It’s an exciting time in Beltzenstein. By exciting, I mean I’m popping antacids like their PEZ and remembering why I told my husband he’d have to bury me in the backyard of this house. Moving is stressful. Selling your home to move, especially for the first time? Turn the anxiety level up to 11. Since we’ve never sold a house before, we decided to hire a real estate agent to help prepare, list, and sell the house, especially with the uniqueness of our home in the local market and the rapid changes to local real estate over the past few years. Since I’m an OCD planner, I researched how to interview a real estate agent to sell your home extensively. To save you from the hassle, we compiled the list of interview questions we beta tested during the process, and made an interviewing a real estate agent free downloadable so you don’t have to reinvent our interview questionnaire yourself.
The Basic Questions to Ask When Interviewing a Real Estate Agent
This group of questions applies whether you’re planning to buy a home, sell a home, or both.
What certifications, qualities, and experience set you apart from other agents?
Are they a Realtor, for example? All Realtors are real estate agents, but not all real estate agents are Realtors.
Have they won any awards from local associations?
Are they super social with a lot of connections to other real estate agents who assist buyers?
Your real estate agent’s job is to market and sell your home, so you want an agent who can market and sell themselves to you. This is their first on the job test.
Are you a full-time or part-time agent, and how long have you been in this market?
It isn’t hard to get a real estate license. It’s a common career people transition into from other industries for more flexibility and with the potential to make bank. You want to ensure you’re hiring an agent who will be available when you need them, yes, but more importantly, when potential buyers’ agents need to reach them to coordinate a viewing.
You also want to make sure they haven’t just moved to the area. You want an agent who understands local markets well, who has seen past trends, and who has a deep understanding of recent trends locally.
The stats vary, but we saw several sources that said the majority of real estate agents fail within the first five years of joining the industry. Some stats showed the amount to be as high as 75%-90%. If your agent has been in the business for less than five years, proceed with caution.
How many sales did you close last year?
Just because they work as a full-time agent doesn’t mean they’re a successful one. If the agent only closed on 3-5 sales last year, danger, Will Robinson.
You also want to be cautious of agents who sold a lot of homes last year, as that’s a sign you likely won’t get a lot of attention and will be bounced around among different members of their team without continuous care.
What areas around me do you specialize in?
Some agents have wide areas they show and sell in, but you want to ask to see if there are specific areas, especially yours, that they do a lot of sales in, live in personally, etc. The more familiar they are with your specific market, the more likely they’ll be able to price your home in the sweet spot between getting offers quickly while getting the market value right.
Let them do the talking
This isn’t a question, but a tactic to employ as you interview different agents. Get a sense of who they are. Working with a real estate agent is a relationship that can last anywhere from one to six months during the home selling process to years if you have a good experience and want to use them for future sales.
I’m an introvert, so interacting with extroverts can drain me, but you want an agent who is personable and can sell the dream of your home to someone else. Well extroversion is a natural deterrent for me, it’s a great trait for a real estate agent.
Take notes of your overall impressions and other things you pick up by letting them naturally talk and sell themselves.
A few things we noted while interviewing different agents:
- How quickly were they to respond to our requests for interviews?
- How easy were they to schedule with? Did they have to change their interview or consultation time because they weren’t organized?
- How quickly did they respond to follow-up messages? This is even more important than the initial response, as it better gauges how they’ll communicate consistently.
- Were they personable?
- Did they talk down to you or did they try to educate you and make sure you were comfortable with the process and with them?
- Did they try to rush you or were in a rush themselves?
We had one agent tell us that anyone can sell a house if they understand the data. My immediate reaction was Then why would I hire you? My husband’s a data analyst. Jot down these notes, as this is the same type of approach they’ll take with potential buyers and buyers’ agents.
Logistical Questions to Ask When Interviewing a Real Estate Agent
Will we be working directly with you or with other members of a team as well? Who will be the primary point of contact?
Some agents, especially ones that sell 100+ homes a year, have a team of other agents or assistants they work with. When they average a house sell or purchase every three days, it’s a clue that you won’t get their undivided attention.
Regardless of their sales, ask this question so you know what to expect. Will they be your only point of contact throughout the entire process? Are you likely to work with an assistant or even another agent? The fewer chefs you have in the kitchen, the more likely the process will run smoothly without a rat named Remy causing hiccups and miscommunication among multiple parties.
How will you communicate with me, and how often?
In our experience, agents will tell you they’ll communicate by whatever means you prefer, but we still recommend asking this question. Do they have certain reports or updates they’ll send weekly? How will they communicate to schedule showings when the time comes? The process is going to disrupt your normal life for a few weeks as it is. The smoother you can make the process, the fewer antacids you’ll have to stuff in your PEZ dispenser.
What’s your commission fee? Any other fees I’ll need to plan for?
Here at The Budget Brigade, this is one of the most important questions to ask since it fits into determining your moving budget. 6% used to be the industry standard when we purchased our home nearly a decade ago. During the interview process, we learned from speaking to multiple agents that 5%-6% was more common now. (Owners with high valued homes may be able to negotiate a discount.) Most have a set amount, which they then split with the buyer’s agent, but some may have a tiered system, depending on their marketing plan. This is all good information to know, as the agent commission is one of the most expensive aspects of selling your house.
