Ethical Homes

For the attendees of the July 30th seminar for first-time homebuyers: please accept my apologies for the printing issues that prevented me from bringing handouts for the seminar, and for not being able to get to everyone’s questions in the alloted time. Here are the materials from the handouts, plus some other notes; if you still have any questions, feel free to contact me and I’ll answer them.

Agenda and handouts:

1. Why you need an agent.

   • Handout: Overview of seller & buyer agency
   • Additional information: More detailed article on buyer agency. (Note: this is the article from which the material in the handout was taken, so the first half of the article will probably seem very familiar.)

2. How to choose an agent.

   1. Find at least 3 agents to interview.

      1. Ask for recommendations from friends, coworkers, etc. Remember to ask for recommendations of agents that people have worked with, and would use again, rather than just asking if they know an agent. Everyone knows an agent in this market. Treat it like they were setting you up on a blind date—make your friends convince you that this agent is worth you giving them a chance.
      2. If that doesn’t work, search on the web. Use Realtor accreditation sites like Quality Service Certification or REBAC, or use the Realtor search engine to find an agent with their ABR or GRI designations; as a last resort, use Google.
      3. If you still can’t find agents to talk to, just try walking into the offices of local Realtors. Be advised, though, that the agents who have “desk duty” to deal with walk-in clients are often (though not always) the agents who have the most trouble getting other business. Before you get to the point of just grabbing random agents off the street, though, drop me a line; even though I personally am not currently taking on new buyer clients, I’ll be more than happy to put you in touch with some good agents (both experienced agents who do have some free time, and newer agents that I am helping to mentor).

   2. Interview the agents.

      • Talk to them, honestly, about your needs and wants. If they don’t spend enough time to make you feel like they understand your circumstances and goals, then move on to another agent. And if, in the course of talking to them, you just don’t get a warm fuzzy feeling from them, then, once again, move on to the next candidate.
      • Ask them, up front, how they will help you get a house, and what value they bring to the table. If they can’t give you 10 ways that you are better off working with them than the typical agent (including ways to make your offers to sellers more appealing that don’t involve you spending more money), you probably shouldn’t be working with them.
      • Find out about their experience, training, and accrediations. As I mentioned in class, this is an area where the exact answer doesn’t matter as much as that they can explain their answer to you. Some agents are very experienced but not very skilled and/or too busy to spend enough time with you; other agents are new and untrained, but have lots of time and energy and have spent a lot of time in training. In some cases, a team of agents might be most useful—newer agents on the team will have the time to work with you, but you get the wisdom of the more experienced agents on the team to help you as well. Conversely, if you do work with a team, make sure that you do understand how involved the experienced agents will be with your transaction; it’s not uncommon for a buyer to be sold on the benefits of a team by its superstar leader, and then have everything done by lesser-caliber agents.
      • Find out how many other buyers they are currently working with. A number between 0 and 5 (for a single agent) is good, but again, use your common sense and let them explain why they have enough time to give you the attention you need (if they have a lot of buyer clients), or why they don’t have any other buyer clients at all.
      • Use your gut. In the end, trust your instincts; if you aren’t comfortable with an agent, just tell them that, and move on. It might be annoying to the agent (we never believe that there isn’t some other reason why you don’t choose us that we could convince you wasn’t a valid reason if we just knew it), but honesty is always the best policy for these sorts of things.
3. Extra bonus for those who took the initiative to come to the website for the notes: I ran out of time before I could offer this to you in class, but for anyone who is interested, I’d be glad to set you up with the automated email updates I mentioned in one of my anecdotes, so that you can see what sort of properties are out there in the price range you are considering. And as I mentioned in class, I’m not trying to sell anything, or add you to any lists; I’m not taking on new buyer clients right now, so I’ve got nothing to gain by providing this service other than the goodwill and good word of mouth from which I get the majority of my clients. If you’re interested, let me know.