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How To Interview A Real Estate Agent

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Choose Three Or Four Real Estate Agents To Interview

Job Interview – New Real Estate Agent

Every realtor handles their business and their partners differently, so get to know the person youll be working with to sell your home. We recommend you interview as many realtors as you can. Interview no less than three agents so you can get a sense of what working with your new partner will be like.

Even though you may have information about the realtor from the internet already, verify your assumptions about the realtor in the interview. Ask them to explain their strengths, expertise, and to fill you in about the information you couldnt find about them.

General Questions For A Real Estate Interview

Though your interview is likely to focus on questions that specifically relate to your skills and experience as a real estate professional, you may encounter more general interview questions that help an interviewer to gauge your personality. Here are some common general questions you may be asked:

  • Where do you see yourself in five years? 10 years?
  • Why do you want to work for this company?
  • Why should we hire you? What makes you stand out?
  • What did you like most about your last position?
  • What are your top three skills?
  • What skills would you like to learn and why?
  • How would your coworkers and clients describe you?
  • What questions do you have?

What Questions Do You Ask Clients To Make Sure Their Needs Are Met

When you meet with a client for the first time, you will need to ask them certain questions to begin the house buying or selling process. You may have a list of specific questions that help you connect with your client on a more personal level and help you best determine their needs versus their preferences. Use this interview question to discuss the early part of your process and demonstrate how you connect with clients to personalize your service.

Example:I typically begin a client relationship by having them fill out a general survey to collect necessary information, such as budget, location, number of bedrooms and bathrooms, home size, family size and many others. This process takes just a few minutes for clients and I use it to guide my initial conversation to further refine their listing options.

After the survey, I ask them to describe their ideal home, what they believe they cannot compromise on and what three adjectives they would use to describe their dream home. These questions allow me to personalize my search and select homes that may have factors they didnt think to consider, such as the type of plants in the yard and how much sunlight comes into the living room during the afternoon.

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How Long Have You Been A Realtor

It helps to understand how long an agent youre considering working with has been buying or selling homes. The median real estate experience of all Realtors is nine years, according to NAR.

Working with an agent whos newer to the profession isnt necessarily a bad thing. But one whos more experienced may be more adept at handling any challenges that arise when buying or selling a home.

How To Interview A Prospective Agent To Sell Your Home

How to Interview a Real Estate Agent

Questions to ask when choosing a realestate agent to sell your house. By Ilona Bray , J.D. If you’ve identified a few realestate agents who seem like good candidates to sell your house and have checked out their websites, the next step is to arrange an in-person meeting.

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RealEstate Agent Survey Results: 86% of customers want owner narration in the video 10% are indifferent 4% do not want narration in the video. RealEstate Agent Video Length Limit Average: 142 seconds Interview Questions. What is your name, occupation and what are you specializing in or developing right now if anything?

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Aug 11, 2014 ·About the author: The above RealEstate information on choosing a Realtor by asking great realestate interview questions was provided by Bill Gassett, a Nationally recognized leader in his field. Bill can be reached via email at or by phone at 508-625-0191.

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TOP 10 RealEstate Agent Interview Questions & Answers in 2020. Houses A few questions that will test your motivation, communication and sales skills, and a few behavioral questions, testing your attitude to various situations that happen in a job of a realestate agent .

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How Does Your Commission Work

As with any financial transaction, get a good understanding of how your agent is compensated before entering into a relationship with them.

Typically, buyers do not pay agent commission fees. Fees are paid by the seller to their broker, and then the commission is split with the buyers agent. The percentage varies by agent and market, but is usually around 6% for both the buyers agent and sellers agent commission.

What Are The Most Critical Skills To Be A Successful Real Estate Agent

A successful real estate agent has a combination of various critical competencies, such as communication, organization, and negotiation skills. The goal of the question is to evaluate the candidate’s opinion of the essential skills that create success for the position. What to look for in an answer:

  • Awareness of the full scope of duties and responsibilities of the role
  • Interest in continually improving their professional skills
  • Ability to identify the most critical skills for their career

Example:

“In my opinion, the most critical skills for a successful real estate agent include attention to detail, negotiation, and communication skills. Attention to detail is crucial to ensuring everything is accurate on documentation, listings, and correspondence. Negotiation is vital to getting the best price for either the buyer or seller. And…”

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Attract And Screen Qualified Buyers

There are many ways agents attract buyers, but its standard practice to list on the local MLS and to make sure the listing also shows up on major real estate portals like Zillow and Trulia. Your listing should always have a complete and clear listing description and professional photos.

