Real Estate Agent vs. Sellers Agent Specialist: What’s the difference?

Portland’s real estate landscape is vast! There’s a specialist for nearly every activity — and that’s a good thing. To have a hassle-free real estate transaction, you need someone handling the mortgage, someone looking at the title, someone inspecting the home, etc. That’s why a system has developed over the decades in which, in a given home sale transaction, there’s usually one real estate agent for the seller and one for the buyer.

Now some real estate agents will take that a step further and exclusively represent sellers or exclusively represent buyers as a career specialization choice to serve their clients in the most effective manner.

Top 3 Advantages of a Sellers Agent Specialist

1. Improved Customer Service

When I first started the industry, obtaining my license in 2003, I represented both buyer clients and seller clients at the same time – like most real estate agents. The problem I quickly learned is that most buyers wanted to view homes on the weekends and most offers on my listings would also come in on the weekends. So at the same time I was driving my buyers around showing homes, I was supposed to be negotiating offers on behalf of my sellers. Not a great scenario! When I switched a few years later to a seller’s only specialist I was able to give my selling clients my full attention, not divided by constant requests to tour properties with buyers. Since I specialized, I’m available at the office with almost no distractions. I’m able to respond to all offers quickly and give near immediate advice to all of my seller clients at the moment they need it. I’m not pulled in two different directions, and I’m completely focused on making sure all of my clients’ homes sell quickly and for the best possible price.

2. Improved Home Marketing

For the many years I’ve been a sellers agent specialist, I’ve been able to spend a lot of my focus on researching exactly what makes a home sell, how to get the highest price in the shortest amount of time for my clients, and I’ve been able to keep my thumb on the very latest real estate market trends and data. This has been true to the point that I publish my own real estate paper, write annual housing forecasts, write best month of the year to sell annual articles, and write multiple articles on the Portland Housing Market each month. I can really focus. Also, I attend the latest conferences on cutting edge tech to get homes sold faster and more efficiently. I honestly believe we have the best available online marketing program to sell your home.

3. Measurable, Consistent Success

We’ve been recognized as one of the 3 Best Rated real estate agents in Portland, earning multiple different top tier customer service awards in our industry (I honestly believe this is in large part due to becoming a sellers agent specialist) and over 600 positive client reviews. It takes consistent focus over time (licensed now for over 20 years) on one particular task to perform at the top level for your clients.

Buyers Agent Specialist

Now you can be sure that I would not leave out our home buyers! We do have many clients that are buying and selling a home at the same time and so it is crucial for me to have an excellent partner who works in the same office with me and coordinates their move.

In order to be a confident sellers agent specialist, I looked around very carefully to find the very best buyers agent specialist I could find in the local industry to partner up with, and a number of years ago I found Kami Price, Principal Broker. She has also risen to the top of the industry due to her intense focus on representing buyers well. Her freedom to pour all of her attention into home buyer’s representation has led her to become one of the most educated buyers agents you’ll meet. She has designation upon designation to help her clients find and negotiate for the home of their dreams and all the availability needed to provide top notch customer service along the way. I also believe we’ve cracked the code on finding a way to give our home buyers 100% availability to see any home they want in the Portland metro on the day of their choosing. Check out everything Kami offers our home buying clients here.

Real Estate Specialization Wins

Only about a fourth of real estate agents are on a team according to the National Association of Realtors. Even those that are on a team may not be exclusively representing sellers or exclusively buyers (sometimes they team up to share business or work different neighborhoods). For those real estate agents that are considering it, I highly recommend sellers agent or buyers agent specialization. For those customers looking for a good real estate agent to buy or sell their next home, I recommend they ask any agent they interview whether or not they work exclusively for buyers or exclusively for sellers.

Here are the top 5 questions to ask when interviewing a buyers agent.
Here are the top 5 questions to ask when interviewing a sellers agent.

Have more questions about Realtors?

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