August 24, 2025 | Selling
How to Choose a Realtor When Selling
With more Real estate agents than ever before in the Wellington Region, it can seem intimidating thinking about how to choose a Realtor when selling.
Selling your home is likely the biggest investment you’ll make. It requires an agent who not only understands your home but also you and your family. They should look at the process as a relationship, not just a transaction.
Since choosing a real estate agent is the most important choice you will make in the selling process, let’s walk through how to choose a Realtor when selling, some things to watch out for and some pro tips and tricks to finding the best fit for you and your family.
How to Pick a Realtor: Think Local
First, consider the real estate agents that are living, working, and actively partaking in your community. No one is going to be able to sell a home better than someone who is a local real estate expert, because they see the same selling features in your neighbourhood.
When you are choosing a real estate agent who is a local, you are getting someone who loves the community you both live in. More than that, however, you are also opening your home up to the client base that your Realtor nurtures.
If your agent is a local, and even better, if they grew up in the Wellington Region, then they will have a variety of different clients in different phases of their lives. Therefore, the likelihood of them having a qualified buyer for your home is much higher than an agent working and living out of town.
If your agent or previous agent is out of town, this will be the biggest downfall of working with them directly; it is harder to come up with a buyer for a region that you are not well-connected to.
Another recommendation on how to choose a realtor when selling is to research how much business a real estate team or an agent is doing in a particular area is to look up their statistics online. By searching their name on Google and checking out their active listings on Realtor.ca, you will be exposed to all of their current listings. This is going to give you a solid idea of how much business a realtor or team generates from a particular area.
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Team, Brokerage, and Network
Your next consideration in how to choose a Realtor when selling comes down to the brokerage you are choosing to work with and the team or individual agent you select.
As a team that works for Royal Lepage, we value the fact that our brokerage has Canadian roots and is established across Canada, creating an extremely wide client-base as well as, strong client referral network. This is extremely important because our referral business can bring you a qualified buyer for your property.
Next, ask yourself if you would prefer to work with a real estate team or an individual agent? Right away, the major difference between a team and an agent is the level of support. You immediately have access to a back-end Operations Manager and Marketing Coordinator in most cases when you choose to work with a team.
Additionally, if your agent is unable to attend something, they are backed by a team of other skilled agents who are happy to walk you through showings and have open availability. If you are working with an individual agent, you are reliant on their schedule and will have to run everything, including the logistics, through them.
Check Out Their Online Presence
The next step in choosing a real estate agent is evaluating their social media presence. While having a strong website is a large part of marketing, social media accounts for 16% of our direct website traffic.
Organic social media leads happen when a Realtor’s social posts on various platforms lead to direct website traffic on that particular listing’s landing page.
For us, social media presence starts before the listing goes live, with the marketing strategy of a “sneak peek” or “coming soon” post to spike our audience’s interest. For Realtors and clients alike, posting the home before it has hit the MLS creates a lead-up for the listing and allows Sales Reps to present it to their clients.
Also, keep in mind, teams will generally have a larger reach on social media than individual agents. The reason being, is that teams are made up of collective databases, pulling on each agent’s clients to create a large following.
Agents who run individual social media accounts will have a targeted audience. For example, first-time home buyers might make up a portion of an agent’s following, which means that a rural listing meant for a high-end market will have less of a reach on their social media. However, an established team with agents of varying ages allows for the best outreach through organic traffic.
Dive Into Marketing
Once you have determined your agent’s involvement in the local community as well as the social media they use, you will want to examine their social media strategy. Your listing agent should have an idea of how they intend to market your home. Since marketing, particularly on Instagram, accounts for a lot of the social media traffic, it is key that your home has a storyline.
Apart from social media videos and posts on a regular basis with fun and trending/engaging content, other forms of more traditional media matter. Choosing a real estate agent who has a reliable photographer and videographer company is the best way to present your home to potential buyers.
Videography allows the future buyer to walk through the home and get a feel for the space without even seeing it. Hiring an agent who uses I-Guide, a platform that allows for virtual 360-degree tours of your home, will be the best option for your marketing.
Commitment & Communication
Once your strategy is established, you will want to evaluate their communication and availability. How to find a Realtor is one thing, but finding a good Realtor who has real estate as their full-time position is another. The majority of agents do real estate along with another career. However, at Capstone, all of our agents are full-time Realtors. There are many non-negotiable pros that go along with this.
For instance, if you want to see a home, your agent is always available to take you. If you need help with understanding paperwork, your Realtor can come and walk you through the listing agreement process, or if you want an agent to be present for showings, the will be there for that too! RELIABILITY is key in real estate, and when you see that your agent is there for you, you won’t have to second-guess a single part of the process.
Meet Face to Face
Personality and compatibility go hand-in-hand with reliable real estate services. Take the time to meet your agents face to face, over a coffee or for a walk in your neighbourhood. It is key to interview the agent and be sure that your personality is aligned with their personality. Type A and B personalities will handle situations differently, and knowing what bodes best with you will help avoid potential future issues.
In terms of personality, choosing a real estate agent who is passionate about their job, enthusiastic about your home and generally positive in their daily life will be a motivating factor in your decision to work with them. When you can sense that someone shares the same excitement about the process, you too will feel more secure in your decision to move!
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Experience Matters
Choosing a real estate agent with experience is key. There will be many questions to ask your Realtor, that come up throughout the process, and ensuring your agent is knowledgeable about your home will help ease these unknowns. Experience doesn’t even have to mean years of selling; it can also look like a wealth of information or knowledge about a particular feature of that home that sets you apart from the competition.
For instance, if you own a rural farm property and you are thinking about selling, working with a team like Capstone, which understands rural properties and has sold and bought over 175 of them, will provide you with the wealth of knowledge required.
If you hired a city agent who specializes in urban Toronto real estate to sell your rural farm property, there may be a bulk of knowledge surrounding these special kinds of sales that the agent is unaware of or uneducated about.
Choosing a real estate agent who specializes in the kind of property you own puts you at an automatic advantage; between their client-base, outreach potential, local knowledge and expertise.
Follow Your Gut
The final step in how to choose a realtor when selling is trusting your gut. After you have completed your interviews, think about who made you feel the most comfortable, who had the most experience, who presents the best on social media and who has the stats to back their promised performance.
Once you determine this, your new Realtor will have you sign an exclusive listing agreement, granting them the authority to work with you until the period of the contract is up. This ensures client loyalty and also reaffirms the client/agent relationship.
Selling your home? We can help! Reach us by email at info@capstonereps.com or call 519.824.9050.
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