For your first meeting try to allow 90 minutes per agent.  In general 75 minutes will be enough time for you to get to know each other, and for the agent to get to know your property. The additional time provides plenty of buffer room for meetings that run over and for you to jot down some notes and take stock of the situation once the agent has left. Your next appointment can then arrive and if for some reason the agent’s happen to cross paths, then so be it.
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Before you book a meeting, make sure you have a series of questions written up that you can refer to, as in the heat of the moment most people tend to forget the questions they’d thought of. If you don’t have any questions pre-planned get in touch and we can send some to you. In addition we have a downloadable PDF called ‘The Top Ten Questions’ that we send to every person that we recommend an agent to.

The second meeting is perhaps the most important as this is where the agent will pitch you their proposal for selling your property and indicate the prices they can get for you. So before you bring the agent back, make sure you clearly outline the brief and timelines to them, as this will force the real estate agent to commit to those timeframes in your meeting.

Try not to disclose what you want for your house, as doing so will hand over the competitive edge to them. Your focus should be on finding out what price the agent can bring from the market and if you believe they can deliver it.

There will come a time in the meeting where they disclose the price range they’re thinking of, so it’s important to make sure you hold your cards close to your chest. Try to keep a degree of separation and refer to the price in the third person.

​For example if the agent says to you: “Bob, we think your property should fetch between $600,000 and $620,000, how does that work for you.” What you do is push the question to back to them. Your response could be; “Well Sue, can you explain why this is the range you’re suggesting and how you derived these figures? Obviously we want to get as much as possible for the property, but we’re relying on your professional opinion to give us the best option. So where do you see the top line sitting?”

The key to meeting agents is being upfront, direct and clear.

Follow these simple steps and you won’t go wrong.