The right questions turn a buyer's agent interview from a pleasant chat into evidence. You are hiring for pricing judgment, negotiation, and deadline discipline on the largest purchase of your life, and each of those can be tested in a fifteen minute conversation if you ask questions that require specifics. Here are the ones that do the work, and what good answers sound like.
Questions About the Record
How many buyer side transactions did you close in Amesbury in the last twelve months, and can I see them? How many were in my property type, condos, multi-families, single families? What share of your offers in the last year were accepted, and what happened on the ones that were not? Good answers arrive as numbers and examples. If an agent works the Merrimack Valley broadly, ask how the Amesbury record specifically looks, because that is the market you are buying in.
Questions About Process and Problems
How do you price an offer, and what evidence will you show me? Take me through your last difficult inspection negotiation and your last appraisal gap, with outcomes. Who are your lender and attorney partners, and why those? How do we communicate between offer and closing, and who covers for you if you are away? Problems are guaranteed in an Amesbury purchase of an older home. You are hiring the person who will stand next to you in those moments, so hire the track record in them, not the promise to be good at them.
Questions About Money and Terms
How is your compensation structured, what happens if a seller offers less, and what does my buyer agreement commit me to and for how long? What do you estimate my total closing costs will be at my price point, beyond the down payment? An agent who answers money questions precisely and without discomfort is showing you how they will handle the seller's money questions too. Evasiveness in the interview becomes expensive vagueness in the transaction.
Bring the same list to every interview and write the answers down. Within three conversations, the differences between agents stop being matters of style and become matters of record, system, and candor, which are the differences that decide outcomes. And ask one final question of each: what would you tell me not to buy in Amesbury right now, and why? The answer tells you whether you are talking to an advisor or to a salesperson with a quota.
If you want to put these questions to me on an Amesbury purchase, I welcome the interview. Call Doherty Properties at (978) 746-0124 and ask for me, Chris Doherty.
Chris Doherty is one of the top-producing agents in the Merrimack Valley. He personally sells 100+ homes a year across Greater Lowell and the Merrimack Valley, with 3,000+ career transactions, and Doherty Properties, the company he leads, has handled over $1 billion in real estate transactions.
Doherty Properties LLC, 14 Jackson Street, Lowell, MA 01852 | 160 Main Street, Unit 7, Haverhill, MA 01830 | 4 Courthouse Lane, Suite 2, Chelmsford, MA 01824 | (978) 746-0124 | [email protected]
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