Steve posted this question to see what kind of answers Realtors would give. SInce this is simply a blog you never loose by placing your thoughts on it.

Sincerely,

Bill

Funny thing Tony when I answered this question I had no idea it was actually the same Steve. I didn't even look at the name. I simply answered the question.

Steven,
if you're an agent - nobody knows what your reasons might be. I know for the fact that the banks are refusing to pay the fees/commissions to the agents if they are a principle of the transaction - short sale or REO(buyer). So in case your property is a short sale, and you would list your own home, there's a chance you wouldn't receive any commission... Maybe you were just looking for more creative ideas to better serve your clients, or maybe you're not the same Steve Compos Tony is reffering to. Either way, if I can be any help, please let me know. I am familiar with Carlsbad/Encinitas area/schools... I would love to list your home! (951-970-9747)

Doesn't anybody realize Steve is a real estate agent with the Richard Realty Group of Carlsbad? Gee Steve, why would you post this question?

Steve,
Looks like you already received a lot of good advise. As a seller be realistic about the price. Too many sellers set their price based on yesterday's market. Have three Realtors prepare Comparable Market Analysis - CMA. CMA will list asking and selling prices of similar homes, as well as amenities and sizes. If a lot of homes like yours are on the market, then I suggest you set an asking price 5-10% below what homes like yours have been selling for. That raises the odds to get your home sold, and even getting multiple offers. We are in a declining market whether most of us would like to admit it or not. In case the sale of your home will be a Short Sale, make sure you hire a Realtor who is familiar with the Short Sale requirements and procedures....
I'm including an article from msn.com - it applies directly to San Diego market. Hope this helps!

Call your friends for referrals. They will give you the skinny on who worked and who didn't. I agree with the last answer that a very important part of the deal is keeping a deal from falling out of escrow. Being sharp wih the forms. All escrows have little blips (sometimes diasters) and your agent has to be really savvy to keep it together.

Also, price your place to sell (if in fact that is what you want to do). Don't pick the agent who tells you your house is worth more than evetyone else told you. Have a good idea in your head of it's value before you interview agents.
Find an agent that answers their phone!!! As an agent myself I can't tell you how frsutrating it is when I am trying to set up appointments for viewing and selling agents don't answer their phone or don't call back for 24 hours or more. Also, don't pick a rude agent. it turns off other agents who won't show the house to their clients because they don't want to work with that agent.
So, to summarize, sharp, good with the forms, available and actively feilding and returning calls of potential buyers or brokers, and likeable.

Good luck with your sale!

Sarah Dupree

I think there have been some very good answers to the question, but the real issue, after all the marketing strategies in the world have been done, is : Does the agent have a thorough knowlege of the Sales Contract? This is one very important point that many agents have little experience with. It is crucial to any seller to have a powerful agent that can structure a transaction and provide an anti-skid surface to get the property closed. Marketing is important, but not as important as holding together a transaction when the market has a reduced field of buyers. Most fancy, costly marketing plans are great to impress the seller with, but in the real world, a buyer will fixate on a property first learned about from the internet. Make sure the agents you interview have an explosion of web-based tools and can demostrate them on the spot to you. The market today demands less and less of printed material. The amount of newspaper classifieds demonstrate this. Printed material, brochures, DVD/CD's are good buyer retention tools, but again, the expense of these items can be easily calculated. What is priceless is the forethought of an offer, and specifics that are unique to each property in handling and offer.

In today's more challenging real estate market, I would ask what strategies the agent is using to sell homes--and which ones are working. Ask about recent listings, sales and market times.

More than ever, you need a seasoned and creative agent with a broad market reach.

I am late to your question and hope that your home has sold!

Best regards,

Roberta
http://www.SanDiegoPreviews.com
http://www,LuxuryHomeDigest.com
760-402-9101 or 877-818-8197

Masrgaret, Great to see that you have jumped into Trulia! You'll be a great asset in this forum! I agree with your answer! Great job! We are lucky to have such fabulous professionals in our area.

