Selecting an Agent: You’ve decided the time is right to buy a home in Central Park. Great, that’s an exciting first step…but now what? It can be a little intimidating and nerve-wracking to try to figure out where to start the process, and you probably have a lot of questions.

Assuming you know the general area where you want to live, one of the first questions you should be asking yourself is, “Who is the right real estate agent to help me with my Central Park purchase?” I say this because your real estate agent should act as your guide throughout the process. Why not have that agent involved from day one so you can get their guidance from the start?

Don’t worry, this isn’t going to turn into a sales pitch saying you should use our services as a real estate broker. The truth is, who you should use depends on quite a few factors. Ultimately, you want to get the right specialist for your particular needs. Central Park is a great market which, in turn, has attracted some high qualify real estate agents who focus on it.

To help you pick the right agent, we’ve put together the following list of questions we would ask if we were in your shoes as a home buyer interviewing potential real estate brokers.

Top 10 questions to ask a real estate broker before you hire one:

What experience do you have in Central Park?

How many transactions did you complete in Central Park last year?

Can you provide three recent buyer clients from Central Park that we could speak to about their experience?

What makes you different than other agents?

We are looking for [insert your home criteria and price range here]. Is this realistically attainable in Central Park, given current market conditions?

Can you explain the Buyer Agency Agreement? We do not want to do anything that establishes you as our agent until we are ready to decide on a broker, so when does that relationship start? Can you also explain how it could end if we changed our mind?

We understand you are paid by the listing agent on the house we buy. Is there any scenario where we owe you a fee of any kind?

Will we be working with you directly or with your team?

Can you explain what would happen if we ended up buying one of your listings? Who would you represent in that situation?

What can we do as buyers to give ourselves the best chance to get the home we want in a competitive bidding war situation?

If, after you ask these 10 questions and follow up on the references, you feel good about the agent, then proceed with hiring them. If you aren’t comfortable, even if it’s just a gut feeling, I’d say keep looking and find an agent you like. You want someone who you feel comfortable with AND who is a specialist in the Central Park market.

Finding the right agent is like finding the right doctor—you want the specialist who deals with your illness every day and knows it inside and out, not the generalist who learned about it once in school and has a vague understanding of it. The agent’s knowledge of Central Park, based on previous experience, is a large part of what they bring to the table.

Before we leave this subject, I want to provide a short list of who you should NOT use as your agent:

Your good friend. OK, you can use your friend, but don’t use your friend just because they are your friend. If they happen to be the specialist in the Central Park area and you are comfortable with them, then it’s OK. Just don’t use them solely because they are your friend and have a real estate license. That is not enough.

Your cousin who just got his real estate license. How long someone has been in real estate is not necessarily an indication of how good they are at their job (there are plenty of experienced agents who are terrible!); however, I do think we naturally learn as we go in real estate. So do you really want to have your agent still learning the ropes on your transaction when it’s one of the biggest purchases you’ll ever make?

The listing agent on the home you want to buy. The agent selling the home you want says they can help you buy it! Great, right? Unfortunately, no. They already represent the seller so why would they be watching out for your interests? At best, they become a neutral agent serving both parties (called a “Transaction Broker”), which doesn’t help you much, and at worst they continue to serve the seller and treat you as a “Customer” (meaning they don’t have your interests at heart at all). Get an agent on your side—don’t use the other party’s agent. That’s like asking the attorney for the person suing you if they can give you a hand!

The first agent you meet. Don’t just meet a broker at a Central Park open house, talk to them for five minutes and decide if they’re someone you’d like to work with. Research Central Park online and see who comes up consistently as an active agent in the area. Do they have good reviews? Then meet with them, ask the 10 questions we listed above and see how you feel about them. This agent is going to have a large impact on your investment, so take your time on this step.

Yourself. Why don’t we try without an agent and then the seller can give us a lower price on the home because they don’t have to pay two agents? This plan sounds good on paper until you get going. Real estate is not rocket science, but if you don’t do it every day, how would you know what to do it? It would be like me coming to your job one day and saying, “No problem, I can do this” without any training or experience. Listing agents selling the homes do not want to work with buyers that don’t have agents. They would strongly prefer to work with buyers who have agents and know what they are doing based on experience. Especially in a strong market with more buyers than sellers, going it alone is a bad idea.

 Key to Selecting the Right Agent: Take your time, use our 10 question interview process to tease out valuable information and hire a Central Park expert.

 Quick Tip: Many agents won’t know the answer to this... be careful what agreements you sign with them!

 Quick Tip: If they can’t give you three recent clients from your target neighborhood, you may not have the area expert you need!