Picking a Real Estate Agent to Sell Your Condo
While any real estate agent can help you buy or sell a home, some agents will be more effective at selling your condominium than others. Too often, picking an agent comes down to the agent that recommends listing it at or for the highest price or the one that helped your friend buy a home. Instead, it should be about finding the agent who will work well with you and in whom you have confidence. So here’s our helpful guide for how to pick a Realtor to sell your condo unit and what questions to ask them.
- Marketing – Pretend that you are interested in buying a home in your area and figure out how you would go about finding a home for sale in your area. If the primary means to find a home in your area is newspaper classifieds, then look for agents advertising in the newspaper. If it is through internet marketing, look for agents with good websites and high placement in search engines such as Google and Yahoo.
- Experience – Are you interested in an agent with lots of experience or with an agent that has fresh ideas and lots of energy and enthusiasm? Will the agent get along well with the potential buyers of your home. You may want to meet with individuals of varying experience levels when deciding who to select.
- Listings – Look at the agent’s other listings. Do you like how they are marketing the homes and would you be satisfied if your home was one of their listings? Additionally, consider where the homes are located geographically and financially. An agent that is marketing other condos, or homes in your area at a similar price point, may have a bigger base of potential buyers to show your home.
- Geography – An agent that knows the local terrain may do a better job of selling your home and the benefits of its location to potential buyers. They also will likely be close by if a prospective buyer wants to see your home.
After you have narrowed down your list of prospective agents, you’ll want to contact them for a listing presentation. At that time, they will get a chance to see your condo and you will get a chance to ask them questions.
- Ask about their past experience with the building. Have they helped a buyer or seller of a condo in the building before? Have they shown units in the building to potential buyers?
- Find out what their plan is for selling your home. Learn about their pricing strategy and the amount of time that they expect it will take for your condo unit to sell. If the condo hasn’t sold after the first month or two, how will their strategy change and where and when would they ask you to reduce the price.
- Ask how they plan to market your condo. Who do they anticipate will buy the condo and how will they reach the prospective buyers? Ask about open houses, internet marketing, print advertising, postcards, and any other avenue of marketing that you expect of your agent.
- Ask for references and contact them. Ideally, the references should be from other sellers in the area. Find out why they choose the agent and how the agent lived up to their expectations.
If you are interested in selling a condo in Pittsburgh, I would be happy to show you how I meet your requirements for an agent.