How to choose an agent…
Part 1: Be wary of the “High-Volume Agent”
The busiest agent in a suburb often isn’t the one delivering the best results.
You might see their signs up everywhere but the only thing this tells us for certain, is that they are good at singing up clients. There are a lot of agents out there over-promising on price to get clients to sign with them and then spending time working their clients back down to where the market is – it’s one of the oldest tricks in the book, but still one of the most common.
Now there are multiple other factors that come into play here…
- It becomes difficult for the agent to give your sale the focus it deserves. If an agent has 10+ listings to run at once, how much time do they have to call buyers back or respond to emails. I’m often hearing about buyers trying to call agents to put offers in and not even getting a response. Then, how much time do they have to spend negotiating your buyer up in price? Or is it easier to get you to take the offer they have?
- They may be selling your listing in competition with their other listings. So – which property do they decide to try and push the buyer towards? Let’s hope it’s yours.
- Are they still hungry? Being well established in an area can sometimes bring with it a level of complacency … not always, but it does happen. An agent might have lost the drive and edge they once had when it comes to performing for their client.
Please take all of what I’m saying with a pinch of salt as it’s not true for all the busy agents, some have built great support teams to help them deal with the volume and get great results.
Hopefully this might help you figure out the right questions to ask when you come to interviewing agents.
