AGENT Secrets
Selling or buying a house is a major transaction. And doing just a little homework can mean getting the best help in the business.
Donna Scott sold $78 million worth of homes last year in the Wellesley area – almost a house per week. If Scott, who works for Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage, has the listing on a place and the owners happen to need help in the sprucing-up department, she will personally bring over clean towels to hang in the bathrooms. If the house is lacking that warm, happy vibe, she’ll pick up some perfectly ripe fruit and arrange it in a bowl on the kitchen table. She’s a high-earning, high-power, busy and successful agent, so it’s no surprise that Scott, who is 56 and brunette, drives a nicer car than most of her clients – a Bentley Continental GT Coupe. Even so, she’s not above grabbing a broom and sweeping the leaves out of a seller’s garage. But here’s the best thing of all about Donna Scott and other agents like her. Effective, efficient agents are actually easy to hire, for people who bother to look.
You’d think that every homeowner trying to sell would do everything possible to find an agent like Scott: someone with an obsessive attention to detail and a track record of success, whether they’re selling a million-dollar home or a starter condo. After all, a lazy agent and a go-getter take the same cut of the proceeds. (The total commission on a sale is generally about 5 percent, which the listing and the buying sides typically split.)
Even though a consumer might spend hours surfing around Expedia and Orbitz trying to save a few dollars on a two-night hotel stay, when it comes to a transaction involving real money – often hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars – homeowners tend to be surprisingly casual about choosing an agent. In 2006, according to a National Association of Realtors survey, the most popular method for finding an agent was to ask a friend, neighbor, or relative. But that guy at the end of the cul-de-sac may not be your best source of information. “While it’s nice that you trust the lady at your church, and there’s nothing wrong with your neighbor who’s a real estate agent,” says Richard Cahill, president of Norwell-based agency Jack Conway & Co., “you don’t know what their experience is.”
Part of the problem may be that the American public does not hold the real estate sales profession in particularly high esteem. A Harris poll taken last year found that real estate was one of three occupations that a quarter or more of adults perceive to have “hardly any prestige at all.” (The others were union leaders and actors.) Of course, the realtors’ association is quick to point out that the Harris poll asked about “real estate agents” and not “realtors” – the name association members use to indicate that they follow a mandatory code of ethics and get regular continuing education. Still, the poll results indicate a bit of an image problem.
And sellers don’t always act in their own best interests. The realtors’ association study found that 65 percent of sellers questioned had chosen the first agent they’d contacted, and 20 percent had interviewed only two before making one of the most important financial decisions of their lives. People spend more time choosing a marinade.
While it pays to get good representation, no matter what the real estate climate, the stakes are higher in a down market, when the need to distinguish a property is even greater. That’s how it’s been in Massachusetts recently. The number of detached single-family homes sold in the state decreased 14.6 percent last year compared with 2005, from 50,351 to 43,024 homes, the lowest volume since 1996, according to the Massachusetts Association of Realtors. Condominium sales dropped 12.1 percent during the same period, from 23,536 units to 20,698. Richard Loughlin, president of the New England region for Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage and the chairman of the Greater Boston Real Estate Board, says he is optimistic about a “very solid” spring market. But even so, he won’t swear that the Boston-area market has hit bottom.
How much difference does having the right agent make? It’s impossible to know for sure how much more money a house would command with one agent over another. But Katie and Karim White’s story is instructive. When it came time to sell their three-bedroom Cape in Acton last April – a buyer’s market, if there ever was one – the Whites chose an agent almost randomly, because they had seen her name on a lot of signs. “I thought, ‘This is a starter house. People are going to want to get in,’ ” recalls Katie White, a stay-at-home mother of two. “I thought the house would sell fairly quickly.” In other words, she thought that being choosy about her agent wouldn’t matter much. Besides, White says she liked that the agent wasn’t “overly aggressive.” She explains: “I used to be in sales, and I didn’t like having to be that way myself.”
In fact, the agent was so unassertive that she instantly went along with the couple’s pricing suggestion of $450,000, a number they had expected her to challenge as too high. Agreeing to a price set by the seller, even if it’s inflated, might not seem like a negative, but much like stuffing a kid with candy to buy a moment’s peace, it’s not a smart long-term strategy. The cliche about not getting a second chance to make a first impression applies to split-level homes, too. Why? Because it’s the “New Listing!” siren song that generates the most excitement among brokers and buyers. After its debut is over, a listing begins to acquire a taint, like an Edith Wharton heroine who has remained single too long. It becomes vulnerable, if not to men of the wrong sort, then to bargain-hungry buyers making lowball offers. Though only 23 percent of houses on the market for less than a week sold for less than their listing price last year, according to the realtors’ association statistics, a whopping 87 percent of those on the market for 17 weeks or more went for less – in other words, finding an agent who’ll get the price right from the start is even more important than fluffy towels and fresh fruit.
