Articles are often written about questions to ask a Realtor prior to deciding who should list your home. I think you should take it a step further and ask YOURSELF some questions. After all, you are going to be working with this person for quite a period of time and your results could depend on it.
You want to sell your home and want to find just the right Realtor. You decide to interview 2 or 3 Realtors. That's a good thing, especially if you don't have a Realtor that you have a relationship with. Most professional Realtors are not afraid of competition, it helps them hone their presentation skills. This is the time to get to know each other and decide if you think you can be a viable team. (That's another blog, my philosophy is that your Realtor is part of your team. You are certainly smart enough to make your own decisions but need a Realtor's expertise to take you in the direction that will get you sold.)
Having said that can you interview too many Realtors? Personally when you tell us you are interviewing more than two or three Realtors, we (the Realtors) are not sure what you are looking for. Is it that you lack confidence about your choices or think there is a "secret" and you just haven't found it? If you have chosen to interview a Realtor referred to you by a friend, neighbor or are a past client of the Realtor and perhaps a local expert, you probably have three very competent realtors to choose from. More than that and you begin to become overwhelmed with the talking and advice and focus on the wrong details when trying to make a decision. For example, one puts an ad in SF Chronicle and another puts an ad in the Oakland Tribune. You can't find a differentiator other than to determine that one is better than another based on a newspaper ad and choose a listing agent based on that.
By interviewing too many Realtors, the Realtors begin to look for less critical things to put in the presentation that they think will HOOK you in. You often make the decision based on the hook and not the plan as a whole. The HOOK is one aspect. Ask any Realtor not in a presentation situation and they'll tell you that the real work has less to do with the hook, but it's trying to find what the seller wants to hear in order to get the listing. This is not always the best way for you to choose a Realtor, especially if you are in a tough market and will be working together for awhile. If that hook, once tried, doesn't work or isn't enough, what then? You are stuck with them. It is important to know there is more there than just the HOOK.
Does the listing agent customize your marketing plan? The marketing plan should be a fluid plan that changes based on a property, location, market conditions, amenities and other considerations. A Realtor who is flexible and creative and will be (believe it or not) thinking about your property even on their off hours can come up with creative marketing ideas on an ongoing basis. Of course there are some baseline expectations that should be included in every marketing plan. One would be a broker tour. DO YOU REALLY KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS?
The purpose of a broker tour is to expose your property to the Realtors in your area so that now or later when a Realtor has a buyer that is looking for something like your property, they will remember your home and show it. They will not have to spend the extra time previewing it as they will have seen it already. This saves valuable time and allows the Realtor to show properties on a moment's notice.
In our area, we have a broker open which is an open house where brokers can visit without making an appointment and the broker caravan tour where we meet and carpool to listings to view them. In some of our cities the Realtors primarily tour by broker caravan tour. When that is a case, the broker caravan tour can increase your showings and this week, with a property we had refreshed and put on broker caravan tour, we got a client showing and an offer. In one recent year I counted 10 transactions sold from Realtors out of our broker caravan tour. IT WORKS.
It takes more work on the Realtor's part as it means showing up at the Realtor marketing session and going on the caravan tour two weeks in a row in order to get a home on the tour. This is a commitment of time, and in many people's opinion would be part of their job. Some Realtors will actually have a brokers open in their listing presentation. It sounds the same to the seller who doesn't know the difference. A broker open is supposed to serve the same purpose and in areas where there is only one tour, they are well attended. Newspapers usually use the terms interchangeably. However, in some areas, they are poorly attended as most of the busy full-time Realtors are on the caravan broker tour. Many times these are utilized by out of the area Realtors and we have a company in our area that holds their listings open every Tuesday for broker open house NOT the broker caravan tour. Of course, they are poorly attended, and the seller's impression is that few brokers are showing homes. It helps that broker to double end many listings. Good for him, but with the added exposure to Realtors in his market, would there have been more offers, higher offers?
To the seller, it appears that this broker works hard on getting the Realtors in by having the broker tour every week (the listing brokers are usually not in attendance and the touring Realtors just use the lok box for entry if they are not on the caravan tour). But one has to wonder is that broker doing the best they know to do for the sellers? That is what I call a Commission based Realtor, not a client based Realtor.
This brings up a good point, DO YOU HAVE A COMMISSION BASED OR CLIENT BASED REALTOR? http://activerain.com/blogs/terrylynn The Commission based Realtor takes the easy way out and aren't lying to you, technically, as they do the broker open, but...given the circumstances noted in the example above, there is a BIG difference for the seller, in terms of potential result. Why? Because NAR statistics rarely waiver from year to year that almost 75% of the time a Realtor other than the one you list your home with will bring the buyer. Therefore a major part of the marketing plan and focus for the Realtor you choose to sell your home should be on attracting other Realtors to your home. After all, if there are 100 properties to see, the Realtor picks which ones the buyers view. Buyers on the internet give input, but the National Association of Realtors Profile of Home Buyers for 2007 says that 79% of ALL buyers use a Realtor to buy, and presumably take their advice. So would you say that the commission based Realtor is complying with their promise to do a broker open for your property? YES, but are they giving you all they know to do by doing a broker tour rather than the broker caravan tour that is more common in your area and brings many more Realtors? Given this scenario the difference is they are thinking of themselves first, and are a COMMISSION BASED REALTOR.
THE POINT IS THAT THE SELLER DOESN'T KNOW THEY ARE NOT GETTING THE SERVICE THEY COULD BE GETTING. If it's the seller's choice, no problem, but in a presentation the seller may not be aware there is a significant difference in what they are being told.
The point of this article is to give sellers a bit of the inside track so the questions they ask a Realtor looking to be their Realtor for their home sale can be productive and meet their goals for their property. For most sellers that is the most exposure designed to bring buyers. Do your homework, get referrals and plan your interview questions with purpose. You'll be happier with the result than comparing ads and automobiles and billboards. The "all about me Realtor" is not in it for you. You can tell by talking who they are. AND check references. Now good luck on that home sale.
TERRYLYNN FISHER, Diablo Realty, Realtor, Staging Specialist - CSP/Realtor (Certified Staging Professional), CRS (Certified Residential Specialist), SRES (Senior Real Estate Specialist). Terrylynn is in her 30th+ year in real estate, works in ALL kinds of markets and has a referral directory of Realtors who use similar marketing in your hometown too. She can be reached at 925 876-0966 for referrals or questions.
