How To Find Out Who Is The Best Real Estate Agent In Your Area

Find­ing the best real-estate agent depends on what you con­sider the best attrib­utes and how good they are at these. There are cer­tain traits and res­ults they should have, and it’s more than just being a smooth talker. From my exper­i­ence in this industry and the research I have done, these are the attrib­utes that really mat­ter to the end selling prices and low vacancy rates.

If you would like a con­trast to what I’m going to explain in this art­icle, have a look at this page, which out­lines how to find a bad real estate agent to buy from.

So here goes, here are some key things I would look for if I were look­ing for a real estate agent to sell my home;

Days On Market

If you have a look at a real estate agent’s stand­ard days on mar­ket (how long it takes them to sell prop­er­ties on aver­age), it will tell you a lot about them.

Put it this way, if an agent has a lower than aver­age days on mar­ket com­pared to the rest of the agents, he is obvi­ously doing some­thing dif­fer­ent. I would con­sider his skill level to be higher and his nego­ti­ation skills to be bet­ter.

If prop­er­ties stay too long on the mar­ket, they become harder to sell as the most interest hap­pens in the first two weeks of mar­ket­ing a prop­erty. We call this a “stale list­ing” and the pub­lic begins to per­ceive some­thing is wrong with a prop­erty if it’s on the mar­ket for an above aver­age of time.

Smart agents can edu­cate their seller about this phe­nomenon. They pre­pare the seller and get them to act before it becomes an issue. This helps make it a very smooth and luc­rat­ive sales pro­cess in most cases.

Large Mar­ket Share

This is not neces­sar­ily the agent that has been in the area the longest. It’s usu­ally an indic­a­tion of how well the real estate agency is run­ning and how well sales, mar­ket­ing and admin systems/people are work­ing together.

You should get a bet­ter cus­tomer ser­vice exper­i­ence, because without it, they surely wouldn’t have got­ten as big as they are. As a bonus, they should have a lar­ger pool of buy­ers for your prop­erty, as they will be con­duct­ing more open homes and the sys­tems should be send­ing out “buyer alert emails”.

Do They Nor­mally Sell Your Type of Property?

Let’s say you were selling a com­mer­cial prop­erty, but you call out a real estate agent with the largest mar­ket share, but it is made up of all res­id­en­tial homes, I doubt they would have a ready-to-go buyer on their hot­l­ist for your prop­erty. I doubt they would have con­tacts and the in-depth know­ledge for mak­ing a smooth trans­ac­tion. Also, nego­ti­ation strategies for Home buy­ers may not work on com­mer­cial prop­erty buy­ers as they are more busi­ness savvy.

Do They Specialise

A good example is that we have an agent in our office who spe­cial­ises in devel­op­ment sites. He has all the con­tacts to be able to mar­ket a devel­op­ment site and also shares that exper­i­ence and know­ledge through­out the office. This makes the entire sales team very good at selling off-plan prop­er­ties and also helps us com­mu­nic­ate with developers to get the best results.

Not all agents have exper­i­ence with mar­ket­ing an entire devel­op­ment site; this can be com­pletely dif­fer­ent from nor­mal house and land sales. Exper­i­ence is all the dif­fer­ence as not all agen­cies sell off the plan well.

Can They Demon­strate Their Nego­ti­ation Skills

I recom­mend you role-play with the real estate agent when you are con­sid­er­ing hiring them. Pre­tend to be a buyer and cre­ate an objec­tion that you think a buyer would nor­mally ask. Test their reac­tion and also get them to explain their strategy.

A good agent doesn’t fly by the seat of his pants; he has a meth­od­ical, planned-out strategy with every inter­ac­tion and ques­tion that is asked by a buyer.

Com­mu­nic­a­tions (Sys­tems & Frequency)

The industry has done many tests and sur­veys on what the biggest prob­lem is within real estate. They say it’s com­mu­nic­a­tion, in particular;

• Lack of communication
• Takes too long to get back to you
• Afraid to tell it like it is
• No sys­tems when it comes to buyer feedback
• The expect­a­tions of how often the agent will com­mu­nic­ate with you were not set
• Details were not put in writing
• These com­mu­nic­a­tion points can make all the dif­fer­ence when it comes to feel­ing as though the trans­ac­tion is going smoothly and you know what is going on. Make sure your agent ticks all the boxes before you sign an agency agree­ment with them.

Do They Make Sug­ges­tions On Quick & Easy Things To Do To Get A Bet­ter Price

For many reas­ons, real estate agents don’t nor­mally ren­ov­ate for profit, but they surely do know what will increase the value of a prop­erty. It just comes down to you not to over­cap­it­al­ise on the improve­ments. If you can do this and take on sug­ges­tions from real estate agents without skip­ping on the work­man­ship, you can do very well.

