The 5 Questions to Ask Every Agent Before Listing Your Home

Questions to Ask your Realtor

In meeting with individuals and families looking to sell a home,

I have found many home sellers are rightly focused on the value of their home and the means to get the very highest price for the house.  

Yet, the discussion and questions tend to focus on comparable homes sales, improvements made to the house and the 'to do' list to final prep the home for sale. Questions on experience and such of the Realtor come up at times.

Yet amazingly, the marketing plan is frequently brushed over without hardly a question or a challenge from the home seller.

The Real Estate Book, a source I personally use for both the print and extensive web presence, rightly notes 5 questions to ask every Realtor.

Every Realtor should have reassuring, sound answers for these questions.  What is reassuring and sound will be up to each home seller.  Yet, the knowledge and experience of the market savvy Realtor should never disappoint a home seller.

The 5 Questions to Ask Every Agent Before Listing Your Home

Be sure to add these questions to the interview of the next Realtor that you ask to sell your home.  If you don't like the answers, move on.

SOLD...Is The Only Word that Counts

  Sold

          Under Contract

                           Pending

These are the only words that matter to a Home Seller.  Yet, the only word that really counts in "Sold".

With the improving real estate market, home buyers truly hope that home owners will be come home sellers in 2014.  The Housing Shortage has continue all through 2013.    Perhaps, home owners didn't believe "Sold" was a true possibility and still walking away with a couple of dollars in their pocket.

In most cases it was in 2013!!  

A truth proven again and again, five factors are common to ensure a home sells.

   *  Knowledge of ever changing Real Estate Market

   *  Competitive pricing

   *  Compelling Offline and Online Marketing 

   *  Large Buyer Bank

   *  Realtor Network

   National Stats, as well as local realities, are that listing with a Realtor nets Sellers about 16% more than if they go it alone.

Imagine selling a $300,000 home and leaving $48,000 on the table.

Did you know that Buyers learn of a home as follows:

    40% Internet(88% start process online)

    35% Agent/Realtor

    11% Sign in Yard

      4% Home Builder--New Home Sites

      6% Neighbor/Friend/Neighbor of Seller

      3% Print advertising

      2% Seller

As you can see, Realtor advertising, online presence, networking brings the buyers!!!  A very low percentage learn of a house directly from a seller.  

Knowing the market place and helping Sellers establish competitive sale prices ensures the house is prepare to match Buyers' expectations when drawn to a given house.

Thus, sellers should be very wary of losing money believing they will be saving money.  For example, languishing on the market due to overpricing can cost an individual with a $2000 house payment to loose $8000 or $10,000 of house payments that can be avoided through proper property pricing.

No one wants to waste money!!!

Remember to get to "Sold"    Call a Realtor!!

In Hampton Roads, you can call me at 757 580-6546 

       

  

Those Internet Ads...Going...Going...Gone???

Don't know about you but those Ads popping up all over the internet can be quite annoying! Obviously, if you are like me, some are rather nice as the products or services are of interest to you(or me). Yet to know that someone in Congress is actually looking out for our interests(YEA!!!!) is so novel.....could have used it on that Sequestration challenge.  But regardless this would help all of us. CONSUMER WATCH: NEW BILL IN CONGRESS AIMS TO PROVIDE EASIER OPT OUT Courtesy of  HomeActions Newsletter by Al Clark

Topic Summary:   Ever visit a website looking for something, for example shoes? Thenevery other time you searched for something else,  Zappos or Shoe Outlet.com shows up first in your search rankings! Some say "pretty cool... how did they do that". More and more are saying "OK, that's enough". Enter the growing area called Online Behavioral Advertising. Many of the ads you receive on web pages and on web searches are, believe it or not, customized just for your eyes only. Ads you see can be based on predictions about your interests generated from your visits over time and across different Web sites. ( How Behavior Ads Work) This type of ad customization - sometimes called online behavioral or interest based advertising- works through a system of files on your computer called "cookies". Like crumbs used to document "where you have been", these cookies tell websites a lot about where you have visited, what you have searched on and what you are clicking on. Then, this pattern of interest gets documented and entered into a profile created just on your viewing habits.  Senator Jay Rockefeller just reintroduced the  "Do-Not-Track Online Act of 2013," which would make it law for all Web browsers, online companies, and app makers to give users a choice of opting out of being tracked online. The Senator introduced the earlier bill in 2011 but was promised by the ad industry they would make it easy for consumers to opt-out.  This time the Senator wants to make it extremely easy for consumers to opt out. He would involve the Federal Trade Commission which over sees online consumer issues http://www.aboutads.info/choices is  a site where you can opt out of some tracking systems, but not all. We will keep you informed as the large players make opting out easier for the consumer