7 Reasons to Hire a Real Estate Professional

If you are considering selling your property, it is natural to ask yourself  “do I really need a Real Estate Agent?”. It is human nature to question the value of a service or a product being offered, and that applies to Real Estate Agents too.  Ultimately, when it comes to selling your home, you want to achieve the highest possible sales price via the smoothest possible process. So considering this is the goal, here are 7 Reasons why you should look to hire a Real Estate Professional…

1. Education & Experience:
   You don’t need to know everything about buying and selling real estate if you hire a real estate professional who does. We’re all looking for more precious time in our lives, and hiring pros gives us that time.
2. Agents are Buffers:
   Agents take the spam out of your property showings and visits. If you’re a seller, your agent will filter all those phone calls that lead to nowhere from lookie loos and try to induce serious buyers to write an offer immediately.
3. Market Condition Information:
   A broker can disclose market conditions, which will govern your selling process. Many factors determine how you will proceed. Data such as the average per square foot cost of similar homes, median and average sales prices, average days on market and ratios of list-to-sold prices, among other criteria, will have a huge bearing on what you ultimately decide to do.
4. Neighborhood Knowledge:
   Agents either possess intimate knowledge or they know where to find the industry buzz about your neighborhood. They can identify comparable sales and hand these facts to you, in addition to pointing you in the direction where you can find more data on schools, crime or demographics. For example, you may know that a home down the street was on the market for $750,000, but an agent will know it had upgrades and sold at $685,000 after 65 days on the market and after twice falling out of escrow.
5. Negotiation Skills & Confidentiality:
   Top producing agents negotiate well because, unlike most buyers and sellers, they can remove themselves from the emotional aspects of the transaction and because they are skilled. It’s part of their job description. Good agents are not messengers, delivering buyer’s offers to sellers and vice versa. They are professionals who are trained to present their client’s case in the best light and agree to hold client information confidential from competing interests.
6. Handling Volumes of Paperwork: 
   One-page deposit receipts were prevalent in the early 1970s. Today’s purchase agreements run twenty pages or more. That does not include the federal- and state-mandated disclosures nor disclosures dictated by local custom. Most real estate files average thicknesses from one to three inches of paper. One tiny mistake or omission could land you in court or cost you thousands. In some states, lawyers handle the disclosures, thank goodness!
7. Price Guidance:
   Contrary to what some people believe, agents do not select prices for sellers or buyers. However, an agent will help to guide clients to make the right choices for themselves. If a listing is at 6%, for example, an agent has a 6% vested interest in the sale, but the client has a 94% interest. Selling agents will ask buyers to weigh all the data supplied to them and to choose a price. Then based on market supply, demand and the conditions, the agent will devise a negotiation strategy.