What are the important factors for selecting the right listing agent to sell your home?
When you are ready to sell your home, it is best to get in touch with a local expert who knows your neighborhood and local area well. Broker/Owner Kathy Sperl-Bell explains what makes a great listing agent and how to find the right real estate agent to sell your home.
How do I choose the right Listing Agent?
Hi. This is Kathy Sperl-Bell with Active Adults Realty in Delaware. Selling a home can be very stressful and possibly emotional so why do people sell their home? For many happy, good reasons like another child, a new job, or a better opportunity. But the reasons are not always happy.
Sometimes people have to sell because of a death in the family, because of a negative change in circumstance or to reverse a bad or hasty decision. But regardless of the reason, choosing the right listing agent with the right brokerage can be very critical to your success. Recently the National Association of Realtors surveyed sellers and they asked them what they expect, what they most want from their listing agent.
Obviously, they wanted an agent to help them market their home to potential buyers. They wanted that to be within a specific timeframe. They said they wanted an agent to help them price their home competitively. And they also wanted some advice on how to fix up their home so they could sell it for the highest dollar.
I would add to that a couple of more things that are important. First, choose an agent who’s very familiar with your neighborhood and the surrounding area. And choose an agent that has a marketing plan that is an appropriate fit for the kind of property that you have to sell.
Pricing your home competitively is where we often see the most disconnect. Let’s look at a few examples. How about a retired couple who bought their forever home? Everything was wonderful until something happened. Something perhaps with a family member or perhaps one of them became ill or passed away. Now the home has to be sold.
Let’s look at another situation. Let’s say a couple relocated but they weren’t really on the same page. One wanted to move and the other really didn’t want to move and it’s become kind of a problem. Now they must sell and move again. Or a couple just simply bought the wrong home in the wrong location. They’re miserable. Now they want to fix it. They want to sell that home and buy something more appropriate.
Regardless of the reason, pricing that home competitively to sell is critical. And how do we do that? A listing agent, a good listing agent is going to take a look at the overall market. You know, we have so much new construction and new home communities here in Delaware in particular that, that could be your competition.
So the listing agent has to not only study the comps for your home within your community but also within the area and be aware of everything that a buyer today could choose. They have to put on the hat of an appraiser and study closely what has sold within the last six months. Unfortunately, it does not matter what you paid for the house. It doesn’t even matter what more you might have put into the house after you purchased it. What matters most is what a qualified buyer would be willing to pay today for your home.
So choose an agent that will do that research, that will tell you the truth. Be willing to listen to the market and I guarantee that if you do that you’ve got a really good chance of selling your home in a reasonable period of time for the best price possible.
The post How Do I Choose The Right Listing Agent? | Ask The Broker appeared first on Active Adults Delaware Blog.