Finding a good agent out-of-state

[Andrew Saquing]

For those of you who invest in property outside of your state; how did you find the agent that you use?

Did you know the area very well or did your agent advise you on where the good/bad areas were?

I have begun calling a few agents in the area I am interested in but it seems that its hard to get an idea of what the agent is like over the phone. Any help is appreciated.

Cheers,
Andy

[Jake Kucheck]

The agents we use on the resale for properties we buy at auction, but we generally don't meet them in person, either. Since it's my job to make sure our agents don't suck, I've developed a few different criteria.

1) Response time. If you take more than an hour to get back to me, and I am giving you several listings per month, you're going to annoy me. The more I'm annoyed, the less I'm inclined to give you listings.

2) General common sense. If a property has something glaring about it that I can't necessarily tell from the Google street view or an aerial view- tell me about it. Don't tell me things like "the property is nice" or "I think it's a good house". Your job as an agent is to give me facts, my job as a buyer is to determine whether or not the facts make it a good deal.

3) Familiarity with the area. Where we buy- there are several areas that can vary wildly in value from street to street, or even sometimes on the same street. If you're an agent that works that area, you should know that, and I shouldn't have to guess. These are the facts I was talking about.

4) Presentation. If you have a "@earthlink.net" email address, we're probably not going to get along.

There are other things that come up but those are the main things I look at. Also, I can look up an agents transactional history, and they should know that, so if they lie about that- probably not good.