When working with a real estate agent, communication is the key to finding the perfect home, whether you’re looking for a starter home or your dream home. The agent is going to work hard to find you the perfect property, but he or she can only go off of the information that you provide. Even if you have a perfectly clear idea of what you want, the agent may not be able to find it if you cannot convey that idea easily.
Of course, this works both ways, as communication should. It is also crucial for the agent to communicate with you about new listings, opportunities and things of this nature. When that perfect house hits the market, you need to be the first one at the door for a showing, and the agent is the one who can get you there. He or she also has to keep your budget in mind and communicate with you in a hurry if a house drops in price or if a home shows up that the agent knows is priced to move instantly.
Important Questions
To begin with, you should look at some important questions to ask the agent. Your individual situation does make a big difference, naturally, but there are some staple questions that everyone should consider. For example, you should ask the agent:
1. Do you work with more sellers or more buyers?
This will help you to determine if the agent is the right one for you, depending on which side of things you fall on. Finding a balanced agent is also good because it ensures that they are going to have insights regarding both sides of the process.
2. What neighborhood do you work in most often?
This is most important for buyers who already have a neighborhood in mind, who know where they want to live. You need an agent who knows the area, who has moved homes there before, and who will be able to watch the listings for the ideal home. Understanding the neighborhood is just as important as looking at the homes themselves, in many cases.
3. Will you and I work together primarily?
Some agents are really running businesses with many other agents under them. We talked with Realty Associate Florida Properties who explained, “They may talk to you at first, but then they will pass you along to someone else. If you are trying to decide if you should hire someone or not, you really want to know that you are choosing the person to whom you are speaking, not an employee that you’ve never met.”
4. How many house have you worked on in this area?
If you do have a neighborhood picked out, get some real stats about what the agent has done. Many of them will say that they work in an area, but knowing how many homes they’ve actually brought to closing will show you how well they really know it.
These are just a few examples, but they can be the groundwork for a long conversation that gets the whole communication process going. You want to open up those channels of communication as soon as you can. After these questions break the ice, the conversation should flow organically to everything else that you may want to know.
The Language Barrier
You and your agent may be facing a bit of a language barrier, particularly if you are trying to buy a home overseas. This can make communication more difficult, but it really means that a good agent should work extra hard to communicate with all buyers and sellers. For instance, agents will sometimes have multiple versions of their listings online, in all different languages. Others will have hotlines that you can call where you speak to a translator who knows your native language. If your agent does this, it tells you that he or she is highly detected to communicating every step of the way, which is a good indicator that the buying or selling process will go smoothly.
