Hiring the right agent may be the most important decision you'll make when selling your home. Your agent is who you will rely on to help you price your home, market your home, and negotiate the sale. And all of these need to be done well, if you want to maximize your sale price. So today I'll share some tips on how you can find a great real estate agent in Edmonton, to help you get your home sold.

One of the keys to hiring a top REALTOR® is to know what you should be looking for. Most people don't deal with REALTOR® regularly and many have never dealt with an agent. So, how can they even know what they should be looking for? 

Some great questions that you can ask potential REALTORs® to sort out the contenders from the pretenders. Not all real estate agents are even close to being the same. I mean, having a real estate license doesn't make you a good realtor, any more than having a driver's license makes you a good driver. In fact, in our area, there are over 3000 agents, and most sell less than 10 homes a year. Many agents don't even work full-time. And many more home sellers will let a friend or a family member try to sell their home without really asking the right questions. Many agents actually would prefer that you didn't ask these questions that I'm about to share with you. So here are five great questions to start with. 

Question number one, why should I hire you over any other real estate agent?  As I mentioned, there are over 3000 agents you can choose from so why choose this agent over all the others? What differentiates them? If they can't provide some really good reasons as to why you should hire them, and why they're the best qualified for the position of your REALTOR®, keep looking. If they can't sell you on themselves, how can you expect them to sell buyers on your home? 

Question two, do you have any buyers who would be interested in our home? If so, how many, and how do you plan to find more? Most agents do not have a specific answer for whether or not they have access to buyers, how to locate more buyers, or even who the ideal buyer for your home is. If they don't know who the ideal buyer for your home is, how can they possibly market to them? If they're starting from scratch to look for a buyer, you can expect it will take some time before buyers come out to look at your home, if at all. Now a good real estate agent will have a large clientele or database of buyers who are looking for a home right now, so you'll get more people viewing your home faster. 

Question three, how do you come up with a price for our home? Many agents abdicate their pricing strategy to what the internet says it's worth or the city tax assessment or, they just take a look at the average in your area but, really what's the average? Worse yet, they often tell the sellers an unrealistically high price and then try to lower the price later on. Don't play that game. Pricing is not an exact science, but it's not a guessing game either. An agent should be able to articulate to you how they arrived at their suggested asking price for your home. Do not just pick a number that they think you'll like.

Question four, what is your marketing plan for our home? What most agents do is take some pictures and put the home on the multiple listing service and then hope another agent will bring them a willing buyer. Well, that's not enough. Not even close. Only about half the homes listed on MLS actually sell. So if you want to improve those odds, you're going to need an aggressive action plan for marketing your home. That includes online and offline marketing systems, as well as, incentives for buyers to choose your home over other homes. Marketing is far more than just advertising. 

Question five, if we're not happy with the job you're doing can we cancel our listing? If an agent is confident in their ability they should be willing to back up their service with more than just words. A cancellation guarantee is a great way to keep your agent accountable to you every day. If you hired any other professional and you weren't happy with the job they were doing, you would fire them and so would I. So why should your agent be any different?

Well, those five questions should give you a good start to finding a top real estate agent in Edmonton but if you would like to arm yourself with more questions you can visit top 10 questions you should ask before hiring an agent. Now if you'd like to know our answers to these questions or any other questions you may have you can call me (Dwight Streu) at 780-462-5002 or email Dwight@DwightStreu.com.