What to Ask an Agent at a Las Vegas Listing Appointment

Most sellers in this valley interview two or three agents, and most of those appointments run the same way. The agent presents, the seller listens, everyone is pleasant, and the decision comes down to who seemed nicest or who said the highest number.

Both of those are bad ways to pick. The highest number in the room is usually the most expensive one, and pleasant is table stakes.

Here are the eight questions I would ask if I were the one sitting on the couch. I am including the two that are least comfortable to be asked, because they are the two that tell you the most.

Not what the number is. How they got there.

A real answer includes closed comparable sales with the reasoning for each one, what is active in your range right now, and what expired without selling. That last category is the most useful pricing information in the valley and it is the one almost nobody brings, because it is a list of numbers buyers already refused.

If the answer is a range with no houses behind it, or a number that arrived before they walked through your house, you have learned something.

Question two separates a marketing plan from a marketing paragraph. Ask what is actually running, and ask when.

In my case the answer is the same every time. Marketing starts on day one and the full package is running inside the first week: professional photography, a Matterport 3D walkthrough, paid digital advertising, syndication to Realtor.com, Homes.com and the other major sites, and open houses. It is front-loaded on purpose, because the first two weeks are the best two weeks a listing ever gets.

The wrong answer sounds like a list of channels with no dates attached. Photos next week, the video when the photographer can get back out, ads if we need them. A listing that trickles into the market spends its best exposure half-dressed.

Ask who negotiates your offers, who runs your showings, and who you call on a Tuesday when something goes sideways.

Plenty of teams in this valley are run well, and plenty of sellers are surprised to find that the agent who sat in their living room is not the person they deal with afterward. Neither arrangement is wrong. Being told which one you are getting, before you sign, is the point.

My answer is that I do it. I negotiate and close the sale myself and nobody gets handed off, because I am solo and that is how I have run it for 20 years.

Vagueness here predicts what the next three months feel like. “I will keep you posted” is not a commitment, it is a way of avoiding one.

Ask for a specific cadence and a specific channel. Mine is a house status call every Friday or Saturday, whether there is news or not, so you are never the one chasing an update. Between those, you get 100 percent of my attention whenever you contact me.

The weeks with nothing to report are the weeks that matter for this question. Any agent will call you the day an offer comes in.

Asking what to fix gets you a list. Asking what not to fix tells you whether the agent is thinking about your net or about making the house easy to photograph.

Plenty of pre-sale work does not come back. An agent willing to tell you to leave something alone is an agent working on your side of the ledger. What to fix before selling covers where that line usually falls on a valley house.

The follow-up is worth asking too. What would you spend a thousand dollars on in this house, and what would you spend nothing on.

What is your commission, and what does it cover? Ask what the total is, how it is split, and what happens to your net. An agent who gets awkward about a direct question on money will be no better at it when a buyer is negotiating against you.

What happens if I want out? Ask about the length of the listing agreement and the cancellation terms before you sign it rather than after. An agent confident in the plan does not need to trap you inside it.

Would you turn down this listing? Ask whether there is a price at which they would decline to take it. If the answer is no, then their opinion of your price carries no information, because it was never going to be anything other than yes. My answer is that I do not take a listing at a price I do not believe, and I will tell you the real number rather than the flattering one even when it is lower than you hoped.

Ask all eight of these at every appointment, including mine, and write the answers down. The differences between agents show up in the answers to questions three, four and eight far more than in the presentation.

Call 702-881-6562 or email JArendt658@gmail.com. I will come out, walk the house, and give you a number with the sales behind it. Then hold my answers to these eight against the other two agents you are seeing.

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John Arendt, Realtor, has sold homes across the Las Vegas valley for 20 years, in Henderson, Summerlin, Southern Highlands, Anthem, Boulder City and North Las Vegas.