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Guidelines to Selling a Home in Tampa

In selling your house in Tampa, We have put together some guidelines to help you weed out those firms that may not be a good fit for you. People make a lot of promises to get your business. This guideline will help you weed out the promiser from the do-er.

Before you pick up the phone... Even before you ask the first question, you can save yourself some valuable time by doing a bit of initial research. Visit a firm's or agent's web site and see what you find. What kind of possible exposure can you get? How visible are they on what most buyers keywords on the search engine? Those promising to put you in 15 to 20 different sites... ask them what those sites are. And see how visible they are. If they don't tell you, this is a sign of other hidden agenda they may have. Remember, a listing in the MLS is standard and will show up on several internet websites irregardless (i.e., realtor.com and other similar sites that host MLS database).
Test the listing agent you're contemplating on listing your house with. Call the agent, email the agent. See how responsive he/she is on returning your calls / emails. How often he/she picks up the phone, how often he/she just lets the answering machine pick up. This is the person who will be representing you and your property. His/her response time is crucial to making or breaking a deal. This is the person who the buyers and buyers agents will call to see your house. Request some comps for your property and see how quickly you will get a response.
Inquire about what kind of marketing techniques they will be using to sell your house. Inquire about the effectivity of these techniques. Remember, you may be charged for some of these marketing materials whether they work or they don't.
Check to see how long their listings stayed on the market. Request a preview of the past and current listings they have had on the MLS. Review how well it's written, how detailed the information they put in, read to see how well they wrote the remarks and specially the driving directions on each listing, see how well the property was photographed, how many photos were used and how photogenic the property looked.
Ask for at least 3 references: ask how often they got a feedback while their properties were on the market.
Rates: don't just sign with the cheapest agent you can find. Focus on the results not the price. The purpose of all this is to sell your house. It doesn't do you any good if your property will just sit for 6 months. It will cost you more in the end. Do your homework and do the math. Most likely, another agent (a buyers agent) will be involved in the sale of your house. Inquire about the co-broke structure. How much of the commission is he/she splitting with the buyer's agent? Hint: In a slow market you need to maximize the incentive for a buyer's agent (3% or more) to show your property. If the commission is LOW, it may not SHOW.