YOUR PROPERTY AGENT

Unless you’re an investor who regularly buys and sells properties, you’ll probably be unsure of how exactly to price your property. Even after doing your research and finding out the prices of all the other (comparable) apartments in the area, there’s still some finesse and even psychology involved.

For example – many first-time sellers intuitively think that they should price their property higher so that they have more space for negotiation when potential buyers make their enquiries; however, if you go overboard with this, you might turn off buyers so much such that you don’t even get any enquiries. Bearing this in mind, it’s a good move to engage a property agent – because when you do so, you’ll get access to alternate perspectives and insights that your agent has gained from his or her many years of experience in the industry. This will make your pricing process that much easier!

For many, selling their homes is an emotional process, and if you’re the one directly speaking to potential buyers, you might find yourself letting your emotions get the better of you. For example, if a potential buyer puts in a low offer, a newbie seller might take offence and refuse to get back to the buyer with a counter. Also, in the case of following up with potential buyers, it takes a certain amount of experience and knowledge of the market to follow up without seemingly desperate or overly; whilst it’s likely that a property agent will be able to maintain a poker face in this process, the same can’t be said about newbie sellers.

Many sellers underestimate the amount of time and effort needed to sell a property – it really isn’t as simple as listing your home on a property site, and calling it a day. If you want your property to sell (and fast), you’ll need to be mentally prepared to answer your phone every time you get a call from a potential buyer, rush home every time someone wants to view your property, and make sure that you’re giving them a great tour and highlighting all the best features of your home, even if you’re doing this at the end of a gruelling and arduous work day. Yup, it’s not as easy as it looks.

Continuing in the same vein, because agents have specific experience in this field, they’re able to suss out potential buyers, and assess whether they’re genuinely interested, or whether they’re just having a look for fun. Most agents typically have their own series of questions that they use to determine the seriousness of a prospect, and these include questions on how long the buyers have been looking at houses, whether they intend to take a bank loan or if they have other financing methods, whether they’ve seen other properties that they’ve interested in, and so on.

With this skillset, agents are able to focus and hone in on the “hottest leads”, or the people who are most likely to make a purchase. For newbie sellers who don’t have the expertise, however, you’re likely to end up showing your home to a wide gamut of people who may or may not be sufficiently interested. At the end of the day, you’re just wasting your time.