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Difference Between a Realtor and a Real Estate Agent Revealed

What is a Realtor? And why should you use one? by Christopher Seder

Only real estate professionals who are members of the National Association of Realtors can call themselves realtors. Non-Members are only Real estate agents or Sales people. There are several amazing benefits of using realtors over a sales person.
All Realtors (members of the National Association of Realtors) are bound to a strict code of ethics. Their code is based on professionalism and protection of the public. Random real estate agents do not have to abide by these codes. If you choose to use a Realtor you can be sure that they are honest and ethical in all aspects of real estate and business. If they are not, they will not be a realtor long.

The Biggest benefit of using a Realtor over an Agent is access to the MLS, the Multiple Listing Service. This is a private service that only Realtors use to share listing with other Realtors. If you use a Realtor they put your House on the MLS and thousands of other Realtors can easily access the information and find a buyer for a house you are selling. Or Your Realtors can access other realtors listing to find you the house that meets your criteria the best.

Some of the principals that realtors must follow include:

Protect and promote their clients best interests. A good realtor knows what the client’s wants and needs are. For example, a good realtor will know what a client can afford in a home payment and will not put anyone in a home that they cannot afford or will have trouble making their mortgage payment. They will also make sure that their client has got home inspections done on their potential house to ensure they made a good buy.

Realtors should be knowledgeable and commitment in the field of real estate. It’s important to find a realtor who really studies what is going on in the real estate industry. A good realtor will know if the market is starting to dip, rise or is going to stay flat. How do they know this? Well realtors are in the MLS, out looking at houses and studying the market every day. If a realtor does not somehow keep track of what they are seeing then they have failed as realtors and as your hired gun.

I know many realtors out there who think their only job is to sell houses. But the job of a good realtor is to know every aspect of the real estate industry form residential, commercial, and real estate investing.

There has been great feedback from buyers and sellers in the past few years about working with Realtors. Sellers are reporting that an agent’s reputation was the most important factor in their selecting the realtor they did. Is that true with you? I believe that working with the best realtor in your area is important. Everyone wants to work with the best.

Home buyers and sellers both report that the biggest benefit they received from using a realtor was help understanding the home buying/selling process. I can really see that as being a huge benefit. If you do not understand the whole process that goes into buying/selling a home it could cost you thousands and hundreds of hours.

At Last! An Easy To Follow Home Buying Process Just for You

Make Your Home Buying an Easy Effortless Process

By Christopher Seder

Congratulations on deciding to purchase a house. Buying a house is one of the most important journeys of your life. Everyone dreams of one day owning a home, it’s the American dream to own a nice home where you can raise your family. If you are new to buying a house then this is for you. Educating yourself about the home buying process is very important and you have come to the right place. You are about to learn the steps that go into buying a house.

Step 1: List out What Your are looking for In a Home

It’s very important that you sit down and list out what your goals for a home are. You need to list out what you are looking for, what features you want, and neighborhood and so on. Having a good base to start from is very important. If you have to have an entertainment room then put that on your list. I would also divide your list up with must haves, and want to have. Something like a hot tub might be on the want to have section. You do not need it but it would be a good bonus to have.

Step 2: Know What You Can Afford

The next step is to really figure out your finances. You need to pull your credit report and make sure everything looks right. If there are errors on your report then make sure you get them fixed immediately. If you credit is not where it should be, you usually need a credit score somewhere in the mid 600’s to get a loan these days. Then Get some kid of credit repair program in place.

Also you should gather all your financial statements for the last year or so and all your bills. Put them together and really figure out what you think you can afford. You will also need these for the next step.

Step 3: Find the Right Loan/ Mortgage Company to Work With

When looking for the right loan company and loan you need to do a little research. Looks up different types of loans and learn about them. You also need to be determining the price range you can afford. You can do this with mortgage calculators that will give how much you can afford or a Mortgage company can help you figure this out.

That brings us to finding a good mortgage company. Just do some research, ask friend who they use for their mortgage company. And find a company that can give you the lowest interest rate. Once you have sat down with your mortgage broker and figured out what your price range is then you will need to get a pre-approval letter. This just shows what the lenders thinks they can lend you and that stuff.

Step 4: Find the Right Realtor to Help You

Finding the right realtor is very important. They can make your home buying experience a smooth ride. Just do some research, Google realtors and ask friends who they would recommend. It all comes down to someone you trust and feel comfortable working with.

Step 5: Find Your Home

With the Help of your super start realtor finding your home should be no problem. Take that list of must haves you made in step 1 and discuss them with your realtor. Sit down with him and go over all the houses that are for sale that meet your criteria. When you have this done map out open houses and go check them out. Your realtor will be a great help in finding you dream home. They will also be able to go over all the paper work needed with you.

