What’s a nice home like you doing with a Realtor like that?

In today’s more challenging market, it’s more important than ever to have a strategy on selling your home. Even with all the technology available to market your own home, most folks can use the assistance of a good real estate agent. Alas, that is the dilemma. How can you tell if the agent you sign a six month listing with is the right one for the job? My suggestion is to conduct a job interview with a variety of agents. If you don’t know a realtor, stick a FSBO sign in your yard and start setting up interviews with the agents that have the courage to call. The interview is pretty simple. It should go like this: “Tell me what you are going to do everyday for the next 30 days to sell this house.” If all you get for an answer is, “Put a sign in your yard, a lockbox on the door, put it on MLS and an ad in the paper,” keep looking. I would challenge anyone that wants the listing to come back with a 30 day marketing plan. If they can’t come up with 30 ideas to expose your home to prospective buyers, they are what is known as “order takers.” In this market, an order taker will make more money taking orders at McDonald’s. I’m not saying coming up with 30 ways to sell a home is as easy as the 50 ways to leave your lover that Paul Simon set to music. You might try it yourself and find yourself drawing a blank slate after the 7th or 8th day. But you’re not the one that claims to be worth anywhere from 5 to 7% of the sale price of your home.

Contribution by Larry Refsland. He was that realtor who had the courage to call FSBOs, and he took a lot of sales away from long-time realtors by presenting a 30 day marketing plan, when all they had was a "plant and pray" plan.