Mortgage

When Is It Time to Fire Your Realtor?

The plain truth is that all Realtors are not the same. Not all of them will work hard to sell your home, and not every one of them will be a good match for your personality and style. Ideally, even if you already have a Realtor to sell your home, you need to check up on what they are doing to promote the sale of your home. If nothing new has been done recently, or if there are no plans for future marketing efforts, it’s probably about time to fire your realtor and get one that will be more active to getting your home sold.

As you know, the sale of your home depends on people knowing about it and actually seeing it. This is why an ongoing effort needs to be made to market your home and bring potential house buyers in to see it. Most likely, a Realtor is in contact with potential buyers and there are possible contacts that could be interested – if they see it. Don’t forget, though, that there are some things you also can do to inform others about your home being for sale.

There are many different things that a Realtor can do to continue to promote the sale of your home, or to help you find the ideal home of your dreams – if you are buying. Two things that are not as effective as before are putting ads in newspapers and holding open houses. Realtor.com says that the first one is not that good because most people now use the Internet to find listings. Open houses are usually actually for the benefit of the agent to meet new clients.

Prior to firing any Realtor with whom you have a contract, you should look to see what the contract says about getting a new one. In many cases, it is quite possible that your expectations and the agents are two different things. When that happens, it is a good idea to talk with the agent and try to work this out before any other steps are taken.

If that fails, then talk with the supervisor of the company (if it is a brokerage) and see if you can get another Realtor from the same company. This time, make it clear what you expect, and the manager may be able to get you another one who will work with you and seek to meet your expectations. Only after that fails should you try and find one at another brokerage.

Before signing an agreement with a Realtor, you should talk with him or her to discover whether or not they are representing just you, or possibly both the buyer and the seller. Obviously, they cannot represent both well, says Vivian S. Toy at the New York Times, because somewhere in the process, they will have to side with one or the other.

Another important essential when choosing a Realtor is to see how they plan to market your home. If you have clear expectations on this – which you should – then it is important to find one that will gladly do the work for you. Get the marketing plan put into the contract, along with a timeline. Many Realtors are just too busy to do a good job of marketing your home, but ones that will are worth paying a little extra to get, because they will most likely help your home to sell sooner, as seen in a post at City-Data.com.

Have You Seen This...

Oops! CFTC Makes a $55 Trillion Mistake

See it Now! x