Questions Every Home Buyer Should Ask: How Do You Choose A Real Estate Agent?

There are tons of options when it comes to choosing a real estate agent. It seems that everyone knows at least a few. How do you decide which real agent to work with? Here are my thoughts.

 

[Video Transcript]

Hey, I’m Zach McDonald, your real estate agent with Real Property Associates. Today’s question that every home buyer should ask is, how do I choose a real estate agent? You’re watching a real estate agent tell you this, so you can laugh about it and take this all with a grain of salt. Right? In my opinion, things that you should be looking for as a home buyer is a few different things.

First, I would be looking for somebody that has knowledge and experience about the process. You want to work with somebody that’s a professional. That understands the market, has been around the block, knows how to negotiate for you, and really is a professional. When I say professional, not the part-time on the weekends real estate agent. Somebody that can answer your call at 2:00 in the afternoon, like somebody that, that’s their job.

I don’t have another job. I don’t work as a barista on the side and I don’t work at a school and then sell real estate in the summer. Now, if that’s your situation I’m not bashing on anybody or if you know somebody in that situation, that’s not the purpose of this video. You want to know what you’re getting into. How invested in the market are they? Are they good at their job? These are all questions you need to ask. Right?

Then as a buyer, do you actually like this person? Do you like them? There are a lot of real estate agents. A lot of real estate agents, and I’ll just keep nodding awkwardly for a sec because there are so many. How do you choose between them? How do you choose? Well, I just gave you some criteria, right? You want to make sure that they’re good at their job and they know what they’re talking about.

You also want to like them. This is one of the bigger decisions you’re going to make. It can be a stressful decision and a stressful process, so you want to work with somebody that you like and trust to walk you through that process and make it fun. Are they going to add stress to the process or are they going to help mitigate the stress? Are they going to take some of that on themselves? Are they level-headed? Are they going to be able to handle this objectively and help you process through one of the bigger decisions in your life?

I think those are the biggest two things. I’m sure you can find articles or blogs where people give you 10 things to look for or 30 questions to ask your next real estate agent, but in today’s day and age, you can go online, you can go on Yelp, Facebook, Zillow, and you can look up Zach McDonald and you can see my track record. You can see the people that I’ve helped. You can even see which specific houses I helped people buy in which neighborhoods and cities. You can see what they had to say about me. Not everybody fills out a review, but a lot of people do.

You can go do your homework. Do a little bit of research. I would encourage you to do that. Go and investigate, because the majority of the real estate agents you might come across or meet, maybe the family member or the friend from work that’s a real estate agent, go look. How good at their job are they? Then if you want to have a conversation, talk with them and meet with them. If you don’t like them, don’t work with them. If you like them and you know they’ve got a good track record of success, go ahead and move forward with that. That’s my thoughts from a real estate agent, so again, take it with a grain of salt, but I think of all the things that you could talk about and ask, do they know what they’re doing, and do you like them.