Step 6: Make an Offer

Once that home is found you are going to have to make an offer. This is usually when you will go through all the paper work that your realtor can go over with you. Ask him/her any question that you may have about the process so your feel confident with your decision. Also make sure they do a market analysis on the property. This will help you determine what you want to offer on your property.

Also always make sure you have an inspection contingency in so that you can have someone inspect the property and make sure there is nothing wrong with the property. By having this if you find something wrong you can easily get out of the contract.

Step 7: Close on Your Home

Before you officially close on the property you will need to review all the closing cost and disclosures with your realtor and mortgage person. Get insurance on your property, an appraisal, and then you are ready to close. Most realtors have done this hundreds of times so they can easily guide you through the process.

Step 8: Move in and Enjoy

Once you have closed you can move into your new amazing home and enjoy life.

Learn How To Choose A Rock Star Billings MT Realtor

Choosing the Right Realtor Can Save Your Thousands.

by Christopher Seder

Do you realize how life changing your choice to sell your home is? You are embarking on an amazing journey that could impact the rest of your life. So why would you want to pick a random Billings Mt Realtor? I know you’re like me and want to only work with the best realtor Billings MT has to offer. Choosing the right realtor can make for a smooth ride. The wrong realtor can leave you with months of stressful days and restless nights.

So the question you are asking right now is how do I choose a good realtor? The first way to find a good realtor is to ask your friends, neighbors and business associates who they would recommend. Even post a comment on facebook if you have a facebook. Everyone loves to give their opinion. When you ask these people for recommendation bug the heck out of them with questions. Ask them why they liked the realtor, what services he provided, and what their experience working with him/her was like. This is a great way to start forming a list of realtors, but you’re not done quite yet.

The next step is to do a little research on the list of Billings MT Realtors that you have made up. Take the list and Google them. Find out who they are, who they work for, what kind of marketing they do, their internet presence, and pretty much stalk them on the internet. It’s also important to find a realtor who has an online presence. 86% of home buyers start their search online.

Here is a great tip and but can be a challenge. Find out which realtor’s in Billings Montana is closing the most transactions. The reason for this is you will know which realtors are the hustlers. The top five or ten realtors you know have figured out the game and know how to sell a house. They are making it happen and they are the people you want to be working with.

Ok so you have your list, you have done your research and found out who looks like good realtors and so on. Now you’re going to want to narrow your list down to about 3 realtors. It’s up to you how you do this. I just recommend going with who you think looks like the very best.

Once you have your list narrowed down call all three of them and set up an appointment to meet them at your home. The reason to meet them at your home is so they can take a good look at is and give you their opinion. Also have them do a CMA (comparative market analysis) on your house. This is just what similar houses are selling for in your area and will give you a good feel for what your house is worth.

When you interview them really take note of their personality and how you feel about them. Also have a long list of questions to ask them. Here are some example questions to ask.

* How do you plan to get my house sold?
* What is your Marketing Plan for My House or Houses you have sold?
* How many years have you been a licensed realtor in this state?
* Are you full Time?
* How to you market online?
* How many transactions did you do last year?
* How many Listing do you have?
* What other services do you provide? Home staging?
* Do you belong to the MLS? (very important)

There are just a few examples to ask them. After you have interviewed them do not make a decision right away. I know a lot of realtors who will want you to sign the listing papers right away but take a few days and evaluate them. Go through the pros and cons of each.

In the end it all comes down to choosing the one you feel will do the best job. Always go with your gut feeling. After you have made your choice trust your decision and you will be fine.

Choosing a pour realtor in Billings Mt can turn an already stressful experience into a high speed car wreck. But if you have done your home work you will choose the right realtor and he/she will make your life more amazing than it already is. Start your Home Selling Journey today.

p.s if you would like my billings mt recommendations let me know CLICK HERE

Home Selling Advice from an Insane Person

How are you marketing your Home? What would an Insane Person?

By Christopher Seder

What do buyers need when they plan to buy a home? In fact, there are so many aspects one needs to consider. Have you ever bought a house? How many houses did you look at? Probably looked at several Houses. What did every one of them have in common? The sellers did the same old boring stuff. I know they all do the same boring stuff. I attended 20 open house this last month. Everyone looked exactly the same. I got to thinking what would an insane person do different? Does it not make sense to set yourself apart from the rest of your competition? Think about it. If every single home looks to same, how is your buyer going to remember you?

Let’s talk about a few things that go into the home selling process. But let’s think about what an insane person might do instead. This is going to be fun; you get to put on your creative hat.

