Why are exclusive buyers agents so important to negotiating the best price and terms?



November 23, 2010For the most part, when a person wants to purchase a home, the goal is to get the best possible value for their money.  Each step of the home search process ultimately affects the value of your deal, because each step ultimately affects the price of the home. For example, the time that you decide to buy affects the price of your home as market values change.  The time you decide to buy also...

buyer’s agents Help Buyers Find the Right Home



November 22, 2010According to the National Association of Realtors survey of home buyers that purchased a home within the last year, 88% worked with a realtor to purchase their home.  Home buyers reported that the two most important things that the realtor helped them do were find the right home, and negotiate sales price and terms. Why is working with an exclusive buyers agent so important to finding the right...

Everything You Wish You Knew BEFORE Calling a Listing Agent



October 22, 2010I am interested in a home I found online.  Should I call the listing agent and set up a viewing? Nowadays, many home buyers begin their home search from the comfort of their own home using online home search tools.  These sites also conveniently provide the contact information of the listing agent so that you can schedule a home viewing. What the sites conveniently don’t tell you (and...

Home Buyers: Do a Little Research Before Picking Up the Phone!



October 20, 2010When I first started the home search process, I did what most people these days do- I started looking online.  I went to a few popular home search sites, punched in a few parameters and bam- had hours worth of home shopping to spend looking at pictures, and fantasize. I found a few homes that I wanted to see among the listings.  Conveniently, there was a Listing Agent, with a phone number and...

Home Buyers: You Don’t Want to be an Agent’s “Aha moment.”



October 15, 2010I read a blog by Lenn Harley describing experienced buyer's agent’s strategy to address home repairs. An experienced agent knows when a repair should be included in the Contract of Sale, or when it should be addressed after the Contract has been accepted during the Inspection Resolution period. This is just another important reason to work with an experienced agent, and equally important, that...

Home Shopping without an buyer’s agent is like Reading your Own X-Ray



September 27, 2010We just recently had a house guest who is a very dear friend of the family, who is in his fourth year of medical school.  We were talking about the term “gestalt.” According to Wikipedia is the concept that “The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.”  It is the idea that a few lines and curves can be recognized as a figure.   For example, a few lines and a circle could be...

Why work with an buyer’s agent?



September 20, 2010I had such a great experience working with our exclusive buyers' agent that I take for granted that anyone buying a home would make the same decision and work with an agent. But I forget that there was a time that I considered, even temporarily, that I might want to just “save money” by buying a house without an agent.   It makes me smile and laugh at myself to think about that.  After...