The Appraisal

Take your agent for a ‘tour’ of your  home and make sure you point out all the features. They need to be making a list of what your property offers so they can refer to this later when marketing your property.

Some agents will give you a price on the same time where others will prefer to do some research and get back to you. I personally do my figures in writing unless the owner wants to place their property for sale with me immediately. Then we discuss local sales, properties for sale and a method to achieve the best price from the market.

When receiving your estimate/submissions from the agent, they generally include the CMA (comparative market analysis ) together with promotional material from their company. You can view this as kind of a resume where you can see how professional the company is with their material, how relevant the sales figures are and even for errors or mistakes in the submission book.

On your second appointment with the agent in going through the submission, you can ask them the more difficult questions. It will work to see this process as a job interview where you are looking to employ a person to do a job for you. Have your questions ready and be prepared.  An example of some questions you may like to consider asking your agent are as follows.

• How long have you been in real estate? Starting at 18 and looking like I was 14, I had this question asked almost every time. As my years grew, I slowly started gaining more and more experience. I was competing against much older but fair less experienced. In this career, people often commence at a later stage and even though they look like they have been in real estate for a long time, they may be very new.  I would like to mention here that sometimes new agents work harder than more experience agents who have been selling for many years and may have lost some of their passion and enthusiasm for the job.
• What strategy will you be using for selling my home? Having been selling for 10 years and talking with many home owners and agents, it’s scary that some agents just don’t have a strategy. When selling your property, you want an agent with a plan that works.  
• What marketing will you be doing for my property? Make sure your property is well exposed. Better marketing means more buyers which results in more competition which pushes up your price.
• Can I see what marketing to expect? You want this so you can see the quality of the marketing. You go to some much time and effort in presenting your home, a poor quality photo or bad brochures diminish the emotional appeal for a property.
• Where are you getting sales from? As a seller, you want to make sure that the agent is advertising well on the places and areas that count.
• Do you have a buyer database? Most offices should have a database of buyers that they can send your home too. If its online, why not ask for a demo?
• How much is your fee? You want to make sure they are not too cheap or too expensive. You are looking for value and service that gets results.
• How much advertising money do I need to contribute?
• What communication can I expect from you over the sale process?
• How long is your selling agent agreement?