Analyzing a Real Estate Agent’s Track Record

When narrowing down the field of agents to interview, analyzing an agent’s track record helps to separate the agents that can sell a house from the agents that just interview well. These stats will help you weed out the bad agents from your list of prospective Realtors.

Analyzing an Agent’s Track Record

Your agent should provide you with a copy of these statistics during your interview. Ask them to run a Comparative Market Analysis (CMA) Report on all of their listings to show how well they have done and to show what they are currently doing. Ask that the report cover at least a year’s worth of transactions or more. Also have them run a report that only covers their listings in your neighborhood too. Make sure both reports only show their listings. Because these reports are limited to just one agent’s data, they can not be used to determine your house’s sale price, just to show the agent’s track record.

When interpreting an agent’s data, you should pay attention to:

Days On Market – Days on market (DOM) refers to the amount of time a house has been on the market from the day it was first listed on MLS to the day that it sold. For this statistic to be useful, you have to use average DOM as a baseline for comparison. Less days is better than more days, when compared to the average DOM.

Number of Houses Sold – This is a cumulative count of how many houses an agent or team sold. Preferably this count is based on your area and on similar sized houses. The higher number of sold houses the better.

Sales Price as a % of List Price – This statistic determines how well the agent priced the house or how much of a discount was given. The closer to 100% the better. The average SP%LP is a useful statistic for determining neighborhood pricing.

These stats reveal how well agents in your area price homes, sell homes and discount homes when compared to other agents. They also reveal the agents that can’t sell a house too. As you can imagine, these are very useful stats for comparing agents.