Four Mistakes People Make While Choosing a Realtor

Are you on the hunt for real estate for sale? Whether you’re dream home is in luxury condos in the middle of the city, or a nice white picket fence in the country, finding the right real estate for sale can be tricky!


Finding the real estate for sale that meets your wishlist, but within your budget hinges one factor: using the right realtor. Before you hit the streets and look for real estate for sale with just anyone, pay attention to our list of big mistakes people make while choosing a realtor:


Four Mistakes People Make While Choosing a Realtor

1. MISTAKE: Choosing a friend or family member to serve as your realtor.
   
   Just because you love your friend who recently passed their real estate exam does not mean they’re equipped to get you into the right home. Finding the best home for your needs, deciding the right bid to put in, negotiating, and then moving all of the paper work needed to make a home purchase successful is tricky. A misstep could cost you thousands of dollars, be the reason you lose the home of your dreams, or worse, get you into a house you never should have purchased to begin with. These stakes are too high to risk on someone who is not equipped, just because you like them.
   
   
   You should not be concerned that you’ll hurt the feelings of the friend or family member you have who is a real estate agent if you don’t use their services. If they are a professional, they’ll understand. If they can’t understand that your personal relationship doesn’t obligate you to use their services, it might not be the only professional infringement you’ll experience. In fact, if you’re worried about the sake of your relationship, you really shouldn’t use them as your real estate agent. If something goes wrong with the deal, it will have a far bigger impact on your friendship than if you just didn’t use them to begin with.
2. MISTAKE: Going with the first real estate agent you talk to, based only on their initial presentation.
   
   You should talk to a few real estate agents before choosing one. Even if you really like the first person you talk to, talking to at least two more is important. Hopefully, the virtues of the first agent will just become more evident as you gain some insight into the other agents. It might feel easy to just choose a real estate agent on impulse, but showing you houses is only the very first part of the service they’ll provide for you. Once you’ve placed in offer on a house, the critical work actually begins, and then you’re stuck with the agent who put the bid in for you.
3. MISTAKE: Choosing an agent based on whoever has the lowest commission.
   They say you get what you pay for. This couldn’t be more true when choosing a real estate agent. When the real estate agent doesn’t have any skin in the game because they’re only getting peanuts for your home purchase, you’ll probably get an auto-generated email with a bunch of listings. You’ll look for houses on your own. When you put a bid in, the success of your home purchase rides on your agent going to bat for you. When there is a hiccup, you need your agent to work their patooty off on your behalf to straighten it out. When your agent is willing to help you buy a home for only 1%, there is a reason. They will only give you that fraction of their effort. Using an agent who charges a few percentage points more in commission might cost a little more upfront, but could save you thousands in the long run, or be the single reason that you’re able to purchase a home at all.




4. MISTAKE: Shopping for an agent, not a good real estate company.
   Yes, the quality of agent matters, but the agency they work on behalf of matters just as much. Using an agent from a well-established company has a lot of benefits. Such companies offer more education to their agents, have a great network of agents who have other homes for sale, and experience to draw from if a problem arises.