How To Choose The Right Listing Agent When Selling Your Home

When you’re selling your home, picking the right realtor will help ensure you receive the highest asking price, as quickly as possible. Many sellers unfortunately make the mistake of picking the first agent they speak to, or the one that offers the lowest commission rate. More often times than not, however, this ends up costing homeowners more in the long run.

Be Wary of High Suggested List Prices

Remember that you are the one who ultimately sets the listing price on your house, and that a buyer must agree to it. Yet Realtors will commonly suggest a high list price, even if they don’t think you will actually receive that much for your house. Unfortunately, even if they aren’t deliberately inflating the price, they may have unreasonable expectations about what the house will actually sell for.

As a test, ask the realtors that you’re speaking with for the numbers behind their suggested list prices of your home. If they don’t have any – or worse, offer statistics for a different neighborhood – you’re better off looking elsewhere.

Focus on the “Right” Price Instead

To avoid listing your house for too much, ask each realtor you’re speaking with to show you similar sales, pending sales, and active sales. Once this information has been provided, ask for a price range that seems fair since variables like location, market strength, and home improvements should all come into play.

Then take some time to evaluate what each one is telling you. As a general rule of thumb, proposed list prices that are too low or too high should be eliminated right off the bat. If several Realtor’s are all coming in around the same price, this is what you should be listing your house for. Choosing an appropriate listing price is important when you are trying to sell your home. If it’s priced right, you’ll probably get an offer sooner rather than later.

If the price is too high, however, you won’t attract any buyers, and you’ll end up reducing the price in the long run. Once this happens, savvy buyers will look at the listing history, begin to question why you’ve dropped the price so much, and immediately think there’s something wrong with your home.

Don’t Base Your Decision Off An Agent’s Commission

If a realtor offers a competitively low commission, it’s usually for a good reason. Low commission fees are traditionally used by agents who cannot compete in the business otherwise. This may be due to a lack of service, knowledge of the industry, negotiation skills, and/or experience. What this means is that a realtor who is willing to discount services is probably not going to be able to sell your home quickly.

And the longer your house sits on the market, the more likely it is that you’ll have to continue lowering your asking price until it does sell, which can cost you a tremendous amount of money in the long run. Ask Questions Remember that effective marketing sells homes.

Ask each realtor you’re speaking with what strategies they plan on using to market your home.

Do they have professional signs? How many open houses will they have? Do they offer broker previews? How often do they update your listing? The more competitively a realtor can market, the better the chances your house will sell. If you have a house for sale in Bellevue, contact one of our experience and reliable agents at Better Properties Eastside today.