How to Choose a Realtor

When you're buying or selling a house, how do you choose a realtor? Here are a few tips for success, and pitfalls to avoid.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Friends
• Yellow pages
• Internet access

1. Develop a wish list of the characteristics you want or need in a real estate agent. Someone who will teach you the ropes from the very beginning? Someone who will get you through the process most rapidly? Someone whose integrity you can count on? Someone who will check listings several times a day for you? Someone who will be available nights and weekends to make sure contracts get processed as rapidly as possible? Do you want a bidding war? Do you want to avoid a bidding war? Know your must-haves and your nice-to-haves.

2. Talk to friends, check the Yellow Pages, or conduct an online search. Talk to people you contact about your wish list, and ask for recommendations.

3. Interview prospective agents! They will be making thousands of dollars off of you, directly or indirectly -- you deserve a good fit. Don't hesitate to ask for references, and do contact the references.

4. Don't forget search engines: Googling an agent's name can give valuable insights into their priorities. You're buying, want a good school district, and the agent you're leaning toward is a PTA officer? That's a good thing. You want to sell to someone who will live in the house instead of renting it out, and the agent is on the board of the local landlord's association? Probably not a good fit.

5. Choose an agent and get going!

Tips & Warnings

• After buying our first house with the "help" of a high-volume agent, we now seek out medium-volume agents. High-volume agents tend to have their buyers pay high prices, have their sellers ask low prices, and they tend to discourage buyers from doing things like requiring a home inspection or shopping for mortgages. These all speed up the transaction (freeing the agent to move on to next deal and further raise their numbers), but costs you extra whether you're the buyer or seller. In contrast, we've found that medium-volume agents have enough drive to get the job done, yet care enough about their clients to do the job well.
• Real estate agents will ask you to work only with them. This is a reasonable request -- they are doing work for you, after all -- but don't be afraid to "fire" them if you decide they're not working in your best interests.
• Once you buy a house, it's extremely difficult to correct any problems that you didn't include in the buy-sell contract. One of the most important things a buyer's agent can do is to help you negotiate all the inspections and repairs the house needs.
• Have your own agent -- don't let the selling agent on a property do your purchase as well. Most states require an agent to be impartial in such cases, but that's likely to mean that the agent will completely abandon the field if there's a conflict. That could result in you, a private buyer, being pitted against the legal department of a multi-state developer.