Five Common Myths About Homeselling
Posted by Chris Tesch on Mon, Oct 26, 2009
Thinking of selling your Bryan or College Station home? Choose your College Station real estate agent carefully. Don't simply rely on word of mouth (though that can be a good beginning point) but check out the agent that you're thinking about dealing with. There are many myths about homesales that carry a bit of truth but a create a lot of hype. Let's look at a few of them.
1) Hire a Realtor who's been in the market for years.
Sounds like a winner...doesn't it? Just hire a real estate agent that's been around in Bryan or College Station for years and you'll have made the right choice. However what you have to look at is not necessarily length of career, but achievements within their career. Someone who's been a College Station real estate agent for 30 years but only sells 3-4 homes a year is probably a worse bet than someone who's been in real estate for 5 years and sells 50 homes a year. Their knowledge is more up to date, so they can price your home more accurately and they have a ready pool of potential buyers.
2) The agent with the lowest days on the market is the right one to choose.
There are many reasons to dispute this myth. In general days on the market might show you something about the agent, but not necessarily that their marketing skills are spectacular. Some agents artificially keep their days on the market low. How do they do this, you ask....Well there are several ways to make it possible.
The first is that the agent may take only listings that will sell quickly (I know a real estate agent that is part of a husband and wife team, somehow one of them always gets the easy listing and the other one the tough listings).
The agent may price their listings too low, making everything they sell an absolute bargain. You don't want to get less for your home even if it has less days on the market unless you really need to move it immediately.
These are just two of a long line of other reasons why days on the market may not be the indication of a good agent.
3) The Realtor is with brand X, a nationally known company so they've got to be good.
This is a very common myth. The fact is that real estate companies don't hire people, they recruit them. There are good and bad agents at just about any company. Yes, the national exposure will definately help but don't assume that the agent has been screened carefully. Real estate agents are self employed and pay franchising fees to work with a company. There are many companies out there who are agent mills. They will take anyone who can fog a mirror into their firm. If they prosper then the company has made money. If they don't do well the company hasn't lost much.
4) The Realtor is going to advertise in the paper so we'll get lots of exposure.
As an agent I use all of those tools, absolutely. However, in the years I've been selling College Station real estate I've found them to be less and less effective. There was a time when Sunday and Monday the phones would ring off the hook for the latest property listings in the newspaper. No more! The buyers we get now are going to the internet to look. Over 94% of buyers start their search on the web. It's increasingly important to have a large web presence, not necessarily for the company, but for the agent themselves. Which leads us to Myth #5.
5) My agent has a great looking website so I'm getting exposure.
Early in my career when I established my website I heard a saying that's always stuck with me. A website that isn't advertised and optimized is like a sign on a road with no traffic. Web traffic is essential to getting exposure for your home. Not just any web traffic either, but targeted traffic with buyers that are actively looking for homes. Many agents put up their website and forget about it. They then pull it out during the listing presentation like it's a huge benefit. Check your agent out on the web before hiring them. Google their names. If they can't even rank as one of the highest results with their own names they certainly won't rank highly in competitive key words. Then put your "buyer hat" on and search for what a potential home buyer would look for. Some popular terms are College Station real estate or Bryan Texas real estate. See how they rank. There will be national company websites that come up first that they simply cannot compete with, but in which your home will be one of thousands. Look for the actual agents and how they rank.
Ask the prospective agent how much they spend on their website per month. Good websites and excellent exposure don't come cheaply. My website runs around $2500 a month between advertising and administration with the lions share going to advertising.
Join me for more College Station buyer and seller myths in the near future. In the meantime choose wisely! Your home is one of the largest investments you'll ever make!