Are you thinking of buying or selling a home and wondering if you even need a realtor? In this video, I’m going to outline the pros and cons of hiring a real estate agent. From finding properties and negotiations to closing, I’ll explain the roles of a realtor so you can decide if hiring one is right for you.
Making Educated Real Estate Decisions
The main reason people hire a realtor is to make an educated decision when buying or selling. You want to make sure you have someone in your corner that knows what they're doing and that does it for a living. Whether you're buying or selling, hiring a realtor will give you peace of mind when making such a big decision.
For example, when you're purchasing a property, it's a big investment. You're hoping that it's the correct investment and that I will actually grow. You know what they say: you don't make money when you sell your real estate, you make it when you buy it smart. Thankfully, working with a realtor as a buyer doesn't cost you anything upfront, as the realtor gets paid out of the proceeds from the sale.
Finding You Properties And Negotiations
Different realtors offer different buying programs, so you want to make sure you interview them and find out what they do to help you find homes. For example, do they just look on the MLS active properties or do they search off MLS properties? At our team, we have 13-15 other sources that we're digging in constantly to find our buyers properties that aren't just on the MLS active search sites. While most of the properties are there, we're going to go everywhere to find you the property that works for you.
Once your agent finds you the property, their job is to negotiate and get you that property at the best price. They’ll then walk you through the entire contract to close process, as there's a tremendous amount of detail. If you have an agent or agent team like ours that doesn't have processes done every single day, the ball can get dropped and your deposits can be at risk. You may end up not even being able to own that home and you'll have a lot of disappointment.
Choosing The Right Realtor
It’s important to make sure you hire a really good realtor that has a great track record. On the other hand, when you're selling a property, you're going to get the most money possible when you hire a realtor. So how do you choose the right one?
First, make sure you hire the right realtor that's going to create more demand for you than the other realtors. For example, our team on average gets $23,500 more than the average realtor in our MLS—which is something we're really, really proud of. You can talk to us about that and our whole VIP seller program when we chat.
Representing Your Interest
Once you choose the right realtor, what’s their job when they're representing you in your home sale? First of all, they're going to make sure that they get rid of all the tire kickers—the people that aren't serious. If you were to sell it on your own as “for sale by owner,” you have a giant target right on your house that says, "Please come and try to take advantage of me." They know you don't have a professional representing you, filtering out all the people that want to do all kinds of strange, funky financing.
“Hey, can you let me do a rent to own?” You typically get that kind of question when you're for sale by owner. When you're listed with a quality realtor team like ours, those calls don't even come to us. And if they do, we shut them down so we're only showing your home to financially qualified buyers.
Besides helping you get the right buyers, what do we do? We help you prepare the home for sale. We tell you what to do and what not to do to get the most amount of money when preparing your home for sale. We use professional home stagers to come in and give us a third party view of your home. I call them one of our secret weapons. When a buyer walks into your home and it’s staged correctly, it makes a huge difference. And when I say staged, don't think that we're getting rid of all your furniture; we're bringing in all brand new, expensive rented furniture.
In staging, we oftentimes use your own stuff but just in a different way. Maybe we trim back some of the furniture by 20-25%. Maybe we paint a wall or make a small repair. When they walk in and feel that the home is inviting and warm, they're much more likely to pay a higher price.
Closing The Deal
Once we get a buyer and need to negotiate the deal, what's the value of an agent? Well, they're going to make sure they negotiate in your best interest, getting you the best offer at the best price. They’ll also ensure you get the best terms and the strongest buyer that will show up on closing day and hand you that big old check.
Now we have this great buyer, how do we get them to the point where they hand us that big old check? Well, we have to walk them through that whole contract to close process. The buyer has a home inspection and their bank will do an appraisal. There could be some different inspections that have to happen, such as on the well, pool, and radon. We help our sellers navigate that entire process, making sure that the property appraises at the right value. And if it doesn't, we walk you through the entire process of negotiation.
We also help you to prep the home for the final walkthrough when the home is supposed to be empty. When are we closing? What day of the week? Why is that important? Why don't we want to close on a Friday? I'll tell you why. If there's some delay in closing and you were expecting to get your big check on a Friday, now you have to wait until Monday. The buyer's going to ask if they can store things in your home even though they don't own the property, which creates a mess.
We want to make sure we do things properly. We like to do our closings on Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday so we never run into a weekend issue. A good realtor with experience will know to make sure you don't get yourself in a jam.
Is Hiring A Realtor Right For You?
I hoped this helped you understand the role a realtor plays in your transaction. If you guys have any questions on whether hiring a realtor is right for you, you can ask me or any of our agent partners and we'll be happy to share with you what we know!