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In response to my article “Dear Angry” one of our readers asked me to provide a list of questions a buyer should ask when looking for an agent. Like many things there is no simple answer to this but I will provide a very generic list. Your criteria will depend on how often you want to look, what type of property you are looking for as well as geographic issues.

The most important consideration is that who ever represents you truly has to have your best interests in mind. This is the type of thing that is hard to quantify and really tough to determine with generic questions.

So how do you find out the real person who is working with you? The best way is by getting a personal referral from someone you respect and trust. Failing that, take the time to interview a few agents – don’t just work with the first one that comes along. Try and think about what is most important to you; most buyers consider integrity, knowledge, responsiveness, honesty, negotiating skills as the most important factors when choosing an agent.

Simply asking how many years have you been in the business does not address competency, and transactional experience in the type of property you are trying to buy.
Most people go with someone they feel good about or thinks in a similar way. While there is nothing wrong with this can you imagine what would have happened in Star Trek to the Enterprise if Spock saw things the same as captain Kirk and advised him thus?

Like sellers agents there are many differences in service levels with some agents so you may want to do some comparison shopping and ask questions such as:

• Ask them to explain their process – This will give you insight into how the agent works, what information they will provide to you, and how they are going to work for you. A more direct route is to ask what will you do for me? See our blog post what can a buyers agent do for you to get an idea of the different services.
• Are they genuine? This is not a question but more of an indicator. How much interest do they show in you and is it genuine?
• How available are they? Honestly if you want to work with me I’m not available at the drop of a dime. Most good experienced agents have time challenges. So maybe less experience and more availability works better for you.
• Another intangible that can be invaluable is “are they a good negotiator?” This in and of itself is a series of posts. A poor negotiator can cost you money and one who is not really representing your best interests is the worst negotiator of all.
• What are a couple of mistakes you’ve made and how did you deal with them? In over 15 years of experience reviewing and sitting on professional standards complaints and hearings i have come to notice it’s not the mistakes that set agents apart – everyone makes mistakes – it’s how they deal with those mistakes that set the ethical and questionable apart.
• Am I obligated to you and for how long?
• Do they communicate the way I communicate? Some people text, email or do none of those. You will be communicating with them a lot so make sure they’re used to your preferred method.
• Performance – If performance is important you may want to see a live list of their buyer represented sales showing you the average list to sale price ratio. I’m not so concerned about the average but if all the sales are pretty close to list price I’d be wondering how much research into market value are they doing for you.
• References. I know everyone has people who will say good things about them. So ask for some current buyer references, some recent past references and some way past references. Unless they’ve been asked this like I have it may take some time to arrange. For privacy reasons I just can’t give out my client’s info without their permission and believe it or not even some of my really good clients have better things to do than hand out glowing reviews of me.

Obviously much of what you want to know will depend on whether you are an investor, first time buyer, buying a condo, buyer a new home or an older home and so on. The most important thing to recognize is that the saying “you don’t know what you don’t know until you know what you don’t know” most definitely applies to real estate.

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