Will your real estate agent go out on a limb for you?
If you are a savvy seller, there is a good chance that you are interviewing more than one real estate agent. So, if this is the case, how are you going to choose one over the others? Certainly, all of them will let you know how they are going to market your house--through various real estate sites such as Zillow and Trulia, through their in-office network and perhaps by using social media like Twitter and Facebook. So how are you going to decide which one will do the best job?
With over 95 % of home buyers first going to the internet, online presence is very important. So, if one of the agents is on more online real estate sites than the others with the ability to upload more photos, this would certainly be a strong point.
However, more poorly shot photos of a house that has not been properly prepared for the marketplace is NOT a good thing. Of course, many home sellers think that their castle, I mean home, is beautiful just the way it is. They perhaps pride themselves on having designer-like skills and feel that buyers should or more positively stated WILL love their house just the way it is. So, if you were an agent who sees things differently and knows that the way we live in our homes is NOT the way we market and sell our homes, why bring up staging at a listing interview appointment? Why risk offending the potential client?
Well, the answer is simple: because agents who are confident and think outside-the-box will risk losing a listing to give their potential client the very best advice. They might also be willing to share the cost of a home staging consultation to encourage you to listen to what a professional stager has to say about your house. Quite frankly, the best agents often take a team approach and have stagers and sometimes professional photographers on their team. They are willing to stand behind what they know will make your house look its best and get noticed on the MLS.
So, when you are ready to begin interviewing agents, don't forget to open your mind to preparing your house for sale and choosing an agent not just by his or her personality or by who quotes the highest listing price but by who is willing to go out on a limb by suggesting home staging!
As an addendum to this post that I wrote at the beginning of the summer, I recently got a call from a Virginia real agent who was looking for a Realtor in my area. She only wanted to use an agent who has a stager on his or her team so she was asking me to recommend one! SWEET!!!
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