What services/information is traditionally provided by a realtor?

[Scott Bartlett]

I've been using the same Realtor to view my potential properties and then if I like the property, I'd submit my offer through the Realtor.

What I'm curious is:

Do Realtors provide a comparable property analysis if asked?

When I look at a property, I want to know what the comparable would be for a house assuming that the property was fixed to above average/great condition.

I don't want a "Typically they could go between X and X in this neighborhood." type answer. I want to request an actual data driven answer, since all of my research and calculations are based on data. I want to see pictures of actual houses, what they were sold for, when and ect. The same information you'd find in an appraisal, but I don't want the property itself appraised, just the comparable.

Any way of asking for one of these, or what would I ask for in this case? Would there be any costs associated with a request like this?

[J Scott]

It's pretty typical for an agent to provide a Comparable Market Analysis (CMA) which contains several comps and an opinion of likely resale amount. And it's certainly not unreasonable for you to ask.

My question to you would be how much of these are you asking for in relationship to the number of offers you're putting in and the number of contracts you're getting. If you ask for 50 CMAs, and then only put in 5 offers (or put in a bunch of really low offers that don't result in many contracts), you're basically asking your agent to do a lot of work for little return.

But, if you're looking at 10 properties, asking for 5 CMAs, putting in 4 offers, and getting 2 accepted, that's not an unreasonable amount of work for what the agent is getting on their side.