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Find an Agent Who Knows the Neighborhood

I have never understood why people don't do their homework and find an agent who knows the area.

I recently had an agent present an offer well below the asking price. The answer when we did reply.....yes we did counter...was that our counter was not enough. They had offered 12% less than the asking price. We are currently selling for between 3% - 5% less than asking price.

The importance of having the right agent cannot be emphasized to much.

By the way we just sold this same property for 3% less than the asking price.

Original Quoted Post

Posted by Florence Gadbois on 07/16/2006 11:40 AM

Comments (5)

real estate, sales selling

5 Comments on Find an Agent Who Knows the Neighborhood

JUL

2006

Oh so right you are! In buyers desire to be loyal to a friend or co-worker, they often end up getting the short end of the stick. This holds true not only in working with incompetant agents, but loan brokers as well.

I've seen loyal people not only get charged fees in excess of the norm, but lose their friend too. Wow, talk about paying for the priviledge!

I have to respectfully disagree. With the internet shift and access to data, competent, intelligent agents will do their due diligence and become knowledgeable about neighborhoods their clients are interested in. Any less, then the agent is doing the client a disservice. Also, I'm not necessarily seeing the correlation between the salemanship example and the topic. Are you saying because the agent made an offer 25% below asking and didn't negotiate, they don't know the neighorhood & is inexperienced?

The opposite is that an agent may know a neighorhood market very well and still present an offer 25% off list. It's not uncommon for sellers in our market to list substantially over market to make a killing. A good agent would know that and advise their client accordingly.

Hehe...kinda funny.

While there are some part-time agents that do a good job, by-and-large, you are correct: find a full time agent.

Your mention of the counter-offer is also well-taken. One of the last deals I made was a case where the offer was VERY low. My seller wanted to just reject the offer. I suggested we counter and see what happens. As it turns out, we had the house under contract less than 24-hours later with everyone very happy.

I'm not sure I see the relationship between the comment and the topic either. I work with some investors who are not going to make counteroffers that they don't think are worth their effort because they are working on several deals at a time.

It could be the buyer, not the agent. Either speak to the agent or give more information about the situation before making assumptions,

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