HOW DO YOU KNOW YOU HAVE THE RIGHT REALTOR®?
For most people, living in the United States, their home will be the largest purchase they will ever make in their lifetime. When purchasing or selling a home, it is always best to make sure you educate yourself on the entire process………OR, get with a Realtor® you trust will help guide you through the transaction. This doesn’t always mean signing with the agent who has signs/listings all over the place and claims to be the best agent that is going to 1) sell your house for the most money, 2) sell your house in the least amount of time and 3) do those things at no hassle to the seller. Real estate is a hassle. The entire industry can be complex and convoluted. That doesn’t mean that you, the consumer, needs to wrap yourself up in that process.
The agent that needs to get the most attention when you are searching is the hungry agent. This doesn’t mean the starving agent. This means the agent that wants to make sure they are striving to be the best, not claiming to be the best. It’s important that an agent be hungry, not always for the payday, but more for the satisfaction of helping their neighbor achieve a goal or see a dream come to realization.
Here are few tips for finding a hungry Realtor®:
- 🗣 Ask Around! 🗣
Your friends and family would never give you a recommendation for an agent that they feel wouldn’t be the right one for you. If they did, they aren’t your friends or you shouldn’t consider them family (just kidding, not really).
- 👀 Look For Agent Reviews! 👀
Agent reviews are available on plenty of platforms, including Zillow, Realtor.com, Trulia, etc. Sometimes agents are new to the industry. Don’t discount those agents, sometimes those are the ones you want. Keep reading, and I’ll explain more.
- ❓ Ask Questions! ❓
When you do narrow your list, ask whatever questions you may have. Being a realtor is effectively working FOR you. You wouldn’t hire a terrible CPA to do your taxes, or bad Dentist to give you a root canal, would you? If you answer that with a yes, you need to re-evaluate life choices. Ask questions you want…….NO NEED to know about your potential Realtor®.
🛑🛑🛑 TIME OUT HERE!!!!! (this is the part I was talking about with the new agents) 🛑🛑🛑
Notice, I did not mention anything about an inexperienced agent. I used the adjectives terrible and bad, not young or inexperienced. One thing I have found is that most really hungry Realtors® don’t have an age, sex or years on the job. We just exist. We are constantly learning for the betterment of our neighbors and opportunities to help them out when their need for a Realtor® arises. We typically attend a lot of continuing education. We bug the mess out of our brokers to ensure we are doing everything we can to stay on track for success. We bounce ideas off of said brokers to ensure we are well within legal and ethical real estate practice.
🚩 Here are some red flags when searching for a Realtor® 🚩
- ⚒ They Don’t Dig Deeper ⚒
When listing your home, they are willing to list the house well above market value in order to just “get the listing”. Also, when showing you homes, they are willing to submit an offer on a property without reviewing disclosures, doing a CMA to determine market value, among other duties we have to our clients.
- 🔇 Communication Is Lacking 🔇
If you constantly find yourself not being able to reach your Realtor®, they may not be the right professional for you. There are plenty of ways to figure this out. How quickly do they respond to you? If they cannot give you undivided attention, do they at least respond letting you know they will be in touch as soon as they can?
- 😔 They Are Spread Too Thin 😔
Some Realtors® claim/advertise to be the best and often times that isn’t challenged, even though it may not be (it also may be) true. Because of that people believe said Realtor® is the person they’d like to hire. Here is the problem with this. A lot of times, those professionals work with a team and will often times delegate their clients to the team members and you will only see the Realtor® YOU hired again on closing day. Your Realtor®, not their team, should be readily available to you as long as you have an agency agreement with them.
- 🚫❓ They Don’t Ask Questions❓🚫
This goes back to not digging deeper. The audacity of a Realtor® to walk into your home and offer services without asking questions is unfathomable. We need as much information as we can retrieve in order to get you what you want. That often times means asking questions you may feel uncomfortable answering…….I’m just saying.
- 💵 They Offer A Low Commission 💵
An agent that offers a low commission is not worried about selling your house. Concurrently, if an agent offers to accept a lower commission on the purchase of a home, they aren’t worried about your purchase. They quite simply worried about a pay day. Great Realtors® are interested in making sure their neighbors are always first priority.
Final Point of Emphasis
Realtors® come in all shapes, sizes and colors. Everyone has their own reason for entering the profession, but after getting in, the reasons should start to align more with the industry standard. That standard being to make sure we are taking care of our neighbor’s real estate needs/wants in using the highest ethical, moral and legal standards in the industry. That doesn’t mean hiring Suzy Q (forgive me if there is a Suzy Q, but I couldn’t get any more generic), because you see her signs everywhere. It also doesn’t mean ignoring Realtor® John Q Newbie, because he’s been in the industry less than a year or two. Here is a staggering statistic for you: the percentage of real estate agents that fail in the business within the first 5 years ranges between 85-90%. Please keep this in mind when hiring a Realtor®. The newbies need to eat too, just be sure you are doing your due diligence.
🚨🚨🚨 JUST BECAUSE AN AGENT HAS SIGNS EVERYWHERE DOESN’T MEAN THEY ARE A GOOD REALTOR® 🚨🚨🚨
✅✅✅ JUST BECAUSE AN AGENT IS NEW TO THE PROFESSION DOESN’T MEAN THEY ARE A BAD REALTOR® ✅✅✅
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