Selling your home can be a very stressful and arduous experience. Choosing the right real estate agent is arguably the most important part of the process. Before reviewing the best criteria for selecting an agent, it is best to start off by determining what the agent should do for you.
Here are services that a strong agent should provide.
- Do thorough research on similar homes in the area and assess the condition of your home to determine an accurate listing price. Pricing it too low or too high can be equally devastating to the seller.
- After reviewing the condition of your home, an experienced agent can recommend which repairs are worth making to gain the best resale value on your home.
- A defined marketing plan including a strong internet presence is vital to getting your home in front of the most potential buyers.
- Providing and reviewing the terms and conditions of properties in your area who are competing with you for the same buyers.
- Making sure the paperwork process is going smoothly once the sale process has been initiated and resolve anything that would prevent the closing.
- Strong negotiations to ensure you receive top dollar.
Significant advances in technology and the use of the internet has reduced the amount of time the agent has to dedicate to selling your home. Most agents also employ transaction coordinators to monitor the paperwork. And the selling agent doesn’t participate in the showings unless it is an open house. The buyer’s agents show their clients the homes.
Before considering what a fair commission to pay your agent might be, let’s delve deeper into what criteria to consider when hiring one.
- Referrals or testimonials. Don’t take this at face value. Try to find clients that worked with the agent that they don’t provide you. They will always provide referrals that are happy. Contact a current client with a listing that the agent didn’t mention.
- Interview the agents and don’t settle for the first one that you speak to. Ask tough questions about their credentials, experience, and knowledge of the area.
- What is the significance of their internet presence and how does it stack up against their competition.
- We all have friends and or family that are in the industry. Avoiding hiring them would be a smart idea. It keeps it on a professional level, and if things don’t go smoothly, you are not ruining a relationship over it.
- Simply because an agent has sold a lot of homes doesn’t mean they are an effective agent. Ask what percentage of their listings they have sold. An agent that only listed ten homes over a certain period but sold all ten they listed could be more effective than someone that sold 20 homes but had 25 listings. An agent with fewer clients will have more time to dedicate to you when you need them.
- When you interview multiple agents and one stands out with a much higher listing price than the rest, you should consider that a red flag. The agent might be desperate to gain a listing. The goal should be to attain realistic numbers that allow your house to sell at a fair price in the shortest amount of time.
This is undoubtedly a lot of information to digest. Contemplating what services an agent should provide and what to consider when selecting one are important, but what commission to pay is the debate that continues to rage on.
The internet has reinvented how the entire real estate industry functions. At the same time, it has been considered a threat to agent commission rates since its inception. The standard 6% commission has withstood the test of time while surviving the onslaught of for-sale-by-owners and flat-fee MLS listings.
If you interviewed two agents, and all the criteria discussed above was equal, why would you pay more commission than necessary? Deedcoin can help with that very dilemma. Deedcoin is taking the real estate industry by storm with a blockchain platform to provide a solution that will allow homeowners a viable alternative to paying high commissions.
Deedcoin’s platform simply replaces the way you find your next real estate agent. Instead of finding their next agent on Google for a 6% commission, customers access the platform, input their property information, and link up with their local Deedcoin agent for a 1% commission. Deedcoin customers use DEED to decide the commission or rebate before linking with the Deedcoin agent.
Deedcoin integrates fully with the existing real estate infrastructure. All discounts are reflected on the standard HUD forms during a property closing, and all homes are listed or purchased through standard MLS. Customers have access to a groundbreaking technology dashboard allowing 24/7 access to an agent or licensed transaction assistant. Deedcoin’s DEED tokens will access a better real estate network that is already usable in 130+ cities and all 50 states. They streamline real estate to run on 1%, allowing future commissions to be set by the free market based on the price of DEED. Patent pending (App. No. 62/552,038)
To learn more about how Deedcoin is putting the entire industry on alert and sign up for their whitelist for the next sales phase go to www.deedcoinlaunch.com.