Evaluating Listing agents

[Islam Abdallah]

Up until this point, I've been using flat fee listing agents to list my properties, main reason being cost ($500/ listing vs 3% of sale price). But as time has gone on and i'm listing more properties, my flat fee agent just doesn't have a real marketing plan besides putting it on the MLS, which is beginning to hurt my DOM and overall bottom line. I'd also like to develop a relationship with a solid realtor to 1) sell my houses quicker and help out identifying latest market trends and 2) potentially bring in more deals to me. I've also gotten feedback from other realtors that they typically don't like showing a home listed by a flat fee agent (unless requested by the client) due to them knowing they won't get a regular paycheck once the deal is closed (at least that's what they tell me which i haven't fully understood why since the buyer pays their portion of the closing costs, could use some help here). My question to everyone is how do i quantitatively assess a listing agent based on some critical criteria such as average DOM, how many houses have they sold, expertise in the area, etc? I try to be very cognizant of pricing the property right based on the comps, but every agent I've talked to says they have powerful software and marketing tools, we have a large network, i have worked this area for years, etc, which makes it difficult to solid data. Any and all thoughts are greatly appreciated. Thanks!

[Dennis Williams]

Islam I am an agent in Orlando FL. After reading your post I see some of those same deals down here. I do things a bit different than most REALTORS. Have you heard of the term, you get what you pay for? That is exactly what you have here. I've been in Real Estate for a year but have been an entrepreneur in sales for 16 years. You need a REALTOR that works with buyers and sellers.

For what I have been told in Orlando Florida and from what I have experienced, the majority of REALTORS are lazy and don't want to do any extra work. They treat the listing like a store instead of a product. They want people to come to the store by putting it on the MLS where it is invisible to people who drive around looking for open houses, new construction, for sale by owners, and garage sales.

What you need to ask the REALTOR is what his/her plan is when they sale a home. For example, I have a grass roots plan that drives bad/good credit people to open houses in the area. Once they show up, I make sure everyone signs-in. The bad credit people are put into our credit program where some will be able to buy in 6 to 8 months. The good credit buyers who are ready to buy will either write a contract that day or sometimes they need some time to think about it. Either way, we do another open house, a week later, in the same neighborhood but different house, and invite new and the old bad/good credit people.

We continue to do this in one area every week that way we always have buyers ready to buy our product because we as the agents turn ourselves into the store. This does three things for us, we get new buyers, we get neighbors that see the traffic and want to sell, and we start to build a reserve of bad credit buyers that turn into good buyers month-to-month.

Experience helps yes, but if they cannot sell, or have a plan, it doesn't matter how many homes they have sold. For all you know the sales they made could have been to family, friend, shared a listing with someone else that sold the place, and/or just got lucky with a buyer.

By the way, if you have a property that you paid the flat fee to list it on the MLS in Orlando, Kissimmee, or Celebration Florida, let me know. I will help you sell it. If we get a buyer that has an agent already, great. You'll save the 3% and we will consider the extra buyers we picked up from the open house as payment (Not the ideal plan..lol). Hope this helps.