Putting an offer on a house

Thanks for the help all.

 

I'm here to advocate for getting an agent, especially when you are a newbie. Sure they have their interests, which is to get paid, but they understand the reality of the situation, they need to keep their good name and need repeat business and good references; at least the good ones.

My advice is to do as much research as you can in selecting your agent as the house of your dreams. Seriously. Ask everyone around you who they recommend for their agent; look at who is popular in the local RE section; ask those who you value their opinion who they used and why. The agent will hopefully be someone who understands that a quick sale is not always the best sale and who understands that a satisfied customer (from the buyer's side) will be a client later when they sell.

From my perspective, my agent took my wife and I around and looked at numerous houses on the weekend in different locations as we searched for our first house. He was very knowledgeable about the marketplace and found various different types. Ultimately, we bought a house that someone else in his office was selling, but he never gave us the hard sell and actually brought it up as kind of a "maybe you might want to look." For that, I always respected his judgment; we stayed in touch over the years, he gave us advice several times when we thought of selling, ultimately helped us sell that house and directed us to our next buyer's agent.

Good luck.

 

like any other kind of salesmen, RE agents fall into the good and the bad. just don't ever forget that salesmen is what they are, and that nowadays much of what you previously needed them for you can discover and learn on your own.

unless you are looking for highly specialized RE, like a NYC coop, an agent's work consists of finding the property (which you can now do online yourself), finding the comps (which you can now do online yourself) and walking you through the papers (which you can learn about by reading 'Home Buying for Dummies').

Is that worth three percent of your purchase price?

 

Shopping for the right agent, if you're going to go through one, is probably equally important as shopping for the right house. When I considered getting a house a couple of years ago, I felt that the agent I was working with was trying too hard to sell me places I didn't want to consider. There is only me, so I figured maybe a 2-bedroom, using one of them as a place guests could stay or as an office. She'd show me 3-bedroom houses. I had a specific price in mind. She was trying to get me to buy houses 10 to 20K over what I was looking to pay. I wanted to live in town. She tried to drag me to a place 12 miles out of town. It seemed everything I wanted, she wanted the opposite. She even showed me a house that had seven layers of shingles on the roof and then said she doubted it would pass inspection. They why bother showing me that house?

I ended up renting. I'm looking to buy again now but this time, I'm going to make sure I get the right agent who can at least balance my needs and the seller's needs*.

As a side note, the agency the other relator worked for went belly up about 3 months ago. The housing market in this town is so out of whack against the seller, it's awful. People are moving out, no one's moving in and there have been houses empty for 2 and 3 years. I had an ex-girlfriend who had her place on the market 2 1/2 years with two relators and lowered the price four times before she just gave up and rented it to her son.

* - If you were a seller and I came along wanting to buy your house but your agent kept steering me away from you, how happy would you be?