P here. Thanks PPs for all of the advice and perspectives. I'm leaning toward redfin but I think you're right that it's a good idea to interview several agents. Do you have any suggestions for critical questions to ask them?

PP here. The most helpful thing for me was asking for and looking at their 2 year record of all listings; DOM, list vs sale and how familiar they were with my neighborhood. I could see if someone consistently priced too high, etc. Obviously, there are factors that may affect a particular home's record that is not the agent's fault, but you can get a decent snapshot this way. That, and speaking to the last couple people who used them to sell a home that was similar in stats to mine.

We were in a similar position (popular area, house showed very well, tight market) and interviewed full service/price realtor who lived in our neighborhood; another who did not but high sales volume; a redfin agent and another flat fee agent.

The first one had a good estimate of what to list the house at, had good comps but like you I could not see what 'value added' things she brought to the table. The second seemed to want our business by flattering our house, had comps that were reaches (cause this neighborhood changes greatly over several blocks) and claiming it would sell for X, which was inflated. The redfin agent went through some song and dance about 'hitting a big swath of the market by pricing it at Y" and had terrible comps (his list price was nearly 200k UNDER the sold price). The flat fee agent gave us the most thoughtful estimate of list price, advice on what to do and not do to get ready for market, threw in free staging, good photos, and suggested, due to the timing (early last summer, a hot time) and the neighborhood, that we list a little low as she expected to generate a lot of interest.

We had 9 offers by deadline (6 days after listing) and we sold 70 over list, with no contingencies. She negotiated everything perfectly (but it was an easy buy/sale on both sides), and even helped us out after we moved by taking care of a few issues free of charge.

I am now living in a different small city/town where there are basically no discount agents, everyone uses the same handful of people inthe business, they all take 2.5 or 3%, they dont even both with professional photos half the time and would never help stage. Its so old school.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I sold with Redfin, Russell Chandler to be exact, and was very pleased with the service. He still responds to my home-related text messages promptly a year later. The process went very smoothly. When the lockbox on the door broke, it was fixed that day. Docu-sign was wonderful and the closing was a breeze. I took off several hours from work but didn't really need to since the closing took less than an hour.

What areas around DC does he do? I'm prob going to use Redfin, too.

Maryland. I just received an email from him today on my one year anniversary--sale date that is.

I work with a traditional agent who we've done a few buys/sales with. She does our deals at 5% - includes photos, docusign, etc.

We were in a hot neighborhood for a summer listing. Had a LOT of offers pre-open house, and during. Wound up with 11 offers, 6 with waived contingencies. She was able to squeeze out an extra 15K for us in the end through negotiating the top two offers that I'm confident a less experienced agent wouldn't have been able to. Not saying all redfin agents aren't, but it was a nuanced part of the sale that I'm glad I had a seasoned, well informed negotiator for. I'm pretty certain that even with the redfin rebate, we would have come out lower.

Anonymous wrote:I sold with Redfin, Russell Chandler to be exact, and was very pleased with the service. He still responds to my home-related text messages promptly a year later. The process went very smoothly. When the lockbox on the door broke, it was fixed that day. Docu-sign was wonderful and the closing was a breeze. I took off several hours from work but didn't really need to since the closing took less than an hour.

What areas around DC does he do? I'm prob going to use Redfin, too.

I sold with Redfin, Russell Chandler to be exact, and was very pleased with the service. He still responds to my home-related text messages promptly a year later. The process went very smoothly. When the lockbox on the door broke, it was fixed that day. Docu-sign was wonderful and the closing was a breeze. I took off several hours from work but didn't really need to since the closing took less than an hour.

Has anyone really thought that marketing is outdated? I mean everyone does everything online and redfin offers that free 3d home tour.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We met with a Redfin agent when we sold our DC house in October and were unimpressed. She was assigned to cover a big chunk of the city and didn't have a good sense of the localized market in our neighborhood. She suggested an "aspirational" list price based on her review of the comps that was 90k lower than our ultimate sales price. She also didn't have a good grasp for just how fast we expected our house to sell and we didn't trust that she'd be responsive enough during the critical first days on the market.

We ended up going with a full service neighborhood agent who cut us a big break in commission because he knew the house would go quickly. He also paid staging, managed last minute repairs and cleaning, and even helped with several projects himself.

We ended up with 5 above list offers in a bidding war and sold for 50k above list in 4 days to a no-contigency offer. He did a great job balancing all of the prospective buyers, preinspections, and negotiations to get everyone up as high as possible.

We had always planned to sell with a discount agent, buy were very glad that we didn't in the end. He was only marginally more expensive and we feel very confident in our ultimate sales price. I'd interview several agents and see where you end up.

OP here. Thanks PPs for all of the advice and perspectives. I'm leaning toward redfin but I think you're right that it's a good idea to interview several agents. Do you have any suggestions for critical questions to ask them?

We interviewed 6 agents and asked each what services they provided, why we should list with them, and for their best deal in commission. We also asked them to send us sample listings for houses that they'd recently sold so that we could see the quality of their marketing materials.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We met with a Redfin agent when we sold our DC house in October and were unimpressed. She was assigned to cover a big chunk of the city and didn't have a good sense of the localized market in our neighborhood. She suggested an "aspirational" list price based on her review of the comps that was 90k lower than our ultimate sales price. She also didn't have a good grasp for just how fast we expected our house to sell and we didn't trust that she'd be responsive enough during the critical first days on the market.

We ended up going with a full service neighborhood agent who cut us a big break in commission because he knew the house would go quickly. He also paid staging, managed last minute repairs and cleaning, and even helped with several projects himself.

We ended up with 5 above list offers in a bidding war and sold for 50k above list in 4 days to a no-contigency offer. He did a great job balancing all of the prospective buyers, preinspections, and negotiations to get everyone up as high as possible.

We had always planned to sell with a discount agent, buy were very glad that we didn't in the end. He was only marginally more expensive and we feel very confident in our ultimate sales price. I'd interview several agents and see where you end up.

cut us a big break in commission == discount agent

and good job!

OP again. How did you get him to cut you a big break in commission? Just asked?

Anonymous wrote:We met with a Redfin agent when we sold our DC house in October and were unimpressed. She was assigned to cover a big chunk of the city and didn't have a good sense of the localized market in our neighborhood. She suggested an "aspirational" list price based on her review of the comps that was 90k lower than our ultimate sales price. She also didn't have a good grasp for just how fast we expected our house to sell and we didn't trust that she'd be responsive enough during the critical first days on the market.

We ended up going with a full service neighborhood agent who cut us a big break in commission because he knew the house would go quickly. He also paid staging, managed last minute repairs and cleaning, and even helped with several projects himself.

We ended up with 5 above list offers in a bidding war and sold for 50k above list in 4 days to a no-contigency offer. He did a great job balancing all of the prospective buyers, preinspections, and negotiations to get everyone up as high as possible.

We had always planned to sell with a discount agent, buy were very glad that we didn't in the end. He was only marginally more expensive and we feel very confident in our ultimate sales price. I'd interview several agents and see where you end up.

OP here. Thanks PPs for all of the advice and perspectives. I'm leaning toward redfin but I think you're right that it's a good idea to interview several agents. Do you have any suggestions for critical questions to ask them?