The top 10 questions to ask a potential real estate agent who will list your home

By Thomas Elrod, Keller Williams Ballantyne-Area Agent

If you are in the market to sell your home, there’s something very important you should know. Real estate agents are NOT all the same. Your decision to place your property for sale involves more than simply dropping a sign in the yard, putting it on the Multiple Listing Service and praying to God for someone to buy it. Selling a property is all about marketing and negotiation skills. Hiring the wrong agent can mean the difference between making or losing money, selling quickly or taking a long time, a trouble-free transaction or a living nightmare.

Elrod

Unless you have extensive experience interviewing real estate agents, you won’t always know what questions to ask. Further, you won’t always know what answer will best suit your real estate needs. Here’s a list of 10 important and insightful questions you should ask any real estate agent before you sign anything. If the agent you are interviewing tries to dodge any of these questions, doesn’t have a great answer, or tries to spin their answer to avoid the real question, you should be concerned by their approach to listing and marketing your property. Don’t let an agent without a clear strategy list your home. That would be like hiring a surgeon to operate on you who doesn’t have a clear strategy. Even though this isn’t physical surgery on you, it is financial surgery on your largest asset. Let’s hop into the top 10 questions to ask below.

QUESTION 1: Will you let me unconditionally cancel my listing agreement if you aren’t doing your job?

QUESTION 2: Can you show me your actual results compared to other agents? What’s your average Days on Market (DOM)?

QUESTION 3: Do you have an actual documented marketing plan and strategy for each individual property you list?

QUESTION 4: What do you do to get buyers to take action and call for more information on a listing that you have for sale?

QUESTION 5: Do you have a database of your active buyers you can show me? If so, how do you work to match them with your listings?

QUESTION 6: Do you have a team of specialists working on my sale or do you do everything yourself?

QUESTION 7: Do you use professional photography, offer a 3D virtual tour and drone footage?

QUESTION 8: Do you perform a Traditional Comparative Marketing Analysis (CMA) when pricing or use other sources of data as well? Also, how do you come up with the best pricing strategy to maximize the value of my largest asset?

QUESTION 9: How many contract negotiations have you done in the past? What’s your List Price vs. Closed Price ratio?

QUESTION 10: Can you provide testimonials from past clients?

To find out Thomas’s answers to these questions, go to www.HighPerformanceRealEstate.com or email him at [email protected] Thomas is one of the few true Charlotte natives who went to McClintock Jr. H.S., East Mecklenburg H.S. and graduated from University of North Carolina at Charlotte in 1999. He is licensed in North and South Carolina and has been personally investing in real estate in the Greater Charlotte Region for over 20 years. Thomas is proudly associated with Keller Williams Ballantyne-Area Market Center, the strongest performing single real estate office in the Charlotte market with annual closed office production exceeding a billion dollars. If you would like to learn more about your home’s value or have questions for Thomas, call him directly at 704-817-4440.