Feel free to copy/paste these into Microsoft Word, delete the answers, and use this as a cheat sheet before you interview at a minimum of 3 realtors before you hire one.
How many jobs do you have?
Your realtor may be a checker at Sears 85% of the time and 15% of the time, be a Wichita realtor. They may be a 75 hour a week area Wichita realtor. They maybe work 20 hrs and out a week Wichita realtor. There is no right answer, but if you sign with them, you are going to have to live with the answer to this question.
Now times are tough, don’t get me wrong. Some people have to get a part time job to make ends meet, to even be able to pay their taxes these days.
Do you depend upon the income from your Wichita Realtors license to feed yourself/your children?
The answer may be no. The answer may be, “well, I was bored at home, (my spouse makes 400k/year), so I decided to get my realtors license to get out and carve a career path for myself. Now I don’t have any problem at all with a person that is married to a person that has a high income, but, if you have a realtor that does not have to rely on their income to feed their kids, (or their dogs [ or whatever] ), you have to take that into consideration. The main thing, is are they selling houses now, or not, (to be covered more in depth later).
How many hours a week do you work as a Wichita realtor?
15, 20, 25, 10, 75, 55, hike. There is the entire range of realtors, and with each of them, you can’t judge the service you can receive from them from the hours they work, but you can at least get better insight in regard to their daily efforts.
When did you get your current Kansas realtors license?
This isn’t “how long have you been in real estate” in which they could tie being a phone answerer for a realtors office in for the 8 years before they got their license 2 months ago as, “over eight years,” this reduces the question to when did they receive their KS realtors license.
Have you ever been fined, punished, penalized or written up by the Kansas State Realtors Commission?
That is either a yes or a no question with explanations if there are any yes’s. I do have a saying though, “even Jerry Rice dropped passes.” You just want to make sure that there is not a history of problems.
How many houses last year were you contracted to be the sellers agent for? (not your team, or your real estate office, or your real estate company).
How many of the homes sold that you were the sellers agent for IN THE LAST YEAR?
They may have sold 17 homes from 1985-2008, or 17 homes in the last year. Do not leave off the IN THE LAST YEAR part.
How many of them did not sell, and why?
How many houses last year were you a buyers agent for IN THE LAST YEAR?
How many houses did you close a deal for in regard to being a buyers agent IN THE LAST YEAR?
Where do you live?
They may live a county away from the house they are trying to sell. It may effect it, it may not, but it is something to take into consideration.
So you work ______ hours as a realtor a week, what are your normal “Wichita Realtor” work hours?
You may be told that they work 40 hours a week as a realtor, in which, they work 12 hrs a day Sat/Sun and a few 5 hour shifts during the week. They may work 10-10 Tues-Sat, you just never know but you are trying to find out. Maybe your schedules would just not jibe at all with each other.
What do you plan to do to help me sell this house?
If you interview 3 realtors, you may get 3 very different answers.
Are you going to put my home on Realtor.com (the most popular real estate website)?
Some may not. Some may.
How many pictures are you going to put on the Realtor.com website?
Are they going to post one pic, or 10 or ??
Who pays for the advertising for my home?
You just never know what kind of a answer you will get?
Are you going to write a vivid, great marketing based description of my home for its internet/leaflet folder, or just, write a sentence up on the home and post it or ??
You will see on line specials and others will have 4 great descriptive paragraphs.
Are you going to hold open houses?
Some don’t. Some do apparently.
Are you going to put out signage other than the one in my front yard with “house for sale à” on major roads to bring people to drive by your home?
Some do, and again, some don’t. No big deal right? Its only 400 people driving by every 10 hours that do not go down your side street to see your home for sale.
How does your Wichita Realtor based website compare traffic rank wise to the area competitors?
Some will know, some won’t. Some will care about the internet, the ones that don’t, will soon be extinct. You can go to Alexa.com to compare the website traffic between different companies.
Will you advertise my home in area real estate magazines/books?
Again, some will, some won’t.
How many Wichita Realtors work in your office?
How many can they quickly network with is the actual question. They should be able to network to sell your house with everyone with the internet.
How many people work for you?
They may have other realtors, assistants, etc.. that work for them. You should know what kind of a support network you realtor has.
As a Wichita Realtor, do you advertise on Go Scout Homes (the local cable tv home shopping channel)?
Every bit helps.
Do you have your own stand alone real estate website, other than Realtor.com or your companies overall website to put my house for sale on?
Some will say yes, some no. Some will have a sub-page of their companies website to where if you put in theirname.com , it will hit the core companies website page, which is NOT a stand alone website.
How are you going to communicate with us while the house is on the market?
Don’t laugh, but sometimes, it may just be one liner emails. They may HATE EMAIL and just want to call your cell, or a mix. It helps to know up front their style.
If you Google your realtors name and Wichita on the same line and hit enter, does their website come up?
The only part that is legible on the notes from home shoppers, or the thing that they recall, is the realtors name, with them going home and Googling it, aka Wichita John Doe. If their website does not immediately come up, big red flags. Realtors have to be instantly findable by potential buyers if they do not have a buyers agent and are out house hunting.
What are the top 20 things that I need to do to get this house sold?
You may get quite a range of answers from you three interviewees.
Now think up 10 more questions yourself, about your own home buying or selling situation, and type them in here.
Good Luck (luck always helps)
Ty |
