Football: After first taste of glory, Messi's Miami target treble

NASHVILLE -- Lionel Messi and Inter Miami have their first silverware, barely a month after the Argentine’s move to the Florida club, and are now turning their aim on a unique treble.

Messi scored one of his trademark wonder goals, to put Miami 1-0 up in the Leagues Cup final at Nashville on Saturday but the Tennessee side fought back for a 1-1 draw, forcing penalties where Miami emerged victors for their first title in their three year history.

"Very happy to get the first title in this club's history. Everyone's hard work and commitment made it possible. Hopefully this is just the beginning," Messi posted on Instagram.

The Argentine World Cup winner has scored 10 goals in his seven games so far, finding the net in each match, and he left club owner Jorge Mas beaming in delight as his audacious move to bring in the game's top player delivered its first title.

"To see Lionel with that smile, all the guys how they are playing. This will be the first of many trophies for this team," he told reporters.

David Beckham, who created the club before bringing in Mas as the key investor, reflected on the years he spent trying to make the team a reality but even he appeared taken back by how quickly the team has gone from strugglers in MLS to a team being watched around the world.

"A lot can happen in five weeks, a lot has changed for us," he said.

"We will enjoy this but now we have to look to the future and continue to build because we have some of the best players in the world out their on the field wearing pink but also, more importantly we had a bunch of academy players out there with them and that is important for us as a club and indeed for the country," he added.

The jubilant players interrupted the press conference of victorious coach Gerardo Martino, spraying him with champagne, but they will have to sober up quickly because their next challenge comes in Ohio on Wednesday when they face FC Cincinnati in the semi-final of the US Open Cup.

Then Miami return to the main business of the Major League Soccer regular season, where the team will be looking to climb from bottom of the Eastern Conference into the playoff places to give themselves a chance of another trophy – with 12 games to go they have little room for error.

As the players chanted in the locker-room at the end of an entertaining, unbeaten seven games in Leagues Cup, Martino’s thoughts were turning to the next test.

"There's not a long time to celebrate. On Wednesday we have another game and we will continue playing and competing like this in the different tournaments," said Martino.

"This one is in the past. And now we are thinking about the match against Cincinnati."

Former Barcelona and Argentine coach Martino said the intense format of the month-long tournament had helped Miami gel together as a team after the arrival of Messi and Spanish pair Sergio Busquets and Jordi Alba.

- Growing and dreaming -

“I remember the first days and I felt we needed to do more training sessions to give shape to the team and I was thinking, how convenient it is to have this tournament, because we can take advantage of this month to play more,” he said.

"And after this month, we are champions, so it feels great, and it helps us continue growing, keep dreaming. I think we clearly understand now what we can do looking forward. We better understand the future, and it's more clear," he said.

The Leagues Cup just concluded its first year as a competition bringing all top flight teams from Mexico and Major League Soccer together for a mid-season, World Cup-style tournament.

MLS Commissioner Don Garber said that the tournament had been a huge success with Messi's impact lifting it to unimagined heights.

Garber said the Argentine's arrival "accelerated the popularity and interest in the tournament. Our television ratings have been spectacular. Our Apple TV ratings have been, for us, dramatically more than we expected," he said.

Messi's presence and Miami's run to the title had been "the talk of the football world," said Garber.

DeAndre Yedlin, Miami's captain before handing over to Messi on his arrival, said the team had undergone a total change.

"We walk in to places now, we expect to win. I can't say that was a factor every time we played before," he said.

"It is our seventh game together as a group. It is strange, we are still kind of learning on the go," he said before he too focused on the next step.

"Now we have a semi-final. It's an opportunity for another trophy."

Agence France-Presse

Football: Messi will need time to adapt to MLS, says Beckham

FORT LAUDERDALE, United States -- David Beckham believes Lionel Messi will need time to adapt to Major League Soccer, even though the standard of play is at a "different level" from the European game.

Inter Miami co-owner Beckham, the former Manchester United and Real Madrid midfielder, watched Messi take part in his first training session for the club on Tuesday after signing a two and a half year contract.

Spanish midfielder Sergio Busquets, a former team-mate of Messi's from Barcelona, also trained at the club's complex, after signing on Saturday, with former Barcelona and Argentina coach Gerardo 'Tata' Martino leading the session.

"Leo's still going to need, no matter how good he is, no matter what his stature is, he and Sergio are going to need time to adapt no matter," said the Englishman.

"They might surprise us, we might start winning every single game, but we have to be patient," he said.

