If you are looking for a real estate agent, it is vitally important that you ask them these five questions before giving them the important job of selling your home.
Despite what most people think, not all agents are created equal.
Are all attorneys the same? Are all CPAs the same? Are all doctors the same? Of course not.
So, how can you make sure that you hire the right real estate agent? I recommend asking them these five questions:
1. How many homes have you sold so far this year? You should also ask how many homes they sold the previous year. Why? The average agent sells fewer than three homes in a calendar year, which means that they probably don’t know much about real estate. At the Roth Team, we’ve sold 175 homes so far this year; last year, we sold 236 homes.
2. What is your average list to sales price ratio? In other words, how close is the purchase price to the asking price? Some agents offer a lower commission because they will give your house away. They let the buyer negotiate the price down. Our average list to sales price ratio is 98.4%, which is very close to asking price.
“YOU NEED AN EXPERIENCED AGENT WHO WORKS FULL-TIME.”
3. What is the average days on market for the homes you list and sell? Of course, if it takes an agent six months to a year to sell homes, they are wasting time and money. This year, our homes spent an average of 48 days on the market.
4. How many years of experience do you have? Do they have another job? Quite honestly, many agents do not make enough money to support their income in real estate. Many agents have less than three to five years of experience in the market. I’ve been doing this full-time for 35 years. Experience counts; it can really make a difference when it comes to selling your home.
5. How many people will you talk to every day to sell my home? Every agent puts your home on the MLS, throws it on a few websites, and takes out an ad in the paper. Some agents may even hold open houses. However, those methods are not good enough. They need to personally contact potential buyers every day. We call that active marketing. Our team contacts as many as 100 people a day to get your home sold.
If you have any other questions about real estate, please don’t hesitate to give us a call or send us an email. My team and I would be happy to help you!
