How to Choose a Realtor
The conversation, the questions to ask, and why they matter
You do not need a Realtor to sell your home. Wait by the phone and someone will call and ask if you have a house for sale. You can sell today to Opendoor, Offerpad, a “we buy houses” company, or an investor who left a card in your door.
If it is that easy, why use a Realtor at all?
Two reasons.
To keep you from being sued. Or at least to put one more experienced set of eyes on the disclosures, the contract, and the deadlines, so that a mistake does not turn into a lawsuit.
To be your advocate. Someone on your side whose job is to navigate the process for you: pricing the home, negotiating, explaining each step, handling inspection issues, reviewing documents, and laying out your options. A real estate transaction is a hoop-jumping contest. Some of the hoops will be new even to an experienced agent and will take research to get right. Your Realtor is the one who does that research and jumps through them with you.
Finding one is easy. Picking one is not.
Florida has more than 300,000 active real estate licenses, roughly one for every 75 residents. You will have no trouble finding one. Your cousin, the face on the bench ad, the duo on the radio, a referral, Google, a civic club.
The hard part is choosing well, because the usual methods mislead you.
Search online and you will find the best internet marketers. They may or may not be good at real estate.
Call a few and you will run into a great salesperson: likable, friendly, a strong communicator. They may or may not be good at real estate either.
You can ask about years in the business, number of transactions, sales volume, and company philosophy. Those are fair questions. But there is a better way to start, and it does not require talking to anyone.
What to check before you call
Look at their listings. Pull up the agent’s active, pending, and sold listings. Look at days on market: how long it took each home to sell. If every one of them sold in a day or two, that may mean the agent is pricing too low and leaving your money on the table. If they sit for months, that tells you something too.
Look at the photos. Are the first five shots all the front of the house, then five of the kitchen, then five of the pool? Buyers scroll fast. If the first five photos do not each show a different strong angle of the home, many buyers move on before they ever see the best room. Good photo order is a sign the agent understands how buyers shop.
Look at the pricing. Are the homes priced at $299,900 and $349,900? That is pricing for a newspaper ad, not the internet. Buyers search in bands: $280,000 to $300,000, $300,000 to $320,000. A home at $299,900 is the most expensive house on the first list and does not appear on the second list at all, where it would have been the best value at $300,000. An agent who still prices just under the round number has not adjusted to how people actually search.
Look at the details. Pet restrictions, lease restrictions, room sizes. If those fields are blank or say “buyer to verify,” keep looking. A buyer with a dog filters for pet-friendly homes. If the field is blank, your home never shows up in their search. Blank fields cost sellers showings every day and the seller never knows it.
What to say when you get one on the phone
Start like this:
“I am shopping for a Realtor and plan to talk to several before I choose. Would you mind if I interview you?”
Then ask:
“What areas do you specialize in?” If they are not local to you, move on. They do not know where the new sewage treatment plant is going, which road is being widened, or where the next traffic light is planned. Real estate is local. Hire a local expert.
“Tell me about your real estate business.” Leave it open-ended and let them talk. You do not want a pitch tailored to what you just told them. You want to hear how they think. If it is not a fit, say so: “Thank you for your time. I don’t think we’re a match, and I have several more agents to talk to.” Then hang up. No guilt.
If you like what you hear, tell them you want to test them. Really.
The test questions
These separate agents who handle problems every week from agents who have read about them.
- “What do you do when a property does not appraise?”
- “What do you do when we get a bad inspection?”
- “Do you know who to call at the county for zoning, permitting, and code enforcement?” (A great question. An agent who deals with these regularly answers without hesitating.)
- “How would you find out whether there is a sinkhole property near mine?”
The one test that matters most
Do they answer the phone?
Call them. Not their office. Their cell. Did they pick up, or did it go to voicemail? If voicemail, how long until they called back?
This matters more than any other question on this list. Buyers drive neighborhoods, see a sign, and call from the curb. If nobody answers, they drive to the next house and your showing is gone. Some agents simply do not answer their phone. You will not find that out from their website. Call and find out for yourself.
I am always collecting observations on this subject. If you have a pet peeve about Realtors or a way you have found to tell the good ones from the rest, I want to hear it.
Randal Jenkins
727-409-4663 | RJ409home@gmail.com
