Benefits of Listing Your Home With a Local Agent.

May 5, 2011

One of the most important decisions to make once you’ve decided to sell your home is choosing the agent that is going to represent you. It’s important to choose an agent that really knows the neighborhood where your home is located, as well as understand what the local market is doing. Every Tuesday is brokers tour. Often times, the homes listed with agents from out of the area may appear on tour when it first comes on the market, and then doesn’t get re-toured by the agents because it’s not on tour again (assuming the home has not sold yet).

Another common issue I see with homes that are listed with out of area agents is that sometimes they are grossly under or over priced. Overpricing or underpricing a home can result in a big loss for the seller. If a home is totally overpriced, most likely, it’ll sit on the market, and require a price reduction, if not multiple price reductions, before it is finally sold. On the flip side, severely underpricing a property may attract the attention of the buyers, but if you only end up with one offer, then the sellers will probably walk away with a lot less money than if the home were priced at fair market value to begin with.

Lastly, local agents should be on tour every Tuesday or see any new listing in the area in order to understand the market, know the inventory as well as be familiar with homes that have previously sold, and your potential competition as a seller. Local agents will generally have a good working relationship with other agents (after all, other agents are usually the ones that have the buyers!). An agent that doesn’t work in the market where your home is being sold on a daily basis will have difficulty pricing your home accurately. Seeing previous home sales will enable you to add or subtract for different features (i.e., an attached garage vs. a detached garage, a level yard vs. one big deck). Don’t get me wrong here, I’m not bashing out of area agents, in fact, many of them probably do a great job and are very knowledgeable, but they probably do best in their own areas of expertise.