Real Estate Agent – WeVett

Should I Work with a Real Estate Agent?

Shannon Kaufman — Thu, 07 Dec 2023 21:56:50 +0000

If you are thinking about buying or selling a home, you are probably weighing the pros versus cons of using a real estate agent. The cost of homeownership can be high, do you really want to pay a realtor commission too? Is it worth it to use a real estate agent?

The short answer is: YES!

Here is a short list of seven reasons why using a real estate agent to buy or sell your home is totally worth it.

1. Access to all of the home listing databases.

Using online search engines to look for homes or scrolling your favorite real estate phone apps from multiple states away will only get you so far! Real estate agents have access to multiple databases that talk to each other allowing you to see the most up-to-date listings.

2. A hired tour guide.

Real estate agents are there to help you with the buying or selling process from start to finish. They understand the forms, reports, disclosures, and other legal and financial documents that are required to process sales. No need to add additional stress trying to figure that out by yourself!

3. Objective information.

Realtors are trained to have an unbiased eye when it comes to real estate. In fact, they are legally required to give unbiased, fact-based information without “steering” their clients towards or away from homes or neighborhoods.They will help you meet your buying goals without busting your budget and provide you all the best local knowledge at your new PCS location!

4. Make more money selling your home.

Statistically, agents help homes sell for more versus those “For Sale by Owner.” 2022 data from the National Association of Realtors show that FSBO homes sold at a median of $225,000 last year, significantly lower than the median of agent-assisted homes at $330,000. If your agent charges a 6% commission, but you sell for 23% less, you are giving up 17% in value!

5. Walking Rolodexes.

If this is your first time going through the home buying process, it can get tricky. Unexpected things often pop up. Real estate agents have a long list of contacts for anything you may need. Looking for a lawyer at midnight? Are you suddenly in a termite crisis? The kitchen sink is leaking? Your agent will have tried and true recommendations to call.

6. Selling a home vs. Marketing it.

Homes do not just sell themselves. You will not sell a home by listing it on a website and leaving it there. Homes need to be marketed! Your real estate agent will be able to get the home listed on the best websites, market its eye-catching qualities, and share the house in their regular networks. Make sure your home gets the visibility it needs!

7. Local Experience.

Even if you have lived in a city your entire life, knowing the nuances of a real estate market are extremely complex if you are not actively engaged in it on a daily basis. As a military home buyer, it is impossible to have that insight from afar.

Building a relationship with a local expert can provide a wealth of benefits. Everything from explaining traffic patterns, recommending local restaurants and highlighting little known city traditions to explaining the real estate negotiation landscape, bringing off-market properties to your attention or sharing crucial information about city growth that might affect future home prices.

In today’s digital world, it can be very tempting to downplay the part a real estate agent plays in the home buying and selling process. Why find a property with an agent when you can search it on Zillow? (Fun fact, all of the information found on Zillow is provided by your local real estate agents!)

We believe though that there is still a huge amount of value in working with a real estate agent who is an expert in their field, especially if you are in the military and purchasing or selling from afar. Not only will your experience be smoother, but you might even develop a friendship that will outlast the close of your home sale.

If you are looking for a military-friendly real estate agent in your area and don’t know where to start, our sister company, WeVett Realty specializes in finding high quality, military-specialized real estate agents all over the country. Fill out a form on their website or give them a call to get started.

How to Vet a Real Estate Agent in 5 Steps

Shannon Kaufman — Tue, 01 Oct 2019 06:14:31 +0000

Homebuying on your mind and wondering where to begin? You’ve come to the right place to learn how to vet a real estate agent!

Our sister company, WeVett Realty focuses on helping active duty military relocate all across the country, and over the years we’ve learned a thing or two about picking the right real estate agent, especially if you need a military specialist.

If you are military, when you receive your next set of military PCS orders to move, what is the first thing you do when returning home that evening (or let’s be honest, when you get back to your desk at work)?

Do you quickly search the internet for details about your new city?

Scroll through listings of houses near your new military installation or office?

Calculate price points for buying vs. renting and dream of granite counter-tops and barbecue grills in the backyard?

Almost all of us take the time to vet the next home where we will live.

But how many of us take time to truly research and screen the real estate agent who will be the key player in helping find and secure that home?

In our earlier article, Russian Roulette: 3 Ways to Find an Agent, we outlined some of the techniques used to find a real estate agent. Most play Russian roulette, read reviews, or rely on a friend or relative to provide a recommendation. However, none of these are ideal solutions for finding the right real estate agent for you, especially if you are relocating.

Instead, we’ve tried-and-tested a five step process that will help you to ultimately end up with the best agent for your unique situation. Below is the basic framework for how to vet an agent.

How to Vet a Real Estate Agent

1. Understand Your Real Estate Needs

2. Collect and Analyze Historical Data

3. Pre-Screen the Top Agents

4. Interview the Best Real Estate Agents

5. Connect and Begin Your Real Estate Transaction

This process should take someone with little real estate experience around 7-10 hours to thoroughly complete.

Because of their experience with real estate and relocation, this will typically take the WeVett Realty team 3-6 hours, ensuring a quick turnaround on a vetted agent for military buyers and sellers.

