First Home Buying

Fire them! No. In all seriousness, fire them. Your agent takes a commission when you buy or sell a home with them, and it’s the same percentage of the sales price whether they worked long and hard for you or hardly at all.

Sometimes agents don’t give you the service you need. Are they taking several days to return your messages or to send over listings after you’ve asked them to pull up a few examples that fit your criteria? Do they ask you to drive when looking at houses? These types of things are pretty rare, but watch out in general for agents who don’t seem to be willing to go the extra mile to serve you.

The rapport you have with your agent should follow the same principles as your other relationships in life: someone who is unavailable when you contact them or who is apathetic about your needs and requests is unlikely to be any more supportive when when things get tough and you’re working against the closing deadline to get all the pieces of the puzzle into place.

Give Me One More Chance!

Don’t jump the gun and get rid of your agent at the first sign of trouble. Give them a chance to prove themselves; if they’re a good agent they will show you over time that they will not only work for your best interests, but that they’ll work diligently for those interests.

When Is It Too Late?

If you’ve already entered into a contract that your agent helped you make up and get accepted, it’s going to be much more difficult to change agents. In fact, you may not be able to do so at all. Make sure you know what you’ve signed so that you are clear on whether you’ve already made an exclusivity agreement with your agent.

Time For Them To Go? Exhibit Tactfulness

So you’ve finally gotten to the point where you’re just so sick of your agent you can’t stand it. Maybe they’re swamped with other clients and you feel like they’ve got no time for you. Maybe they have no clients besides you at all, but they just don’t seem to care about what you’re looking for. It could be that you aren’t getting along with your agent or you find their personality irritating.

Be polite but firm. Find another agent first so you don’t have a lapse in your home finding process. You don’t have to give them a reason other than that you’ve decided to go with a different agent. If you must, though, tell them that you don’t feel like the scope or pace of the search is going well and you’ve made the decision to pursue another partnership.

Above all, know that any agent - not just in real estate - is working for you in exchange for getting a slice of the pie that you bring them. Make sure your agent does enough for you to deserve that slice.

It’s not very difficult to locate real estate agents. Cast your net among any social group or do a quick Google search and you’re likely to come up with a dozen of them at the drop of a hat. But finding one who knows your local area - not just the market conditions, but also the roads, the towns, and the people who reside there - requires a little bit of extra discernment.

One of the main ways real estate agents get new clients is through word-of-mouth advertising. You can stand behind a podium with a loudspeaker and sing your own praises until you lose your voice, but a kind word about you from a friend or acquaintance has a much larger impact on those who are listening. It may even grab the attention of a few people who aren’t listening! Talk to some of the people you live and work with, and it won’t be long before you stumble upon a conversation that leads you toward contact with an agent.

It’s personal story time. When I started thinking about buying my first home, I got on the internet and found my way to some real estate website. It had lists of real estate agents with descriptions, pictures, and blurbs about their experience in the industry. I was younger and I didn’t care about experience; I wanted someone who was close to my age and who I would be able to spend time writing contracts and looking at houses with and not feel awkward or out of place. I scrolled through the listings until I found an attractive young female agent, called up her brokerage, and got her as my agent.

Now the reason I tell this story is not to show how brazen I am (although it does a pretty good job of it), but rather to illustrate what a quick decision can mean. In this case I was lucky enough to have chosen an agent who knew my local area very well. But personality-wise, she could be excitable and impatient, and she nearly flipped a few times when the mortgage company wasn’t communicative at certain steps in the process. I understand how an agent could become upset because the financing company that is going to end up providing their paycheck isn’t checking in often enough, but things got dramatic a couple of times and it was pretty irritating.

So should you use the same agent your Aunt Sally did when she bought her retirement home in the late 80’s? Maybe. But I’d think about some important factors before you choose an agent, and ask yourself at least the following questions.

Is it important for me to feel connected and to have things in common with my agent?

Do I feel that I need to work with someone who is experienced in the area, or just with real estate in general?

What, if anything, do I know about this agent as a person outside the real estate business?

Do I trust this person? Do I feel comfortable sharing financial information with them?

In brief conversation, do they seem uptight or easy-going? Are they helpful and forthcoming with answers to my questions?

You should not be afraid to call up a few potential real estate agents, let them know you’ve been approved to buy a home, and schedule a time to get together with them. You’re not obligated to work with a specific buyer’s agent unless you sign something that says you are - and that doesn’t normally happen until that agent helps you write up an offer. Of course, you should have nailed down who your agent is going to be by the time you start making offers on places anyway!

