Is a Listing Agent a glorified task rabbit? (not trolling)

[Aaron Caddel]

I was just reading through the recent post asking for the TOP quality they look for in a real estate agent. The comments that followed were extremely depressing. They looked more like a list of soft skills most would consider basal expectations for a virtual admin: "Responsive" "Hard Working" "Communicative" "Reliable" etc. Remember that for most people, this is the LARGEST TRANSACTION of their lifetime.

After soft skills, the second trend is throwing out the all-mighty word, "Experience." It's a fun, hard to define (and unfalsifiable) word that is hard to challenge when the card is pulled. Often, this merely points to another shallow value proposition. I know plenty of contractors who have tons of experience but I wouldn't let bid a job regardless of the price. Contrarily, I've known agents, contractors etc who became juggernauts in their market within a year or two by being smarter and harder working than everyone else around them.  Experience alone isn't a value proposition that draws a necessary correlation to results.

So... what is it then? For a listing agent, I believe the greatest goal here is NOT just convenience, legal knowledge, etc. It's about maximizing home value, so how should you choose a real estate agent to achieve that goal? 

(before you respond, please make sure your response describes the agent, not the brokerage: eg. marketing reach of keller williams still doesn't mean a agent is good at their job)

[Irene Nash]

A worthwhile listing agent is not a task rabbit, but a lot of listing agents don't do what they should.

A great listing agent is highly skilled at pricing, number 1. That includes treating every market like it's a new market, even if they just listed a home in that market 3 weeks ago. (Not doing this is why a lot of 'neighborhood experts' get caught off guard when the market is transitioning up or down - they've called themselves the neighborhood expert a few too many times and they're not doing the research anymore.)

Secondly, great listing agents are highly skilled at increasing the market value of the listing before it ever goes on market. This means:

a) coming up with a plan of realistic recommendations (varies by what seller is able to do)

b) helping the seller execute that plan to the best extent reasonable (varies by situation)

c) staging every home, whether vacant or occupied (we do our own staging but it's professional grade, for occupied homes it's usually removing some furniture, shifting other furniture around to enhance flow and feel of space, sometimes adding furniture pieces if the originals date the home too much, i.e. trading out a coffee table or couch, etc.), usually replacing ALL art work and most decor items, advising on specific paint colors that are good for resale, consulting on outdoor plantings/landscaping and often just installing some plants ourselves. Sellers get overwhelmed and it's easier to say 'just do exactly this' and 'we're taking care of this other thing'.

d) getting professional grade photos, whether that means hiring or doing it yourself. And by pro grade that means multiple exposures of each shot professionally blended so that lighting is perfect and you can see clearly out the windows (easy to find people who know how to do blending on Fiverr). 

Just staging, or just pro photos, doesn't do it - you need both.

This all involves understanding what buyers want, what the 'hot buttons' for that specific listing are going to be, not accidentally emphasizing downsides in the photos or remarks (I'm not talking about hiding anything, I'm just saying in our MLS we have a limited number of photos and characters in which to sell the house and I see these wasted with non-appealing or even repelling info sometimes).

Most listing agents get some of these right, very few get most or all of them right.

And sometimes after seeing online photos I feel like the agent should be charged with some kind of criminal offense. My sister who listed in another state told me the agent was good at photos and when I saw them on the MLS I thought I was looking at shots of a Third World prison after a riot.

My husband and I actually flew across the country to do a home staging rescue. But that agent got paid the same commission that we get paid when we list a home. So I understand where your question is coming from.