Many of us know agents or are related to one or more. Now the time has come to sell for one or many reasons. New job? Move back to your old hometown? Downsizing? So how do you pick the agent to list your home for sale when your two best friends or two family members are agents? How do you choose?
Often the seller is torn making this decision. The seller wants the best agent on the job, after all they need to sell their house. They may also believe that it is best to keep business and friendship separate. Let us look at it another way: if you decided to open a coffee shop and your best friend kept going to Starbucks to “keep business and personal separate” would this seem odd?
So how does a seller navigate this mine field of business and friend/kinship? How can they be fair to both parties and get the job of selling their home completed to the satisfaction of the seller? Here are some ideas that sellers use and some that they have not thought of using.
- Choose a neutral third party as the agent. Makes sense to not pit one friend against another and make one unhappy. Guess what? Now both are unhappy or at least miffed when that sign goes up in the yard.
- If they work at the same brokerage, they can share. Agents who are under the same broker are considered to be one in Arizona.
- If they work under different brokers one can “refer” to the other. An agent can refer a client to another agent. This is common practice when a client is moving to another part of town and wants to connect the client to an agent with local market knowledge. The commission is shared between the different brokers.
- Call in each agent and even include a neutral third party and interview each one. Then the seller can decide to pick the best agent for them. The sellers very best friend may not be the very best agent for them. If given an interview opportunity, each agent has a fair opportunity to get the job and is more likely to accept the outcome of the choice.
- Choose the best agent for the transaction based on facts. The list price is especially important to sell the property and get off on the right foot. But how does the agent come to that conclusion? How they present comparable sales, their marketing plan, communication, and work ethic are vital.
