As you can probably appreciate, selling your Sydney home can be an emotional experience, so you want to do everything possible to make it a smooth and stress free process. One of your best tactics is to select a real estate agent who can sell your property for the maximum price and do so quickly and efficiently.
The problem is identifying the best agent for your property, so here are five questions you need to ask yourself when first meeting a listing agent.
1. Do you like the agent?
This might sound like a very simplistic factor, but if you don’t feel a positive connection with your agent, the process of selling your home can become very complicated. Communication and understanding are key factors in selling properties. So if your real estate agent doesn’t communicate well with you and has a grating personality, buyers aren’t likely to feel any different than you! These issues are easy to pick up during your first meeting with a potential listing agent and can be the difference between a positive and a negative selling experience. After all, whilst you don’t need to become best friends with your agent, you do need to see eye-to-eye on selling your home.
2. Do they listen to you?
Some agents seem to have their own agenda, barely listening to the needs, feelings and requirements of their clients. So during your first meeting, if the agent rushes through their presentation and doesn’t take time to listen to what you have to say, not even taking notes about your requirements, you can be pretty sure that they are not good listeners. If an agent doesn’t pay attention to their sellers, they won’t pay anymore attention to their buyers and that doesn’t bode well for selling your property. So always ensure that the agent you select is open to your opinions and takes the time to address your concerns and answer your questions fully. We are happy to say that everyone at Switch Realty is a very good listener with a winsome personality!
3. Do they have the right type of experience?
Inexperienced real estate agents usually work alongside more experienced agents to learn the ropes, so you always want to meet the senior agent in this partnership. Your first step is to ensure that the key agent you engage to sell your home has the experience you need in a listing agent. This means that that they not only have a history of successfully selling properties in your location, but they have a significant amount of experience selling homes similar to your property. On the other hand, agents new to the industry might not have the experience you desire, but they can bring an abundance of enthusiasm to selling your property, so they shouldn’t be discounted at the first hurdle. As long as they work alongside an experienced principal agent, they can bring an element of freshness to the selling process!
4. Do they have an up to date marketing plan?
Selling your home for the right price depends on the right type of marketing plan, so this should be an essential factor when selecting a listing agent. You need to know the marketing strategies that the agent will use to present your property to buyers, so you can judge whether their tactics suit your needs. Whilst hardcopy advertisements in newspapers and presenting your property in the agency’s shop window are strategies that still work well, they are only part of a successful marketing campaign. Uploading your property to internet sites, such as realestate.com is an essential first step, because most people now start their property searches online. Social media is also another effective strategy that is used to successfully market real estate, so your listing agent needs to clearly outline their plan for your property. Also, don’t forget to ask about viewings, because you might prefer to have private viewings rather than regular open houses.
5. Do they have data on listed vs sales prices?
It’s all fair and well to list a property at a particular price, but what was the actual selling price? There can be big difference between the listed price and the actual sales price, and whilst this can reflect a volatile local market, it can also be due to the agent’s lack of understanding or experience. When an agent over or underestimates the selling price of a property it often reflects their lack of knowledge about the local market space. Whilst the real estate market can change quickly and dramatically, it’s unlikely to change so quickly that the market alone accounts for a huge difference between the listed and selling price. Not unless however, the property has been on the market for a significant amount of time, during which market factors significantly changed. In this case however, you must wonder why a property has not sold within a reasonable time frame with the listing agent.
The answers to these five questions should help you to select a suitably experienced listing agent for your Sydney property.
