BEST ANSWER
FIRST ANSWER
The best way to handle this is to have another Realtor refer you to one in that area. Unfortunantly, there are too many people who think its "fun" to contact a Realtor via email and make them think that they are going to sell a property that they don't own, or who just want to get comps and make up a long story about how they are going to put the property on the market. The realtor does a lot of work, gets the answers that the person is looking for, then never hears from them again. As a result, many agents ignore people who come in strictly from an email without any clue where they got the Realtors information. When the request comes from another Realtor with a note that this is a serious seller looking for information prior to placing his property on the market the Realtors pay attention. I would stick to larger Realty companies when you are dealing long distance, since the smaller ones won't have the support systems in place to deal with the sellers several states away that the larger companies will have, plus the larger companies will have a network in place with sister companies where it take them one phone call to find someone and small companies typically won't have much of a network.
All it takes to set up a referral is the full names of everyone on the title, their addresses, phone numbers, and emails. The legal address of the property (and if it's rural, the closest town). It only takes a few minutes to set up a referral during regular work hours, and you would be contacted by a Realtor from that area within a few hours. That Realtor will then discuss the property with you to get the basic information about it, so that they could research the recent comparable sales. They would also be able to discuss with you the steps that would need to be taken to put the property on the market in that area (and yes, we put property on the market when the sellers aren't in the area all the time, often with estates, vacation properties that are no longer wanted, etc). Now some types of property aren't sold through Real Estate Companies (like Time Shares), in which case, we would need to refer you to a different type of agent.
Tue May 6 2008, 22:19