When it comes to choosing a broker for selling your home, please take a few moments and do some research. Due to the low barriers for entry into our industry, there are a plethora of part-time and inexperienced agents chasing commission checks and not treating real estate sales as a business.

Here are a couple of examples of why you should ask tons of questions.

Client: I want to list my home for 500k. The place down the street sold for 475k.

Broker: Great, here is the paperwork. Let’s do it.

Background info: The Clients home is a 850 sq.ft. 1 bed condo in Dorchester’s Savin Hill. The place down the street was a 1200 sq. ft. 3 bed condo.

This is called buying a listing. Your broker wants a listing so badly he or she will take it at whatever price, then start asking for price reductions shortly after the ink dries on the listing agreement. Your broker should have a precise range in which your home should sell and how long it should take to sell.

Here’s another one.

Client: How long will it take to sell my home at this price?

Broker: No time at all. This is a great market!

–> In today’s market, if a broker says that to you… run, and run fast. How fast a home sells depends on how it is priced. Certain ranges relative to the market will sell faster and others will take longer. The closer you price your home to the market, the more offers you will see and those offers will be close to the asking price - if not a little bit more.

Our job is not to tell you what you want to hear, but to tell you the truth. We need you to trust us and earning that trust is part of the process of selling your home. Lying however is not. Only an insecure agent will do this, and ultimately it may cost you 10’s of thousands of dollars due to his or her lack of professionalism.
Please read the article in Boston Magazine about how to choose an agent. There’s to much money at stake not to educate yourself on this subject.

Should you ever have any questions about any part of the real estate process, please email me at JamesM@NextGenRealty.com or post a comment here on the BostonRealEstateBlog.com. I will make sure all responses are answered throughly.

Filed under: Choosing a Boston real Estate Broker, Boston Landlord Tips and Advice