Cliff Barron here with my weekly update for Milton, Georgetown and Glen Williams, September 6-12th, 2020. This is the second part of my two-part series about hiring an agent and the questions you want to ask when doing so. Last week I talked about price. That's the big thing - what they're going to price your home at. You want to make sure it's an honest assessment of your property without any exterior forces contributing to their opinion. 

Today, I want to talk about another big one - commission. That's what everybody wants to know and then in a nutshell, "What the heck am I going to get for that commission I'm that paying?"  So, just remember this - not all commissions are fixed - for one thing.  There are no set fixed commissions. You can offer as little as you want, or as much as you want, or pay as much as you want. And not all agents charge the same commission too - keep that in mind.  So, there will be agents doing 5%, there will be agents doing 3.5%.  And don't be fooled by the 1% total commission stuff that you see in flyers, etc.  It never happens - it's a loss leader, basically just to get their foot in the door and then they work their commission up from there. 

So there are a few questions you have to ask...

> First of all, "How much is your commission?" You want to know what their commission is and what they offer to the buyer agent - so the TOTAL commission, in other words. 
> What does it include? That's a big thing. Another thing to think about too, is if the agent - if your agent - represents both sides of the deal (in other words he "double-ends" the deal) representing the buyer as as well as you (the seller) - will he cut the commission? 
> And if you were to buy a property through that agent, will he or she cut their commission a little bit or give you a little bit of a deal on the selling of your current property? 
> And how long is the listing contract? How many months is it going to be? The minimum is two months. You can't do any less than that and you can go as long as you want. I personally do about three - and it never goes that far. It sells long before then. And then if you're not happy with the services, can you cancel the contract and what does that mean exactly? Does that mean canceling altogether or does that mean the agent can have the right to choose another agent to take over your contract? That's another thing to think about.
> And then finally, the services that are offered. Usually the higher the commission, the more services are offered (i.e. staging). And staging... it DOES work. If you pay a little bit more in commission, don't worry because you're gonna net about $20,000 to $30,000 more in the end. I had a client on the weekend - I sold their place and it was beautifully staged and I asked, "How much do you think the staging affected your property? About 20%? 30%?" And they said, "No, no I think about 50%" So it works. It definitely, definitely works. So don't "cheap out" on the commission, only to lose out on the back-end of the deal, if you know what I mean.  So not only should you ask if staging is included, what type of staging? Is it just a consult or is the furniture moved in and out? 
> Are there virtual tours, 3D tours, drone shots for advertising your home? 
> Do you do open houses? Right now they're kind of a sticky point still with COVID. Do you do agent open houses? These are completely useless (between you and I). Agent open houses usually happened on a Tuesday. If you list your house on Thursday and those people haven't seen your house by the following Tuesday, usually they're not really on the ball, for sure. In the old days, agent open houses made sense because we didn't have the internet and they used to send fax sheets of the latest listings. You could go in on a Tuesday to preview them for your clients - but now it's so competitive, you have to be so fast and so on the ball. If you wait until Tuesday for your agent to see the property and then he calls you and says, "Hey, I think you should get in." By then it's too late. It's already sold, it's already gone. 
> And what kind of advertising does that agent do? How do they market your home? Online, or do they do newspaper ads? If they do newspaper ads, you might want to think, "I don't know if they're targeting my demographic."  Think about the last time you read a newspaper. The only people that look at newspaper ads are usually older people, or people who have nothing to do -they're bored, so they read the newspaper sitting at home. 

So anyways, getting to the sales for Milton and Georgetown. Milton first, September 6-12th. 41 sales this past week, as opposed to 35 the same time last year. We're still not too bad. It's slowed a little bit from the week before. The week before, there were 50 sales - so it slowed a little bit - but the prices are still up there - $1.16m on average.  There were a bunch of big sales in Milton, 22 of them detached - 7 days on the market. 12 towns sold at an average of $723k, which is still high and 8 days on the market - pretty quick. And 5 semis sold, average of  $778k and 2 days on the market. Semis are flying. And moving on to Georgetown and Glen Williams.  It was a little bit different in Georgetown and Glen Williams the past week because there were no big sales. There were 7 sales and 8 sales last year at the same time, so it slowed a little bit. I think it's because kids are back in school and because not a lot of the big properties sold. That's why the numbers are a little bit lower. There were 5 detached that sold at $904k on average, which is way down from the week before, which was $1.17m and 8 days on the market, still moving pretty quickly. 2 towns sold, $657k on average and 10 days on the market. So things are still good, the market is still busy. I did an offer last night, 4 offers registered on it. I had a buyer for a property, 8 offers registered on it. I had a buyer for another property and we didn't even get in because it sold before we had a chance to. 

So the market is busy, you've got to be on the ball if you're a buyer for sure.  And you've got to get in there quick and act fast. Anyways, any questions? Let me know. Send me a DM, PM or a phone call, email. I'm always around, thanks. Take care.