Whether you take the time yourself, or have WeVett Realty research and interview an agent for you, you will greatly increase your chances of success in your real estate transaction.

Now, let’s take a deeper look at each step:

1. Understand Your Real Estate Needs:

Boil down your home needs to the essentials and “must-haves” then write them down. Since you’re going to be spending time interviewing multiple real estate agents, you’ll want to be very certain and comfortable with the basics of your search.

If you’re buying a home, determine the size of home, number of bedrooms and bathrooms, any major family needs (like a large backyard or mother-in-law suite), price point, etc. Keep these home buying needs simple to start. Once you narrow down your pool of agents in steps four and five, you’ll be able to go more in depth.

The most important part of step one, and the most often missed, is understanding your personality and what personality in a real estate agent will best fulfill your expectations.

If you are analytical and cost-driven you might look for someone who can provide you a lot of information on the market, good comparable homes, breakdowns of pricing, demographics, etc.

If you are relationship and community-driven you might look for someone who is well-connected and can share all the ins and outs of the city, neighborhoods and local insights.

Some agents are 5-stars because they are excellent with the analytical details, however, if you are relationship and community-driven, you likely won’t have a very fulfilling real estate experience with them (and vice versa).

Know your needs, and know the basic type of personality that you’re looking for in an agent before you start step two.

2. Collect and Analyze Historical Data:

WeVett Realty researches and reviews all of the multiple listing service data in your relevant city. They then compare that data with the top agents who fit your basic criteria from step one.

If you’re looking to buy, they look for agents who are experienced as a buyer’s agent. Similarly, if you are selling, they’ll look for an agent who specializes in listings. WeVett Realty also analyzes if the agent’s previous transactions match your price range and if they are well-versed in the area of town you are looking to buy or sell.

This step can be challenging as an individual and tends to take a good amount of time to complete, but using sites such as Realtor.com, Zillow and Trulia can help.

Make sure to reference multiple sites during your research, as each site is prone to its own issues (that’s a story for another article).

Start by searching in your relevant zip code – look for agents that have 2+ years experience minimum, have strong 5-star reviews, and show that they have at least 20 transactions for the year (although the number of transactions might be more or less based on location.)

This data can help weed out a lot of agents. Make a list of the agents that pass your initial scan.

From there, dive in deeper. Read the reviews, look for agents that have experience with relocation, with military moves, with VA loans. See if they have any negative reviews. Check their personal websites and even their Facebook pages. Look for indicators of whether or not they will fit your criteria from step one.

Once you have researched and reviewed as much data as you can handle, jot down the top agents on your list. Ideally, this list should consist of at least 3 – 10 real estate agents.

3. Pre-Screen the Top Agents:

Now that you have a good grasp of your own needs and a list of potential agents, on to pre-screening.

First, determine the questions you will ask the agents. The questions should be a structured series so that you can make the calls quickly and ensure that you’re evaluating each agent using the same method.

Include criteria similar to previous steps, such as number of years as an agent, 12 month transaction history, do they work with more buyers or sellers, have they dealt with out of town buyers/sellers, etc.

It’s essential that this pre-screen is a phone call. Remember, in step one how we mentioned that personality type is important? Even though it may seem easier, unfortunately, emails and text messages won’t provide you a good indication of your agent’s personality.

When you call the agents from your list, make sure that when you ask them your predetermined questions, you get a straight answer back. Many real estate agents are superb salespeople (which is good, as it will help you buy or sell a home!), but you want to get to the core of their skill level, not just hear their sales pitch during this pre-screen.

4. Interview the Best Real Estate Agents:

Pick the top three agents from your pre-screen and conduct a second interview to gauge their overall real estate expertise, confirm their skill with relocation and determine whether they will be a good match for you.

It might even be helpful to have your spouse sit in with you or conduct the interview themselves. This offers you a second opinion.

If you conduct both the pre-screen and the final interview yourself, that’s okay too. At the very least it provides a second opportunity to learn the agent’s mannerisms and determine if they were being honest and open during the pre-screen.

Out of all the steps, this one is essential.

At this point, you have gathered all the facts and made a careful examination. This final interview is your opportunity to be more critical and ask your top agents open-ended questions, such as “What experience do you have working with military?”, “How do you conduct long distance showings, and inspections?”, and “What sets you apart as an agent?”

The key here is that you ask a standard set of questions to evaluate each agent fairly, but you keep those questions open-ended so that you can get an honest response from each agent. These open-ended questions will help you flush out the sales pitch from reality.

The good news is, this step is when you finally start to appreciate and see the rewards of your labor. A high quality, well-suited real estate agent is more than worth it!

5. Connect and Begin Your Real Estate Transaction:

Finally, after all of the long hours of research, the numerous phone calls, and subsequent headaches and fatigue, you are at the successful end of your vetting process.

Based on your top agent interviews, choose the most qualified agent and, more importantly, the one that “felt right”.

Not to discourage you, but vetting is just the beginning of your home buying/selling process. If you have the right agent though, what could have been a long, arduous task will now be much more enjoyable!

