Most buyers start their search a little like this… pull out your phone, open up your favorite real estate search website, (compass.com is a good one), find a property, you like scroll down to see an agent’s name call that agent request a showing, go on the showing, decide that you love the house, scramble to find a lender, get preapproval letter, you get your offer in and you still. miss. out.

There’s a better way. That’s what I’m going to tell you in this blog, along with one reason why you shouldn’t go see a house without finding a realtor first.

I’ve been a realtor since 2013. I currently service Breckenridge, Colorado and I will tell you that I have seen the buyers scramble too many times, even my own buyers. There’s a number of buyers that this is how they found me and while sometimes it works out and we’re the right fit and I find them a lender that they love and we write an offer and we get it accepted.

More often than not, it doesn’t. That first offer even if you find an agent that you like ends up being a learning experience. Because you don’t have rapport or trust built yet to write the offer or you scramble and you don’t get that pre approval letter in time. So if I find a house online, use the agent connected to that house, find a lender is not the right order of operations; when do you find a realtor? The short answer, yesterday. I’m only kind of kidding, you should start looking for a realtor as soon as you know that you’re going to buy a house or as soon as you start thinking that you might want to.

As realtors, my job is to connect you to everyone who will take you from looking at a house online to closing. And the sooner you talk to a realtor and get connected to a lender, the sooner you can start putting things in motion so that you are ready to buy when the right house does hit the market. A lender might tell you that you need to save more money or there’s one thing you need to clear up on your credit score that would reduce your P. M. I. (Private Mortgage Insurance) So, if you’re supposed to look for a realtor yesterday, how do you find the right one for you?

Here are a few ways.

• Ask a friend, see who in your neighborhood, the neighborhood you want to be in, see who they used to see if they liked them because because they used them doesn’t mean they liked them. But find one, that vibe, with one of your people.

• If you have a friend in another market, ask for a recommendation. If you have a friend who’s a realtor elsewhere they can tap into their network and find someone in the city where you want to buy.

• Read reviews online, look on google, look on Zillow don’t look for who has the most five stars. Read the reviews and see if the reviews resonate with you. If you’re like, oh that would be important to me.

• , look on social media, look up the hashtag “your local city realtor” for example, hashtag Breckenridge realtor and look through the post and see if you can find someone who seems like your kind of person.

I’ve said it a couple times now and I mean it, it’s important that your realtor is “your kind of people”. They have the same vibe as you, whatever you want to call it. I think feeling connected to your realtor, feeling like they’re going to understand you is really important.

The more comfortable you are with me as your realtor, the more you’re going to tell me.  W hat you’re looking for, what your concerns are, and the more I can help you. Anything including finding a lender who has the right personality. Because I have lenders who will break down all the numbers, who are great at their job (and I love, love, I love the numbers). But if that stresses you out and you want someone who is going to tell you these are the documents I need you to give to me.

If you need a softer handle, that’s also important because, as much as I want you to trust and feel comfortable with me, you should trust and feel comfortable with your lender. in your search Try to find someone that you like, that you want to work with.

This last tip is really important. This is why you want to find a realtor today, yesterday, before, you step foot in the house. That’s the most important piece. Find a realtor that you want to work with before you go on a showing. And that reason is this nasty little thing called Procuring Cause.

Procuring cause boils down to whichever realtor showed you the house convinced you to write an offer. That is the realtor who gets the commission and there’s a whole bunch of gray area that goes into what determines Procuring Cause.

But that’s done agent to agent. What you need to know is that you shouldn’t go on a showing with an agent that you haven’t already decided that you like because if you go on that showing and during the showing you decide you don’t like them. But, you love the house, you’re gonna be kind of trapped into writing the offer and going through the whole deal with that agent. Even if you were to decide to find a different agent to write an offer.

That agent would then have to fight the first one for the commission. I’ve done it, it’s not a thing you want to get into.

If you want to see a video on all of the nitty gritty on how procuring cause works put a comment below, I’m happy to explain how it works. The two times that I’ve dealt with it, where I’ve had to go through mediation one time was because the buyers called us after the showing.

If you’re interested in hearing those stories and hearing more details, put a comment below. But if you take one thing away from this video, it’s that you should start looking for an agent TODAY. Whether you’re going to buy six months, a year, two years from now, start looking for an agent, that can be your agent today.

My contact information will be listed below. So whether you’re looking to buy in Breckenridge or in a different market, if you feel like I could be one of your people, I am happy to interview agents in any market in the country to help you find the right agent for you