In today’s market, hiring the right agent to sell your house has never been more important. Hiring the wrong agent can delay the sale of your house for months. You need to interview an agent to learn about their background, to see what they know about your neighborhood, and to find out if they are a good fit with you and your lifestyle.

Here are some important questions you should ask each agent you interview.

1. How many years have you been involved in real estate?

2. Are you a REALTOR and do you have any special real estate accredited designations or certifications? How would those designations benefit me?

3. Is real estate your full-time career or a part-time career?

4. What makes you a better choice for me than your competition?

5. Are you a member of a team? Would I be working only with you or would I be also working with other members of your team? Who are the other members of your team? Who is responsible for what?

6. Do you or a member of your team speak a foreign language?

7. How accessible are you? Will I be given your cell phone, home phone and any other phone number where you can easily be reached? How often will you contact me?

8. Do you just work with sellers, or do you represent buyers too?

9. How many clients are you currently working with? How many are buyers and how many are sellers?

10. How do you deal with disclosed dual-agency?

11. What areas of town do you specialize in?

12. What can you tell me about the demographics of my neighborhood? How will you use this information to my advantage to market my home?

13. How will you determine the appropriate sales price for my home?

14. How are you going to advertise my home? How often will you hold open houses? How will you promote it?

15. What does the listing agreement entail? What are the starting and expiration dates? What’s your commission and how negotiable is it?

16. What haven’t I asked you that I need to know?

17. One blog reader recommended that you ask the agent for a list of the homes he/she sold near yours, call those homeowners and ask them how they liked working with that agent.

18. The most important question you need to ask… Download your copy of the questionnaire to find out what the most important question is that you need to ask.

Now that you have all this information, what comes next? Read over all the information they gave you. Read over the contracts, look at their handouts and compare each agent. Ask the agents questions if you do not understand anything. You can also contact us too if we can be of help.

What Should I Do Next?

Look At Your Interview Notes

Look at your notes. What did you like about that agent and what did you not like about that agent.

Go To The Texas Real Estate Commission Website

Here is the link: www.trec.state.tx.us – Texas Real Estate Commission – At the top of their home page, you can look up the agent and find information like the classes they’ve taken, their license status and number of years they’ve had that license.

Choose Your Agent

Remember that agents are chosen based on their track record in your area. That agent or team was one of a small number of agents that sold the highest amount of houses in your area. Given this information, you really can not make a bad choice. Feel comfortable in knowing that you are only interviewing qualified agents that are capable of selling homes in your neighborhood.