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Hello, everyone! Today, we're going to discuss some essential tips for selecting the perfect real estate agent. If you find this information helpful, please show your support by hitting the "like" button. I'm licensed in 48 states to assist with mortgages, and I'm here to guide you through this process.
The first thing you should look for in a real estate agent is the ability to connect with them. It's crucial that you and your agent are on the same wavelength. No matter how impressive their reviews or sales numbers are, if you feel uncomfortable working with them, it's a red flag. You need an agent you can trust and feel comfortable with, someone who genuinely has your back.
Your agent must be a market expert. Don't make the mistake of choosing an agent randomly or based on personal connections. The outcome of your home buying experience greatly depends on your agent's knowledge. Even in a straightforward market, having a market-savvy agent can make a significant difference. Avoid part-time agents; you want someone who is dedicated to your success.
So, how do you find a market expert? Start by driving around the neighborhood you're interested in. Pay attention to whose signs are prevalent; this indicates who has listings in that area. In many cases, one or two agents dominate the market. However, don't assume that a listing agent is always the best option. To find top agents, search online for "top real estate agents" in your area. Look for agents with substantial reviews and a solid sales record in the last 12 months.
Reviews are a good indicator of an agent's reputation. However, be cautious of overly positive reviews with no comments; they may not be genuine. A reputable agent will have reviews that reflect positive experiences, not just five stars. Take the time to research and read reviews carefully.
Consider your budget when selecting an agent. If you're looking for a $400,000 home, check the agent's track record in that price range. The ideal agent should have experience in your price point, ideally between $350,000 and $500,000. If an agent primarily deals with million-dollar homes, they may not prioritize your needs for a $400,000 house.
Finally, schedule a conversation with potential agents to get a sense of their approach. If they only talk to you briefly and then put you on an automated listing, that's not a good sign. A great agent will take the time to understand your goals and preferences.
Watch out for agents who also try to be your lender. Some agents partner with lenders to earn extra income. If your agent redirects you to a lender that seems disconnected or untrustworthy, it's a red flag. Good agents prioritize your best interests.
In conclusion, choosing the right real estate agent is crucial for a successful home buying experience. Focus on personal connection, market expertise, and reviews when making your decision. Don't hesitate to ask questions and ensure that your agent is committed to your needs and goals.
I hope you find this guide helpful! Feel free to reach out if you have any questions or need assistance in your real estate journey. Thank you for reading.
Today, we're going to talk about some tips to help you choose a real estate agent. So before I start, if you like this channel, hit like, if you hate it, hit hate. I am licensed in 48 states to do mortgages, and I am here to help you guys, okay?
So, what would I look for if I was looking for a real estate agent? Um, a couple of different things. Number one, I need to get along with them. It's so important that you and your real estate agent are on the same wavelength. It doesn't matter how good their reviews are or how many houses they sell if you feel uncomfortable every time you talk to them. Okay? And I say that because it happens a lot where people are like, "Well, I don't really want to ask them; they're kind of mean, or they're always busy, or they don't call me back." Those are all red flags that you're working with the wrong real estate agent. So that's number one, you've got to get along with them; you have to feel comfortable with them; you need to feel like they have your back.
Number two: Market expert, yeah, this is important. There are far too many people who just go with whatever real estate agent they find in an open house or maybe their dog sister's dog groomer's cousin is a real estate agent. You know, there are so many people going with real estate agents without doing any research, and I think it's a horrible idea. You know the difference in you getting a house is going to depend on your real estate agent. You could be in the easiest market, and I see this all the time, so I'm going to use Houston, Texas as a great example. We'll have clients where they're with a real estate agent where I'm like, "I'm not sure about this," but they love them, and I'm like, "Okay, if you love them, whatever you want." They're still looking for houses two years later, guys. If the person is not a market expert, you are never going to find a house. You might fall into one, but it may not be the best option for you; you may not get the best price; you may not know about your ability to negotiate. There's a lot of stuff that you're going to miss out on if you're not working with a market expert. So, would I personally work with a part-time real estate agent? No, no, I wouldn't work with a part-time lender; I wouldn't work with a part-time title officer; I wouldn't work with a part-time dog groomer, guys. I would not work with a part-timer if I'm going to be paying someone, right? And here's the thing, people go, "Well, the seller pays the buyer's commission." That's true; the seller does pay for the buyer's agent, but guess how they pay for it? It's in the cost of what you pay for the house. So, you are, in fact, in a roundabout way, paying your agent's commission. So with that given, knowing that you're paying that right on a $400,000 house, three percent agents generally make between two and three percent, so let's say three percent, they're making $12,000. I want you to ask yourself this question: would I pay this person out of my pocket $12,000? And if the answer is no, they're not the right agent for you. It's that simple. You know, people are always, sorry, I'm going to be sniffling because my allergies are crazy. People are always saying, "Oh, well, you know, I find the houses online, and they take them to me." Guys, if they're taking you to those houses, and you're finding them online, ask for a part of their commission towards your closing costs because you're doing all the work. Seriously. I want you guys to understand, you need an expert; you want an expert, period. I don't care if your cousin's wife is a real estate agent, and it's going to cause trouble if you don't use her, and she just got her license last week. No, this is your future; this is your house; this is your financial commitment. All that is noise.