Believe it or not, small things like clean­ing win­dows, basic gardening/cleaning up, and a fresh coat of neut­ral mod­ern col­ours can add $4 to every $1 you put in when it comes to selling. A good agent will also tell you what will not add value, and this can save you a lot of time and money. An inex­per­i­enced agent would prob­ably be wishy-washy and is not to give you spe­cific things.

Not Afraid To Tell It Like It Is

This can make all the dif­fer­ence, as you may not like what they have to say, but I can surely save you a lot of time on money, for example.

Let’s say interest rates are up and the mar­ket is down. You have lis­ted your prop­erty at a good price accord­ing to pre­vi­ous sales around your area. Let’s say as you list the prop­erty on the mar­ket, another interest rate rise has hit and the buyer feed­back hasn’t come back as you would like.

You’ve lived in your prop­erty for 20 years and you brought up chil­dren in the home. You have fond memor­ies of liv­ing in the area, and you think it’s a great place to live. All the buy­ers that come through your prop­erty give you crit­ical feed­back com­pared to what’s on the mar­ket right now. You receive no offers, and the mar­ket is approx­im­ately going down $10,000 a month.

Inex­per­i­enced Agent

An inex­per­i­enced agent that doesn’t know what to say in this mar­ket will be too afraid to say any­thing and con­tinue to leave your prop­erty at that higher price and just hope that someone comes in who gets emo­tion­ally attached to your home. Your home sits on the mar­ket for three months and is now worth $30,000 less.

Exper­i­enced Agent

A good agent will know the right things to say and pass on the feed­back. Let you know how quickly the mar­ket is going down. He will advise you to mar­ket your prop­erty more aggress­ively to get a bet­ter price sooner. You may have lost $10,000 as the mar­ket is trend­ing down­wards, but it’s bet­ter than $30,000 as in the pre­vi­ous example.

Good agents have exper­i­enced the ups and downs in the prop­erty mar­ket and know how to can­didly talk to home sellers to help them get the best res­ult in the mar­ket they find them­selves in. We call it chas­ing the mar­ket, and you’ll start to see this as a com­mon occur­rence as interest rates go up.

Good Reviews on Google

The most accur­ate reviews in the real estate industry I found on Google itself. There are a lot of web­sites out there that have Real estate agent reviews, but a lot of them can be con­trolled by the agent. Google audits its reviews and has an algorithm to pre­vent people from tam­per­ing with reviews.

The algorithm will even find out how reli­able the review is and remove reviews that square res­ults. They do this so that reviews can be used in their search algorithm when you’re look­ing for the “best real estate agent” in the area, for example.

I also recom­mend calling the people that the agent has giv­ing you as a testi­mo­nial and have a can­did con­ver­sa­tion with them. Yes, it can be con­front­ing, but doing your home­work should help you decide who you think is the best real estate agent.

Do They Adhere To Good Prop­erty Mar­ket­ing Principles?

• They should put you in a data­base and you should receive dif­fer­ent types of com­mu­nic­a­tion from them.
• Social media mar­ket­ing (is it pro­fes­sion­ally man­aged or is it aban­doned, with list­ings spammed all over it). Most agents give up after 6 months and default to post­ing list­ings because they can’t be bothered.
• An easy to nav­ig­ate web­site is a mark of any good business.
• Do they do video mar­ket­ing on You­Tube with reg­u­lar updates?
• Pho­tos (do they look good or bad?). I see some bad agents take pho­tos with their phone and use them for advert­ising. This is a big no-no.

Con­tacts to help keep the sale together

It is rare that a prop­erty sale will have no hurdles, and a good agent has built a team around him to help keep the most trick­i­est of sales together. The team con­sists of;

• Mort­gage broker
• Fin­an­cial planner
• Soli­citor
• Valuer
• Pest inspector
• Build­ing inspector
• Prop­erty manager
• Account­ant
• Cleaner
• Trades­people

For example, in our office, we have been through many of these people and over time, we have built rela­tion­ships with them. As we can­not accept com­mis­sions from them but hav­ing a good rela­tion­ship with them will help us get a trans­ac­tion through that may seem impossible in the time­frame.

Because real estate agents can help you make 10% all lose you 10% it is very import­ant to look for these char­ac­ter­ist­ics. If you find an agent that ticks all the boxes hold onto them and build a rela­tion­ship with them. You never know when you may need a ques­tion answered, and with so much at stake, you need to know it’s reli­able advice.