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Teamwork: Working
with your agent
Buying a home is serious business.
There are two things you can do to make every step run smoothly.
The first is to select a really professional agent who knows the real estate
business, knows your local market, has both a solid reputation for integrity
and a solid record of success, and clearly is eager to respond to your
needs.
The second is to make you agent your teammate in the literal sense of
the word, using teamwork to be sure that the house you ultimately buy is
the house you’ve always wanted.
Making your agent your teammate requires choosing an agent you feel
able to trust both as a person and as a professional. And that’s
no small matter. In real estate as in all areas of business – as
in all aspects of life, actually – trust can make all the difference in
the world.
True teamwork is nearly impossible to achieve unless you stick with
one agent throughout the buying process. You should shop around –
and shop around carefully – when you’re still deciding which agent to work
with. Once you’ve made that decision, however, don’t reverse it unless
(and this rarely happens to people who are careful in the first place)
something specific happens to make it clear that your choice was unwise.
Teammate status is all the motivation a first-rate agent needs to go
all-out in finding houses that suit your needs. And if you’re concerned
about what it is you’re looking for and how much house you think you can
afford, your agent can save you huge amounts to time and effort.
If you’re not sure how much you can afford, be candid with your agent
about that, too. He or she can provide you with some helpful preliminary
guidelines and can put you in touch with mortgage lenders who know how
to get you focused on an appropriate price range.
It’s always a good idea, as you look at listed homes, to give your agent
a lot of feedback on what you’ve seen. Good feedback will refine and sharpen
the agent’s understanding of your likes and dislikes, which in turn will
make it easier to find the house of your dreams.
The ultimate payoff, once again, is that you get to your goal more
quickly, expending less time and less effort along the way. Anyone who have ever
done it this way will assure you of one thing: it pays off.
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