When you interview Realtors to sell your home, you are hiring someone to handle the largest transaction of your life, and you have maybe forty-five minutes to decide. The good news is that a handful of questions will separate the agents with a real plan from the agents with a good script. This is the list I would use if I were the seller sitting across the table, and they are the same standards I hold my own listing appointments to.
Start With How They Price a Home
Ask the Realtor to walk you through how they would set the list price for your home, and ask to see the evidence, not just the number. Which comparable homes sold in your neighbourhood in the last 90 days? What did they actually close at, not what were they listed at? What do they think your home's features are worth on top of that, and why? Then ask the question that matters most: what would they do if your home did not sell at that price? The answer should be a strategy, a timeline and a communication plan, not a shrug. Pricing is where most listings quietly die, so the agent who cannot take you through it clearly is telling you everything you need to know. I explain how the market writes the price in a separate article, because it is the most misunderstood part of selling.
Ask What Actually Happens in the First Two Weeks
The first two weeks decide most sales, so ask for a specific plan for that window. When will professional photography happen? Will the home be staged, and by whom? What is the pre-listing preparation checklist before the sign goes in? When does the listing actually go live, and what happens on launch day? Vague answers like "we have a great team" or "we market aggressively" are not plans. You want to hear the same specifics I lay out in my guide to the first 30 days of a listing.
Ask Who Answers the Phone
Selling a home runs on communication. Ask who you will deal with week to week: the agent you are interviewing, or an assistant, a team member or a voicemail. Ask how often you will hear from them, whether you get written feedback from showings, and what happens when an offer arrives, including at 9 p.m. on a Tuesday. The best marketing plan in the world fails when the seller is the last person to know what is happening with their own home. Strong communication throughout the sale is one of the four pillars of my own approach, and it is the one sellers thank me for most.
Ask About Marketing With Specifics
Ask where your home will actually be seen, and keep asking until you get past the brochure answers. Which portals does the brokerage syndicate to? How are the photos used beyond the listing itself? Is there video, a virtual tour, social media, an open house plan? How do they reach buyers before they arrive from Toronto, for a rural property in Queensville or Mount Albert, or a downsizer moving within Newmarket? Being listed is not the same as being marketed, and this article tells you what a real marketing plan looks like.
Ask How They Handle Offers
Negotiation is where a listing becomes a sale, so ask how they manage offers. Would they recommend an offer date or not, and why, for your home specifically? How do they compare offers, from price to conditions to financing to closing date? What do they do when the highest offer is also the riskiest? The agent's answers here should sound like they have been through it, because a skilled negotiator reads a buyer's motivation and manages the process so you never feel rushed or pressured. What multiple offers actually look like in East Gwillimbury is worth knowing before you are in that room.
And Ask What Happens If It Sits
Every seller hopes the home sells fast, but the honest interview tests what happens if it does not. Ask what the agent proposes at week three, week six and week eight if there is still no offer. Expect a real answer: a pricing conversation backed by fresh data, changes to presentation, a marketing adjustment, and a clear schedule of when you will hear it. The agents who cannot answer this question are the ones whose listings quietly go stale. My diagnosis of why listings sit walks through the usual causes, and your interviewer should be able to do the same, out loud, from memory.
The Test of a Good Listing Interview
Listen to the entire conversation with one question in mind: is this about my home, or about them winning the listing? A confident, experienced local agent will happily answer every question on this list, because they have answered them a hundred times before. They will not dodge your price question, they will not hand-wave the marketing, and they will not be threatened by your homework. If an agent gets uncomfortable, that is the answer. I welcome the same questions at my own listing appointments, and I have sold more homes in East Gwillimbury than any other Realtor over the past 10 years, so I have seen what happens to listings hired on charm instead of plan. Compare the plans and pick the one built for your home.
Thanks, Lee :)