In my previous post here, I described why it’s in a buyer’s best interest to work with a Realtor. Now, I will offer some tips on picking and managing your Realtor relationship. This isn’t an exhaustive list but should be useful nonetheless.
Picking a Realtor:
- Check references, better yet, ask friends and family if they know of an outstanding Realtor
- Ask for examples of specific value-added services they provided previous buyers
- Ask about what they expect from their buyers
- Ask what makes them different from other Realtors
Using a Realtor:
- Work with one Realtor, if you don’t like him or her, tell him and stop working with him and change Realtors. Working with more than one Realtor at a time — especially on the sly — can often backfire and result in lower quality service and sometimes legal problems.
- Be crystal clear about your expectations, if you’re not happy, tell them and be prepared to change Realtors.
- Be realistic and be prepared to make tradeoff’s. You will rarely find a property that meets 100% of your criteria. Furthermore, your Realtor’s time is not limitless so if you’re looking for a $300k condo and he or she has taken you to see 30 or more units, they’re definitely gonna lose money on the deal. Moreover, you risk them suddenly dropping you as a client and needing to find and build momentum with another Realtor from scratch. (One way to mitigate this is to go to lots of open houses on your own.)
Hope this helps!
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Wendy –
*Great blog!*
However, I do find this commment quite disturbing:
“(One way to mitigate this is to go to lots of open houses on your own.)”
I would never tell a client to go to open house on their own. There’s another realtor at that open house, waiting to pounce on ANYONE that walks through the door. They’ll either try to pick your buyer client up as a client of their own, or they’ll try to double-side the deal and cut you out completely. It’s not that difficult to convince a realtors association/arbitrator that I’m the procuring cause if someone walks into my open house and I show them the home.
I instruct my buyers to never attend an open house alone. After all, I’m representing them, why should they attend alone? So I don’t have to show them homes they want to see? It’s my job to show them homes. If I have to show them 30 homes, I’m not doing a very good job at determining what it is they are looking for…
IMHO.
Thanks for the compliments and comments Jay.
From my pov, I find that every buyer has unqiue preferences on how I can add value. Of course, all of them want me to cover all the bases.
At the same time, one client may want lots of help seeing lots of homes and another may want really deep emphasis on custom CMA’s and another may want really specialized neighborhood research.
At the end of the day, I like to carve out a ton of time for each client and work with them to make sure I’m spending the majority of my time on the kinds of services that add the most value for that particular client.
Of course, I don’t need to tell you that every market, client, and Realtor has it’s own nuances and what works for me might not work at all for other Realtors. I guess that’s what makes our job so fun 🙂
Thanks for the great comments Jay!
Wendy
Hi, I am looking for a list or direction as to where to find a list of “approved” applications for condo conversion projects.
I came across your excellent article on finding a buyers agent. I would personally never go without one. I like having someone experienced watching over my shoulder to make sure all the i’s are dotted and t’s are crossed.
Here’s my question. After much shopping around, we ended up going with a lease/option. This means that my realtor won’t get her 3% until we eventually close the purchase in up to a year. What would be the appropriate way to thank her for the time she’s given us so far? A gift? A payment? A “tip”?
Thanks.
A thank you note with a gift card will be a nice gesture.