Steve, You may start your search for a listing agent any number of ways: referrals from friends, on-line searches, or looking at marketing pieces that you see at local listings. But once you have a few names, you should interview them, and I have some specific questions that you should ask your prospective agent. If any of them try to evade the questions or give you vague or ambiguous answers, you may want to consider moving on to the next agent. So here are some suggested questions to ask:
1) What will you have done by day 1 of my listing to market the home, and how much money will you have spent by day 1? What is the total budget for the entire listing period?
2) Who will be the photographer who takes the photos of my home and can I see samples of the work that he/she has produced in the past?
3) Can you show me 3-5 examples of marketing brochures/campaigns that you have conducted in the recent past for homes like mine?
4) How much money will you spend on Internet advertising each money so that people will find out about my home? How can I verify your spending? What is your web site address?
5) Do you produce video tours of your listings, and, if so, how long is the tour? How many DVDs will you produce to market my listing?
6) Will you use open houses to market my home, and, if so, how often and what will you do to market the open houses?
7) Are you a local expert and what’s the basis for that conclusion?
8) Will you present homes at the broker caravan?
9) If the home does not sell within the first 45 days, will you be coming to me asking for a price reduction or will you be coming to me with additional ideas to market the home?
10) Who will provide backup for you if you are working with other clients and someone wants to see my home?

Margaret Hokkanen, http://www.EncinitasCarlsbad.com

Steve, referrals are definitely a great way to find a good agent; however, it's deninitely a process buying or selling in this market, so you definitely want to make sure you're compatible and have good communication with your agent. If you're selling, I suggest you act like a buyer and think about the process you would go through if you were to purchase a home. That might give you insight to how you want your property marketed and by whom. Good luck. You can go to the website reference for more tips on buying and selling. Much success to you.

Hi Steve,

If you are picking a sellers agent to market your home, interview 3 agents and hear their pricing opinions and marketing strategies. Do you have a source for referrals through friends and family? If not, check http://www.crs.com for prospective Realtors. These Realtors have achieved this designation as a result of achieving volume and educational requirements. A secondary source might be the local chapter of the Women’s Council of Realtors.

Upon meeting the prospective agents, ask questions that will help you become familiar with:

1) THEIR KNOWLEDGE OF THE LOCAL MARKETPLACE & THE REAL ESTATE INDUSTRY. Are they able to discuss the local marketplace? Are they familiar w/ the properties? Do they possess a comprehensive understanding of real estate? What makes a good offer? How to deal with the endless list of issues that may surface?

2) SKILLS - The ability to get the job done; sales, presentation, negotiating and technical skills.

3) COMMITMENT AND WILLINGESS TO WORK HARD - Will the agent work diligently for you and be reasonably available?

4) ORGANIZATIONAL SYSTEMS AND SUPPORT - Does the Realtor have the support of a company behind them that will provide the necessary technical and marketing support? Will the company be providing advertising, online support, office admin support? Or, if not provided by the company, does the Realtor have mechanisms in place to assure proper servicing of the listing?

Good Luck
Deborah

Steve if it were up to me I would want to be given the opportunity to be able to speak to any one of their last 50 to 100 clients either buyers or sellers. I would also want what I would call an unscrubed list. The actual last clients. I say this because I have found some who only give their favorites and that is not in your best interest. By being given that you can then call anyone and get an unbiased opinion. In this market you may want to ask for the last 20.
On top of that list I would also take the advice of the last few postings with one exception. Give an agent who is busy something to do and it will get done. If they do not answer their phone seven days a week move on.
There are agents in this area who only work on the weekdays. There are also agents who have many listings and they flaunt that in your face but fail to mention that 95% of their listings are for 600k of less and they have only a few pending. While others will parade in front of you the look how many I did rather then what I can now do for you. So let me give you a list of the gimmicks and also the things I think you should consider.
1. The I will sell your home in 30 days or buy it myself gimmick. -- Wow that sounds great until you find out that sure they will buy it but at what price. The fine print get's you to call. I will buy almost anyone's home for 29+6 percent less then what it is now.
2. I will list your home and if I do not sell it in 30 days it will cost you nothing. This is new one but of course it will cost you nothing. There is no charge to a seller anyway other then time.
3. I will sell your home in 30 days or I will give you $1000. Sure again the 29+6 percent off price. Also it is not the 29 plus 6 percent commission price that you should be worried about. It is the then appraised value plus the 29+6!
4. Or how about this one. I take the listing and then you never see me again. Well then who does the negotiations. The answer is I have a team of experts. In one case I know of an agent whose negotiator lives in Arizona. Another couple who only are there when they take the listing as a figure head. A client of mine when they were approached by a certain agent then ask the why am I wasting my time speaking to you. I want to interview the one who is actually going to sell my home.
5. Please sign my buyer broker agreement. A buyer broker agreement is something that some agents use but to me it would be like entering a department store and the first person who sees you tells you that they are going to be your personal shopper. What if you learn that you just do not get along.
6. The I only take 6 month listing agreements. WHY? I 100% believe if you take a listing it should an open agreement based on trust with the seller having the opportunity to cancel at any time and it should be in writing.
7. 6% listing. Well quite frankly this has nothing to do with reality. I can take 7% listing agreements all day long as long as I get you the best price bottom line. So it really comes down to the bottom line and nothing more. If the agent can show you how they did it in the past with proof from their past client base then great.
8. My average listings time is only 28 days. That could possibly be but make sure the property has not been listed before. I know of a few agents who take it off the market by self canceling it and then place it back on the market and after a few days put it on as sold.
9. Marketing budget is another thing to look at! You should ask for a breakdown on what they will spend per house obviously your home in order to sell it.
10. Internet? I have heard of a group that tells people that their wed site is the number one in this area. The last I looked over 97% of all people who look for homes look at Realtor.com.

