How to Choose a Real Estate Agent?

By hiring a real estate agent to sell or rent your property, you save personal time and, in the long run, money as well. How can you identify a true professional in your field and by what criteria?

A good agent is well-informed about what's happening in the real estate market and has an overview of prices and legislation. In the sales and rental process, both a pre-sale property audit and the correct asking price are important. The first is to understand whether it's even possible to sell/rent the property given current norms and regulations, and the second is to ensure the property doesn't sit on the market too long—that the sale/rental doesn't drag on.

Dedication

This point can be divided into three sub-topics:

• Commission size – The property owner's first question is usually about the commission. However, this is often not the main argument for choosing an agent. The reason is that the content and quality of the service are directly dependent on the commission. To compare different offers, the owner must ask the agent: what am I getting for this money? The basic content of real estate services is not just quality photos and as many sales portals as possible, but should include legal and tax analysis, refined customer service down to the details (service design), etc. Therefore, it's smarter to choose an agent who knows all of this and pay a higher commission than to hope that you'll pay less and maybe get satisfactory quality in return—generally you don't get both.
• Feedback – It's important to provide the owner with feedback at certain intervals, even if there's no particular interest in the property. Here the agent can offer the client possible options for how to speed up the sale/rental. Taking initiative on the agent's part gives the owner the knowledge that the property is being worked on and hasn't been forgotten.
• Everyone offers everything – In portals, you occasionally come across properties offered by more than one agent at the same time. This gives the impression that several agents are trying to sell/find a rental tenant for that property. In reality, none of them may be sufficiently dedicated to the sale, just hoping to reach a deal through sheer luck. For the buyer/tenant, different listings can create some confusion, as, for example, photo quality can vary greatly. There have been cases where an interested party has agreed with two different agents to view the same property at a certain time, because it seems to them that these are different properties. In reality, however, it's the same property.

Trustworthiness

It's important to have mutual trust between the agent and the client. If this doesn't develop in the early stages of the relationship, future cooperation can be difficult. The agent's presentable and correct appearance certainly helps build trust. Of course, communication skills also play an important role – on one hand, you need to connect with the client, and on the other, basic politeness is important. Additionally, with property owners, it has been observed that when struggling with a sale, they are very satisfied if the agent can offer concrete solutions on how to speed up the sales process.

It's a misconception that when choosing an agent, you should base your decision on a well-known firm, extensive experience, and/or professional certification. These criteria may not always be the most important; sometimes an agent who has operated on the market for a few years can be significantly more professional and knowledgeable than someone who has been brokering real estate for 20 years. It all depends on the person: how dedicated they are to their work, how they do it, and what matters to them about the brokerage profession.

Availability

An agent must respond to client calls and emails. Unfortunately, I've heard of cases where a potential buyer/tenant cannot reach the agent and they don't call back either. This creates questions for the client about whether the agent is actually working with their property or not. Availability is important from both the property owner's and potential buyers'/tenants' perspectives.

Consultation

As mentioned above, there are property owners who need the agent to advise them, to be their psychologist, listen to them, and offer different solutions. It's certainly important that the agent doesn't pressure either the seller or the buyer. A potential interested party should be given time to think so they can make their own decision.

Agent as a Business Partner

An agent is no longer merely a broker, but in today's situation, agents are also consultants, lawyers, psychologists, and construction specialists.

Quite often, agents promise owners to sell/rent out their property above market price while asking for a low commission. The result is often that the sales process takes considerably longer than planned. If, for example, the market is volatile, as it is now, the financial loss can be quite significant in the end. The asking price is determined by actually conducted transactions, not by the listings in real estate portals. And here, the agent's ability to involve a professional appraiser who has the relevant information plays an important role in determining the correct price.

When an interested party sees a listing, their first impression comes from the photos, based on which they decide whether to view the property or not. The fact is that the client must get a clear and detailed overview of the property from the photos. Unfortunately, even in 2020, it can be seen that not enough care is taken with photos. Often photos are taken from random angles, with poor lighting (including no post-processing), and random objects are photographed. There are also listings where the photographer's shadow is visible in mirrors. We've also heard of cases where a property searcher sees one thing in the listing, but when they arrive at the property, they find it in a completely different condition. That is, the photos are over-edited, so the actual situation doesn't appear clearly enough. The result—the interested party comes to view the property and is disappointed because they don't see what the listing led them to hope for.

A comprehensive and correct listing text. It makes no sense to write the listing text in detail about what's already visible from the photos; instead, the text should provide information to the property searcher that they can't get from the photos. At the same time, there are listings where there's only one or two lines of text. One of the first things that are noticeably missing from a listing and asked about is utility bills. For some reason, information about utility bills is very often missing from listings.

With each passing day, proper documentation and registers become increasingly important (which are part of the pre-sale property audit), as banks have become very critical and thoroughly check whether things are in order. Often an expert appraisal is ordered and the final transaction is near, but at the last moment problems emerge that can lead to the bank not granting a loan. We definitely recommend involving an agent who checks documents and registers, which ensures a smooth sales process.

How to find or choose the right agent who meets the above description?

First, through acquaintances and positive experiences of friends and acquaintances. Second, I recommend critically reviewing the portfolios of agents available in real estate portals. Even if you don't know the agent's background, you can draw some conclusions based on the listing texts and photos. Also, check the number of listings the agent has—if an agent's portfolio contains over a hundred properties, it's unrealistic to expect them to work in depth with all of them.

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Article author: Annemai Tuvike, Real Estate Agent at Kaanon Real Estate Office