If you’re planning to sell your house, you’ll likely need the service of a real estate agent. Especially if you don’t know a reliable Long Island NY cash home buyers. However, if you deal with an incompetent agent, it may look like you have no agent.
Therefore, hiring an amateur agent is as good as having no agent. Since you rely on the agent to make the sale for you, your house may be there for long without finding an interested buyer if the agent you chose isn’t capable. More so, if you don’t know the value of your property, you may have to depend on your agent to help you with that.
An amateur agent can tell you a lower rate. You may regret that when you find out the actual value of your property after selling. Such an agent may also put too much price on your property; hence, the property can be there for long without finding an interested buyer.
What you need to do, therefore, is to ensure that the agent you want to deal with is capable and can serve you well. How can you know this? You need Just to ask the following questions:
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How Many Properties Have You Sold in the Last One Year?
This is a way to test the effectiveness of the agent. The answer you get here will reveal to you whether the agent is good at what they do or not. When you ask this question, some agents may begin to give excuses about why they haven’t made sales or why they’ve sold only a few properties in the past year.
When you start to notice this, you may want to look away and find another serious agent. On the other hand, some agents are at the top of their game. They will gladly tell you about the significant number of properties they’ve sold in the past year.
When you get a response like this, you can ask them to direct you to the seller and the buyer of some of those properties. If they’re telling the truth, they won’t hesitate to do so. However, some people do this just to see whether they’ll be given the contact or not.
Once they get the contact, they believe the agent already and proceed to deal with them. This is always not the best thing to do. You should get the contact and reach out to the sellers and buyers yourself. Speak to them to confirm if the sales of their properties were actually made through the agent.
Averagely, How Long Does It Take You to Sell a Property
This is another crucial question you should ask. An agent might have sold a lot of properties in the past year. Perhaps, those properties might have been on sale for a long time before they finally got buyers for them.
You don’t want your property to stay that long. You should ask them about how long it’ll take them to sell your property.
Nevertheless, they may not be able to give a specific time, but they should give you a range of time. What they say can be a reflection of how many buyers they have at hand.
For How Long Have You Been Selling Properties
The purpose of asking this question is to know how well they’re experienced. It is always better to deal with an experienced agent. Such an agent will also guide you on things you should do from your end to sell your property quickly and profitably. Hence, you should ask how long they’ve been in the business of selling properties.
Are You Licensed?
To be on the safer side, you should only deal with a licensed agent. The license is a formal way to tell whether they’re qualified to practice as an agent or not. If an agent is not licensed, it is difficult to know whether they’re capable of offering quality service or not.
How Do You Want to Be Paid?
If you’re satisfied with the responses you got from the previous questions, you can then ask about payment. You should ask how they wish to be paid. Most agents will accept their payment after the sale of the property.
The standard is that agents will charge you a percentage of the total amount you sold your property. It may be 5%, 10%, or as negotiated depending on how much you finally sold the property.
These are the five questions you should ask when before hiring a real estate agent.
