Whether you are buying, selling, or investing, your relationship with your real estate agent is an intimate one. You share with them your financial and family situations, wants, needs, goals and interests. You should not only enjoy spending time with them but feel a high level of loyalty and comfort with your agent as well as a sense of teamwork… together you are working towards a common goal because your success equals their success.

Priority Are you a full time real estate agent? Or is this one of many jobs or a hobby?

Ask yourself and your agent if real estate is their top priority. Make no mistake, if our clients aren’t successful, we aren’t successful and to succeed in real estate it must be a full-time job. A full-time real estate agent can devote their time and energy to helping you achieve your real estate goals whether it is continuously marketing your property for sale or searching for the right one for you to buy. There are limited hours in a day so if your agent has limited time and energy to devote to selling real estate, chances of you achieving your goals with them are slight.

Present- Is your potential real estate agent present in the area? Are they a local expert with experience in the area? It is incredibly difficult to advise someone on something that you don’t know or understand yourself, so if your agent is not familiar with the past, present and potential future development of the city, neighbourhood, or price range that you are working within, they can’t help you. During your time with your agent are they present and involved in the conversation or are they distracted by outside influences? If they aren’t listening to your wants and needs they won’t be able to help you achieve them.

What are your marketing strategies and techniques? - the days of simply placing a sign in the yard and uploading a home on the Multiple Listing Service are LONG gone. Is your potential agent experienced at using a variety of current marketing techniques? Traditional print media such as newspapers, magazines, mail outs are now a small component in the effective marketing of selling a home. It’s a well-known fact that the vast majority of home buyers search for a home online before they even consider viewing it in person so your agents online real estate presence is vital.  View their history of advertising their homes for sale, experiences and expertise on personal websites, social media (Facebook, twitter, linked in, Pinterest and Instagram) If their online presence is lacking or just recently began, then chances are they won’t be able to market your home to reach the greatest number of potential buyers.

What is your experience?There is a huge variety of different agents. Each one has a unique personality, variety of education, training, and marketing techniques. For this article lets break agents in to three categories. New agent, experienced agent, and top producer. There are benefits to using an agent in each stage of their career, the one that suits you best will depend on your own personality, experience, and goals.

Although a new agent may lack experience they will likely make you a top priority and make up for a lack of experience with fresh and energetic enthusiasm for their new career. This can be a benefit to you as your goals are at the forefront of their mind increasing your chances of finding the right property and the amount of attention your home will receive in their marketing efforts.

If you are looking for more guidance and support with your real estate goals than you feel a new agent can provide you with then an experienced agent may the right fit for you. An experienced agent will be able to guide you through the complexities of real estate seamlessly. They will have systems in place to create a smooth buying process for you keeping your housing needs and budget a priority so that you can focus on what’s important… finding the home that you want. An experienced agent has developed a variety of marketing techniques they will use when selling your home. Their market knowledge in the area will be advantageous when pricing your home, increasing the likelihood of achieving your goal… selling your property.

If hiring an agent with the most experience is your priority that a top producer might be the right fit for you. These are the agents who year after year have been at the top of their field and involved in the most real estate transactions in the area. The top producer should be able to provide you with an abundance of information on the current market conditions, historical real estate facts and will have solid systems in place to facilitate your experience whether buying or selling. Due to the sheer volume of clients that a top producer works with they will likely have an assistant or buyer’s agent working for them, which means at times you will be working with them and not your agent.  

Negotiation skills- if you are going to be working with a full-time agent by now they should have taken extensive training in negotiations. If you have contacted an agent to sell a home, they will have completed a Comparative Market Analysis which will determine the most likely sale price of your home in the current market.  Often a seller will want to price their home above fair market value in hopes of optimizing profit, if your agent is unable to discuss the pit falls of overpricing with you and help you to see why this is a mistake how are they going to negotiate on your behalf when an offer is placed on your home? Simply put if your agent is unable to negotiate with you, they are unable to negotiate for you.

Communication- Does your agent answer their phone and return your calls in a timely manner? If you aren’t able to get a hold of your agent how are others going to? Unanswered phone calls, text messages and emails are a good indication as to how much time your agent can devote to communicating with others on your behalf. Whether it be potential buyers for a property you are selling or the seller of a property you may want to purchase, lack of communication from your agent will equal missed opportunities for you.

Referrals-friends, family, past clients, other agents. If you don’t already know and trust a local agent when you decide it is time to start your property search or choose to sell your home then it’s a great idea to ask your friends, family members and co-workers about their past experiences with local agents. If this is not an option, then there are many online options that may be available to you. Research past client testimonials, ask for referrals in a local online chat group or simply set up appointments with several agents who you feel you may want to work with a decide who is the best fit with you.

As you can see there are many factors involved in choosing your agent. Make sure that whoever you work with is someone with whom you feel comfortable, have local market knowledge, possess strong communication skills, offer a variety of marketing strategies, and has dedicated the time and energy towards making real estate their primary focus. At the end of the day… if you don’t succeed in reaching your real estate goals, they won’t either!