Choosing A Real Estate Agent

If you're reading this blog, you're likely either thinking about selling your house, or you've had your house on the market for a while, and it didn't sell. Now, it's imperative when you're choosing which real estate professional to list your house with that you choose the right agent. Now I want to guide you through a few simple questions to ask, and this works in any market at any given time, and it works right here in Farmington. 

#1: Ask your real estate professional about their online presence. If they can ask you specifics like how are they tracking traffic? How are they optimizing your listing for search engine optimization for Zillow, Trulia, realtor.com, all of those things if they can't specifically answer those questions, you may be interviewing the wrong real estate agent. We use Google Analytics; we use Facebook analytics; we use cash to retarget people with ads. And that's important because 50% of the people who bought a house last year found the house they eventually bought online. So it's important to have an excellent online presence. 

#2: Do you invest in a professional real estate photographer? Now I say the word invest because it is expensive to hire the right professional, who's trained specifically for real estate. Now, we use the media group here locally. You must use a professional photographer. I know this from experience; before I got into real estate, interviewing a real estate agent to list my house, I asked, "Hey, do you use a professional photographer?" He said "well, my wife has a DSLR and she is an excellent photographer." Well, I got the photos back, and unfortunately, they were lackluster, and we didn't have any showings on that house. So it's essential to use a professional real estate photographer. The other thing that's vitally important in this environment with COVID-19, and showing restrictions and open house restrictions, is that you have some virtual reality display. 

#3: Do you use a 3D imaging? Can you portray a virtual reality image of the house and give us a floor plan so that we can see flow without seeing multiple houses? We use the best technology in the business concerning 3D tours. 

#4: How many people are in your database. Now, we didn't hear a lot about database in real estate, even just five years ago. Gary Keller (founder of Keller Williams) says "your database is your business". We have over 4000 people in our database. That means we have their phone number, their email, and we have them on a drip campaign. They've clicked through on our Our website, given us their information and raise their hand and said, "Hey, I want more information on the houses you're selling". The way you work that database is important because we're constantly trying to get people from curiosity to hey, I'm buying your house.  So how are they doing? Do they have a database? Can they reach out to them via email? Do they send out a blast email, the minute your house hits the market, and make sure everybody is aware of it? It's a great question. 

#5: How many hours a week do you prospect for new business? If someone responds, "You know, I don't do that. I put the sign in the yard, I put it on the MLS, and I hit my knees, and I pray that it sells" that's not the right real estate professional for you. It would be best if you had somebody who is proactively looking for buyers for your house, continually trying to get people from that curiosity phase to the purchase phase. Now, we've had many people make comments about clicking on our website; we immediately put a pop-up page asking for information. We do that for our sellers' benefit because if somebody is curious enough to put their information in, they're interested enough to buy your house. So what do we do when we get that information? We call them; we email them, put them on market updates, and retarget them with your property ads. Having an aggressive online marketing campaign is incredibly important. Having the hours a week to go ahead and prospect for new buyers is also really important when you pair that with it. 

#6: How many houses a year do you sell? Vince Lombardi once said, "some of us will do our jobs. Well, some of us will not. And we'll all be measured by one thing. That's the result."   Here's why it's essential; I ran the numbers this morning in the last 12 months. There were 180 realtors registered in the San Juan County Board of realtors who sold something last year; more are registered with the board, but 180 actually sold the house. So if you take the number that we sold over the previous 12 months, which is 1067 houses, and divide that by 180, the average realtor in town sells less than six homes a year. I hate to say it, that's not a job. That's a hobby. So your cream of the crop realtors will typically sell 30 a year, so 3030 plus homes a year. So its a fundamental question. Am I dealing with somebody who has a hobby which is a side gig, or am I dealing with somebody who's a professional who does this to feed their family and provide for themselves?  Now, I do want to point out that our team sold 15 times the average number of houses over the last 12 months. We'd love to interview for the job of getting your house sold. 

#7: What is your average days on the market? Some people will try to convince you a house will sell within a certain amount of time no matter how you market it. The average days on the market over the last 12 months for our board were 115 days on the market. That means three and a half months before you sell your house, we cut that in less than half and our average days on the market is 42 days. That includes the big boys, the $600,000 and $700,000 houses that tend to sit on the market a little bit longer. 

 You want to make sure that you're interviewing somebody you jive with, who you can have a good conversation with who's personality meshes with your own. The other thing is you want to talk to them about their communication. We have a database in our system's backend, and I hire an assistant full time who is a licensed Realtor who gathers feedback and relays feedback. His job was specifically designed to improve your customer experience. We'd love to interview for the position of getting your house sold. I hope this video is helpful. If you aren't in Farmington, New Mexico and would like me to interview somebody for free call me. I am a member of the largest referral network in the United States through Keller Williams. Thank you for watching this video. I hope it helps you guys have a great week!