Normal Vs. Insane

First, you should be an informative seller and let people know you have a house for sale. You could put the "Home for Sale" in your front yard. Don't forget to put your phone number on it, so a buyer can get contact you. How Boring is that though? Let’s spice it up and say to ourselves what would an insane person do? How about erecting a Billboard in your front yard? That’s a little crazier. How about getting a huge Balloon and attaching it to your sign or house. Make the Balloon Stick out so you can see it from miles away. I like that. And have your phone number in letters you can read 5 Blocks away. Yes we have a winner.

Second, you should Price your house reasonably, valued by the physical price of your home, environment and location. It’s pretty tough to come up with something insane for the price of your house, because you want to sell it Right? So it should be marketing around the same price of similar homes in your area are selling for.

So what can we think of to make the price a little insane? Think of anything? I got it, how about we list the property around triple what its worth? Then in 1-3 weeks we drop the property back to reality. Buyer will go crazy thinking wow they just dropped his price by how many hundreds of thousands? It could work and it is totally insane.

Third, correlated on physical condition of your home, your home curb appeal is the most important thing. You can do some works to improve appealing of your home exterior. Just to make it beautiful, tidy, and fresh.

Alright, home buyers want your home to be in nice shape. That’s a given. To get top dollar you will want your home in tip top shape too. But what can we do to make it a little more insane? Can we add something that may benefit the house? We could do that. But what would be insane and memorable? I know let’s build some kind of volcano in the back yard. You think anyone will forget that? I do not think so. And yes it has to be functional. Imagine the look on a buyers face when they check out the back yard and see a functional volcano spewing lava. That’s just insane.

Fourth, get your buyer in the right mood by creating a cozy environment in your home. What do I mean by "cozy environment"? Very important is fresh air, clean environment, fresh odor, and make the buyer feel all warm and cuddly inside.

That’s what 99% of home sellers do. Let’s be different and insane. Do you have any ideas?

Why not decorate the place a little different. Now this may be a little over the top, I am going to warn you only try this if you are truly Insane. Why not make your house like a tropical paradise inside. I am in a tropical mood right now. Get palm trees all over the house, get decorations all over the house. Why not just try it, what do you have to lose? Oh your buyer. There are hundreds of them out there.

Fifth, good presentation of your home selling can add great value to attract a buyer. Know your entire home and its contents, and present it to your buyer. Tell them how sweet your home is, how much you love it, your experience in your home, the great moments you have passed by etc. Just be a familiar and friendly seller that can give much impression to your buyer.

I agree what that who statement, somewhat. Now let’s ad our little twist. When buyers come over let’s give them a lay. No not that kind of lay, sicko. I mean a lay like you would get when going to Hawaii. Let’s give the buyers an experience they will never forget. Dress up in Hawaiian Shirts, play one of those letter guitars, what are they called? Make your buyers feel like they are on vacation. That is great, they will never forget you.

It felt really good to let your imagination run didn’t it? All of these ideas are a little crazy but believe me; the buyers will be talking about you for a long time. There is no way they can forget some of the insane stuff you did. Now take what I said use my ideas, or come up with some of your own. Try them out; you could have lots more fun selling your home.

Real Estate Investing Marketing

What is marketing? Marketing in real estate investing is just simply ways for motivated sellers to find you. Finding leads I believe is what real estate investing is all about. If you have no leads coming in then you have no deals and no money. This is why marketing is key to your success. We are not in the real estate investing business we are in the marketing business. You need to get the word out about what you do and let your whole town know that you buy houses. I am going to talk about what I think are some of the best ways to market for real estate investing.

Networking

Networking is a key to success in real estate investing. 99% of other investors out there hate to network. Networking like a mad man will give you an advantage over most of them. A real estate investor needs to be going to every networking event possible. REIA’s, Chamber events, BNI, mastermind groups and every event you can go to. You need to be giving your card out to everyone you meet. The more cards you give out the better chance of getting leads. You will most likely get I lead out of every 50 cards you pass out. Most people just through the cards away or stuff them in a dresser. But that 1 lead could net you $10,000 or more. A good thing about networking is that it gets the word out about what you do.

Classified Ads

Classified ads are a great place to advertise what you do. It is a must for every real estate investor to have an ad somewhere. Start off with a local paper like the thrifty nickel or one of the free papers. Its costs around $15 a week to have you ad in their but you get lots of great exposure. I know what you are thinking there are tons of other investors in the paper and in the classifieds. But I have called all of them that advertise and I will tell you that only two of them have ever answered their phone. The rest I am still waiting for them to return my call.

