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Comment by jwjohnson314 | Hacker News Reader

But where do you find a good agent? My experiences have been of sellers agents dramatically undervaluing my property hoping for a quick sale and buyers agents with none of the qualities you mention, just a desire to push me to buy at any price asap regardless of whether the property they are showing me is a decent fit or not. I have yet to experience any value added from an agent on either side of the transaction.

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I had the luxury of time in my last move, which I used to go to a lot of open houses and talk to the attending realtor (which is not always the listing agent btw). Treat it like a behavioral interview and judge agreeableness and conscientiousness. Also, study basics of sales tactics so you know when they are being deployed on you. This will filter for honest, hardworking people in many situations.

It's worse than that, how do you know it's a good agent without completing the transaction? It seems you pretty much need trusted word of mouth referral.

See, there's this education and licensing process, with a Trademarked(TM) name and everything: REALTOR(TM).

Unfortunately, this process is what we have now.

Yes, you need a trusted word of mouth referral, good agents live on them.

It's just like any hiring process: get referrals from people you trust, look at prior work (previous purchases/sales in this case), learn the right questions to ask when interviewing.

It's even worse! Even after you have completed the transaction, you don't have the counter-factual and never will: Could someone else have done it better/faster/for more?

I would think a referral is only really excellent if from a person who had to do many transactions recently, and sampled at least 2+ realtors. And that's something that's quite hard to come by.

> But where do you find a good agent?

Word of mouth, or maybe Yelp reviews?

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