Who Cares About Experience, All Realtors Are The Same – NOT!
October 6th, 2008 Categories: Gwinnett
This morning I watched a bunch of online videos about the real estate market and about how to choose a real estate agent. Much to my surprise, I agreed with most of what I heard and saw in the videos. That’s weird for me because I think there is so much mis-information out there about how the real estate business truly works. It’s very different than most people think. But, I’ve got a few comments to be sure.
How To Buy A Home – video powered by Metacafe
One of the suggestions was “hire an experienced agent”. The video specifically suggested an agent with at least 8 years of experience. Not exactly sure how they came to that number (out of thin air?). I think the point was to find a Realtor who has been through enough deals (and problems) to anticipate them before they happen to you! I’ve only been in the real estate business for about 5 years, yet I’ve closed hundreds of successful real estate transactions here in Gwinnett. I know other agents who have 10+ years of experience who may have only closed 30 to 50 transactions in all of that time (not that there’s anything wrong with that 
.
So, maybe the more accurate measure of experience would be “# of transactions divided by # of years in the business”. If your agent only completes a few deals each year, they probably don’t have enough current experience to know what’s going on in the market and really have a deep understanding of the current finance situation, etc. Agents who close 25 to 50 deals per year or more get to see “everything that can go wrong” and – since they’ve seen it already – they can help you avoid all those pitfalls. In fact, most of the time, the client doesn’t even realize all of these little details. The experienced agent just makes it happen and makes it looks easy. Maybe that’s why people think that selling real estate is so easy?
Buyers & Sellers who work with an experienced agent (usually “their friend”) generally DON’T do that again. If you’ve had a nightmare closing or a transaction-from-hell, the first question I might ask is how much experience your agent had before the transaction.
