One must know their potential real estate agent. Ask essential questions and do an interview. Most people will tell you that you need to interview your agent and ask questions. They will also tell you to expect questions from your prospective real estate agent as a way of getting to know you.  Perhaps you should go a bit further than asking the right questions and know the type of answers you should expect.

If you ask the agent how long he/or she has been in business, the answer that you should be looking for is five years or more.

If you ask to know the agent’s list to sales ratio, a sellers’ market should produce a list to sales ratio in the range of 100 to 110% and a buyers’ market from 97 to 100 percent.  If you are a buyer, you are going to want to see ratios of 90 to 97 percent in a buyers’ market and 100 to 103 percent in a seller’s market.

You might want to know what makes your agent different from the rest in the real estate market. If the answer is a strong record of satisfied customers, your agent should be able to produce letters or notes from these customers.  Customers will often send a card, letter or thank you note to an agent for a job well done.  You might get the answer that he/she is a very strong communicator.  You will know from your question and answer session whether this is so. If the agent says that he/she is assertive, this is a good quality.