REAL ESTATE AGENTS

We learned quite a few things about working with a realtor while buying our first house. Here are some thoughts:

(1) Choose the right realtor!  This is key.  Your choice of realtor will have a large impact on your house buying experience because of the large number of important steps the realtor has to help you with.  For instance, your realtor will:

(a) find houses that fit your criteria and price range,
(b) make appointments and take you to see houses you want to see in person,
(c) help you bid on the house and negotiate a price until you sign a contract to buy the house, and
(d) help you get a house inspection
(e) provide referrals for getting price estimates on repairs you need to make to the house
(f) negotiate what you ask the seller to repair or credit you once you find problems in the house inspection
(g) walk you through the closing process  ("closing" is the final step of buying the house... it entails signing a lot of documents)

... and more!  Here's what we will look for next time we need a realtor:

• Years of experience in the area where we are buying a home
• The ability to describe things to us, answer all our questions, and patiently go over things again if we don't understand everything the first time
• A referral from somebody who will recommend the realtor to us.

(2)  Get a referral.  We called multiple realtors, found one who seemed to know her stuff, and chose her.  I wish we had gotten a referral from somebody who had used a realtor and had a good experience with him/her.  That came back to bite us HARD.  Next time, I would ask my co-workers, friends, neighbors, family -- and maybe even people waiting in line at the coffee shop in the morning -- for a referral.  If somebody can vouch that the realtor did a good job, then you have a better chance of also having a good experience with your realtor.

(3)  Ask a ton of questions. Tell the realtor when you have questions, and ask as many questions as you want.  This is not the time to pretend you understand something if you don't!  We did not understand the timing and deadline for our home inspection, and we asked for an explanation. We didn't fully understand the answer our realtor gave us, and we should have asked more questions. 

(4) TRUST YOUR INSTINCTS.  If you have a feeling that you should lower your bid or raise your bid, ask for a home inspection clause, request that a home warranty to be included in the house, get a second quote on the cost to repair the roof, get a new realtor, or anything else, trust your instincts!  You will often times be correct.

(5) Your realtor wants to find you a home you love but also wants to make a large commission on the sale and move on to another client.  Our realtor did a good job of sending us information on houses that might work for us.  We gave her a list of things we wanted, and she used that list to find houses that we wanted to go see.  Once we wanted to bid on the house, our realtor pushed us to put in a higher bid than we wanted to start with.  The realtor will get a commission from the sale -- a percentage of the final sale price will be paid by the seller to your realtor, since he/she found you as the home buyer.  So the higher the sale price, the more your realtor makes on the sale!  Remember that you should bid as much as you are happy to pay for the house, and do not raise your bid just because your realtor tells you that you need to pay more to get the house.  Sometimes you will lose the house to a higher bidder, but you should only bid what you think the house is WORTH and what you are WILLING TO PAY.