We met with three more real estate agents yesterday.
First was The Bob. We liked The Bob. Bob has worked for the same big real estate company for 20 years. That is impressive. Most people jump from company to company. We could tell that The Bob really liked doing his job. The Bob also knew his stuff. He grew up in the area where we live, so he was quite farmilar with the market. He took copious notes as we gave him the house tour and asked us some very good questions too. The Bob was very easy to talk to and just had that "I could sit down and have a beer with this guy" personality. He really liked the Boy too. The Boy cozies up to him as well. He gave the positive without gushing and the negative without the "sky is falling" approach.
Next were the "Golden Girls" (In honor of Bea Aurther...RIP). They were two ladies in the late 60's whom we just loved. They worked for a smaller agency whom I chose because the owner's dog was pictured in the ad. They were also well prepared and knew the area well. While they did not take notes, you could see that they were making mental notes of everything. They were laid back and cherry; I could see having a drink with them too. The Boy sucked up to them and they recipricated. Like the Bob, they were positive and gave us some good insight.
So, after interviewing four real estate agents, we are down to The Bob and The Golden Girls. It's tough because we could see working with either The Bob or The Golden Girls. Husband and I are going to be looking through all the information and try to make a decision by Tuesday. Nothing special about Tuesday, we just wanted to give ourselves a deadline. There are things we want to consider:
Big agency v. small agency
One agent v. tag team
Amount of commission (the Golden Girls were a little cagey about how much commission they would take. Standard is 6-7%)
Not keen on open houses v. Open house happy
Marketing strategies
Laid back (Bob) v. Kinda pushy (the Golden Girls wanted us to sign an agreement that day).
There is other stuff too, but my brain is fried right now.
About Me
- Seeking Solace
- I am a college professor who is fumbling through the chaos of academia, rheumatoid arthritis, working on my PhD and just being a 40 something woman. I used to be a lawyer, which made me a snarky little person. I have a wonderful Husband and a German Shepherd named Junior. They help keep me sane.
Paws to Consider
My Sister's Keeper
6 comments:
There is on agency in our area that has a reputation for selling houses without really taking them off the market--when we moved here we saw houses thinking they were available only to find out afterward they weren't. Big agency was too big for themselves.
I really like it when they know the area---that helped us making a decision in buying!! Our agent could answer all of our questions so quickly.
Does this mean the others you met with are totally out of the running?
Pushy would totally turn me off but it sounds like you liked a lot of other things about them.
Good luck with making the decision. How exciting.
We decided that the other two were just to extreme. The first one was just too giddy. The other was way too negative and pompous.
(I edited my earlier comment because I didn't like the tone of part of it.)
I thought I'd share some of what we talked about when deciding on our agent, since we're just wrapping up the process (set to close on Thursday).
We sold our house in large part because our agent hosted a broker's open house (in addition to a regular open house). Another agent in our agent's company came to the broker's open, thought some clients of his would like it, and brought them in the next day. Those are the people who bought our house. We had to sign off on the fact that both the buying and selling agents were from the same company (and were actually father/son-in-law), but we were totally fine with that.
We picked our agent because he knew the area really well; he appreciated (and thus did a good job promoting) what we'd done to the house; he not only provided comparable data, but he put that data in context (so he was savvier in his analysis than some of the other agents); he was willing to accommodate some of our requests (ie, having a strong web presence); he got good reviews from past clients (that's one way to check your hunches about the various agents; and Chica had a good rapport with him (important, because she's the one who dealt with him).
One thing we also liked about our agent is that he had a 24 hour cancel policy. If we decided that things weren't going well, we could cancel our contract with him immediately and not be required to give him X amount of days to continue to list the house.
Good luck with the decision!
I don't like the idea of the pushy ladies and the fact they could not be more open with their commission.
Sounds like you have a lot to think about. Best wishes.
Joy
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