Throughout my years as a Realtor® in Jamaica Plain and Roslindale, I’ve met with many homeowners who are having or have had unhappy experiences with their listing agents. The reasons for this are myriad, but as a public service (and to toot my own horn, of course) I’m going to share with you the early warning signs that it’s time to make a switch.
1. Your broker doesn’t give you a list of suggestions to help your house show at its best. From replacing your mailbox to having your teenage son move out, it’s your broker’s job to see your house through the buyers’ eyes and advise you accordingly. One of my favorite, though painful, aphorisms is: If you’re comfortable in your home while it’s on the market, it’s not showing right. If the on-line photos are less than stellar, many buyers will not even put your home on their must-see list.
2. You have showings and an open house and you don’t have an offer from one of the first twenty parties that sees the house. If your property is priced correctly and shows well, it will generate an offer quickly. In the Boston market now, homes are regularly going under agreement in under 24 hours as a result of multiple offers. After two weeks with no offers in a busy market, an honest agent will ask you for a price adjustment.
3. You call or email your agent and don’t hear back within a time frame that feels reasonable to you. Unless your agent has set up another expectation from the beginning, hearing back within a few hours, maximum, is your right as a client, especially with the multi-media options of communicating today. If I’m too busy and don’t have quality time to respond to a voice or email from a client, I will email, text or call them and let them know when we might have that conversation. Whether a property is listed at $150,000 or $1.5M, it’s often the largest financial transaction my client has ever undertaken and it’s my duty to understand this and perform accordingly.
4. Your agent urges you to act contrary to your instincts. In real estate as in the rest of life, I’ve learned over the years that one can lead a horse to water, i.e., I can share with my seller clients my experience through the years in like situations, and share with them my feelings and impressions of the transaction in hand, but it is ultimately up to the owner of the property to decide what’s right for them. I’ve learned a lot about negotiation from my clients, both seller and buyer, throughout the years. I believe firmly that if a transaction is meant to be, it will be.
5. Your agent is not willing to go the extra mile for you. In the course of pre-marketing, marketing and actually facilitating the sale of your home, there are many occasions where your agent can step in and make your life easier. From meeting a contractor at your house while you’re at work to paying for incidentals for which they’ll be later reimbursed, your agent should be gracious and available to be your proxy in the many situations that arise. To me, this is a normal aspect of every listing relationship. These are the small ways in which superior agents make the often wrenching home sale and moving process a little more pleasant and which will be remembered long after the sale is closed.
6. Your agent normally works in a community miles away from yours. No matter how much you love your agent, intimacy with the local market and the local agents are invaluable attributes for a listing agent. Many times homeowners will hire a family friend from Hanover to sell a home in Boston and vice versa. The result, especially in a slower market than we’re experiencing now in the greater Boston area, can be inaccurate pricing, difficulty commuting to showings, and a general lack of engagement from the local agents who, seeing an out-of-area broker’s name on a sign will often assume the property is incorrectly priced or difficult to show. As in all things, shopping locally is smart shopping.
7. You get the feeling your agent is not being honest with you. Sometimes it’s hard to share with a homeowner negative feedback about their property or discouraging news about the market, interest rates, and the many other aspects of marketing a property. My hard-learned experience is that sugar-coating leads to decay — of the agent-client relationship — and unrealistic expectations that also lead to unhappy endings. Your agent needs to be smart and skilled enough to deliver information to you from day one that will keep you both on the same page and focused on a win-win finale for everyone.
Linda Burnett
Jamaica Plain/Roslindale Real Estate Maven
Keller-Williams Boston-Metro Real Estate
Search Boston Homes
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