Were you thinking of buying some property in Destin, Florida? I hope that you’ve thoroughly educated yourself on the market and are ready to proceed ? having done over 50 million in property transactions in my time, I have a few helpful hints for you as you begin your search.
I have found in my own experience that about 95% or agents and brokers really aren’t going to help you much ? however, the other 5% of them can be a lifesaver. This may sound like a harsh assessment, but I’ve found it to be the case in Destin and everywhere else I’ve ever dealt with properties. For our purposes here, I’m going to go ahead and assume you’re looking for something here in Destin; so you’ll want to find Destin realtors to help you out.
Try this ? using Google, do a search for “Destin Realtor”. You’ll get a lot of results; check them out and what do you notice?
Probably that almost all of them look exactly the same. The typical realtor’s website you’ll find will have a smiling photo of the realtor, a place to search MLS, a spot for their listings, an about me section and a brief profile of the community ? everything a prospective buyer needs, right?
Having done my share of searching for real estate agents all over the country, I’ll tell you what you won’t find on these sites: no way to tell whether or not he or she has any idea what they are talking about. I know that any agent can show me the MLS and that they could take me around to look at some properties.
But why would you or anyone else want to deal with a real estate agent or broker who doesn’t know the market and the community like they know the back of their hand? I know I’d rather work with an agent who is intimately familiar with the territory.
So how are you to find the top 5% of Destin realtors? There’s a lot of different ways to find a realtor; but if you want to find a realtor who is really an expert, then you need to start by getting educated about the market yourself ? this will let you evaluate whether or not the realtor you deal with know anything about the market themselves. In a recent blog post, I made the suggestion that buyers take a look at Realtor.com to learn as much as possible about the market before they even talk to an agent.
Why do this? You’ll want to know if the realtors you talk to will really be any help to you as you look for properties in Destin. You should tell the broker or agent exactly what you’re looking for then just let them talk ? if they’re good, they’ll understand and start giving you information you can really use. If not, they’ll probably make little sense and keep trying to interest you in one or two particular properties.
One good Destin realtor may not be enough; keep talking to other agents until you are totally convinced you’ve found the perfect person to work with in your search for property in Destin, Florida.