Bryan Vogt: Welcome back to Ready, Set, Sold with your host Bryan Vogt. I left you the last segment talking about you have a family member, you have a cousin, you have a friend, you have someone that you know. The question sometimes comes into is is do you hire them? Now, they may have the trust factor and that’s a good thing. They may or may not have the questions and hopefully they do. The question comes in is is how is the whole experience going to go? Let me share with you some tips.
What we’re talking about today if you didn’t catch us in the beginning, we’re talking about how to choose a realtor. One of the things that you can look at is, and this is what we hear from sellers, that things didn’t go well. That’s one of the things that you have to do if you’re looking at your cousin, your best friend, or whatever. Is the only reason you’re hiring this person is because of that fact? No other credentials, they haven’t sold anything, they haven’t done anything, they’re not that familiar with it, or they have limited experience.
If that’s the only reason, you might want to think about asking at least a second person or a third person realtor to be a backup, to make sure that everything is going to work the way you want to. That’s number one is is do they have experience? If they have the experience, that’s a good thing. Then that comes back on number two. One of the things that sellers we’ve heard talk about and can be a problem … This is really for any business.
This is not just in real estate. I’ve actually experienced it myself. When you hire a friend to do work, sometimes the timing somethings sometimes that you don’t feel like you’re getting everything, you’re getting their best because it’s a done deal. Where else would you go and experience of recently of hiring a friend? It just seem like that the work took a lot longer than I expected, and it seemed like I was second fiddle. Where was I going to go? We’re friends and that was a good thing. Well, that’s the same thing when you’re dealing with cousins are friends of that.
Are they going to do a presentation? There’s the friendship side. There’s the family side, but there’s also the business side. Can they keep that separate? Meaning is you’re going to get the same deal. You’re going to get the same performance, the same marketing, the same communications, the same experience as if you were anyone else, hopefully more but at least that.
Again, complaints that we’ve heard from sellers even when the sell happened, they didn’t think that their friend, and in this situation it was a cousin, really worked as hard as they could have. They could have done more and that may or may not have been true, but you want to get that up front. Again, I’m not saying that the agent isn’t doing everything but you want to have that conversation up front before you move in that direction. Then the third thing is, and this is something that you have to decide, what if it doesn’t work?
Even the best [lay-plans 00:03:03], if the house doesn’t sell and for whatever those reasons are, are you still going to be friends? Of course, you’re still going to be family but are you still going to be friends? Sometimes when friends work together, even in business situations, friendships are strained. I’ve seen in real estate where someone hired a friend, and it didn’t go well. That friendship was actually broken off.
Again, understanding that of course you want it to work and you have confidence and [inaudible 00:03:36] one of the reasons why you wanted to hire this person is the trust factor and there’s nothing wrong, but making sure it’s going to be on a professional basis and understanding that if things don’t work out maybe 100%, is that friendship still going to be in tact? Maybe just things just didn’t work out for various reasons. I mean there’s no guarantees with anything in life and whatever, but again do you stand a good chance of having your cousin or your friend be able to sell your house? That’s definitely something that you want to take a look at.
The same thing … I talked about cousins. I don’t know why cousins seem to come into play when you’re talking to realtors. That is I’ve heard of stories of families being a little bit more tense when things didn’t go well, or even if the house got sold they didn’t feel like their cousin protected them and did as good of a job they could have to get that top dollar and fast sale.
Again, it’s touchy. Again, if you get those things up front then they can [be-have 00:04:38] much, much better experience than just saying, “Hey you’re my cousin. Let’s do this. Hey, you’re friends.” Just a little questions, make sure everybody’s on the same page, can do wonders. We’ve seen people have some great success working with family, and there’s nothing wrong with that. You should support your family. You should support your friends. There’s nothing with that at all. I think it’s a great thing and so that happens to be a realtor that you choose, that’s fantastic.
Again, having those guidelines in place, having that understanding that this is business also and there’s a lot riding on it, and they understand that too can make the experience work. If they can’t, [inaudible 00:05:15] you have to make that hard decision. It does happen. You have to make that hard decision that maybe there’s someone else that can service their needs and again still keeping the friendship and everything in tact.
You as a seller maybe have to make that decision what’s best for you and your family. As we said, there’s a lot of things riding on this. With that said, I want to talk about the next segment. Basically is do they have a track record, what is their experience, and how important that track record is. Just so you know, don’t forget, the last segment of the hour we’re going to have the tip of the month, the $5,000 tip of the month, where either you as the seller will make or earn $5,000. This is Ready, Set, Sold with Bryan Vogt.
Ready Set Sold with Bryan Vogt #12-03: 3 musts you should know if you are going to hire a friend or relative
August 12, 2017