Selecting the Right Agent for Your Needs

If you are getting ready to either buy or sell a home, you will likely get started by looking for a real estate agent. Unless you already know an agent personally or have one from a previous transaction, it may be difficult to narrow down the many 

candidates in order to arrive at a final selection. There are many real estate agents in business today, and it can be hard to differentiate one from the other just by looking at their websites.

So, how are you supposed to pick the right agent? Fortunately, there are some steps you can take to locate someone who should be a good fit for your needs.

Make a List

To get started, put the internet to use and make a list of most or all of the agents who appear to serve your area. This could turn into quite a long list, but that’s okay. At this point, you are just trying to get an overview of who is available. We will get into the business of narrowing down your search in a few moments.

As you are making your list, you’ll start to notice a few patterns in the local real estate market. It’s likely that there are at least a couple large agencies, maybe more, depending on where you live. Also, there are going to be some smaller agencies and independent agents. You can choose whoever you would like to work with, of course, and there are potential pros and cons to both working with large agencies and smaller operations. Once you feel that you have done a thorough job of filling out your list, you will be ready to move on to the next step.

Start Making Cuts

Right away, it is going to be pretty easy to cut some of the agents off of your list. For example, some may state that they specialize in taking clients looking for high-end, luxury properties. If you do not fit that description, you can skip over that agent as you move forward. Or, as you look further into a specific agent, you may find that while he or she is based in your general area, they don’t actually serve the location you have in mind. Whatever the case may be, it’s likely that you’ll wind up crossing off quite a few options during this stage of the process. Your list should now be far more manageable, and you’ll be able to keep on moving forward.

Creating a Short List

At this point, it is time to get down to business and narrow your choices to a select few. One way to do this is simply to read the information that you can find regarding each potential agent on the web. Read their own website, as well as any reviews that you can find. Remember, you should never put too much stock in just one or two bad reviews, as those can happen to any agent, and for a variety of reasons. In fact, fake reviews are not uncommon on the web, so you can’t even be sure what you are reading is legitimate. Take an overview of what you see in the reviews, but only use it as a small part of your process.

After doing some research, you should be able to settle on a small group that you want to investigate further. This group doesn’t have to be an exact number of people, but somewhere around five is probably a good benchmark. Too many more than that and you’ll have a lot of work on your hands in the next stage. If you go with only two or three, however, you may be limiting your options too severely to wind up with the right agent in the end.

Making Some Contacts

It is finally time to start to contact some local agents and formally begin the process of making your selection. How you choose to contact them is up to you, of course- you may feel more comfortable making phone calls, or you may choose to send out emails. The email option is certainly the more efficient of the two, as you won’t have to leave phone messages, wait for calls back, etc. By writing out a simple email that you can send to all of your candidates, you can save time and just wait for their responses to roll in.

This initial response is going to tell you a lot about each agent. Are they willing to take the time to address any of the questions you asked in your email? Or, if you call, are they willing to chat for a bit about your needs? Also, do they seem to have experience which lines up with the kind of transaction that you plan on completing? Once you start this stage of the process, you may be surprised to find just how easy is it to pick a winner.

Finish the Deal

Most likely, you are going to want to meet in person with the agent that you think will be the right one for your needs. Once you have a good sense of who the winner will be, ask to set up a meeting where you can talk about everything that needs to be settled before you can start working together formally. With any luck, you’ll only need to have one such meeting, and your working relationship will be off and running from that point.

We hope this article helps you think about the best way to track down a great real estate agent. Of course, you are free to tweak this process in any way that you see fit. In the end, it shouldn’t take too much time to find a quality agent, and by going through a thoughtful process you should feel more confident in the decision you wind up making. There are many excellent real estate agents out there today, so it is almost certain that one in your area will match up nicely with your needs.  If you’re looking to buy or sell in the Kamloops area, get in touch with me, Jackie Brommeland, today!

Categorised in: Buyers, Kamloops, Real Estate, Sellers, Sellers

This post was written by Redman Team