Anyway Steve their are a lot of things to consider. The key is will the person you work with treat your money like their own.

Hi Steve,
I would interview 3 agents, ask for their marketing plan, if they are full time professionals and if they offer a Seller Service Guarantee. Good luck

If you are picking a listing agent:

Ask:

What percentage of the listings that you took in the past year or two sold within 45 days of the original listing date?

Did you have to reduce the price to get the sale?

If I were a seller I would rather have a “medium”
producer who sold 8 out of 10 listings, at or near original list price, within a reasonable time frame, than a “top producer” who sold 30 out of a hundred listings. Pick quality over quantity.

If you are picking a buyers agent...Tell him your buying criteria, get the list to do some “drive-bys”
Pick out the most likely and the least likely houses. If you want to put him to the test, have him show you only the worst houses, the first time out. If he doesn’t try to sell you one of the bad ones, you can trust him to show you the good houses on the next outing, with objectivity.

Steve, There are many ways to choose an agent. Referrals from friends satisfied with their agent is one way. Another way that people choose an agent is to call a few of the offices in the area and ask the manager of the office who they might recommend, then interview a hand-ful from different agencies.

You need to think about what type of agent you might like to work with. Do you want a "big-name agent? Or would you prefer an agent who is going to spend more time working specifically with you? I would suggest that however you choose your agent, make sure that they are a "full-time" agent, with plenty of experience in this market. You want someone who REALLY knows how to market in today's climate. James had a great point about using care in how you choose, because often I hear of people who "use a friend, a relative", etc. and it doesn't work out well.

Selling your home is a pretty intimate transaction. You'll want to work with someone you feel that you can trust, someone you may be working with on an almost day-to-day basis for a number of months. You'll want to have a true professional!

If I may help you in any way, please don't hesitate to let me know! I work in Carlsbad almost daily!

Patti Phillips
President, North San Diego Women's Council of Realtor's
800-680-9133

Steve, picking one agent from the many good agents that are vying for your attention is a herculean task, especially right now. Most people pick one from a referral of a good friend or relative. You may already have a relative in the business already. The trouble with those options is if it doesn't work out sombody's feelings may be bruised, maybe yours. If you throw your hat into the ring, such as you have already done here, you will be inundated with "pick me offers" to produce their credentials for you. I bet you have already recieved a call before I could post this. We all have those credentials, some real and relavent, others less so. There will be so many that it will come down to a blind guess.

Another way would be to go to the California Association of Realtors and search for an agent that lists Carlsbad as their home area. The agent profiles there will also list their areas of specialty and other personal information. You will find links there to their websites where you can also get a grasp of their personalities and ethics. Once you find a few candidates this way, call each one and interview them out of the blue. From those pick several that can think on their feet for a personal interview at your home. The one you should pick will immediately relate to your issues, not their agenda. That candidate should have some years of experience, remember, this is the first downturn of the market in many years. They need to know the area where you are interested. Ask them questions, many questions about selling homes and about what to expect if you list your home with them. Pick the one with good answers and a sense of humor. Good Luck! I hope I get a call soon.