<p>Are you selling the house as a rental property or as a primary home?</p>
<p>You should use whatever agent can best sell into the market space you are in. Most agents don’t know all that much about rental properties, so if you are marketing it as a rental, find an agent with this kind of experience.</p>
<p>If we sell the house ( and it is an if at this point ) it will be sold as a primary home. We only have it as a rental property because we couldn’t sell it at the time and we had people ready to rent and move in. It seemed like a good idea at the time , but it hasn’t been so good since the original tenants moved out ,and I dread finding new tenants. We will not be able to rent it as soon as we like because it will take some time to get it ready since some damage was done and it was left absolutely filthy.</p>
<p>We have tried to use family & friends for various things (dentist, realator, broker, accountant, pediatrician and orthodontist). So far, it has ony worked in for the ortho and accountant the ortho). You can say that you have a blanket policy not to blur friendship and business because you lose friends and $$$ that way, or something similar.</p>
<p>It is very awkward to fire family or friend. Keep that in mind as you figure out what you want to do.</p>
<p>When we sold our first house, the realtor was someone we knew (not a friend, but the father of a friend). Mistake. He was used to dealing much higher-end properties than ours and looking back, it’s clear he didn’t want to be bothered with us for any longer than necessary. He spent almost zero time/effort marketing it. He low-balled the listing price for a fast sale (we didn’t find this out until later; we depended on him to recommend the best price, and he didn’t). He wouldn’t return our calls. And the biggest sin IMO was that he ended up representing the buyer too.</p>
<p>OP, I am NOT saying your friends would do any of these things. The point is, if our realtor had been a stranger, we would have fired him. But we couldn’t. So we now have a rule: Never do business with friends.</p>
<p>My Ex-jerk had pick of first realtors. My laywer found they had good rep in the area, but I insisted they be given short-term contract, specifying what they were going to do to market the house. They arranged for pre-inspection, hired handymen, and staged it. The got it sold within 3 months. With any realtor, I’d make the contract quite specific.</p>
<p>If I had a good friend in the area who was a realtor, a BIG player, I’d probably give it a shot–for 3 to 6 months. If I had any concerns, I’d ask their opinion about other realtors. My childhood friend was extremely hurt when a close friend chose someone else, as she was manager of a realty group in the area. Had the other person shared her concerns first, hurt feelings could have been avoided.</p>
<p>Jumping off on bookworm’s point … if the friend is successful and active in the business, it might be OK. If the friend is hanging onto the license to make an easy buck (not so easy …) maybe the thing to do would be to ask her to refer you to someone really successful and active. She’ll get a referral fee – so she’s getting some money – and you’ll get an agent who is up to speed and working for you.</p>
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<p>As long as you can do it without making it sound like she’s not successful and active. Ouch!</p>
<p>Honestly, our friends ( husband an wife team ) haven’t had any success yet…he has had a few minor commissions and while I admire their efforts , it just isn’t happening. I seriously don’t know how they even pay their bills , literally.
Not for lack of commitment , just not a good market here in our area</p>