Your ad should just be something simple like I Buy Houses Cash, with your phone number. You should get a little creative and make your ad stand out from the others. Its real simple and remember to answer you phone.
Bandit Signs

Bandit signs are just simply signs that you put up around the community on telephone poles that say I buy Houses and a phone number. Most places hate them and you could get fined for putting them up. I had some up for a while and had great success with them, they work. If you do get a call from the code enforcement just comply with their wishes. Some people have told me to put them up on Friday nights and take them down Sunday nights. If the code enforcement harasses you I would recommend doing this.

Flyers

Flyers can be a great source of leads. What I do is make up flyers that just simple say Cash for you house. I list some things like have your been transferred? facing foreclosure?, behind on payments?, getting divorced?, etc. Then I put my phone number and web site.

I put these flyers out all over the place, at local businesses, and just find places that allow me to put them up. There are hundreds of businesses out there that have bulletin boards and allow you to put flyers up. Do this every week because that’s about as long as your flyer will last. Most get pulled down by others putting up flyers.

Mailers

Every big real estate investor does mailers. The most successful marketing in the world is direct marketing. Mailers are a pretty simple thing to do, that a lot of people do not do. It does take time to put together a mailer, print them out, stamp and lick all the envelopes but you will have leads coming in like crazy. So who should you send mailers too? People in foreclosure, landlords, vacant property owners (not the vacant house), people getting divorced, people late on payments, and really anyone that you think is motivated to sell.

The letters should just be one page saying that you would like to purchase the house they own, and that you can pay cash and close fast. Every real estate investor needs to be sending out some sort of mailer weekly.

Online Marketing

The internet is becoming the biggest place to find deals and for motivated sellers to find you. Statistics have shown that over 80% of home sellers and buyers start their search online. This means that if you do not have an online presence you are losing tons of business.

What should everyone have when doing online marketing? Every real estate investor should first off have a Seller and Buyer Squeeze page. These are pages or sites where sellers and buyers can give you’re their information. An investor should also have a word press blog. This helps to build your online presence; it’s a place where you can put articles and tips for sellers and buyers. Real estate investors also need to have ads all over the free online classified sites. This is just the basics for online marketing. I could write a book about it. Just learn as you go and read everything you can on online marketing. Also social media is a must. Get on all the social media sites.

All of these marketing venues are pretty inexpensive and should be done by everyone. There are several other ways to market your business but I would start here and work your way up. The key to all of this working is doing these consistently. To run a successful real estate business you have to be doing each one of these things weekly.

Billings Mt Home Selling Guide

Selling your home in Billings Mt can be a daunting task. You need to pick the right sales associate, estimate what you think you can sell the house for, fix up the house, show the house, and cash your huge check. One thing that a lot of home sellers over look is understanding what the market is doing. You have to know what is selling, how long homes are staying on the market, prices, and what your competition is.

If you are working with a realtor in Billings Montana he has probably helped you set the price to list your home at. Even though this price right on with what people are paying for homes like yours. You still have to know that the price or value is going to be determined by what a willing and able buyer will pay. There might be a home that looks exactly like yours down the street but your home might not sell for the same price or sell as fast. Real Estate can be crazy at times.

Sell Home Fast Here

This is why determining your asking price can be the biggest factor in getting your home sold. All real estate agents can give you a market analysis that provides details on recent sales of homes similar to yours, as well as the asking price of homes currently on the market.

There are more factors to deal with, so that you can fully understand the process of selling your home and what really determines what you are going to get for your home.

One factor to look at is the location of your home. What are the tradeoffs and advantages of your home? A house on the west end is going to sell for more than a house on the south side of Billings. Yes that is pretty obvious. Does your house back up to a busy street or is it in a quiet neighborhood? This is huge and can drop the value of your home by over $10,000. Area is huge factor in selling your home. Also know what is going to detour potential buyers from your home.

Next thing to look at is the features of your home and features of other homes on the market. I like to call this the sizzle factor. What features separate your home from others on the market? Does your home have an amazing view, new kitchen, overhead microwave and just things that people love.

Another one is condition of the house. If you are going to try and get full market value make sure you home is in amazing condition. Retail buyers want a house they can move right into and not have to do a darn thing. If you don’t want to do any work a sell your home, call Big Sky Property Solutions LLC in Billings Montana. Otherwise fix up the house and get it looking like a new place.

Lastly just understand what the market is doing. Is it a buyer’s market, a seller’s market? Study what is going on out there. Do not watch the news to find this. They will tell you that no one is buying and that you are better off to bulldoze you home. Just ask realtors, go to open houses and really just open your eyes.