Selecting the right agent

[Kris L.]

So I have a house I am going to be selling in a couple weeks in the Clearwater Florida area, but I’m confused about what the agents are saying. I have it narrowed down to two agents, one has more general experience in the area and are part of a large organization. The other is a smaller operation which does a lot of business in the specific neighborhood the house is in. The first agent is absolutely certain the house will sell in the high 400’s. The other is equally certain it will sell around 550. This is a pretty critical difference. The one with the higher number has 1 active and 3 pending listings pretty similar to my property. These range low 500s to the mid 600s. there just aren’t many sold properties in the neighborhood in the last 3 months and even out to 6 months is limited. of course the sale of hurricane damaged houses also confuses the issue (my house had no such damage but is only about 4 blocks from houses that did).

Is the higher price agent inflating to get the listing or is the lower price agent just not keyed in well enough in the specific neighborhood?

[Kris L.]

Quote from @Caleb Brown:

I would go with the one that is the specialist in the area. They seem to know what they are doing for that pocket and has the track record to prove it. Can either agent provide comps? That would show you exactly what they are each looking at to compare your property

They did both provide comps.  Looking more closely the higher price agent seemed to provide overall better comps though one or two that I would have considered comps at a somewhat lower price didn’t make it.

the Lower price agent had a very unimpressive CMA which included a hurricane damage property sold for land value and another that was an auction, so in retrospect, I’m not too convinced that the lower price agent really knows what they are doing.