Selling Your House

Choosing to sell your house is a big decision that brings with it a variety of challenges. From attracting buyers to negotiating contracts, it’s helpful to have a professional real estate agent on your side to help reduce stress and lead to the best possible outcome. Finding the right real estate agent can present a challenge in itself, however, with the high quantity of qualified Australian agents out there. To get started with selling your house, you’ll want to compare agents carefully to find an individual who will be most effective in helping you with your particular needs.

You can start this process by registering your details at LocalAgentFinder, which gives you access to thousands of real estate agents. With the free dashboard tool provided, you can compare your options and select the real estate agent who will best represent, market, and sell your property. When comparing agents, it’s helpful to keep the following guidelines in mind:

Choosing a Local Real Estate Agent

As you start to take a closer look at potential real estate agents, it makes sense to find one who is familiar with your particular neighbourhood. This allows them to interact more effectively with buyers and share details regarding the area’s amenities, public transportation, and housing statistics. They will also have more accurate information regarding similar houses for sale in your area, and how to make your home stand out from the competition. Most suburbs have a number of real estate agents who specialise in property solely in the local area.

Aside from looking at location, however, you’ll want to take a look at their experience and whether or not you have a personal rapport with them. When it comes to something as important as selling your house, it’s a good idea to work with someone who makes you feel valued and comfortable. Just because one agent has the most listings in your area doesn’t mean that they will best represent your needs. Find out whether the agents you are comparing are licensed, and what their education and experiential backgrounds look like.

Asking for references is also an integral part of the screening process after you have narrowed down your initial list using the comparison tools available at real estate portals like LocalAgentFinder. Find out how this website works and start the comparison process, with all of these facts laid out before you. As you narrow down the field, speaking with former clients through reference checks can point you in the right direction.

Interviewing Potential Agents

In addition to comparing all of these features described above, as you whittle down your list of candidates you’ll want to meet with a few agents in person. When selling a house, you’ll want to choose a handful of agents to appraise your property. This should include the estimated sale price of your home, which real estate agents base on similar homes that have sold recently in your area. Ask for a comparative market analysis or CMA for your property. This will provide you with the following pieces of information:

• At least three recent sales of similar houses to your own property, located in the same neighbourhood
• A full list of the average property prices in your suburb
• A full list of other properties currently for sale in your suburb
• A full list showing all the homes the real estate agent has sold recently, including sale prices for each property

This information will help you determine how each real estate agent reached the figures given in their appraisal, and how realistic their anticipated sales prices might be.

Comparing Agent Commissions and Fees

It’s natural for those selling property to be anxious about what the fees are going to look like. As a result, one of the first questions that many sellers ask is what the estate agent’s commission rate will be. What’s important to remember is that at the end of the day it’s better to be happy with the outcome of a sale than to save a few hundred pounds on a commission. The overall amount of a real estate commission could vary from a few thousand dollars up to tens of thousands of dollars. This will depend on the price and value of your property.

Estate agent fees can vary quite a bit, so be sure to take this into account along with the rest of the information you receive. The primary focus should be to sell your property for the highest price. The right real estate agent will be the one who is able to help you accomplish this outcome.

Comparing Agent Agreements

There are several different types of agent relationships that you might see when selling a house. You can pick and choose from these agent agreements to find the best fit for your needs.

• Exclusive Agency Agreement: In this type of agreement, you agree to use the service of a single estate agent. No matter how the home ends up being sold, you will pay the same fee to this agent.
• Sole Agency Agreement: This is almost identical to the exclusive agency agreement. Yet in this type of contract, the owner can still sell the house privately. Should this occur, the agent’s fee will not need to be paid.
• Open Agency Agreement: In an open agency agreement, you employ several different real estate agents. However, only the one who sells your house will be paid the commission. Although this can be beneficial because you get a wider range of marketing coverage, it could lead to your home being low on the priority list for agents because exclusive sales tend to come first in order of importance.
• Auction Agency Agreement: An agent will organise the auction of your property in this type of contract.
• Multiple Listing Agency Agreement: Also called a Multi-list, this is another exclusive agreement. You can choose a single agent to sell your property, but the agent can then work with other multi-list agents to find buyers.

As you can see, there is a lot of work that goes into selling your house. Choosing the right real estate agent to represent your property to buyers involves several different decisions, before the selling process can even begin. With the help of a fully qualified professional on your side, the full process can be made far easier and worry-free.

What’s next?

You can start the process of comparing and selecting the right agent for your home by finding out more about LocalAgentFinder. This free, no-obligation comparison tool allows you to compare agents including fees and commissions, so that you have all the information you need to make the right decision.