I also assumed that we would be on the hook for paying for the photography and videography for the listing. Turns out, agents typically pay for this from their commission fees.
Closing costs are another aspect to ask about, as they can add up to another few percentage points of your home’s selling price. We paid closing costs when we bought the house, so I assumed the buyer paid the closing costs. Turns out, sellers also buy title insurance. In addition, they pay the document fees. Don’t forget your prorated escrow and escrow fees. Property taxes are paid in arrears, so you’ll need to cut a check to the government for the percentage of the current year.
Will we need to sign a contract? For what length? Can we cancel without penalty?
While you’ll sign a contract with the buyer of your home when you sell it, before you get the house on the market, you’ll need to sign a listing agreement or some other form on contract with the real estate agent you chose to represent you and help you sell your home.
Contract lengths vary depending on the agent. From what we encountered, 3-6 months seems typical.
If you decide not to sell your home, an emergency crops up and you have to press pause, or you really just don’t get along with the agent and think you made a huge mistake during the selection process, many agents have an early termination clause with a penalty, which typically covers the costs of their marketing expenses for photography, virtual tour video, etc.
Think of the contract with your real estate agent like a prenup (not that I think everyone should have a prenup, but if you decide to go all Dharma and Greg and get married after one date, it’s definitely not a bad idea). If the relationship is toxic or you end up in bed with someone who doesn’t do anything but sit around and scroll their social media, telling you one day they’ll show your house, you want an out. And in that case, you’ll want to know how you’ll have to split the equity in your relationship.
Questions about the Selling Process to Ask When Interviewing a Real Estate Agent
Now we’re getting to the fun part. Let’s talk money and time.
What are your realistic expectations for the current market? When would you recommend listing for optimal timing? How long do you expect the process to take?
During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, you were lucky to ge a showing scheduled before a property had three offers in over asking price. That shit was bananas. B-A-N-A-N-A-S. If a few times it’s been around that track, you wanna know if it’s just gonna happen like that again so you can plan accordingly.
If houses are sitting on the market closer to 45-60 days, that’s important to know, too.
Don’t forget, once you have the listing ready and an offer on the table, you still have to go through closing the transaction. This can include inspections, the appraisal, mortgage finalization, etc. This can double the total time of the process over receiving an offer, so take that into account when you’re chatting and planning your strategy.
If you aren’t in a hurry to sell, ask about timing the market. Real estate is often seasonal, taking into factors such as school years, weather seasons, and holidays. Putting your house on the market during a peak season may help it move faster and get you a higher offer for the sale, depending on what type of market it is.
Depending on how much information you gave the real estate agent ahead of your interview, if any, they may already have a range of where they expect your house to sell when you speak. If you email them ahead of time to schedule an interview, provide them the address of the property you plan to list, along with any main updates you’ve done since you purchased it (along with the year you completed them). This way, they can get an idea of the general area and of the property from the previous listing, and from your upgrades.
What is your marketing plan?
They may want to walk your property and home before providing a full marketing strategy, but get a general idea of what their strategy is. Do they still do open houses, or do they rely more on social media marketing? Do they try to tailor their marketing plan for the property, or do they follow the same general M.O. for each house they list?
How will the house be introduced and shown to prospective buyers?
This ties in with the previous question, so the real estate agent might answer them together in a single response. Ask for a few specifics, depending on your comfort levels of showing your home. If you’re a complete home selling noob like me, you’ll likely want to know if strangers are going to be letting themselves into your home and roaming freely, especially if your personal belongings will still be in the house. Do they plan to meet with the prospective buyers for the showings, or will they install a lockbox on your door and coordinate remotely?
What should I do to get the house ready to sell?
This question will likely wait until you do the in-personal consultation, but if you’re coordinating remotely for a property you don’t live in, the sooner you can ask, the better. If there are certain repairs or improvements they know you’ll need to make to the property to make it marketable and move it quickly, the sooner you can start, the sooner you’ll be ready to sell. This also gives you the opportunity to discuss marketing strategy more in depth with agents, especially if you have a home that’s a fixer upper or you know of specific repairs that will need to be done either before you sell or that you negotiate into the sale price.
Who can I contact for a reference?
Even if you met the real estate agent through a referral from a family member or friend, as working off one person’s opinion can lead to you working with Charles Manson. If you stumbled across them only, this step is even more critical because we all know online reviews are a hot mess. If Cartman can Yelp review all across South Park and if Goodreads has taught us anything, a terrible rating from multiple reviews is a good indicator to stay TF away. A good rating, however, doesn’t hold any weight in today’s society, so ask for their references, and interview them too after the in-home consultation, before you sign your home prenup.
Aim for 2-4 references. You don’t have to call or email them all, but you want to make sure the agent can produce at least a few happy clients.
Free Questionnaire to Interview a Real Estate Agent
Overwhelmed? Join the club. We’ve got cookies, books, and video games, and we’re happy to have the company. We also have a free one-page questionnaire that compiles the questions above into a quick reference you can use when you embark on your home selling journey.
We plan to add more resources as we walk through the process ourselves, so check in with our archive of home selling articles for updates along the way. If you’re in the middle of the process already and we haven’t covered your question yet, drop us a line in our budgeting and personal finances Facebook group. Godspeed, my friends.