Ever wondered how to find the perfect Real estate Agent?
Well read on to find out all the tips you need to know to make sure your making a right decision when choosing your agent.
Agents, as you know, work on a commission per sale or per listing base, so for this reason you must always be aware that they may have their own interests in play here.
Listings are when they successfully persuade someone to give them a property to sell. This is great for the agent as it means more people will come into their store to hopefully either buy the property or list another property with them. Listings are excuses for real estate companies to promote their own company.
There are a few things you should know when deciding on what real estate agent should sell your home.
Never ever pay for advertising costs. Most agents will make you sign a contract before anything happens, and on that contract will be costs associated with marketing, signboards, adverts, you name it! A commission is what you pay to fund their costs and also their effort and time in finding you a buyer (and hopefully for their great level of care) so make sure you don't pay "extras" for any services they offer you. Great real estate agents will not charge anything upfront and you may need to pay a small fee besides the commission only AFTER the property has sold at the price you wanted.
Don't let them over price your home to get you interested. If they value your home way above what you expected-don't be fooled! Get your own evaluation done so you can tell the agents what your house is valued at and what you want it to be listed at. The reason for this is simple; they will quote you a high price at the start and make you interested in them, so you will list with their company. Then when your house isn't selling they will drop the price right down and claim the market values changed. If you have a stable price the whole way through (a price that is reasonable) your house will sell and it won't be left sitting on the market for months.
Houses on the market for months at a time attract bad reputations, the reason is people think there's something wrong with the house, they wonder why the price is dropping and no one is buying, avoid this at all costs, even if it means taking your house of the market for a few months.
Don't be fooled by auctions! If you have ever used eBay to sell odd things around the house you will know all about bidding. It takes 2 people interested in something to make the price rise, so, if only one person is interested then naturally the price will be low when the item is sold.
This goes for your home as well. Someone may be interested in your home so much they are prepared to pay say $600,000 for it, the other person interested may only be prepared to pay $450,000. So when the bidding reaches one persons maximum the bidding will end and the house will be sold. That means you could have gotten another $150,000 for your house had you just sold it without an auction. Keep these things in mind when dealing with agents, don't pay anything up front, don't sign contracts until you know everything and don't be persuaded into auctions because the agent wants a quick sale-and more commission for him.