So, how do I find a market expert? Great question. So, if you're in the area, the first thing I would say is drive around the neighborhood. Drive around the neighborhood you like, whose signs are out because that's going to tell you who has most of the listings. Now, if there's a ton of different agents, and there's no consistent themes, that makes it a little more challenging. Most parts, you'll see that there's one or two real estate agents just dominating the market. I see that consistently wherever I go; there's usually one or two that just have a lock hold on the market. Okay, so that's probably a market expert. Everyone's listing with them. But is a listing agent always the right answer? No. So what do you do? Okay. Here's what I would do. So, let's say that tomorrow I move to Memphis, Tennessee. What I would do is I would put in Google, I would say, 'top real estate agents Memphis, Tennessee, Zillow.' Yep, so Zillow is going to give me a list, and it should be by how many reviews they have, who has the most reviews. Reviews are a good tell if someone's great. What Zillow also will show you in most parts of the country is how many sales that person has in the last 12 months. Okay, if I see zero sales in the last 12 months, yeah, that's not good. I want to see a good number in the last 12 months. So what would I determine as a good number? It depends on the area. You know, there's some areas like if the houses are $100,000, an agent's going to have to be selling at least 12 to 24 to even have that be their full-time job, right? You know, that's kind of the stuff you want to think about. But like zero sales, one sale in the last 12 months, I wouldn't, I would not be doing it personally. These are my personal opinions, so feel free to disagree, but no way. I would be going through, okay, how many reviews do they have? I would click on it, and I'd be looking to see how big their team is because sometimes what you'll see is you'll be like, '500 five-star reviews.' That's great, but then it's like the team's like 40 people. So what that means is that it's all of those people contributing to the amount of sales and the reviews, and that's not as real. Right? Then you've got to go, 'Okay, 500 divided by 40,' and you've got to go through the different little bubble heads, right? Because you don't necessarily get to pick if you're going after one of these big teams. You may not be able to pick the real estate agent you want. You know, if you're looking at a big team, figure out who you want when you call, ask for that person. If you can't have that person, walk away. I see way too much with big teams where they will hand you off to the most junior person, right? Because they get a cut of all the money, no matter what. They're getting a cut; they're just trying to bring in as many real estate agents as they can. So they can grow their business, you know, not necessarily to serve you, but to grow their business, make more money, bring in more agents, bring in more agents, throw people at them, throw people at them. That's not what you want. What you want is the agent that's been in the market, like my favorite agents are ones that don't have a big team and are not going to put me with their team. Sorry, it's true. If I'm paying for, you know, let's say it's a $400,000 house, it's going to be built into the price, but if I end up paying, right, because I'm paying for the whole thing, $12,000 for an agent, I want them to be a market expert; I want them to negotiate for me. Now, look, would I be cool with a junior agent showing me a property? Yeah, totally. But who do I want during the negotiation? I want the seasoned real estate agent with a lot of experience doing the negotiation. So that's a question you guys have to ask because we're seeing so much of this right now with these super teams where it looks really impressive. But then when you start dialing down to what you actually get, it's not impressive. Okay, so I love a real estate agent that hasn't gotten to the point where they have a ton of people on their team, maybe one or two, maybe three. It's like the sweet spot before you, you know, they just go into that mode of never being able to talk to them again. So I'm a big fan of that. There are some teams that are amazing. Okay, so like I know the team in Sonoma County where, you know, a couple of the agents on that team are better, they are better than the main person on the team, they're way better. But on that team as well, they're also always hiring new people that don't have a clue. And if you're a Zillow lead, right, you're generally going to go to the person with no clue. Now you may go, 'Wait a second, I clicked on this house, and it said that Becky could take me to see it. Is that a good agent?' Guys, that's just someone who's paying Zillow for leads. So you need to know this. Zillow sells people's leads, as does Realtor.com, they all do. So if you say, 'Yes, I want to see this house at this time,' like you're scheduling it, the person you're going to is not the best agent. It's who has paid Zillow or Realtor.com in order to have you as a lead. So be hyper-aware of that because a lot of times when people are starting out their business or if someone has a big team and they're trying to feed the baby agents, that is how they get