They bring lots of data and patterns to the table mostly -- because they spend all day every day dealing with it.
- If you tell your agent "I'm looking for a good investment property" they'll be able to tell you why this house on this side of the street is a good investment, and why the house 2 blocks away isn't.
- They can use this data during negotiations. You don't really know what price a home can be bought or sold for, but they can work off of a more educated guess. Should I try to sell my home for $x? or $x*1.25? They'll know how much and why. Should I try to negotiate down when buying or do I need to make a stronger offer? They'll know market conditions and can help you.
- They're familiar with all the oddball paperwork certain kinds of property deals have to work through. Like, are you buying a deprecated farm unit in an independent but not registered municipality that's been rezoned for mixed-use development but you'd like to rezone back to agricultural use? There's a form for that and they just saved you 6 months of back and forth with the state/county/city getting it sorted out.
- They can dig into property history and find out things that you might not know from looking at the property. Like, the foundation was recently rebuilt, or the property has a history of flooding and needs a sump-pump, so you might be looking at $20k in charges to put one in, or you can use it to negotiate down.
- If you are selling, connecting you into the broker network to find a buyer. It's a lot more than just putting something up on the web, a good agent will spend quite a bit of their time hunting down a good buyer for you.
- If you tell your agent "I'm looking for a good investment property" they'll be able to tell you why this house on this side of the street is a good investment, and why the house 2 blocks away isn't.
- They can use this data during negotiations. You don't really know what price a home can be bought or sold for, but they can work off of a more educated guess. Should I try to sell my home for $x? or $x*1.25? They'll know how much and why. Should I try to negotiate down when buying or do I need to make a stronger offer? They'll know market conditions and can help you.
- They're familiar with all the oddball paperwork certain kinds of property deals have to work through. Like, are you buying a deprecated farm unit in an independent but not registered municipality that's been rezoned for mixed-use development but you'd like to rezone back to agricultural use? There's a form for that and they just saved you 6 months of back and forth with the state/county/city getting it sorted out.
- They can dig into property history and find out things that you might not know from looking at the property. Like, the foundation was recently rebuilt, or the property has a history of flooding and needs a sump-pump, so you might be looking at $20k in charges to put one in, or you can use it to negotiate down.
- If you are selling, connecting you into the broker network to find a buyer. It's a lot more than just putting something up on the web, a good agent will spend quite a bit of their time hunting down a good buyer for you.
Here's a longer list
http://ohiorealtors.org/consumers/184-tasks-agents-do-for-yo...