Using a Realtor Pays
We’re in the process of selling and buying a house (well, two houses, but you know what I mean). The selling piece is essentially over, since we sold our house in a day. Now we’re on to the buying a new house phase.
I never thought I’d be writing something like this, but using a full-service realtor has really paid off on both ends of the transaction. Obviously, we’re super pleased that our house sold as quickly as it did. I can’t say that was entirely, or even mostly the realtor’s doing, but she has been very helpful. She guided us in the pricing of our house, which was obviously key to selling it so quickly.
Using a realtor has been great so far on the buy side, as well. Just for some background, the house we’re in right now was our first. We’d lived in the area for a couple of years, though, so we knew which communities were for us and which weren’t. In other words, we had pretty good local knowledge.
Now we’re moving to a new state and don’t have that kind of geographic information. We don’t know which towns are preferable for a family like ours. We’ve relied heavily on the realtor we’re working with to provide that information and she’s been great. She’s asked pertinent questions about our situation, likes and dislikes, and our lifestyle. It really is more than price of the house.
I really underestimated the value of that kind of local information. When we first started the process, I thought maybe we’d try buying on our own and hiring a real estate attorney to assist us. My ever-wise wife, however, thought that wasn’t the way to go. Thankfully, I listened and she was right of course (Hi, Honey!).
There have been a couple of times now when we saw listings for houses that seemed perfect for us. When we mentioned them to our realtor, she let us know gently that maybe those weren’t the areas for us. Were it not for our realtor, we may have made a major mistake.
We travel to the new location this weekend to meet the realtor in person and look at places. It’s not going to be a drawn-out affair, since we need to move in a couple of months. We’re looking to make an offer during this trip. Wish us luck!
December 27th, 2007 at 9:33 am
I think you might need to change the title to using a GOOD realtor pays. My wife and I are in our second house now. The realtor we used when buying and selling our first house was GREAT. If I’m ever in the same area as he again, I will use him no question. Both my wife and I are technical, and have logical minds, and he knows how to deal w/people like us. He was also able to nudge me into the right direction in my willingness to spend money to get what we wanted (not an easy feat…but he was able to do it).
However, when we moved, the first realtor we had at our new location was awful. We told her our requirements, one of which was that the house needed to have everything my wife needed on one level since she has arthritis and can’t really do stairs. Her response was “well, do you *really* need that?”, we told her yes…to which she responded “well, that’ll make it hard”. We should have fired her then, but we didn’t. We looked with her for several weeks, and i don’t think she knew how to handle a cold and calculating arse like myself (hey, it’s a lot of money I’m going to spend on a house…I’m not buying it unless its right). She kept saying “you’ve got to be honest w/me on what you think so I know what you want”. But at every house we went into, I always went over what I liked, what was ok, and what I hated…she just didn’t pay attention. It became obvious to us that she had no business acumen, and just wasn’t the right agent for us, so we fired her.
We found another agent a few days later, and emailed him, and said we wanted to interview him. He asked what we were looking for, and he gave us information on about 40 houses that night for us to look at and talk about when we met him in 2 days. Some of them didn’t have everything on one level for my wife…but he put it together quickly, and we hadn’t even met yet to really discuss things, so I wasn’t too concerned. When we went to interview him, we told him the everything for my wife on 1 level so she didn’t have stairs requirement, and why. He took the stack listings from us, went through them and started tossing out the ones that wouldn’t work saying that they wouldn’t. After talking to him and going to look at a few houses that day, we decided he was the agent for us and hired him. We found our current house in a week.
Yes, good agents are worth it, but the bad ones aren’t.
December 27th, 2007 at 9:46 am
I hope you have fun exploring! My grandmother spent some time as a realtor and she loved showing people around and talking with them about the town and such.
December 28th, 2007 at 5:47 am
@ mjmcinto - You’re 100% right. I should have elaborated a little more and told more of our story, I guess. We had a bad experience this time around with a different buy-side realtor. You’re right - I should have said ‘Using a Good Realtor Pays.’