Whether you’re buying or selling a home, the first thing most people need to decide is whether or not they should hire a real estate agent to help them out. If you’re on a tighter budget than most, then a real estate agent is the first thing that you usually think of when you need to cut back on non-essentials. However, a real estate agent is far from a non-essential. Unless you’re a real estate agent yourself, there are many ways that you can benefit from hiring one in your buying or selling process. Here are the most important reasons why you need to hire a real estate agent if you intend to buy or sell a property:
- Experience
Unless you are a real estate agent yourself, you are never going to have the amount of experience that a real estate agent has when it comes to buying and selling homes. Even if you’ve bought and sold several properties in the last few years, and intend to build yourself a real estate empire, a real estate agent deals with several clients a week and will have dealt with more purchases and sales in the past year than you are likely to anytime soon. Most real estate agents cost roughly the same amount, so be sure to look around to find one with the best reviews and the most years in the job. If you’re a seller, it also makes to hire a real estate agent that specialises in selling homes and find one that specialises in buying homes, if you’re a buyer.
- Knowledge
As well as experience, real estate agents also have a lot more real estate knowledge than you could possibly imagine unless you were a real estate agent yourself. If you were interested in a particular area or location, your real estate agent would be able to answer any questions that you may have about that area. For example, if you have a couple of children, your real estate agent would be able to tell you how many schools there are in the area, and if there were any activities that could entertain your children, such as bowling, swimming, and play parks. They will also be able to easily locate properties that are within your budget and fit your circumstances.
- Convenience
Of course, it is completely possible to find out all of this information yourself, and the internet is an incredibly useful tool for this. If you were looking for an apartment, you could easily visit a website such as http://rumahdijual.com/jakarta-barat/apartemen-murah, and have a look through a few. A Google search could also help you find out where the nearest school is to any one particular property. However, this may not be the most convenient thing on the planet. You have to remember that you have a job that you need to go to, a home that you need to keep clean and tidy, and perhaps even children and pets to look after, so you might simply not have the time to look through web pages of information yourself. As easy as it may be to find information online, it’s not as easy to go through it all, especially if you have a busy household, and so you may find it difficult and time-consuming to find a property that suits you. On the other hand, a real estate agent is paid to do this work, and can easily do it for you, freeing up more time for you to do everything else that needs to be done in your busy life.
- Objectivity
An important part of an estate agents job is the ability to be objective when it comes to buying or selling a home. A seller may be incredibly attached to a property, and for that reason may see it to have more value that it really does. It is an estate agent’s job to ensure that the seller understands that the price they’re putting on their property isn’t sensible. Similarly, an estate agent can stop a buyer from making a large offer on a home they’ve fallen in love with, as it simply isn’t worth the money. An estate agent will also be able to provide feedback from the buyer to the seller, without any unnecessary emotion or drama. This objectivity is also useful in the negotiating stage.
- Negotiations
Negotiation is one of the hardest parts of buying or selling a home, especially if there are a lot of emotions involved. Real estate agents know how to emotionally remove themselves during the negotiations, and how to deal with this stage sensibly and professionally, which could potentially save you a lot of money. Some people view real estate agents as unnecessary at this stage in the buying process, as they think that they simply communicate offers and agreements between the buyer and the seller. On the contrary, they actually have an active role in this process and know how to present their client’s case in the best possible light, to get them the best deal possible. They can also advise you against making any ridiculously high or low offers on a property and will help you to see the true value of a property.
- Contracts
Contracts are difficult to deal with at the best of times, but when you throw in a bunch of real estate jargon, you are left completely clueless about what it is that you’re actually signing. For all you know, you could be completely signing your life away (or more realistically, your home), and could end up losing a lot of money in the deal. On the other hand, if you are planning to sell and property and need to write a contract, you will want the help of a real estate agent to make sure that you don’t make any mistakes or leave any loopholes. While a piece of paper may not seem like a big deal to you right now, it certainly will be in a few months time, when you’re being sued for thousands of dollars in court, because you left a loophole or made a mistake when writing the contract. Really good real estate agents deal with the same sorts of contracts multiple times a week, if not multiple times a day, and will know the sorts of conditions that are required in a contract to protect you, whether you’re a buyer or a seller of a property. If you wanted to learn some real estate jargon yourself, so that you’re not completely clueless when reading contracts, then click this link: http://www.realestateabc.com/glossary/
- Connections
If a real estate agent has been in the business for a while, then it would be incredibly surprising (not to mention worrying) if they didn’t have a phone book full of people that are used when buying or selling a property. Whether you’re buying or selling a property, you are going to need to deal with a lot of different types of people, including mortgage brokers, home inspectors, interior designers, real estate attorneys, builders, and a range of different vendors. Looking for all of these people yourself would be incredibly time-consuming, especially if you wanted to ensure that they were reliable and trustworthy. A real estate agent would simply have to look through their records and would be able to pull up a list of options, along with recommendations and reviews. Legally, a real estate agent isn’t allowed to suggest one individual or company over another one, but they can provide you with enough information on the individual or company’s work to help you make the informed decision yourself.
- You Are Priority
Although many people view real estate agents as only being there to make a sale, they do help you an awful lot throughout the buying or selling process, and genuinely have your best interests at heart. They are there the entire time to ensure you get the best deals and hire the best people possible. Of course, they are paid for this help, but so are police officers and doctors; Receiving money for hard work doesn’t mean that you care any less about the people that you’ve helped. Even the smoothest sales can go wrong at some point, which is why your real estate agent will be there to help with any problems months after a sale has gone through.
So, do you really need a real estate agent? The short answer is yes. Although you may not see a real estate agent as a necessity (which should be pretty hard after all of this), they are incredibly useful to you, and could potentially save you a lot of money, both during buying or selling, and after a sale has gone through. However, more importantly, they save you time, which could be better spent elsewhere, and help to make sure that you only hire the best people in the business to help you with your real estate.