Bringing in qualified buyers is one of the most important tasks any listing agent has. According to the Zillow Group Consumer Housing Trends Report 2018, 89 percent of sellers rank bringing buyers to the sellers home as an extremely or very valuable agent service.

Your agent should talk to every potential buyers agent to vet the offer and gauge their interest this is especially important if you are selling in a sellers market, where youre likely to get multiple offers. Your agent should be able to find out how much money a buyer is putting toward a down payment, how much earnest money theyre willing to put down and how soon they want to close. Serious buyers usually have definitive answers to these questions, and theyre more willing to put money on the line.

What Are The Terms Of Your Contract

HOW to Interview a Real Estate Agent

Working with a Realtor means entering into a contract, and its important to know what that contract says.

Once you sign a contract youre typically locked in to working with them unless they agree to release you.

The listing agreement will last for a set period, such as three or six months. From your perspective, shorter may be better so that youre not trapped if you dont like the agents services.

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Questions To Ask When Choosing A Real Estate Broker And Advice For Newly Licensed Agents

The first step to your successful career in real estate is choosing the right real estate broker to work for and knowing what questions to ask. There are wide differences among real estate brokerages, both in what they will offer you as well as the commission splits, expectations, and culture.

Many new real estate agents base their decision on the best commission split and that usually isnt the best route, especially when you are new to the industry.

We highly recommend that you meet with at least three different brokerages and do your research on each one beforehand . Once you find the three that look the most appealing to you, schedule time to meet and ask the following questions.

While you are researching different real estate brokers, be sure to check out what eXp Realty, the innovative cloud-based brokerage voted Top Places to Work by its agents, has to offer!

Questions To Ask When Choosing A Real Estate Agent To Sell Your House

By Ilona Bray, J.D.

If you’ve identified a few real estate agents who seem like good candidates to sell your house and have checked out their websites, the next step is to arrange an in-person meeting. Allow at least one hour to show the agent your home and discuss possible prices and issues in the sale. Here are the topics you want to discuss:

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Other Helpful Home Seller Interview Resources:

Again, as a home seller, please make sure to do your homework prior to hiring your real estate agent! Going through this exercise of asking all these interview questions might seem a bit much, dont forget you only have one chance to make a first impression when youre putting your property on the market! It better be a good one home buyers will not be too forgiven if you change strategy, price, or real estate agent mid-way the home selling process!

If you found this article to be an interesting read, please share it across your social media platforms!

How To Interview A Real Estate Agent When Selling Your Home via

Xavier De Buck

About the author: The above article How To Interview A Real Estate Agent When Selling Your Home was written by Xavier De Buck, your top-producing Johannesburg real estate agent. Xavier has been nationally recognized and awarded for providing service excellence, exceptional property sales, whilst exhibiting the highest level of professionalism. With over 15 years combined experience as a real estate agent and real estate investor, if youre thinking of buying or selling a home in Johannesburg, Xavier would love to share his property knowledge and expertise.

Xavier has more than 65,000 followers on , , , , and .

Make sure to connect!

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Ramsey Solutions

Ramsey Solutions has been committed to helping people regain control of their money, build wealth, grow their leadership skills, and enhance their lives through personal development since 1992. Millions of people have used our financial advice through 22 books published by Ramsey Press, as well as two syndicated radio shows and 10 podcasts, which have over 17 million weekly listeners.

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Seek A List Of References That You Can Contact

Ask the agent how many other clients he or she is working with right now. This matters immensely because you dont want an overloaded agent whos spread too thin. But, on the other hand, you want ample attention and time to ensure your property gets promoted well.

Most of all, ask for referrals from current and past clients who dont mind talking to you. Then, take the time to actually call the people to determine how well they enjoyed working with the agent. Ask about issues and other relevant things you want to be clarified. This is the best way to get to know the agent.

