Finding a Realtor

[Juan Diaz]

I’ve worked with many realtors in my time, and I can tell you that there are a wide variety of strategies that can be used. Some realtors will offer to take 1% off their commission, some realtors will impress you with their personality, and still others will impress you with their knowledge of the market.

A word of warning: don’t be fooled by cut-rate realtors! Unless you’ve proven yourself as a flipper, and are offering them a pretty significant amount of houses you’ll be flipping every year, the type of realtors who work at a discount tend to be lower-quality realtors. Their goal is to attract business, and thus invest much less time in each client. As a beginning flipper, that’s NOT something that will work for you. As a beginning flipper, you’ll want to be picking your realtor’s brain at every opportunity to learn as much as you can about real estate.

To do that, what you want to watch out for someone with both knowledge of the market and a personality that’s going to go over well at open houses. To get a feel for the realtor, I recommend going to open houses, and seeing what the realtors are like in action. Collect some cards, and get a feel for what the realtor is like relating to clients. Watch how they interact with the interested customers, and what sort of knowledge their responses convey. Do they make customers feel comfortable and informed as they look at the house? There’s nothing worse than a real estate agent who rubs customers the wrong way. In my time, I’ve come across real estate agents who have been drinking on the job, have insulted realtors representing customers and generally acted like jerks. You’ll want to avoid these realtors like the plague.

When you’re looking for realtors, one of the other things you’ll want to look out for is what kind of houses the realtor represents. Are they representing run-down junkers? Or are they representing fabulous finished houses? Some realtors specialize in million-dollar houses, some realtors specialize in bank-owned properties. You’ll want to find a realtor that tends to specialize in the geographic area you’re flipping in, and in the particular type of housing that you’ll be flipping. An agent who represents exclusively cheap houses 20 miles away from where you want to work is going to be useless if you’re looking at a mid-level neighborhood near you.

At the same time, some agents will have a broader area of expertise. If there’s not much inventory in your market, you may find that agents will tend to have a broader scope both geographically and in type of housing that they represent. If that is the case, you can go with a generalist real estate agent, but you will want to make sure that the agent has experience selling houses of the type that you will be selling.

Once you’ve identified a list of agents who are both personable and are selling the type of house you’re looking for, it’s necessary to make sure that they know about the market. Ask them a list of questions about the market, their opinions of what sells and what doesn’t, which neighborhoods are hot, and where they think the market is going. If you’re looking for suggestions, we’ve created a list of questions you can ask your prospective realtors. Once you’ve gone and asked your candidates these questions, you should have a feel for who seems to know your market best. Based on their expertise, type of housing they’re working with, and their manner at open houses, you can now select a real estate agent.

Congratulations! You've now found a real estate agent who should be a fantastic resource for you as you embark on your flipping career. This real estate agent should be able to provide you with MLS access, as I described earlier, and is also a resource in their own right, with information about the market and neighborhoods.