Finding the Best Real Estate Agent to Sell or Rent your Property

Pick a couple of common questions to ask all the agents you qualify. A good candidate is how much they can sell or rent your property for. Keep track of the answers, as a consensus among agents will become your baseline. The ones that exceed the baseline by a considerable margin should be viewed with skepticism, as they may be overselling themselves. The ones that dramatically underbid should be excluded, as real estate isn't a price-cutting business. 

Another good line of inquiry is time. Again, be careful of agents who seem to be in a rush, and exclude the ones that aren't in enough of a rush. There's no sense in having your house or rental property sit idle waiting for your agent to get around to your priorities. 

It is very important you press any real estate agent candidates for information on what exactly they will expect from you. These questions are highly useful for property owners as they will give you an excellent idea of how your prospective agent works with others. If you get a maverick, don't automatically pull the eject handle. Sometimes go-it-alone types can be very powerful salespersons. If you get someone who sounds like they'd be more at home at a potluck, be careful you don't give them too much leeway in your schedule and affairs or you might find yourself working for your agent instead of the other way around. 

One of the best ways to interview anyone for a specialized role is to get them talking about their past experiences. This will give you a chance to learn how they feel about their job, how excited they get when something goes well, and how they deal with adversity. Don't turn this part of the conversation into a question and answer session. Just ask what you need to keep them talking as long as possible. 

You're not looking for anything in particular here, but you are still going to get an understanding of your prospective agent's personality and how they relate to the job they do. Most of evaluating this part of the interview process comes down to intuition. You'll be able to tell which of your candidates is the right agent just by the way they talk and how engaged they are in the conversation. If keeping them talking is relatively effortless, you've also found someone who is enthusiastic about their career. 

Another potentially useful approach would be to see if your prospective agents will direct you to a former client to get a recommendation. Agents who are hesitant here may have perfectly reasonable reservations, so don't automatically assume they are trying to hide something. That said, if you can get a positive recommendation from a former client, that can be a gigantic plus and often a solid foundation from which to move forward. 

Qualifying highly specialized advisors like agents, attorneys and accountants is a tough process and it takes quite a bit of patience. Take your time and do the job right. A bad agent is almost guaranteed to lead to a bad deal and that's something you'll have to live with for a long time. Getting the right agent, however, will strengthen and advance your business prospects and financial position.

Even with services like Real Connect, with the amount of information available at the click of a mouse or the tap of a mobile device, it is easy for the average person to become completely overwhelmed.