10 questions to ask a realtor before you hire them

Buying or selling a house is one of the most important financial transactions you’ll make in your life. Naturally, you want every advantage possible to get the best deal. One major asset in any such journey is having a great real estate agent or realtor in your corner.

For home sellers, agents won’t just help you list and market your home, they’ll help you find the right buyer and the best price possible. And very good agents will help you sell your home before the average time of 58 days on the market.

What does a real estate agent actually do?

If you bought your house using an agent, you probably have some idea of how an agent can be helpful in finding properties that meet your budget needs and personal preferences. But to home sellers, it might not be so obvious. In such a hot housing market, do you really need an agent to help you sell your home?

While 7% of home sales are done without an agent, there are several good reasons why the vast majority of American home sellers enlist an agent.

• Access to the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) that markets your home to buyers.
• Access to pricing data like Comparative Market Analysis (CMA) to accurately put your home on the market at the right price.
• Advice on upgrades and maintenance to complete before listing your home to get the best price.
• Guidance through the negotiation and transaction process to ensure an efficient closing process.

Hiring a realtor or real estate agent to help you sell your home is a good idea. But hiring the right one is even more important. Here are some crucial questions to ask a potential agent before you hire them.

1. How long have you been a real estate agent?

Experience isn’t always everything when it comes to realty — you want an honest, reliable person more than anything — but it certainly can’t hurt. Someone who knows the ins and outs of the business and your local area will understand local regulations and market conditions, helping you to get the best price for your home and the quickest, most painless closing process.

2. What’s your schedule and availability?

Reliability is paramount when working with a real estate agent to sell your home. Still, you can’t expect an agent to be available all the time. Ask upfront what an agent’s typical hours are like and how soon you can expect replies from them to emails, texts, and calls. If an agent isn’t full-time, make sure you understand their work schedule — you may be able to negotiate a lower commission if your agent is less available.

3. How do your prefer to communicate?

Between personal showings, open houses, staging photos, and simply meeting to talk strategy, there’s a lot of communication and coordination that goes into selling a home. Making sure you’re on the same page with your agent and you have similar communication styles is essential.

Clarify with an agent if they prefer to stay in touch by phone, email, or text. If you’re a texter and they’re a caller, you may find yourself getting frustrated with answering so many phone calls to deal with issues that could be handled by text.

Likewise, set up expectations about how often you’d like to touch base. Things can switch from slow to fast very quickly in real estate, but in those slow times, you still want to be apprised of what the agent is doing to help sell your home. In a very hot market, you should touch base daily. In a slower one, you should be fine talking weekly.

4. Do you work independently or with a team?

Real estate agents work in different ways. Some are solo acts, some work as part of a brokerage team. There are benefits to both, but it’s nice to know when you have an entire team at your disposal. If your primary agent is unavailable, another can step up in his or her place. Of course, you’ll want to meet the team to make sure you gel with everyone before making any hiring decisions.

5. Have you sold homes in my neighborhood before?

Any licenses real estate agent will have access to local sales data, but cold hard numbers don’t tell the entire story. Agents who have sold homes in your neighborhood may already be familiar with the clientele shopping in the area, understand the quirks of the neighborhood, and know what to highlight in ads and listings.

6. How many homes have you sold this year?

While there’s more to a neighborhood than pricing data, numbers can be useful when interviewing a potential agent. An agent who sells multiple homes every month clearly knows what they’re doing. There’s a difference between working with sellers and actually selling homes.

7. How long does it typically take you to sell a home?

As we mentioned in the intro, the average house stays on the market for 58 days before selling. That number might be higher than you expected, and it should make you realize you may have to plan for at least a couple of months of uncertainty. (Plus, closing can take anywhere from 14 to 30 days, which is even more time to account for.)

If you’re particularly motivated to sell, a great agent may be able to help you beat the average time on the market.

8. What’s your working ratio of buyers to sellers?

Most real estate agents work with both sellers and buyers. This may seem like a counterintuitive question for sellers to ask, but there’s a good reason why it’s a useful question. Although it’s not common, in many states, the same agent can represent both buyer and seller. While this can potentially lead to challenges in contentious negotiations, when an agent knows a buyer for a seller client’s home, it can seriously streamline the process in amicable sales.

For home sellers, it’s useful to know if a listing agent has a strong buyer network to tap into to find a potential match.

Related: Listing vs selling agent

9. How many clients do you currently have?

Most homebuyers don’t just buy one home and stay in it for the rest of their lives. As such, real estate agents keep a rolodex of past and current clients in the event that someone buys an investment property or looks to make a move. Many people choose to use the same agent more than once.

On one hand, it’s a great sign when an agent has many clients that they’ve worked with more than once. It shows that customers are clearly satisfied. However, it’s imperative to clarify how many clients an agent is actively working with now. If they’re juggling ten clients, it may be difficult for them to give you the attention you deserve.

10. How will you market my home?

Finally, every real estate agent works in different ways and has different ideas about how to present your home. This may be the ultimate deciding factor when choosing an agent. One agent may love your home as is and want to work with a real estate photographer to showcase how it is. Another may want to move everything out, stage your home, and show how it could be. Again, there are benefits to both approaches, but it’s a lot more practical to keep your home as is while you’re still living in it.

Moreover, good agents want to know what you love about your house as it will help them write up a creative listing description that attracts buyers you’ll be excited to pass your home to. Someone who appreciates your home as much as you do is always easier to work with than someone who doesn’t.