That depends on who you ask. Some people tend to think that real estate agents sit back and do very little work while they collect huge commissions on home sales. This might be true especially of people who have dealt with bad or lazy agents. Personally, I believe that to be a successful real estate agent requires a patient, motivated person who is dedicated to building a business. Real estate agents work long hours; they are always on call, and they need to make themselves available to working professionals who may only be able to go out looking for houses on evenings and weekends. They’ve got to stay on top of their market and be a constant source of information about inventory, prices, and sales data in their local area.

Not only is the job never over, but a starting sales agent makes a salary of exactly $0. Nine times out of ten, you’re getting your start in the business without so much as a single client. You foot the bill for your own marketing plan, and often that means spending money you haven’t earned on billboards, TV and radio commercials, mailings, web and magazine advertisements, and branding merchandise, just to have the opportunity to drop your name where people will hear it.

I’ve never been a real estate agent, nor do I ever anticipate changing careers toward home sales. But I have completed the real estate certification course in the state of Virginia, so I know a great deal about the housing market (which is the main reason I created this website). I took some basic economics classes in college but have been self-taught beyond that, and so I have more than a layman’s understanding of how our economy works. Most of the agents I’ve observed, known, or worked with, are especially determined individuals who know what it means to work hard. It’s not physically demanding labor, of course, but making and keeping a network of social connections takes lots of upkeep. So is being a real estate agent easy? I would offer that there are professions which are much easier. Can you make a good living at it? If you’re determined to succeed and you’re a good businessperson, it’s quite possible.

When you’re buying a house, there is one fantastic reason why you should always work with a real estate agent: it’s free. That’s right, a buyer’s agent (which is simply the term for a real estate agent who happens to work with buyers, which 99% of them do) will work for you for free! She won’t bill you by the hour, she won’t charge you for the mileage she puts on her Lexus taking you to see houses, and she won’t ask for your first-born child or your signature in blood. At least, she shouldn’t. If she does, contact the appropriate authorities.

How A Buyer’s Agent Gets Paid

The buyer’s agent is paid a commission out of the sales price of the house, which is shaved off of the seller’s profit and split between the seller’s agent and your agent. So no matter how many hours your agent spends with you, poring over listings, walking from the curb to the front door in the blistering heat or freezing cold, unlocking lockboxes, calling to make sure you still want to buy a house, or dealing with ornery sellers (and their agents), you can be sure that your agent fees will come to a total of zero dollars and zero cents.

But let me be serious for a moment. A short moment. Working with an agent gives you an edge in the marketplace. Agents have access to their local MLS (Multiple Listing Service) so that they can see new properties as soon as they come on the market. They get full, detailed listings right away - not just the basic listings that take extra time to appear on search engines and websites.

An agent spends time on the phone, shooting emails, doing research, and getting property information so you can still work a day job and afford to buy that house you want so badly. They’ve got connections. And you don’t. So revel in one of the few times in your life when you can hire somebody to work for you and not have to pay them a single solitary cent!

They come in multiple flavors, but I’m going to do the best I can to describe the different kinds of real estate agent and the services and experience each one provides. You don’t need one or the other; they can all help you in finding and buying a house. But certain levels of agency come with success and experience, so the agent you choose is completely up to you.

Sales Agents

The first is your average real estate agent. They are called simply ‘agents’ or ’sales agents’ because they are licensed to act as the facilitator of property transactions. In order to become licensed, real estate agents are required to take a specified number of hours of coursework depending on the state where they work, and to pass an exam within a certain high percentile range.

Realtors™

A Realtor™ is an agent who is also a member of the National Association of Realtors. Benefits of membership with the NAR include a wealth of information, sales and marketing tools, and other services and resources related to the realty business. Everyone who is a member of the NAR is supposed to have been certified as a legitimate real estate businessperson and has to agree to a code of ethics. Not that there are a ton of frauds running around out there pretending to be real estate agents, but it does happen, so be careful. Working with a certified Realtor™ who is a member of the NAR is supposed to help keep you safe from fraudulent activity.

So to recap, all Realtors™ are real estate agents, but not all real estate agents are Realtors™, and for that matter, not all non-Realtor™ real estate agents are really real agents at all! It’s almost like one of those word puzzles about whether Tom, Frank, Bob or Susan is the tallest.

Brokers

This is the big boss. All the other guys work for one of these. A broker usually has several sales agents who work for her to conduct transactions. The broker often provides office space and a business location, and as a result the sales agents under her split off a portion of their earnings for the broker. Requirements for becoming a broker vary by state, but they tend to be much more difficult to achieve and often include a certain period of time having been spent as a sales agent.