Thing #4
Creates a detailed home search and is available, personally, or with a team to move quickly on “hot listings.”
It is one thing to be able to define your wants and needs but now is the time to put your list to action. Your Real Estate Agent should have the capacity and resources to build your list parameters in a search service, which sends you listings as soon as they hit the market. Again, a point worth making, currently the Louisville real estate market is the best it has been in over ten years. There are roughly 3,000 active listings in the Greater Louisville Association of Realtors. To put in perspective 5 years ago at this time there were roughly 6,000 active listings in the Louisville Real Estate Market. The most impacted homes are starter homes and move up homes.
Your Realtor should be a full time real estate agent who works, constantly, in the system and within their network of resources, to deliver homes which would fit in your search. The days of waiting for the newspaper, driving around searching for signs in yards and attending agent hosted open houses are over. The speed of the internet exposes the need for a full time and capable real estate agent in the Louisville area. It also reveals the need for a full time real estate team to be working exclusively for you.
In general, and especially in this market the need for buyer representation contracts is also valuable. If you sign a buying contract with a real estate agent and their team, you are asking them to take on the fiduciary duty to represent you as a client and to deploy their vast number of resources on your behalf. Remember, agents work on commission and many top agents, frankly, will not give you the attention you need in this market if you are not fully committed to their representation. A contract is there to protect both parties.
In addition, you are depending on your real estate agent to help you find a home, and their most valuable resource is the local multiple listing service (MLS). Zillow and Realtor.com are good sources but they are often inaccurate, depending on dated data and often time lag behind the local MLS. I cannot count the number of times a buyer has fallen in love with a home on Zillow, which was under contract but marked as active in Zillow.
Lastly, on this point, your real estate agent or the team you chose to work with must be available. If a “hot listing” comes up, you may not have days to wait to see it. If your real estate agent is not a full-time agent or he or she works with a team of full time agents, you may have to wait for him or her to get off work, decreasing your chances. I know this seems arbitrary but I cannot stress enough how fast the current real estate market in Louisville is moving. Make sure your real estate agent or team has the capacity to get you to a showing as soon as possible. This is the only way you can position yourself to make a solid offer on a house you want to make a home.