How to Hire the Best REALTOR in Your Area

LONG BEACH REAL ESTATE

We have reached, and exceeded, saturation point on what the market can tolerate financially. Buyers have gone into sticker shock and have retreated; standing on the sidelines, watching prices going down. Wanting to purchase a property and buy it way below market. Sellers are watching the market wanting to believe that prices will escalate as they have for many of the past several years. As each week goes by they are getting more nervous. Should I list now? Should I wait? Prices are not going up, maybe I should list it now, if I wait I could get a lot less value.

What to do?

All of this as the Long Beach properties pile up on the market; more and more going on every day. Many agents are listing Long Beach homes with the high prices of a time gone by. Failing to properly educate sellers about the inherent risks of pricing their properties at too high a price and how much money this terrible, terrible error will cost them. Reducing prices too late, having to reduce them again and again, while the seller chases the market down and down further. The Sellers watching as their property value flies out the window, all because either their agent did not properly educate them, or they did not listen. Result: The property does not sell and is worth a lot less than it would have been had it been priced properly and sold in the early part of the contract. Did you know that approximately 80% of listed homes are not selling in today’s market?

How do I avoid this?

Take the pricing decision out of your agents hands. Insist on seeing the comparable sales. Look at them, I mean really look at them. Spend some time with them. Compare them to your property and remove your ego. Really look at size, condition and proximity to your own home. How long ago did they sell? Did they sell at the top of the market? If they did what is the market now? How much can you truly ask for your property, realistically? Interview several agents, really interview them. Ask the hard questions and demand the answers. Ask why there are so many properties on the market in your area that have not sold. There are basically only three reasons property does not sell, price, condition and lack of communication. Examine these, determine why each one did not sell, or is not selling, knowledge is power.

Don´t make the same mistakes.

The Buyers that are in the market have their choice of the multitude of properties that are listed; naturally they are going to shop for the best property at the best price. If they have a good agent, they are going to negotiate terms. Is your agent a good negotiator? Did they accept a reduced commission?

If they could not negotiate with you on their own behalf, how are they going to fare when negotiating on YOUR behalf?

Are you offering a Buyers agent a tempting commission? A tempting commission may be the difference in your house being shown to many more Buyers, perhaps an over and above bonus to the Buyers agent for a full price offer that actually closes in 30 days? What is your agent going to do to put your property in the forefront? How are they going to make it visible to the Buyers that are looking now? Can they tempt the Buyers to force their agents to show YOUR Long Beach property?

Is your agent prepared to and capable of reaching these Buyers through print media and advertising, do they have the ability to E-Market your property to a large cross section of Buyers, investors and top agents? How Many? Are they Internet savvy? Will they place your property on enough sites to actually make a difference? What sites? How powerful are those sites? Do they subscribe to additional premium services to better display your property to a larger cross section of potential Buyers and agents? Do they have a successful, lead generating web site? Do they have a large arsenal at their immediate disposal to best represent you?

Download the Google toolbar, pull up their website and run your cursor over the Page Rank icon on the toolbar. An “average” agent’s home page should have a 3 ranking, few do, many don’t even have sites and most are sub par. Anything over a 3 required a “tremendous” amount of time, money and content generation. This agent works hard, is intelligent, cares about their business, and is generating a lot of traffic (leads) to benefit their clients. This is NOT an agent who is buying their way up the search engines, yet unable to perform. This is an agent that performs.

Is your potential agent well financed? Interesting question, “Is your potential agent financially sound enough to properly represent you?” It takes a large investment by an agent in our current market to put your property into all of the above mentioned venues. The longer you sit on the market, the more money it costs. Or is your potential agent going to place you on the MLS and hope that another agent will sell it and they will get a hefty commission check. This is the case much of the time.

The really BIG question here is do you want to “LIST” your Long Beach property or do you want to “SELL” it?

Hiring an agent is not a personality contest; it is a business partnership between yourself and your agent. If you want to sell your Long Beach home in the current market you must have a Realtor that can provide you with the tools required to reach the largest cross section of Buyers effectively and immediately.

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Posted on February 2, 2007 by Laurie Manny