Real Estate Tips & Secrets

Okay, so now you have decided to sell, who will you choose to market and get the ultimate price for you? Your son wants the "good looking chick" from another suburb, your partner wants the local lass who just started and needs the money and you want someone who knows what they are doing. Who is right? Here are some tips to help you choose the right agent.

Look for experience: Be sure they are seasoned in the business - several years or more is best. After all why would you want someone learning on your time and money.

Look for Honesty: Many agents promise unrealistically high sales prices. In our trade it is called "buying the listing". A good agent suggest a fair and reasonable price based on the facts: Condition of the property, location, current market value supported by actual recent sales in the area, preferably that they have personally sold.

Look for References: A good agent will gladly provide you with names and phone numbers of past clients and you can speak to them if you wish. Also you can ask to look at their referrals from local Clubs and previous happy sellers or others willing to recommend them as excellent communicators and achievers.

Look for Compatability: Don't pick an aggressive smooth talking agent especially if you think they are "over the top" then the odds are they will be just that. There is no magic personality type that succeeds in selling homes. When you have looked at all the above, choose someone you are comfortable with and feel you can trust.

The benefits of professional real estate photography

There was a great article in the New York Times last year which is worth reading:

“Good photos will grab people’s attention and help you sell a home,” said Jacky Teplitzky, an executive vice president of Prudential Douglas Elliman Real Estate in New York. “Bad pictures will absolutely give you trouble, because you won’t have any calls on it, and nobody will come to see it.”

The article goes on to quote a survey by America’s National Association of Realtors, which found that 80 per cent of people across the country who bought a new home in 2006 used the Internet while house hunting, and they rated photographs as the most useful tool in their search. In fact, for people looking to buy a home, the photographs are more important than anything else you can throw at them.

I see these stats mirrored every day in my conversations with home owners. They’ve all seen the poor photos taken by some real estate agents, where everything looks dark, and the Corn Flakes are left on the table. And they all know that bad photos put them off checking out a home, and that good photos make a home more enticing.

Can the use of great photos also help you as an agent? Absolutely!

“If things look shoddy or unprofessional, not only are buyers going to find the property unappealing, they’re going to associate you with being shoddy and unprofessional.”
- Rosalind Clarke, a senior sales associate with the Corcoran Group in Palm Beach, Florida

Potential buyers are also potential sellers, and if they associate poor quality images with agents that are unprofessional, they're hardly going to be knocking on your door to sell their own home. A number of our clients have found that in regularly using Highshots to shoot their properties, they see an increase in the number of listings they get, and that's always good.

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