While many real estate agents have walked away from the business, many realtors have stayed the course and continue to persevere in the current real estate market. I am one of those realtors. Real estate is an investment, and with that investment comes much labor.
Now that the natural screening process has taken place, how do buyers, sellers, and even renters filter through the realtors that remain in the real estate business? First, the type of realtor you should seek depends on your real estate goals as a client. If you are a home owner and want to sell your home, it is important to hire a real estate agent who is experienced in listing homes. As a listing agent myself, I understand the role of pricing and marketing in getting a house sold. Your listing agent should have a sound grasp of doing a Competitive Market Analysis (CMA) and be familiar with market activity in your community. Furthermore, considering we are in a real estate market of undervalued properties, it is likely your home might have to sell as a short sale property. If that is the case, your real estate agent should be an experienced short sale agent and understand how to work with your bank in getting your home sold as a short sale property.
On the other hand, if you are a buyer, you should seek a buyer's agent that is very motivated about finding you properties. I use the the word motivated because there is always other buyers searching for properties and I still believe that you have to approach the process as a competition. Even in a buyer's market where there is more inventory than buyers, there is always enough buyers to have multiple buyers looking at the same property. As the saying goes, "the early bird catches the worm." You don't want to miss out on an ideal property because you are not hitting the pavement constantly to look for homes for sale. Furthermore, your buyer's agent should be a property matching expert. As I do for my clients, your realtor should have a keen eye for finding properties that you like and want to write a sales offer on. This allows you to spend more time looking at properties you might want to purchase versus those that you don't. Of course, you won't like every property, but your real estate agent should be showing you properties that fit your criteria and that get you excited about the purchase process. This is the same for rentals. Furthermore, your buyer's agent should know how to write strong sales offers. Now that you've found the property, you have to write a winning sales offer to get the home you like so much. While you never know what the seller will accept, it's important that your buyer's agent has a sense of strategy before you write a sales offer. The more competitive your sales offer, the greater your chances are in having your sales offer accepted by the seller. And definitely, if you are a first-time home buyer, your real estate agent should be familiar with first time home buyer programs.
Most agents, such as myself, come with the overall expertse of working with buyers and sellers. There are some real estate agents that work with renters and some that do not. I do. Thus, it's important that the real estate agent possesses the experience to help you achieve your present goal of selling, buying, or renting. While you never know what you're going to get, it's good to have a meeting with the real estate agent to learn more about their real estate services. This is only a summary of what qualifies an agent, but what I've shared gives you some basic funadmentals of what a qualified agent should know in order to help each type of client. As an experienced real estate agent, I am faithful to my clients and take pride in helping them achieve their real estate goals. To learn more about how I can help you buy, sell, or rent a home, contact me directly. Go to my website at www.uppermarlboromdrealtor.com to get free real estate information and to sign up to be on my email list.
Comments (0)Subscribe to CommentsComment