Real Estate: Questions to Ask when Split is Forcing You to Buy or Sell a Home
When you’re selling your home or searching for a new one, a Realtor may be a godsend, particularly if you’re going through a divorce and time is critical to the equation.
“People in divorce situations tend to use their Realtor as a weapon of mass destruction. It’s all about communications. If communications are set up at the time of listing and the Realtor is not used as a weapon everyone’s best interest is served,” said Laurie Manny, a top producer associated with Prudential California Realty in Long Beach.
Here is a list of questions Manny suggests you can ask when hiring a Realtor to sell your home.
1. What is my home worth in today’s market?
2. How long will it take to sell my house? If the answer is 60 to120 days or longer, how much will my home be worth then?
3. How are you going to market my house and get a buyer?
4. How are you going to reach the customer that will buy my house?
5. Do you have the ability to send my property to page one of Google?
6. How many Web sites are you active on and how many sites do you have a powerful presence on?
The flip side of the coin is you’re looking for a home in a particular area and you want to get the best deal. Isa Realtor the way to go? What questions should you ask a prospective agent? Here are Manny’s thoughts:
“You definitely need a strong Realtor who knows the market and understands its ebb and flow. Such an agent will work for the client to get the best deal,” she maintains. As the buyer’s agent, Manny suggests a prospective buyer ask a Realtor:
1. How well do you know the market I’m shopping in?
2. Are you familiar with the property I’m interested in buying, or are you seeing it for the first time with me?
3. How are you planning on negotiating on my behalf? “You want a strong negotiator,” Manny adds.
4. What can I ask the seller for in today’s market? How far can you push the envelope?
5. Are you planning on showing me comparables for every property I’m interested in?
6. Would you be willing to pull tax records on these comparables to verify the MLS information?
In today’s down real estate market, what is Manny doing that she wasn’t doing two years ago when property when it was a seller’s market in California?”I’m talking directly to the customer on my blog. I’m educating the buyer and seller about today’s market,” she said. “There is nothing more important than educating the consumer in a market like this.”
Toward that end, Manny not only provides real estate education for buyers and sellers in the Long Beach area, but she can also provide the services of a mortgage broker, an appraiser, an investor and a home stager. Cliff Steffen, a Realtor with Keller Williams Realty in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., says in today’s real estate market a seller has to be prepared to reduce the price of his property. “The well-priced house will move very, very quickly,” he said.
For example, a house that might have sold for $750,000 in 2005 will probably go fast if it’s listed for $600,000 today. “If you need to sell your house quickly then you need to price it aggressively or it’s just going to sit there. You can’t think about what you could have sold it for two or three years ago, that’s just not today’s reality,” Steffen explained.
When someone lists a house with him, Steffen wants them to sign a year’s listing agreement.”It doesn’t make any sense to take a six months listing agreement because we’re going to spend several hundred dollars advertising your property. If for some reason you want to get out of your listing agreement with us, all we ask is that you pay for our out-of-pocket advertising expenses and $500, he said.
“How’s the market in Fort Lauderdale right now? “It’s extremely slow. There is at least a two-year inventory of condos right now, all the speculators are gone, getting credit with a bank is tight and many people have to sell because they got bad loans,” Steffen said.
“It may be another six months or a little more before the single-family market bottoms out, but the condo market still has along way to go,” he said. “We’re telling people if they can hold on and not sell for another six months to a year they should do it.Now is not the time to sell.”
Don Moore is a veteran newspaper editor and reporter who spent more than 40 years working at newspapers around Florida. He recently retired from the Port Charlotte, Fla., Sun-Herald. He can be reached at donmoore39@gmail.com.
