Choosing the Right Agent to Sell Your Home
The decision to sell your home is one of the hardest decisions a person can make. You may know on one hand that you need a different home but at the same time, we maintain a very emotional attachment to our homes. Especially if we’ve had children there and the home holds special memories. With that being said, you need to be sure that the person you are entrusting to get you the most money for your memories is worthy of the trust you are placing in them.
Here are a few steps that should assist you in choosing the real estate agent that is right for your needs.
1) Ask friends and family for recommendations. If they have experience in the past, good or bad with a particular real estate agent, it could help you make your decision or at the very least narrow the field.
2) Interview several real estate agents and interview them more than once. You want an agent representing your home that is honest, consistent, and that you feel comfortable with. You definitely want it to be someone that you’ve established a rapport with.
3) Experience is less important than enthusiasm. You want someone that will be a champion of your home and work very hard to find the perfect family to take over where you are leaving off.
4) Make sure your realtor is a member of the National Association of Realtors ® membership in this group requires that the realtor adhere to a certain code of ethics that a real estate agent isn’t held to. It’s a good indicator that the realtor you are using is committed to providing you a positive overall home selling experience.
5) A good realtor will give you advice on things you can do in order to assist in the sale of your home in addition to improvements that can be made inexpensively that tend to lead to larger payoffs at the closing table.
6) Be sure that you are comfortable with your realtor’s ability to guide you through each step from listing to closing, with your best interests at heart. In other words, make sure your realtor is a person you don’t mind spending time with and feel you can count on to deal with you with honesty and integrity.
These things may not seem like a lot but in the end, when you are trying to get the most return on your investment (and face it, a home is the largest monetary investment most people will ever make) from the sale of your home, these things will be of monumental importance. In the end, I recommend going with the agent that you feel the greatest rapport with. You are entrusting them with your home and you are doing so in the hopes that they will respect it and care for it with the same degree of intensity that you do. Choose an agent that you believe will.
