Interviewing REA

[bullygirl979]

The agent we wanted to use is now semi-retired and going back and forth from here to Florida. So, she can't help us. Given we are looking for a pink squirrel of a house and this person is going to be selling my house. I really want to make sure we get a good one. Obviously, I asked for recommendations from this agent as well as family and friends. Problem is, now I have 10-12 names. I was thinking of checking out their websites and interviewing the top 3-4. 

With that being sad, for anyone who has interviewed agents before, what questions have you asked them? What should I look for or avoid? Any advice would be appreciated!

[redredwine]

You're supposed to interview them?!

I got a recommendation from a friend, the agent called me and I liked her demeanor. Once I met her in person, I got a good vibe from her (she wasn't overly "sales-y" and she was really informative) and most importantly-she stayed on top of everything during our home buying process. In fact, we still text every once and a while. It helped that we knew what we wanted going in though. I never end bothered looking for another agent-no need unless the one I was going through wasn't on top of it.

My dad was an REA though, and I feel like I knew a decent amount about the real estate process before purchasing a home. He said he always preferred when clients used his loan officer because they were so in sync with things are knew how things worked with timelines/work styles, etc. Ironically, we happened to start talking with our REA's loan officer before we met our REA (but both were recommended by the same person) and I think they did alot of "behind the scenes" updates with each other to make sure things were tracking, how much our offer was going to be, etc. They were all a great team. So, maybe ask who they recommend going through for pre-approvals, etc. (and make sure you're pre approved!)


ETA: I didn't read your post well enough, so I probably wasn't helpful. Basically, I went with a great recommendation by someone I trusted and they approached me, I liked them and BAM. House.  

[julygal]

We met with 2 realtors before picking one. They came to our house. We gave a tour. They gave us a sales pitch about what they would do to sell the house (their experience, where our listing would be posted, types of pictures, mailings, etc). They gave us recent comps and explained how they felt our house matched up & where they would price us. The sales pitch naturally lent itself to questions. However, here are a few things I remember us asking about (bit of background our neighborhood was just surfacing from being underwater and was still struggling a bit with slow sales)...
1. Professional pictures-this was important to us since our neighborhood was sluggish we wanted a great first impression
2. Asked what improvements they felt we should make regarding repairs or staging to help our town house sell fast
3. Marketing strategies-we wanted to know what else they did besides list on the MLS, opinion on effectiveness of open houses in our area, etc.
4. Commission-what was their rate, what if they were a dual agent
5. Experience selling in our neighborhood (this was huge to us, as our neighborhood was slow...we are so glad we went with the agent that sold many units in our neighborhood, as we sold while many units that came on the market with us became stagnant and are still there)

Last we just got a feel of who best matched our personalities, especially since we were using the same agent to sell and buy. We knew we'd be spending a lot of time with them, and we wanted to make sure we could get along professionally. Even though a realtor isn't your friend, it is an intimate relationship. They learn far more about your finances than most people, spend hours looking at homes with you, and have to be on the same page about your wants/needs.

[everythingsshinyap]

Mar 5, 2015 22:51:52 GMT -5 julygal said:

Last we just got a feel of who best matched our personalities, especially since we were using the same agent to sell and buy. We knew we'd be spending a lot of time with them, and we wanted to make sure we could get along professionally. Even though a realtor isn't your friend, it is an intimate relationship. They learn far more about your finances than most people, spend hours looking at homes with you, and have to be on the same page about your wants/needs.

Yeah, I'd say personality is just as important as the rest of a realtor's resume.  We got lucky and met an agent we really clicked with at a random open house that we attended.  He lived in the neighborhood we were looking in and just "got" us.  We'd tour a home, tell him what we liked and disliked, and the next place he'd take us to completely reflected the fact that he'd really listened to us.  (Ultimately, we went with the home where we first met him--his listing.  Settlement is next Friday!)

It was very different from when my ex and I were buying our first home.  We went with a recommendation from my ex's boss.  The problem was the realtor, though nice and professional enough, was used to working with people who had budgets significantly higher than ours and unfortunately, it showed.  It sucked some of the joy out of the home buying experience to feel like the homes in our price range weren't up to his usual standards.  And we're not talking shit holes, you know?  But like, when you're looking at fixer-uppers, you don't want to hear from your realtor that the house with old carpets and no dishwasher isn't "quite in livable condition" yet.  Lol.  At that point in my life I had never even lived someplace with a dishwasher!  There were just a lot of little things like that that made us feel kind of like his pro-bono work on the side.  So while he did his job and the eventual purchase went smoothly, I just felt like it would have been nice to have a REA that shared our enthusiasm as first time home buyers, rather than sucked it out of us.