Real Estate Agents - Selling Your Home

I have a lot of opinions on real estate agents, not all of them are good ones.

My cousin just sold his home and had some problems with his real estate agent.

The first problem showed up when he told me that his agent offered to reduce the commission if the agent sold the house himself.  It was a real sales pitch.

He went on and on about how fair this was and what a great agent he was to make this offer etc…  

The truth turned out to be that the agent had no intention of selling the house himself, because he never showed the house to anyone so offering the reduced sales commission was just a empty sales pitch.

Many real estate agents are just listing agents they spend all their time trying to talk people into letting them list their house.  Once they have the listing then it is on to the next one.

They figure if they list enough houses some of them will sell themselves, and they get half the commission (the selling agent gets the other half).  

This kind of annoys me that agents like this can’t be a little more honest with you.

So if a real estate agent offers to reduce their commission if they sell your house themselves beware.

When you’re trying to pick an agent ask them how many houses they have sold recently, your looking for a big number here, the bigger the better.

Then ask them how many of those sales they were the selling agent, if they say none then you have a problem.  If they say a lot then ask them to print out some recent sold listings where they represented the buyer.

They should be able to print out a list from the MSL (multiple listing service) that shows houses they have sold.  It will also show the buyers agent, and sellers agent.

When your selling your home the more informed you are about how these agents work the better off you will be when trying to pick one from all the real estate agents out there.