When looking for representation, a seller should act like a marketing manager who’s hiring a salesperson to sell the company’s most important – its only – product. It may feel awkward not going with the friend’s mother-in-law who sells real estate on the side when she’s not playing tennis, but industry experts caution against hiring a part-time agent, arguing that it’s a lot like going to a part-time surgeon.
The first step is to gather a list of candidates – as many as 10 to 15 names, which does require some stamina – by calling agencies to find out who their top producers are, asking for recommendations from knowledgeable sources such as people active in local business or development, and getting names from “for sale” signs in target neighborhoods and from ads. Thus armed, a smart shopper will narrow the pool with phone interviews, inquiring about advanced training and experience in the business – one longtime agent says two years is the minimum – and getting a general feel for each candidate.
Online research is an important part of the process, too. Considering that last year 80 percent of home buyers used the Web, it’s a good idea to ask agent candidates for photographs they’ve posted with their other listings. Actors aren’t the only ones who need good glossies. “I’ve seen listing photos of a bathroom with the toilet seat up,” says Lisa Kauffman Tharp, the head of Boston Home Staging, a company that specializes in sprucing up homes that are for sale. She says to make sure the master bedroom and kitchen are pictured, then adds, for emphasis: “You cannot not show the kitchen.”
The last step is to conduct interviews, at home, with the top three candidates. After each agent has assessed the property, sellers should ask: What price do you suggest, and how did you arrive at that number? How close to the asking price do your homes usually come? May I have recent references and phone numbers? What’s your commission? How many open houses do you plan within the period of the contract? How many times will the house appear in the paper? What other methods will you use to get my house out there? What do I need to change in my home before putting it on the market?
The ability to price a house right – to know what’s happening in the market at the moment a house is going up for sale – truly distinguishes an excellent agent. Persuading the seller of the wisdom of a certain price, especially if it’s lower than fantasized, can be hard. Pat Vredevoogd Combs, president of the National Association of Realtors and an agent in Grand Rapids, Michigan, gives sellers a handout that explains what things “don’t determine what they’ll get for their house,” she says. She even uses graphic circles with slashes through them – the international sign for “Don’t even think about it” – over sentences, including: “What you paid,” “What you want,” and “What you need.”
In the end, a seller looking for the right agent is shopping for a trusted guide.
after their house in Acton had been on the market for more than two months, the Whites became concerned. They had already bought a larger house down the street and were paying two mortgages. So Katie, in an effort to move the old place, began repainting walls and planting flowers; she installed a new knocker on the front door. Though the agent seemed content to sit by and wait, the Whites were not. They lowered the price several times, but to no avail. “We were always chasing the market,” Katie White recalls.
A good agent knows all about the chase. A recent column in the trade journal Realtor Magazine Online compared selling houses to dating. It included such tips as “Make them know you want them,” “Image is (almost) everything,” and “Go where the people are.”
Alas, as lovers know, life isn’t all first dates. There are last dates, too, perhaps followed by a bitter “ex” period. Katie White remembers the relief she felt the day that the six-month contract with her first agent finally expired. But when she called to get her keys back, the agent just couldn’t accept that the relationship was over. “Things will be different,” she pleaded. “I can do some open houses!” But it was too late for that.
White got to work methodically interviewing new candidates. This time around, she inquired about marketing plans, pricing strategies, communications expectations. She wanted an agent tuned in to the local market who wouldn’t be afraid to tell her any hard truths. She eventually hired a two-person team that came in like “storm troopers” – in a good way, she says. This time around, they began at an asking price of $375,000, well below the crucial $400,000 mark that the first agent had never reached. After the house had been on the market about eight weeks, the couple’s asking price reached the magic number – $350,000 – that brought in multiple offers, and the house eventually sold for $355,000. “Looking back,” says White, “I was naive. I thought if Joe Shmoe down the street can sell his own house, how important can an agent be?” Like a lot of sellers, she got engaged after the first blind date. It’s a mistake she won’t make again.
Beth Teitell is a freelance writer based in Boston. E-mail comments to magazine@globe.com.
