Eight reasons to hire Real Estate Agent before selling your first home

Helps Build Trust with Prospective Buyers

Real Estate Property or a home is one of the most significant and valuable assets that most people have invested in their life, and they are cautious when buying or selling it. Therefore, the whole process of selling or buying a home demands care and due diligence. Selling a home is not as easy as selling old furniture on Kijiji or Facebook marketplace, where one can hope to get the best bargain for a buck. When a seller hires a Real Estate Agent to sell and market their home, this can help build trust and add value to the appeal of their home as most buyers, especially first-time or new buyers, will not place their trust in something that’s listed off the MLS. Hiring a real estate professional to sell their home provides a cutting edge to the seller and helps market their home to a broader market and reach more prospective buyers.

Evaluate Price

A licensed Real Estate Agent will have all the tools and experience to help decide what time is best to put the house on the market and the best-selling prices that are most likely to get your home sold. As the goal is to sell the home at the best value possible in the shortest time, this information will benefit the seller. Being a homeowner, price expectations for selling the house can differ from how the market is diverging. But a knowledgeable real estate agent can make a lot of detailed comparisons and conduct market analysis on other comparable sales in the market to access the best list price for a home to achieve your goal. Moreover, if the seller is listing their house for sale by themself, they might be tempted to put it on sale based on other homes sold on their street. But this can result in undervaluing or overvaluing. Some potential might use the seller’s home as a comparable home to finalize some other home.

Help make the home more saleable

A licensed Real Estate Agent deals in real estate transactions more frequently than anyone else, and being experienced would be able to guide a seller throughout a home selling journey. Whether preparing the home to market, such as cleaning and decluttering, dealing with lengthy paperwork, or filling some legal obligation, having experienced and expert personnel beside them can benefit the seller. A real estate agent with an eye for perfection would be able to make recommendations to add some cost-effective improvements to the home that can enhance the price value of the house and make it more saleable. Given that they do this all the time, a real estate agent will be able to provide you with trusted third-party references to help the required work done. Of course, these enhancements don’t have to be huge, but something like changing the paint colour, landscaping outside the home, maybe fixing some house lightings. But significant enough to make the house more attractive.

Knowledge and Resources

An expert real estate agent stays abreast of the newest market trends and information to help you value and market your home at the best deal possible.  Furthermore, they will be up to date on current industry factors such as laws and regulations based on economics, mortgage rates and information, and everything that can impact the buying or selling of any real estate property. They will do thorough research and comparative market analysis of all the comparable properties sold recently in the last three to six months to help understand the market rates for homes similar to the seller. A well-experienced real estate agent will have tools at their disposal to market a seller’s house on a broader scale, such as social media, websites, and many listing services to reach a wider audience and help sell it faster. Therefore, sellers don’t have to worry about setting the word out that their home is on sale as it’s all taken care of now. Otherwise, if they are selling their house directly themself, they are responsible for reaching out and finding potential buyers all by themselves.

Selling a home is a full-time job

Once the home hits the market and is on for sale by the owner, the seller has to handle multiple buyers all by themselves who are willing to view the home. This means they have to coordinate viewings with prospective buyers, arrange the house available for visit and schedule the showing all by themselves. Moreover, if the seller has not hired a real estate agent for listing the home and showing your home to the buyer by themselves, their presence during the viewing might make buyers uncomfortable and self-conscious. Buyers might find it hard to associate themselves with the house and find it hard to imagine themselves living there in the future with the current owner being present.  Plus, during the whole process, the seller will be required to engage and work with third-party professionals all by themselves, including lawyers, home inspectors, mortgage brokers, and others during the offer stage. It can become taxing on your actual job and personal life to keep on top of everything by doing it all by yourself. So, it’s better to hire someone who does all this for you and help make this process a breeze. And if you have done due diligence in hiring a right and processional agent, they would communicate with you at every step.

Qualifying the most potential buyer

Given the skill and familiarity, Real Estate Agent would be better to eliminate just window shopping and curious buyer and qualify the serious and potential buyers. This will save you time and help you get a better deal according to your ideal time. The Realtor would prequalify and decide on pre-select criteria and will only bring them to showings; hence you won’t have to leave the place to accommodate this.

Putting seller first

First, legally, Real Estate Agent with whom you sign the representation agreements will have a fiduciary duty to act in your best interest & provide due diligence at each step of the process. And doing this, they keep the emotions at bay. Second, when the time comes for negotiation and selecting the best offer, a good agent will guide you step by step and help you decide on the best deal favourable to you, practically weighing all the perspectives equally. Additionally, when it comes to price negotiations, they might be able to provide you with the correct price that is deemed to be accepted and lead to closing.

Emotional Support

Selling the place where you have lived for some time with your loved ones and nurtured your relationships could stir up a massive tide of emotions in any seller. Whether it’s your principal residence or family house or weekday condo or go-away cottage or inherited home, no matter what it is, you can always associate personal moments with the place, making it difficult to disassociate from it. This is where a good and empathic realtor comes into play and helps you plan and hold your hand in this phase. They will respect your personal and professional requirements and keeping your best interest at the top will help you get the best value.