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BLOG: Questions to ask When You are Buying a Home

Home buying season is here: 10 Important questions you need to ask realty professionals whom you interview to represent you.

Here are some questions to ask a realty professional if you're interested in buying a home:

1. How much experience have you had?

When you walk into the office of a realty firm, you often become the “property” of the agent who is on the “up desk.” The same thing may happen when you call in to the realty office. Either way, you may soon be talking with the most inexperienced agent in the firm. To protect yourself, why not state, firmly, right from the start, that you want a Realtor with at least 10 years of real estate sales experience?

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2. Do you work full-time as a real estate agent?

Why be represented by an agent who only works two days a week and sells three homes a year? Or one that has a full-time job and only dabbles at real estate? Ask for an agent who has sold at least six homes in the last year. Ultimately, sales experience is what counts. Similarly, you do not want a full-time Realtor who has sold only two homes in the past two years. Ask for a full time agent who sells MORE than the average number of homes that are sold annually in his firm’s office.

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3. Will you provide a competitive market analysis (comps) for a property that I might want to buy?

You MUST ask your buyer’s agent for a CMA if you hope to pay a market-competitive price for a home. Do not rely on just what the agent thinks about the price. Agents can be fooled, too. In addition, you, contrary to what you may believe, are probably the worst predictor of what you should pay for a home. Listen to your agent.

4. Are you a dues-paying member of the MLS? (Multiple Listing Service)

If the agent is not personally a dues-paying member of your local MLS, do not buy a house through him.

Such agents do not have the right to use the MLS, but may access it through colleagues or through consumer MLS portals that you, yourself, could have used. Generally, the more experienced Realtors will belong to the local MLS (and pay dearly to do so) and lesser ones will not sell enough in a year to warrant the expense.

Also, ask them if they belong to the National Association of Realtors (NAR) and to their state association (example: California Association of Realtors) and to their local board of Realtors (in Orange County, CA for example, it is the Orange County Association of Realtors - OCAR)

5. Are you familiar with the areas in which I want to buy?

Generally, any agent or Realtor can legally help you buy or sell a home anywhere in your state. However, you are wise to deal only with agents who live and market 90 percent of the time in the cities and neighborhoods in which you seek a home.

There are often hidden problems with a given street or neighborhood (soot, noise, noisy delivery trucks in a nearby shopping center, shifting hillsides, bad roads, speeders, etc.) law suits, condemnations, right-of-way problems, etc. that only a local agent can tell you about.

6. Will you show me all properties which best suit my needs, regardless of the listing company?

This is very important. Some less-than-noble firms, even some local offices of big national realty firms, have a policy of showing you only their own listings, and not the homes listed by every other realty firm in town. Often, the MLS that they have created will be limited in the same way. Realty firms make far more money this way.

Don’t be fooled. Tell your agent that you want to see ALL the listings that are in the MLS for your price range and for your other parameters. Ask to see proof if you are in doubt, or go check yourself by using a consumer version of the MLS.

Don’t be afraid to ask … the bad apples are praying that you won’t. Some agents pay big money themselves to offer a customized entry to the MLS from their own web site. These are fine and often faster to use than large national MLS services like www.Realtor.com.

See an example here of an agent's fast, customized MLS portal that keeps its listings CURRENT.

 7. Will you represent me as a buyer’s agent?

You want your buyer’s agent to negotiate with the agent of the home seller (listing, or seller’s agent) on your behalf. Today, few California buyers sign exclusive buyer’s agent agreements with an agent, even though contracts exist for such an arrangement. Instead, typically you’ll just find an agent in some office, or on the web, and tell him you want such and such kind of home and he helps you find it.

Remember, buyer’s agents still have a fiduciary relationship with the seller, not to you. However, their implied loyalty is to you, not the seller. You might think twice, therefore, about using the same agent (listing agent) that the seller is using, because that agent walks a thin legal line between maintaining the fiduciary relationship with the seller, and representing you as well.

It’s wiser to get your own agent; no matter what the listing agent tells you. Remember, if he acts as both the seller's and buyer's agent, he gets twice as much commission.

8. The most important factor in choosing an agent is: Do you feel comfortable with him/her?

No one can answer this but you. If you ever start out with one agent, but later decide you are not compatible and want a different agent to help you, call the manager of that first agent’s office and explain your feelings. The manager can just assign you a different agent and spare you any embarrassment involving the first agent.

9. How much time can I expect from you?

Buyer’s agents should be willing to take you out looking at homes almost any time that you ask. However, when you have finished looking at all the current homes that meet your price range and other parameters, the agent should continue looking for matching homes, both by visiting new listings and by hunting for them on the MLS.

If an agent is not suggesting homes for you to go view, either emailing them or calling you about them, he may not be doing his job for you. Conversely, he should not be showing you homes that are far off your mark, either.

10. Do you have a personal internet web site?

Virtually all leading regional buyer’s agents should have not merely a web site, but a very extensive one filled with much useful content for buyers, including hints and tips like these above.

If the agent you get when you call or visit a real estate office does not have a truly comprehensive web site, or else has only the limited one supplied by his realty firm, and thus lacks one that he pays for himself, you might want to ask for another agent.

You might consider this first agent less of a buyer’s agent than ones who demonstrate their affinity for buyers by developing a web site primarily for the benefit of buyers.

Good luck, and remember, too, that there are agents, Realtors, and realty brokers, each having differing training and credentials. The distinction can be critical. 

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