Real Estate Interview Questions And Sample Answers

Here are some questions and sample answers you can use to prepare your own effective responses during your interview:

  • How many homes, on average, do you sell each year?
  • How do you use the internet and social media to sell homes?
  • How do you stay organized to make sure you make every appointment and are always on time?
  • Talk about a time where you had a hard time creating a relationship with a tenant, owner or investor. How would you have handled that differently?
  • Whats the hardest part of keeping your clients focused on home tours?
  • What qualities make you a good real estate agent?
  • What questions do you ask clients to make sure their needs are met?
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    Lets Get Down To Basics

    The beginning of the call is the best place to get to know the agents business and how well they know the area. Youre listening for things that signal experience, knowledge about the area, and workload.

    How long have you been in business?

    The agents answer to this question will give you some clue to their track record. If theyve been in business a long time, you know theyre managing a stable and respectable business. They probably know the area really well and theyll have a deep network of agents and other real estate professionals to draw from during your work with them.

    On the other hand, if theyve only been in business a few years, theyre likely hungry for your business. A young, scrappy, real estate agent with strong performance data may fight harder for you but may struggle with nuanced roadblocks that come up.

    How well do you know the area?

    Heres your chance to test them on their knowledge of your real estate market. Ideally, your agent will have lived in and around the area for a long time. Theyll know all the hidden gems, theyll know the buyer taste trends, and theyll have a firm grasp on housing market and economics data.

    What sets you apart?

    How many clients do you represent at a time?

    The subtext in this question is simply: will you make time for me and my needs? You want to get the agent to divulge information about how they handle their workload and get a good idea about their teams capacity to meet your needs.

    Question #: Which Advertising Tools Will You Be Using To Market Our Home

    How to Interview Your Real Estate Agent

    Besides the traditional advertising tools, such as ads in newspapers, magazines, on bus benches, billboards etc., any decent real estate agents needs to have a strong online presence.

    As a quick reminder, 90% of the home buyers start their home search online!

    Why would an agent not want to be in front of that audience?!

    The internet is where all the researching and reading up happens, months before the home buyer even contacts the agent!

    Through the agents online activities across many social network platforms, his personal website, and an active blogging calendar, chances are very good that the home buyers will keep running into that agents content during their information-gathering phase!

    And who will they more than likely be contacting to help them find homes for sale in Johannesburg once theyre ready?! After all, without even having met the agent, these home buyers already have quite the impression of him due to this dominant online presence!

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    Essential Questions To Ask A Realtor

    If youre planning to buy a home, theres a good chance youve thought about the kind of home youd like to buy. And if you have a home to sell, youve likely pondered how much your property could sell for. But buyers and sellers often forget to think critically about the Realtor they choose to partner with. And thats a mistake.

    Interviewing For A Position At A Real Estate Firm

    Real estate brokers-in-charge are nearly always in the recruiting mode. If they have desk space available, many will take on almost anyone with a valid license and a desire to work. Don’t wait for the broker to advertise for salespeople. You can just call the broker yourself.

    Some firms may require that you commit to a full-time job in real estate, and not hold a second job while others will hire agents who work part-time. A few allow agents to be associated with the firm, even if they don’t work on a regular basis. This allows someone with a salesperson’s license to remain on active status, rather than go inactive, as they are technically under the supervision of a broker.

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    Real Estate Skills List

    Here’s a list of real estate skills employers seek in the candidates they hire. Skills will vary based on the position for which you’re applying, so also review our list of skills listed by job and type of skill. Mention these skills during your interviews, and incorporate them into your resume and cover letters.

    Question #: Whats Your Sale To List Price Ratio

    Commercial Real Estate Broker Interview Questions

    Any realtor can show you how much theyve sold homes for.

    But you want to see what the original listing price of those homes was.

    This number is calculated by taking the selling price of all of the homes a real estate agent has sold and then dividing them by the listing prices of those homes.

    For example, if a realtor has an average selling price of $1,000,000 and an average asking price of $950,000, then their sale to list price ratio would be 105%.

    You can take this number and compare it to other realtors you might interview.

    Be leery of listing agents with a number that is much higher or lower than others.

    A ratio that is on the higher end means that the realtor underprices the homes they sell.

    They do this so that they can market the home they just sold to other homeowners with something like, Just sold for $$$ over the asking price!

    Usually, the listing agents who do this have a sale-to-list price ratio of ~110% or higher.

    Ones with a ratio on the lower end overprice the homes they sell.

    Either because of a lack of experience or because they intentionally overpromise on their suggested listing price.

    In my opinion, anything under 95% can be a red flag.

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