Published on : 18 June 20197 min reading time

You are currently engaged in selling your property and are considering placing it in the hands of a suitable and trustworthy real estate agent. But how do you find the right real estate agent? How can you find out which real estate agent takes his work seriously and whom you can trust? How do you know if you are dealing with a black sheep in the industry and what can it do? Isn’t every real estate agent the same?

How can you find the right real estate agent?

A property is an essential asset in a private portfolio. Either you have worked for a long time for this property or you have inherited the property and remember the many beautiful hours you spent there with your relatives. Now this property is to be sold and you want to offer it through a competent real estate agent. Perhaps you have never dealt with this subject before and are unsure who can sell your property in a qualified manner. You know there are many real estate agents and you may have heard one or two positive or negative things about this profession. Now you need to find the right real estate agent to sell your property.

There are over 450 estate agents in Cologne who would like to sell your property. But how do you find out which one is the right one?

Which criteria have to be considered in order to find the right real estate expert?

A look at the website

Take a close look at the website:

  • How do estate agents present the properties for sale?
  • What do the photos look like?
  • Is the information about the properties on offer clearly structured?
  • Are there ways to get in touch with the real estate agent?
  • Can you find the telephone number and the contact person for the property on offer?
  • What other services does the real estate agent offer?
  • Also have a look at the subpages. Does the real estate agent offer helpful tips for the sale of properties? Does he have a blog with relevant topics?

At these points you can see whether the real estate agent deals with his topics and has an idea of the real estate sale.

Today, 2/3 of all properties are sold over the Internet. Therefore, the Internet presence of a real estate agent is crucial. A modern designed site does not only radiate on the broker, but also on the real estates, which he offers.

On which portals does the real estate agent offer the objects?

Here it is important that the real estate agent offers the properties on the large, well-known portals. The whole free portals hardly bring inquiries and also not the correct prospective customers. Therefore, it is important to check whether the real estate agent is represented on the large portals.

What training does a real estate agent have?

In Germany, the profession of real estate agent is not protected. So everyone who has a positive certificate of good conduct can become a real estate agent. An important decision criterion for the quality of the real estate agent is the affiliation to a professional association, e.g. IVD. If the real estate agent is in a professional association, then it is guaranteed that this federation convinced itself of the ability of the real estate agent before admission and the broker must train itself further regularly. In addition, an association has certain rules of professional conduct which the agent must abide by if he wishes to remain in the association. Here you can be sure to find a broker with many years of experience.

What possibilities does the broker have if the sale comes to a standstill?

Before signing the contract, have the estate agent explain to you exactly what possibilities and marketing tools he has at his disposal to offer the property. It is not enough for him to explain to you that he only has to advertise the property in Immobilienscout24 and that the property then sells itself. Of course, you hope that everything will run smoothly and quickly with your property. But it can also be that different factors come together that lead to problems or time delays.

There are various other advertising options that a real estate agent can use to sell the property at the desired price.

What is a bidding process?

Many estate agents currently offer a bidding process for the sale, which suggests to the seller that the buyers will outbid each other and thus an even higher price could be achieved. Our experience is that buyers do not want to engage in a bidding process anymore. Real estate prices are currently exorbitantly high and the bidding process is only making the situation even more uncertain. No one is more interested in not knowing whether the property can be bought at the target price or not. At the moment there is mainly the fear to buy too expensive and as soon as the interest rates fall that the property no longer has the value at which it was bought. We have already heard from some sellers that as soon as the word “bidding procedure” is mentioned in the ad, there are hardly any inquiries about the real estate portals.

The public evaluation of a real estate agent by stars

The rating in the popular portals is very important. You should check whether it is possible to give the real estate agent a neutral valuation at any time. Only if the real estate agent allows neutral valuations can you assume that the valuations are correct. In this case, the more valuations the real estate agent has the more objective the valuations can be.

Has the real estate agent understood what is important to you?

If you talk to an estate agent, try to find out whether he has understood what is really important to you. We often see colleagues talking about your great successes and not listening to what the seller is ultimately about. The best way to find out is to consider whether the broker asked you what you really wanted: Is the price important to you, the time window or a discreet sale? If you attach particular importance to one of these points and the broker did not ask for it in the conversation, you must assume that he will not act in your interest.

Now a word about the black sheep

We are seeing more and more often that black sheep are romping about more and more in the tight real estate market. These brokers usually approach sellers who try to offer their property themselves and notice that they are not making any progress. Here is an example: A customer offers his property online and a real estate agent contacts him. The customer agrees with the real estate agent that it is only allowed to offer his property to his customers and the seller does not want his property to appear on the Internet. The real estate agent then places a similar property on the Internet. However, this real estate does not exist at all. When interested parties report, he says that this property is reserved, but that he can offer another property. On this real estate he demands 5,95 % commission instead of 3,57 % or in individual cases even up to 7 %. You can imagine what potential buyers will say about this method and what they will think about your property later.

How can you protect yourself against this?

We would always advise you to look at the property offers of the selected real estate agent in advance, to ask one of them to hear how the real estate agent behaves with potential interested parties. It’s perfectly okay to test an agent and tell him that later. Every real estate agent would be happy to help you sell your property.