What Does a Residential Real Estate Agent Do?
What Does a Residential Real Estate Agent Do?
Real estate agents help people buy and sell homes
They work with buyers and sellers to find homes that meet their needs, and they work with lenders and other professionals to make the sale process as smooth as possible.
What does that entail?
For people looking to sell their homes, a real estate agent will bring buyers to see the home and show how it is unique. They may also stage, or fix up, the property to help sell it more quickly and at a better price than it would otherwise command.
For people buying homes, a lot of the process involves finding the best fit for the buyers.
Home inspection
A real estate agent will also help with the dreaded home inspection, scheduling and accompanying inspectors at different stages of the house hunt. They will also help negotiate any repairs that need to be made to a property before someone buys it.
Price evaluation
A real estate agent will help buyers and sellers compare homes, present offers and give advice on prices.
Depending on factors like schools, square footage, neighbourhoods, and more, real estate agents can figure out what a home should sell for.
Listing creation
Agents are experts at finding out what potential buyers want, and so when they create listings agents are able to draw people in. They will usually also take listing photos in order to make the property look as big as possible.
Depending on the property they can also hire a professional photographer to showcase the entire home, from the front door to the dining room to entice buyers.
Home staging
For some prospective buyers, nothing is more important than visiting an open house.
There are a lot of different options, from DIY home staging to hiring professional home stagers, sellers often use these services to showcase their home in the best possible way.
Transaction management
If you're buying or selling a home through an estate agent, they will also manage things like legalities and paperwork involved in the sale.
Negotiation
Real estate agents must be familiar with their local housing markets. They need to know the current market values of different neighbourhoods, what homes are selling for, what interest rates are for mortgages, and more.
An agent also needs to be good at negotiating - this is especially true if the agent is representing the buyer.
They may do everything from help find financing, help buyers get their offer accepted, or even represent out-of-state clients who need to buy a home in another state.
What is involved in home staging?
Though other parts of the process seem like they should be best left to professionals, good home staging seems like it could be done by anyone.
That is not the case.
Home staging tips can get you far but to really let buyers imagine themselves in a home, and bump up the selling price, a professional stager can do wonders. Often, that person will be your real estate agent.
Staging efforts can be minimal or incredibly thorough. Your typical home stager takes a little from interior designers and uses their knowledge of what a potential buyer would want to create the best open house possible.
Rearranging furniture is often the first step to changing a lived-in home into something potential buyers see themselves in. Buyers, agents, and even the friends and family that come along must all be blown away.
A real estate agent will often hire a professional home stager or offer staging services themselves. It's something you should ask them beforehand to avoid surprise costs. Some people believe that staging is not necessary but to fetch top dollar, most agents will insist that staging efforts attract the best potential buyers.
The sale sign might make people peek but here are some things that home stagers take care of, and you can even think of them as staging tips.
Plants
Adding plants to a home is a great idea, it helps the space feel fresh and alive without adding clutter. There's a case to be made for either real plants or fake plants. It depends on what makes sense given your house and the type of plant. Fresh flowers, that don't crowd out surfaces can work well too.
Scents
This isn't magic, people appreciate nice scents and will be more ready to buy a house that has a nice flow of fresh air compared to a house that reeks of body odour. Most buyers won't really register something smelling bad but it will stick with their impression. This is particularly important if the home is a house to some pets. As clean as they can be, sometimes a home stager will need to deal with pet odour.
Clutter
Whether it's pet accessories, extraneous existing furniture or things best left in storage units, it's best to highlight the space of the future home like the crown moulding in the master bedroom. A few hours of tidying up and donating things to thrift stores is a small but important part of home staging.
Personal items
A new buyer wants to see a home as theirs, so it follows that staged homes make it a point to hide family photos or other features that would make someone feel like they are in someone else's home. Replacing quirky pillows for nice neutral throw pillows, or replacing personal photos is the quickest way to do it.
Paint
Let's face it, pink walls aren't for everyone. A fresh coat of paint might sound counterintuitive for sellers as it means investing more money in the home but it saves buyers the need to imagine the room in brighter or darker colours.
Freshly painted walls can make a major difference in the local market.
Lighting
Bright homes tend to sell more easily as people tend to like light. It doesn't just mean turning on all the lights, it can mean changing the lighting fixtures to change the mood of a room or changing the types of light switches to create an atmosphere conducive to selling.
No one wants harsh bright lighting in the dining room or a gloomy stairwell.
What else does a real estate agent do?
While real estate agents work a lot on the buying and selling of homes, they are also a fountain of information on the topic of real estate. It's not all about staging, curb appeal, and checking for dirty dishes before an open house.
Realtors keep up on new developments in the industry through research and investigation. They do more than lead potential buyers to homes or find the best price for a seller.
Real estate agents can also put you in touch with mortgage brokers or give you advice on how to think about your real estate journey. It can vary depending on many factors but they can teach you the ins and outs of your local area so that you will be thinking of your moves two steps in advance.
Agents are also there to help you understand certain things about home-ownership if it's your first time buying a home like property taxes, the different kinds of mortgages, how home projects can affect the value of your home and so on.
To conclude:
Real estate agents deal with residential properties. Apartments, houses, and so on. Their work involves a lot of things that seem complicated from the outside like negotiation, knowing the legal details behind a real estate transaction, understanding how the housing market works, getting financial documents in order. But part of their work that may seem simple, like home staging, is actually more complicated than it might seem at first.
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