6 Signs You’ve Hired the Wrong Real Estate Agent

I’m going to preface this blog with the fact that there are many GREAT real estate agents in the Wilmington area. We’ve had the pleasure of working with some very professional individuals and teams on both the listing and selling side of closing transactions. However, I’m constantly watching what other real estate agents, both locally and in other parts of the country are doing, and there are people (just as there are in every field) that have left me shaking my head, and I hate to see home owners suffer due to a lack of knowledge. So…

If you’re thinking of hiring a real estate agent or you already have (this is not a solicitation for your listing), here are 6 signs you’ve hired the wrong agent.

1. They’ve offered no advice for preparing your home for sale. If the agent hasn’t given you any tips on staging, pricing, or addressing the negative features of your home (no property is perfect!), they may be afraid to anger you and/or lack the leadership skills needed to guide you through the selling process. Remember, a good agent might not always tell you what you want to hear, but they will tell you the truth and that’s what gets homes sold.
2. Your home’s description in the MLS is written in all caps, has poor punctuation, or is only a few sentences long. If the agent can’t take the time to write a description pointing out your home’s best features, they either don’t have enough experience to understand the role of the description in marketing your home online or they don’t care. Either way, they’re doing you a disservice.
3. The pictures of your home were taken with a smartphone. Cameras on smartphones are improving with each new generation of devices, but a professional knows that interior photos just don’t come out as clear or bright as pictures taken with a regular camera. Smartphones don’t function as well in low light conditions and the raw images regular cameras produce are of better quality. Also, many agents who use their smartphones to take photos don’t know how to use the included features or setup the shot to get the highest quality photos they can, so the home turns out looking dark and dingy. Pictures sell homes. They should be one of your listing agent’s biggest priorities.
4. After the home is listed, they rarely answer your phone calls. This is a big red flag! The job of the agent is to work WITH you to sell your home. If you can’t call them with your concerns or to ask questions, how can you trust they are going to help you make the best decision when you’re presented with an offer?
5.  You Google their name and they’re nowhere on the first (or second…or third…or fourth) page. 90% of home buyers conduct their search online. Yes, the number one priority is getting your home, not necessarily your agent, found online, but it doesn’t take much to get a profile indexed in a search engine. If they have no web presence, it’s likely they don’t take the trends of buyers seriously and won’t put much into marketing to them.
6. They don’t provide any samples of their marketing for your home. Your agent won’t be able to provide proof for every bit of marketing they do as some of it is done in-house and by word-of-mouth, but they should provide you some guidance on how to find your home online, as well as samples of the flyers and mailings they do. If you see nothing, you may want to question how much marketing they’ve actually done, because some agents think putting the home in the MLS is all the marketing they need to do. That’s like saying, “If you build it, they will come.” “They” won’t. I can promise you that.

If you want to avoid agent remorse, read 12 Questions You Should Ask Before Hiring Any Real Estate Agent. If you’re thinking of listing your Wilmington area home for sale, we’d be happy to answer all of your questions about listing and marketing. Give us a call at 910.202.2546!