Find the "Right" Agent Before the "Right" Home

It’s a common practice for buyers to make a list of what they want in a home during the search process and to explain it to their agent. However, maybe the first list they should make would have the skills they want their agent to have.

The Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers identifies what buyers want most from their agents and as you’d expect, help with finding the right home was ranked highest most often. While it is important, it may not be the most unique of the desired area of expertise.

Equally essential to the success of the transaction are the combination of help with price and terms negotiations and assistance with the paperwork, comparable sales, qualifying and financing.

To summarize the responses in the survey, Buyers want help from their agents with two things: to find the right home and to get it at the right price and terms. Some agents are actually better equipped with tools and acquired knowledge to assist buyers with financial advice and negotiations.
Since an owner’s cost of housing is dependent on the price paid for the home and financing, a real estate professional skilled in these specialized areas can be invaluable in finding the “right” home. An agent’s experience and connections to allied professionals and service providers is irreplaceable.
Ask the agent representing you to specifically list the tools and talent they have to address these areas.
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About buyer agents: While any licensed salesperson or broker can call themselves a "buyer agent or broker", only an agent who has earned the Accredited Buyer Representative (ABR) designation AND is a current member of the Real Estate Buyer Agency Council (REBAC) has the extra training and knowledge, and experience to properly represent a buyer. It is important for your agent to know the area where you are looking and to know more about the houses than you do from looking at photos on the Internet. Knowing the area is more than knowing where the schools and restaurants are; your agent should know about zoning, land, septic and wells (if the town is not served by municipal services.), and more.

Marilyn Messenger is an ABR and has been providing buyer representation for 20+ years in Wayland, Sudbury, Maynard, Stow, and the towns west of Boston. Call 508-596-3501 to find out more about buyer agency.

You Have the Right to Remain Silent.. Anything You Say..."

Anyone who has ever watched a crime show on TV can finish that sentence. We all know about Miranda rights when someone gets arrested. Hopefully, no one reading this blog will ever have to hear those words but there is a good chance that you or someone you know will at some point talk to a real estate agent or broker about buying or selling a home.

If you are like most people, you don’t think about “rights” or “relationships” when you contact a real estate agent; you just want information about a property or a town or about financing. The agent will ask questions about where you live, where you work, when you need to move, how much money you make, your source for financing, how much you want to spend on a property… all kinds of personal and financial information that you would want to have kept confidential; and certainly not shared when you want to win a negotiation.

Now this is not legal advice (you need a lawyer for that), just a heads up for buyers and sellers that in Massachusetts whenever a consumer asks a real estate licensee to discuss a particular property, the licensee must disclose in writing whose interests the licensees represent, the buyer or the seller, or both. Without such a warning consumers can make tactical mistakes in negotiating the best possible deal, such as disclosing their bottom line price to a real estate licensee who is actually the seller's representative..."anything you say can and will be used agains you..." How about a seller asking for advice about pricing their property; what if that agent represents a buyer who may have an interest... who does that agent work for?

A recent investigation by Patrick-Murray Administration's Division of Professional Licensure shows real estate licensees regularly fail to disclose whose interests they represent. Investigators found 94 percent of licensees checked were not in compliance in Boston. Pairs of investigators from the Division of Professional Licensure, posing as consumers, visited 200 real estate offices throughout Massachusetts and found that in only 12 instances, or 6 percent of the time, real estate licensees properly disclosed to consumers whose interests they represent.

Have you contacted a real estate agent lately…did they provide the Mandatory Licensee-Consumer Relationship Disclosure form for you to sign?

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