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If you are a typical home seller in the Plymouth/Northville/Novi/Canton, etc. market, you know something about real estate. You’ve probably bought and sold a home before, and you may have bought and sold multiple homes. And, because of that, you probably have an established relationship with a Realtor. Maybe even several Realtors.

And perhaps your last real estate experience wasn’t handled as well as you had hoped it would be (and as a recent study showed that *MOST* people are not happy with their Realtor, this could easily apply to you). This being said, this blog post is intended to:

• Help you identify your next real estate professional: Sadly, most people spend more time researching the purchase of a TV or a computer than they do in researching the Realtor® they use! Given the financial significance of a home sale for most people, it is absolutely crucial for you to do everything you can to make sure your next agent is the right agent for you;

• Educate you: This is self-explanatory. We just want you to know more about the process, because the more you know, the more likely you will be to make a good decision and that’s what this is all about, and

• Save you time, frustration and money: Time and again we end up working with people who have been let down by other agents. In normal times, this is bad enough, but in today’s market “with prices still declining in many markets“ this is costing sellers REAL MONEY. It’s not just the hassle and frustration of your home not selling. It is the very real erosion of your financial resources! Can you afford to make a bad decision? If you’re like most people, probably not!

Here are six questions you can ask when you are interviewing candidates to sell your home to increase the odds of working with a truly qualified real estate professional. We wish you all the best in making your decision!

Question #1: May I rescind our listing agreement if I am not satisfied with you?

Why You Are Asking this Question: To gauge the Realtor’s level of “Performance Guarantee.”

When listing your home, all Realtors® require you to sign a listing contract. One of the terms specified within this listing contract is the duration of the listing. Most agents try to get you to agree to the longest possible listing term, for obvious reasons: the longer the term, the more likely that your home will sell, and the longer you are contractually obligated to stick with your agent, for better or worse!

But what happens if, for instance, 30 days into a 90 day listing contract, you discover that the agent is not doing what they promised (which is VERY often the case)? You owe it to yourself to ask this hard question, straight up, because the last thing you want to do is find yourself stuck with someone in whom you’ve lost trust and confidence.

ANY answer to this question other than, “Of course, you may cancel our listing agreement at any time for any reason whatsoever because I have no doubt that I will do EVERYTHING I’ve promised you that I am going to do to sell your home, AND I will put that in writing as part of our listing agreement” SHOULD give you pause. True professionals have no issue providing such guarantees. Any agent who balks at this is someone you should be wary of.

Also, be wary of the agent who says that their “company policy” precludes them from allowing you to terminate their listing agreement at any time for any reason. This is an age old trick that many agents use to get around this question. Our experience is that no company actually has such a policy. Agents are independent contractors, and therefore in control of the vast majority of the decisions that they make that affect their business. The bottom line: any agent who won’t guarantee your satisfaction should be avoided at all costs.

Question #2: How many listings do you have at the moment?

Why You Are Asking this Question: To gauge the probability of working with a “Marketing Specialist” vs. a True Professional.

Some of the biggest names in the business are what we call “marketing specialists.” These are agents who specialize in making money for themselves, but not necessarily in providing great service. They accomplish this through massive marketing budgets that fuel mega-advertising programs (billboards, mailings, postcards, shopping cart inserts, etc.) that tell the public how wonderful they are.

These agents attract loads of clients through sheer magnitude of marketing expenditures. Their focus is on getting vast quantities of listings, locking those clients into long-term listing contracts (refer back to the previous question to remind yourself why you don’t ever want to do this) and then letting other agents do all the work in terms of getting those listings sold.

This strategy is very simple and very effective at producing income for the agent…but very ineffective at selling individual listings and at maximizing the sales prices of their listings. Sadly, many within the general population fall for this approach because they are impressed when an agent speaks about the massive volume of business that they do.

Most of these “marketing specialists” carry large inventories of listings. Many carry 20, 30 or even 50 listings at a time. Let’s assume that a given Realtor works 50 hours per week, and that they currently have 50 listings. Do the math: that means that they are spending, on average, ONE hour per week attempting to sell each of their listings! And that assumes that they are working with no buyers, which tend to require a lot more time than do listing clients. And since many agents tend to have more buying clients than listing clients; well, you get the idea.

Does that seem like an optimal arrangement for you, if you are to be listing number 51? Trust us when we tell you that you cannot properly service a listing in one hour per week. A good Realtor will not take on more work than they can handle, because that is a recipe for dissatisfied clients. You WANT an agent that is fully focused on your specific situation at all times. When agents take on more than they can handle the quality of the service they provide suffers to your detriment.

What you should keep in mind is that many hours go into each and every successful real estate transaction. When you do too much business, by definition, the quality of the service provided suffers.