Picking a Good Real Estate Agent

Some say that real estate agent rate close to used car salesman, lawyers and repossession agents in the popularity stakes … but they’re essential if you want to sell or buy real estate.

So, we have to deal with them.

And, getting the best agent makes a huge difference to your experience and result.  But how can you tell good from bad and what should you look for to pick one ?

A recent article by Susan Wellings in the SMH Domain called Picking the Best Agent explains that the key things are -

• The fee structure
• Who has the best sales record
• Which agent knows potential buyers best

And that five key questions to ask potential agents are -

1. What do you think my property is worth and how did you come up with that figure?
2. How does my home present and what can I do to improve it?
3. What's the best method for selling my property — auction or private treaty — and why?
4. What's an approximate time frame?
5. What's it going to cost me and what fee structures can you offer?

This sounds right to me but I’d add that you should also check on the following things.

• Why the agent recommends an auction or private treaty ?
• What reporting on sales interest will you get ?
• How will offers and negotiation be handled by the agent ?
• What the agent recommends to improve the sale speed or price ?

Either way at least applying some of these tests and filters will improve your outcomes.

I’m now spurred on to try to develop a similar list of things to help pick other key suppliers of services in strata (like strata managers, lawyers, accountants, cleaners, etc).  So, I’ll do that in future posts.

What do you think are important criteria for choosing them in strata (and why) so I can add your thoughts to the posts ?

Francesco …