When a real estate agent calls the home owner of an expired listing or a FSBO, invariably the home owner will ask the agent if he or she has a buyer for the house. The agent will usually say they don't know if they have a buyer for the house because they haven't seen the house yet. Which makes sense and has a lot of truth to it. However, I'd like to suggest this question is irrelevant to the phone call, because a listing agent's roster of buyers reflects the agent's listing inventory.
Let me explain. If I have a $300k listing, I will get $300k buyers. If I have a water front listing, I will get water front buyers. Here's why: Buyers who don't have a buyer's agent will call listing agents to get more information about the houses they're interested in. When those calls come in, it is the listing agent's job to then build rapport with the caller and build interest in the house so they'll want to take a closer look at it.
Agents who acquire a large listing inventory usually end up hiring a buyer's agent to answer their listing phone calls. There's just no way to keep up with all the prospects and inquiries that come in on a multitude of properties. So you may hire Susan as your listing agent, thinking she does a lot of sales so therefore must have a lot of buyers, but Susan doesn't actually have any buyers - her buyer's agent has them all. And her buyer's agent is always busy showing property, so she may never actually see Susan's new listing.
Fortunately for Susan and the home owner, Susan's buyer's agent will know everything she needs to know about Susan's listing because more than likely it will be in the MLS (Multiple Listing Service). Of course since it's in the MLS, EVERY agent will know all about Susan's new listing, so really any agent in the MLS has the same opportunity and chance to sell that listing. There is no advantage, then, to hiring Susan as the listing agent for the house just because she *might* have a buyer.
My point is this: Don't hire an agent to list your house just because you think they might have a buyer for your house. Even if they have several listings in your price range and therefore several buyers in your price range, the chances of them having THE buyer for your house the day they list it is slim to none (though it does happen every so often).
Instead, hire your listing agent based on whether or not they are able to build rapport quickly (remember - they need to be able to capture your buyer on the phone!) and the strength of their marketing plan (will your house come out and hit an out-of-state buyer over the head?). Nothing else really matters. If your agent can build rapport and uses a stong marketing plan, you can bet they also have the rest of the package, to include integrity, communication skills, follow-through, market knowledge, negotiation strategies, and so on.
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