Inform your new agent that you have chosen them as your real estate agent and that you’d like to get started!

Your agent, presuming you picked well, will now hit the ground running to help you either buy or sell your home!

If you’ve read through the above five step vetting process and are feeling overwhelmed by the task, remember, WeVett Realty is here to help at no cost to you. They will vet and connect you with a real estate agent within 24 hours! Get started here or give them a call at 937-907-0150.

3 Ways to Find a Military Real Estate Agent Russian Roulette-Style

Evan Kaufman — Tue, 01 Oct 2019 05:07:17 +0000

Those of us in the military or in a corporate position who are regularly relocated to different cities across the country have a unique set of needs when it comes to buying or selling a home.

Electronic signature capabilities, WiFi communication, virtual showings and the ability to coordinate power of attorney signatures while out of country, can make a world of a difference.

Overall though, the biggest need is to have someone you can trust during the real estate transaction in order to make the transition smooth. In most cases, that person is your real estate agent.

How do you find the best military real estate agent?

Most typically rely upon Russian roulette, online reviews, a distant friend’s cousin’s recommendation (if we’re lucky) or some combination of the three.

Before we start the journey of finding the best real estate agent for military relocation, let’s first dive into understanding the three methods most commonly used to find a real estate agent.

Top Ways People Find a Military Real Estate Agent

1. Russian Roulette:

While the details are a little varied, this method is essentially a game of chance.

You simply call the first relevant real estate agent that appears in a search result or the agent whose name appears on a home listing.

From an initial time investment perspective, this is by far the quickest method to find an agent. However, don’t be surprised if your real estate experience ends in confusion, frustration, or worse, complacency.

Truth be told, when playing roulette, an ‘okay’ experience (not taking the bullet!) is more dangerous than a ‘bad’ experience because it promotes a second spinning of the gun for your next move. (After all, it worked out ‘okay’ the first time!)

The problem with real estate Russian roulette is there is more than one bullet in the chamber.

You could feasibly end up with one okay experience and then three consecutive bad experiences (if you PCS and are purchasing/selling more than once.)

The odds of a happy ending next time around are not in your favor. In fact, due to the incredible number of real estate agents in the industry (including part time agents, weekend workers, brand new licensees, etc.), the odds are probably against you.

There are many military buyers and sellers who have relocated several times and experienced vast differences in the quality of real estate agent each time.

This can not only result in frustration for you, but can also majorly impact the success of your real estate transaction.

2. Online Reviews:

There are numerous websites out there that provide you with reviews or objective quantitative data – both claim to find you the best agent.

Taking this approach is better than going in blind; however, just because an agent has a 5-star review for someone else doesn’t mean they can operate at a 5-star level for you as a relocating client.

Think of the last time someone recommended you their favorite restaurant.

For me, it was a 5-star recommendation from a friend for the supposed best restaurant in town. Unfortunately, the restaurant happened to be Indian cuisine, and I’m not a fan of curry. I would rate the experience 3-stars (although the dessert was pretty good!)

The same thing happens in real estate. You might see a 5-star review for an agent that specializes in selling, but what if you happen to be buying a home?

You might even find a glowing 5-star review given by a local (who had a great face-to-face interaction with the agent), but what if you can’t meet your agent in person until the day you carry your boxes through the door of your new home?

You need someone who understands the hectic travel, temporary duty (TDY) or deployment schedules that riddle your months leading up to closing.

Trusting one of your biggest investments, in terms of both time and money, solely to a 5-star review is akin to Russian roulette, but now you’re lucky enough to at least know the ‘make’ of the gun.

3. Friend Recommendations:

This final method of finding your military real estate agent can be more reliable than the other two, but you have to recognize and understand any differences between your friend’s situation and your own.

Like the review method, friend recommendations can fall victim to bias.

Because your friend knows you personally, they will ideally be able to provide you with more personalized and relevant information about the agent than a review would, however, they will typically be biased towards their needs, not necessarily yours.

You can’t fault them for their bias, of course, because they are drawing on their own experience. Just be well aware of your differences if you rely upon a friend or family member’s recommendation.

Looking back to my curry example, the person who recommended their top restaurant to me was one of my best friends. I assumed that he knew I did not like Indian food, but even he can’t know everything.

Your friends and family might know you well, but that doesn’t necessarily make them qualified to provide the best real estate agent specifically for you.

These methods commonly used to vet agents might seem comical or rudimentary, but aren’t far off for many people.

How did you find your last real estate agent? How did your friends and family find theirs?

After years of helping military PCS and relocate all over the country, our sister company, WeVett Realty has developed a system of steps that helps to minimize the chance of error in finding a good real estate agent when relocating from one city to another. Check out our 5 Steps to Vet an Agent to learn more.

The steps are quite simple, but the key comes down to creating the right combination of questions to ask and taking the time to execute.

In all honesty, that’s the hardest part about truly vetting real estate agents—taking the time to do it and having the experience to understand what the agent is saying.

WeVett Realty was created specifically for this purpose! If you’d like a streamlined, no commitment way to find a military real estate agent, get started with WeVett Realty here or call 937-907-0150.