12 Questions to Ask...

12 Questions to Ask When Choosing Your REALTOR®

Make sure you choose a REALTOR® who will provide top-notch service and meet your unique needs.

1. How long have you been in residential real estate sales? Is it your full-time job? While experience is no guarantee of skill, real estate — like many other professions — is mostly learned on the job.

2. What designations do you hold? Designations require that agents take additional, specialized real estate training.

3. How many homes did you and your real estate brokerage sell last year? By asking this question, you’ll get a good idea of how much experience the practitioner has.

4. How many days did it take you to sell the average home? How did that compare to the overall market? The REALTOR® you interview should have these facts on hand, and be able to present market statistics from the local MLS to provide a comparison.

5. How close to the initial asking prices of the homes you sold were the final sale prices? This is one indication of how skilled the REALTOR® is at pricing homes and marketing to suitable buyers. Of course, other factors also may be at play, including an exceptionally hot or cool real estate market.

6. What types of specific marketing systems and approaches will you use to sell my home? You don’t want someone who’s going to put a For Sale sign in the yard and hope for the best. Look for someone who has aggressive and innovative approaches, and knows how to market your property competitively on the Internet. Buyers today want information fast, so it’s important that your REALTOR® is responsive.

7. Will you represent me exclusively, or will you represent both the buyer and the seller in the transaction? While it’s usually legal to represent both parties in a transaction, it’s important to understand where the practitioner’s obligations lie. Your REALTOR® should explain his or her agency relationship to you and describe the rights of each party.

8. Can you recommend service providers who can help me obtain a mortgage, make home repairs, and help with other things I need done? Because REALTORS® are immersed in the industry, they’re wonderful resources as you seek lenders, home improvement companies, and other home service providers. Practitioners should generally recommend more than one provider and let you know if they have any special relationship with or receive compensation from any of the providers.

9. What type of support and supervision does your brokerage office provide to you? Having resources such as in-house support staff, access to a real estate attorney, and assistance with technology can help an agent sell your home.

10. What’s your business philosophy? While there’s no right answer to this question, the response will help you assess what’s important to the agent and determine how closely the agent’s goals and business emphasis mesh with your own.

11. How will you keep me informed about the progress of my transaction? How frequently? Again, this is not a question with a correct answer, but how you judge the response will reflect your own desires. Do you want updates twice a week or do you prefer not to be bothered unless there’s a hot prospect? Do you prefer phone, e-mail, text, or???

12. Could you please give me the names and phone numbers of your three most recent clients? Ask recent clients if they would work with this REALTOR® again. Find out whether they were pleased with the communication style, follow-up, and work ethic of the REALTOR®.

These are great questions, and my next series of blogs will answer them... from me to you.

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Reprinted from REALTOR® magazine (REALTOR.org/realtormag) with permission of the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS®.
Copyright 2008. All rights reserved.

First Time Home Buyers and Credit History

I work with many first time home buyers... twentysomethings who get it that with mortgage rates so low and prices so low, it must be a great time to buy a home. And they are right, it is a great time to buy a home.

Many of these twentysomethings have done the right thing and steered away from racking up a lot of debt. That, too is fantastic.

So what's the problem?

Big problem... many can't qualify for a mortgage loan... Even if they have good steady employment and money in the bank.

Why? Because they have been so careful to not have a bunch of debt, they also don't have a credit history!

No one can get a mortgage loan without a credit history.

While it's true that you can get an FHA loan using "alternative" credit sources such as rent history, cell phone bills, car insurance payments, etc., you need to have two years worth of receipts for these types of sources. Do you have that?

It's far easier to open a gas card, a department store card, and a Visa or MasterCard (you need three lines). Use each judiciously and pay them off and on time monthly, for about a year, and you'll build the credit history you need.

Just be very careful not to rack up debt! Debt is not good. Credit history is good.