Tips on Picking a Real Estate Agent: Making a Short List!

This is stage two in our quest of selecting the best Real Estate Agent to sell your house.

As I have previously stated I have no professional qualifications in the Real Estate Industry and these steps are not from any other sources other than those learned from my own experiences over the years of buying and selling Real Estate, both Houses and Properties.

I would be delighted to hear, via the comment boxes underneath this article, from anyone who has anything constructive to add to the discussion. Any tips, large or small that can help our readers to obtain the best result in selling their precious property would be gratefully accepted!

Now that you have decided to sell you house and you have done all of the preliminaries prior to selecting your selling Agent here are the Rules of Engagement that you might like to consider.

Firstly though, if you have not done the prelim's you might like to go over and read the Pre-selection system that I have used. They have been listed on my Hub called:

Tips on selling your house - property. Preliminaries !

The ultimate aim is to end up with who you regard to be the best Real Estate Agent to sell YOUR house. Some Agents have an ability for selling in niche markets such as 'acreage', apartments, land etc. So the idea is to narrow down the field to pick the right Agent to sell your home.

What the intention here is to eleminate agents so that we finish up with a short list of Three, then we interview that three and decide on the final and hopefully best Real Estate Agent.

This is how we go about making the selection!

The first thing we need to do is make a list of all the Real Estate Agents in your local Area.

In Australia we do have Real Estate Offices operating on a national basis with local Offices working on a Franchise system similar to McDonald's, and also One office Real Estate Agents with just one man and a receptionist. (This is becoming a rarity these days).

I have drawn up a list below to give you some ideas on what to include. Add and remove Headings to what you think works for you.

As you are going along give each Box a rating, say out of 10 (I have put example in brackets) and carry the scores over to the Scores column.

I have a number of Golden Rules that I have used in many of my business dealings over the years. Here they are with a brief explanation:

• Never use a Company that is not a member of the relevant National or State Association. This safeguards you against shoddy business practices . Although it does not eliminate them altogether there is an 'indication' or impression that a particular company does want to do the 'right thing'!. It would also be a wise move to make sure that the Association carries a form of Insurance against things going wrong!
• Here's one from left field. 'The Company Receptionist'! As the saying goes something like ' the eyes are the windows to the soul'. Well it is my belief the 'The Receptionist' is 'the window to the company soul'.
  Over my many years in Business dealing with other Businesses I have found that the Receptionist doe's reflect the morale and integrity of the company she is working for. Before you make your decision evaluate the Receptionist/s attitude to customers and if possible call her by name and establish a 'rapport' early.
  It will be invaluable later on when you just may need to get in contact with your agent quickly.
  You should also remember that any Vendors will also have to communicate with the Receptionist and you want that to be a good impression.
  

As you may see by using this method we have removed a lot of the Emotion out of making a selection and we are able to commence to make a reasoned decision based on the information that we have gathered on our list. And up to this point you should not have had a serious discussion with a Real Estate Agent. ( If they do come the heavy just say you are only shopping around and if they start to 'harass' you just 'CROSS THEM OFF THE LIST'

The next step is to make a 'short list' from your long list of all possible Real Estate Offices.

That should be relatively easy just run down the list and pick the top scorers. For this step you will need at least Three.    I would suggest no more than Four!

As you can see from the list that I have mocked up, there are three Agents that fill the top three places and those three Real Estate Agents constitute our Short List. By the way this list is very close to the actual list that I used in selecting the Real Estate Agent who is handling the sale of our property. Only the names have been changed to protect the innocent!

If you find that you have a 'tie' for third place, go back over your point score on the long list and see if you have been fair with the way that the scores were taken for the tied Agents. 

If you still can't separate them, don't sweat it just  call it a tie and put four Agents on your list.  The next stage will sort that out very easily!

We can now move on to stage three to select the Best Agent to sell Our House or Property