fed, right? Because if you're able to just set up a time on these websites, and a real estate agent shows up, do you think the best real estate agent in the market is going to be showing up for that to an unqualified lead they don't know you from anything, they don't know if you're pre-approved, they don't know what your price point is, all they know is you want to see a house at nine. No way, you're not going to get the best agents doing that. Okay, so really dig into reviews. I would also check out Google third-party reviews and see if anyone has some. So, we don't see as many real estate agents getting Google reviews, but if they have some, it's a good sign. It's a good sign that their clients like them as long as they're positive. And when it comes to reviews, you know, it's important to know like if someone just had like a bunch of five stars with no comments, I would totally say those are bonded, it's not realistic. If someone's taking the time to review a real estate agent or a lender during a transaction, it's generally because they had a really good experience, and they want you to know about it so you feel safe. It's not just five stars. Now look, does that happen sometimes? Yeah, totally, like I’ve got a couple of those, but it’s not the norm, so if you see someone where they have a hundred reviews, they're all five stars with no comments, probably not real, okay? Um, what else, what else, what else? Price point, oh my God, so important. So if you guys are looking for a $400,000 house, Zillow in most parts of the country will show you what houses the agent has sold, you know, since Zillow's been tracking their data. So if you're looking at it and you're like, 'Oh, every single house is like $350, $425, $475, $310, $350. Great, that's great. If you're looking at it and it's $186, $125, $180, $92, $125, uh, not the right agent for you, right? You want to try to find someone who is an expert in the price point that you're looking at. So if you're looking at a $400,000 house, in a perfect world, you want the agent's average to be between $350 and $500, maybe $3 and $500 to give you a big, a big swoop. But you know if you're looking at it and the agent sold $1 million, $2 million, $3 million, $4 million, and you're trying to buy a $400,000 dollar house, you're probably not going to get priority treatment unless that agent is your mother's best friend. You're not going to get priority treatment, and they may not know as much about the $400,000 market as an agent that does that market every day.
So, I would definitely be looking at price point. I would be looking at what they've sold. Are these the type of houses? Are these the type of neighborhoods I'd want? And then last but not least, we circle back to what we talked about in the beginning, set up a time to talk to them and just really get a feel for what they're about. See how they treat you. If they just talk to you for six minutes and put you on a list where you get automatic listings, that's crap. I think that's crap. They need to have a real conversation with you about your goals, why you want specific neighborhoods, you know, and look, everyone does the automatic listings. The reason they do it is because they can actually see most of the time on their end what you're looking at, how long you're looking at it, did you look at it more than once, seriously? And it alerts them to reach out to you. But if they're just sending you a gobbledygook of listings that have no premise, what are they really doing to earn that money? And that's what you guys need to think about. What are they really doing to earn that money?
The last thing to be aware of because this is a new development in mortgage land... Oh, hold on, guys, allergies are so bad. Are they also trying to be your lender? So, there's a new thing where basically real estate agents can get their mortgage license or they can just tie with a bank, and there are lenders who are courting them, saying, 'Hey, if you just put this link on your website, you know, we'll do all the loan work, and you'll get a big fat paycheck from it.' And since they're licensed lenders and they're pretending to be licensed lenders, they can legally get that fat paycheck. So, if the realtor is saying, 'Hey, look, no, my team will do your loan,' and they send you to a link and it's like a call center or it's like some lender where you're like, 'Wait, what? Wait, I thought you were going to be my lender.' That's what's going on. So really a red flag for that because I have to say the real estate agents that I think that are going to fall for this whole, like, you know, the mortgage lender saying, 'Oh, give me all your leads and I'll give you a cut.' They're not the best agents, right? It's that simple because a good agent knows that for the long term of their brand, right? They need you to be happy, and whenever someone else is coming to the party to make more money off the deal, they're just making more money off of you. So really watch out for that. That's something we're going to see a lot of over the next year unless the government gets involved and realizes that the rule they let out is actually being perverted and will harm consumers.
So I hope this video has been helpful. As always, guys, I'm licensed in 48 states, so please feel free to reach out. Thanks.