3 reasons to list home with a local real estate agent – Metro Vancouver Real Estate
1. Local agents may have insider marketing knowledge. For example, the standard practice is to:
- List a home midweek.
- Hold it open for brokers only on Thursday — and advertise those on agent-only fliers.
- Not allow it to be shown otherwise until the Sunday open house.
- Hold it open for two Sundays.
- Take offers the Tuesday or Wednesday following the second open house.
- Agents from surrounding areas could probably guess at some but not all of these things, but often they don’t. And that lack of insider knowledge might actually prevent out-of-the-area agents from getting the fullest exposure for their listings.
For example, if you just took the first offer that came in, you might forgo the offer of a local buyer who was expecting to have two weekends to get to the place.
2. Local agents may have relationships outsiders don’t. They may know the other agents in town, and be able to market the property to them casually, as they run into them in the grocery store or at local meetings, in a way that (a) works and (b) an agent from outside the area cannot. They also will have the built-in marketing channel of being able to market to agents inside their own office — not to mention the buyers they represent.
Finally, local agents might know the inspectors, appraisers, even lenders (i.e., all the pros who have to work together to close a deal) and have a relationship of trust with them that a stranger does not.
And that includes being able to find contractors or other vendors who will do repair work at better prices or on better terms than they would offer to a stranger.
3. Local agents might have a leg up on pricing. Possibly the strongest argument for working with a local listing agent is that they know what local buyers want, care about and deprioritize. That means they understand local pricing nuances better, having worked with local buyers, and having viewed and/or sold recent homes nearby.
You don’t have to have been in the market long to understand that photos can be misleading and that location nuances weigh heavily on the prices that buyers are willing to pay, so the history of having actually been to and inside the comparable sold listings — rather than just having seen them online, can be critically important to understanding how comparable they are to your home, and how your home should be priced accordingly.
Source, Image: Inman, recent settlers
If you have any real estate questions or if you are thinking of buying or selling your home, please contact James Louie Chung, Metro Vancouver REALTOR® at [email protected] or call ( 6 0 4 ) 7 1 9 — 6 3 2 8 today!
