What Does Your Real Estate Agent Do?

Real Estate Agent

Just like any profession there are good real estate agents and bad real estate agents. Because of this some people fell that Realtors might be over paid. Some sellers or even buyers feel like they should buy or sell their home without the assistance of an agent. This is not the best idea. It seems when the market is hot sellers think they can throw their listing up on a FSBO site and have someone drive by and they just come up and say “hi there we love your house, here is a duffel bag of money can we get the keys now?” Unfortunately that is not how the real world works. It would be wonderful if everyone could do the job that a real estate agent does. The truth is it is a little more difficult than that. A little more involved and almost every deal has some sort of issue come up that only a trained professional knows how to handle. 

Why Home Sellers need a listing agent…

It is true over the last few years it has been a seller’s market. There have been a lot of buyers around and not a lot listings. That makes it a little easier to get an offer on a listing. Getting an offer for a seller is just the start of a long process that can be full of obstacles. For starters that offer might not be as nice as it seems. Not all offers are created equal. The novice is concerned usually with only one line a 20 page contract. The first thing most sellers do is jump to the price line. That is their only concern. That is an important part of the contract, of course, but there are a lot more things in that contract that make the offer more or less appealing.

It is still a seller’s market but is starting to lean towards a buyer’s market. Even when it was a full on seller’s market it was a very good idea to hire a Realtor that knows how to market your home. Even in a seller’s market you need a good sampling of the market to view your home. If a seller wants to get the right price and to see the true market value of their home, the market must be able to see the home. A seller could be leaving money on the table if one person sees the home, makes and offer and the seller accepts. That might be less hassle but is it truly the “market value” of a home? Is the market set by one person? Marketing the listing is much more than just slapping a home up on Zillow and waiting for phone calls.

Security when selling a home is huge. When a home is listed it is sort of a target. It is a perfect opportunity for many things to go wrong. It isn’t guaranteed that it is safer for the seller when an agent represents them but most criminals would never go through the trouble of hiring a real estate agent to show them around. They would rather call a FSBO and gain access that way. There is usually a vetting process an agent puts buyers through. Most agents can tell if someone is not legit. The longer a person is an agent the more their gut feeling is there. 

The seller’s agent is also skilled in pricing a home. There are plenty of websites out there that predict and guess the value of a home. That is really all it is. They take an average of sale prices and figure what square footage there is and calculate to the best an algorithm can. A skilled real estate agent can really give you a much better number. For someone to truly price the value of a home they need to be in the home. They need to see you fixtures, condition and layout of the home to truly give you and accurate value. Especially in areas like Colorado where most homes are very unique and there aren’t cookie cutter layouts. There are some neighborhoods like that but most homes are very different. Even the layout of the lot is different in most areas. The neighbor’s house that just sold might have 2 acres of usable land. Your home might be 2 acres bigger but only .5 acres of land. That changes the value and marketability of the home.  

Once the offer is made it is up to the listing agent to tell you exactly what the offer means. As mentioned before there are many things in an offer that makes the offer more or less appealing. Unless a seller knows exactly what to look for they may take the less appealing offer just because the price is slightly higher. For example a slightly lower cash offer with no contingency is usually better than a slightly higher FHA loan with a contingency to sell another home. There are thousands of combinations of good and bad offers. With so many different ways to structure an offer it is hard for many sellers to intemperate. Of course a few thousand dollars more is always good but what if the buyers are very weak and just barely able to qualify? What if the seller takes the listing off the market for 3 weeks and the buyer is unable to close? Then the seller has lost out on three weeks of selling time and there is now a history of a buyer pulling out of the property. That is a red flag for uneducated buyers. They think “well if someone else pulled out there must be something wrong with the home” 

What a Buyer’s Agent Does…

Your buyer agent should be your best friend. You will spend a lot of time with them over the course of your home buying experience.  They will tell you the good and bad about all the properties you look at, they will get you access to all the homes you want to see, they will tell you about the area and the neighborhood, they will make offers for you that you will like and the seller will like enough to accept, they will price homes for you to make sure you aren’t paying too much and they will tell you things you don’t want to hear because that is their job. Yes that is right, your agent should never just tell you things you want to hear. It is their job to tell you things that you don’t want hear. Their job is make sure you get the price but they know if you are making and offer 25% under list price chances are the deal will never happen. It is their job to tell you this. There is now point in just writing offer after offer that will never get accepted. 

A buyer agent will send you homes that fit your criteria in an area you like. The best buyer agents have websites that send out listing alerts automatically. It is hard for a buyer agent to track every single new listing so in this day and age a buyer agent should have a good website that sends property alerts automatically. Everyone should have representation from a buyer agent. In Colorado you can not have dual agency, meaning a real estate agent can’t represent both parties in a transaction with full fiduciary responsibility. An agent can represent both buyer and seller in a transaction type agency. That means the agent may not advocate for either party. They can not tell you as much as a person that represents a client in a buyer or seller agency. It is always best to have an advocate on your side. A person that is going to represent you in a full agency aspect. Transaction brokerage is something may real estate agents try to avoid. Even though they get paid twice as much. Many Realtors feel they are not representing either client to fullest. ​​