The Right Find How to Pick a Real Estate Agent for the Perfect Fit

Given that the average person moves more than 10 times in their life, it’s likely that even if you’ve found a great house, you may want to move later on. During those 10 moves, you’ll also need to find someone to help you and knowing how to pick a real estate agent is essential. Finding the wrong agent will cost you time and money whether you’re buying or selling a property.

Here are four things to look for when you’re in search of an agent to help you.

1. Find Someone Local

When you’re in search of a real estate agent, you need to find a realtor who knows more than you do when it comes to the local market. Whether you’re new to the area or you’re a lifelong resident, the job of a good realtor is to find out information that you don’t know or don’t have access to. Someone who is local to your region is going to be better than someone who works nationally or impersonally.

Have a meeting and gauge their knowledge of what’s good in your neighborhood. Share your ideas and be open to the kind of feedback they can offer. If they’re telling you that your idea of what’s hot in the market isn’t quite right, they should be able to tell you why.

If they’re going to push an emerging market on you, find out why. If they’re just doing it because they have a stake there or they have something to gain, it should be pretty clear to you.

Local realtors have inside knowledge, know what kind of industries are starting to emerge, and can tell you what to look out for. They should have knowledge that’s more robust than what a casual visitor might have or what you’d find in the daily paper.

2. Talk to Recent Clients

The most reputable agents will be proud to share a list of their recent clients and to offer you information about listings they’ve successfully sold. However, if you’re going to reach out to former clients, you need to know which questions to ask them.

If you’re buying a place, ask former clients what the asking price was when they decided on the home and then what the sales price ended up being. This lets you know how good your realtor is at negotiating and how they can help you to get a better deal.

If you’re trying to sell a property, look for properties where the details were similar to what you’re selling. If the price, location, and amenities were similar, ask how long the home was on the market before and after the realtor got ahold of it. You should also be working with someone who knows how to sell the kind of property you have, so this is a good litmus test.

3. Check the Credentials

Another thing that a talented and professional realtor will be happy to share is their current licensing and certifications. It takes years to be a great realtor and many of them take additional classes or certifications to understand how to work with a variety of properties.

Your realtor should be willing to share this inform station with you and proud to answer any questions you have about their experience. Their experience and accomplishments are powerful selling points when you’re seeking someone to work with.

You can also look for disciplinary actions against your realtor. Every regulatory body checks up on the people they certify and license. There are complaints lodged against the worst realtors around and reviews from the Better Business Bureau ensure that you don’t work with them.

Ask the realtor if they’ve been given any special awards for their work. All the time, realtors are given professional accolades that certify them as realtor of the year or as a realtor who is good at what they do.

4. Check Out What They’ve Got On The Market

A realtor or an agent’s current listings are going to tell you a lot about how they market properties and how hard they work to sell them. A realtor committed to helping their clients is going to offer a lot of details with photos that get you excited about the property. If you can look at a realtor’s listings online before you talk to them, you can get an unfiltered view into how they work

If a realtor or an agent has a website, it should have lots of up to date information about properties that are currently on the market. If you notice that the agent doesn’t update their listings very often, you can expect that the realtor you’re trying to work with is going to forget about you. Letting your property sit on the market for months without updating the listing or trying to reel in any buyers is toxic for your asking price.

Pictures are worth a thousand words, so make sure the photos that they’re using are professionally taken and not stretched or scaled. If everything looks oddly stretched out or pixelated, then your agent doesn’t care enough about details and presentation to help your listing to sell.

Take note if your agent’s website appears to be inundated with listings. This can be a good thing but it can also mean that it’ll take forever for them to get back to you when you need help.

Use Your Gut on How to Pick a Real Estate Agent

When you’re navigating how to pick a real estate agent who works for you, use your instincts to guide your decisionmaking. You’ll find it’s much easier to work with someone who you feel comfortable with than someone who just has good reviews.

Before you start your search, check out our guide to the most common struggles that every buyer and seller faces.

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