Selecting someone to represent you
Selling your home should be a stress-free and enjoyable process… not the headache it has become for some folks. There are over 9,500 real estate licensees in the Austin Metropolitan area. Before you decide to list your home for sale, we encourage you to interview several real estate professionals to ensure you are hiring someone who is experienced, qualified, enthusiastic about your home, and will document their marketing plan in an easy-to-follow, logical way. Choosing the right agent for your home can be confusing. It is especially difficult when you speak with several different agents, and they all seem so convincing.
There is a way to determine who is the most likely to succeed in getting your price and terms. The key is in knowing the right questions to ask. This is particularly important now, as homes are selling more slowly. After all, this could likely be the single largest financial transaction you make this year! Unless you choose the right person to represent you, you might not achieve the results you have in mind.
The following list provides you with 21 questions to ask your prospective Listing Agent. The list will not only help you select the right Agent, but also get you the very best efforts from the one you choose…
1. Are you a “REALTOR®,” an exclusive title only applicable to members in good standing of the National Association of REALTORS® who subscribe to a higher standard of professional ethics as mandated by the NAR, and are you also a member of the Austin Board of REALTORS®? Not all real estate agents are REALTORS®.
2. Do you work as a full-time REALTOR®? Most listings require service on a full-time basis to achieve maximum results. And WHAT commitment to Professional Excellence have you demonstrated by pursuing and achieving advanced certifications in your real estate practice?
3. Why are you a real estate agent? Why and when did you get into this profession and what keeps you going?
4. How many clients (buyers and/or sellers) do you have at this time? More listings and more clients typically translate into more prospective buyers for your property as long as there is a Team in place to handle the volume of activity.
5. Do you have a full-time staff of professionals to see that no details are overlooked? If yes, who will be the team member I will most often deal with? Your relationship is with your REALTOR®… are you confident of his/her assistants' abilities?
6. Do you ever take time off to be with family and/or loved-ones? What about vacations? If you do, who will handle my listing activity while you will be away, and what is/are their professional qualifications? Only licensed agents may show your home and engage with potential customers.
7. Where are you going to advertise my home and why? On what "target markets" will you focus your marketing efforts, and how will you appeal to them? The more strategic the marketing, the greater the likelihood of a quick sale.
8. In what ways will you encourage other REALTORS® to sell my home? Posting the listing in MLS is simply not enough.
9. What marketing efforts do you intend to do in my immediate neighborhood? And how do you feel about Open Houses?
10. What about Property Flyers / Listing Sheets? How do you know who's interested in my home?
11. Will you do an audio tour of the property? What about a virtual tour?
12. Do you have a system to follow-up with other agents so that we get valuable feedback after every showing?
13. Are you associated with a national referral network that refers clients to you? If so, what percentage of your business is attributable to these referrals?
14. In what ways do you plan to expose my property to millions of buyers on the Internet? On which sites will my home be featured, and how will you draw traffic to my home? How will you KNOW that people are looking at this information? More awareness is always better than less, but you can’t know how effective your marketing is unless you have a system in place to track the success of your marketing efforts.
15. What is my property worth in today's market conditions? What listing price do you recommend? How did you arrive at this price? Quiz Question: What is the only determination of value that really matters?
16. Do you have a written Marketing Plan designed to sell my property quickly and for top dollar?
17. Tell me about the information on your yard and directional signage? If the inquiries don't go to the agent's phone number, is your home really getting the best representation to a prospective buyer?
18. Do you have access to technology resources so that my home is marketed 24 hours a day with fax-back and "0" transfer capabilities?
19. How long must I list my property with you?
20. On what basis, and frequency, will I be kept informed of your activities to market my home?
21. Do you offer any written Service Guarantees?
Setting the price of your home
The three factors to consider in selling your home are location, condition and price ... and they are all related.
Location
Your home's location and setting influences its value. A home inside a quiet subdivision sells for more than the identical home on a busy street. Remote areas typically sell for less than close-in areas. Views, streams and trees usually enhance value. You obviously have no control over location.
Condition
New homes enjoy a marketing edge over resale homes because they are shiny and clean. And builders enhance their appeal by offering model homes (clean, bright and decorated in current colors and amenities) for buyers to examine.
Our goal it to make your home as close to a model home as possible… being sensitive to costs. You have nearly complete control over condition and you can increase value and decrease marketing time by being sure your property is in the best possible condition.
Pricing
If IBM stock is trading between 104 and 108, it does no good to insist on selling at 112. Likewise, your home must be priced within the appropriate range to be seen by the largest number of potential buyers. You must actually "sell" your property twice: first to a buyer and then to an appraiser. The buyer is more subjective and compares the amenities of your home to those of other homes in the same price range. The appraiser is more objective and compares age, size and cost-identifiable features in your home against other properties that have sold.
We use our experience and expertise to fine-tune our pricing recommendation by taking into consideration all of these variables up front as you set the listing price for your home, to avoid headaches and heartaches later on.
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