Miami's fans may need to show that patience at Friday's Leagues Cup game against Mexicans Cruz Azul, with Beckham saying the Argentine may not necessarily start.

"Leo will play some part of the game but that will be down to the coach (and) it'll be down to Leo to decide if he's ready because we know that he's been away for a few weeks with his family but he looks sharp, he looks great but he's going to need time to adapt as well," said Beckham.

Beckham was the biggest name to have moved to MLS when he signed for the Galaxy in 2007 when the league had just 13 clubs, compared to 29 today and the standard of play was significantly lower.

But Beckham said that there was one area where nothing had changed.

"One of the similarities will be, when I came, all of a sudden, everyone thought: LA are going to win everything. LA are going to win every game, 7-0, 8-0, and that's it, nobody else is gonna win anything," he said.

But despite Beckham's arrival, the Galaxy weren't even able to make the playoffs in his first two seasons.

LA finished next to bottom of the Western Conference in 2007 and 2008 but then in 2009 were beaten finalists before winning MLS Cup in 2011 and 2012.

"Those first two years for me, it was a challenge, getting used to everything, bringing the club and the league to be a little bit more professional, but things changed very quickly," he said.

"I started enjoying the soccer a lot more, not just because we were winning (but) because I could see the change that was being made -- the academy stuff coming into each of the clubs... we're now at a stage where things are definitely different to how they were in 2007," he said.

While the standard of MLS is still well below that of the top leagues in Europe, where Messi has spent his entire club career, several foreign players who joined the league late in their career have found it difficult to thrive.

The frequent travel across time-zones, playing on artificial surfaces at some stadium, and having team-mates who might not be on the same wavelength or have the expected technical ability, are some of the challenges players have faced.

Beckham has no doubt that Messi will be a success but accepts his impact on the field might not be as instant as some may be anticipating.

"It's a different style of football, it's  a slightly different level to what obviously some of the players that are coming in are used to," he said.

"But at the end of the day, this level of football in this country now is a good level, it's a great level, so there are going to be moments where we have to be patient," he said.

Agence France-Presse

Few pro athletes suffer heart disease after mild COVID, says study

There are few cases of inflammatory heart disease among professional athletes who suffer mild cases of COVID-19, according to a study authored by medical experts from Major League Baseball (MLB), the National Basketball Association (NBA) and other major North American sports leagues.

Medical personnel from MLB and the NBA, along with the National Football League (NFL), National Hockey League (NHL), Major League Soccer (MLS) and the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) pooled data from athletes from May through October 2020, as professional sports in North America slowly returned to action after coronavirus-linked lockdowns.

The retrospective study, the first of its kind among the six leagues and published by JAMA Cardiology on Thursday, showed that five of 789 athletes who tested positive for COVID-19 during that time were found to have inflammatory heart disease after mandatory "return-to-play" cardiac testing.

"It does show that in this population of athletes it is safe to return and that inflammatory heart disease is relatively uncommon," said Dr. Gary Green, medical director for MLB, who confirmed that all were able to return to play.

None of the people in the study were hospitalized due to COVID-19 infection and none would have been classified as "seriously ill," Green told Reuters.

More than half a million people in the United States have died from the novel coronavirus, as government officials scramble to roll out vaccines and stem the spread of the highly contagious virus.

"The study was sort of designed to answer the uncertainty that there was surrounding this issue about whether cardiac inflammation was present in people who had mild or asymptomatic forms of COVID-19 illness," said Dr. David Engel, the consulting cardiologist for the NBA and a co-author of the study.

Numerous professional athletes have opted out of playing since the COVID-19 pandemic first took hold in North America, amid concerns over the long-term impact of the virus.

Boston Red Sox pitcher Eduardo Rodriguez missed the 2020 season after contracting the novel coronavirus and subsequently being diagnosed with myocarditis. He since said he plans to play in 2021.

"Being athletic doesn't necessarily protect them anymore than if they were sort of an age-matched non-athlete," said Engel. "The cardiac inflammation that you can see with COVID-19 or really with any virus poses a unique risk to athletes because myocarditis, if it's present, it can cause a lethal or a dangerous arrhythmia when the heart is stimulated."

The report offered little insight into the impact of the novel coronavirus on female athletes, with the WNBA the only North American women's league included in the study. Just 12 WNBA players tested positive for COVID-19 during the study's timeframe. 

-reuters-

Football: Seattle defeats Toronto 3-1 to capture MLS Cup final

LOS ANGELES -- Seattle defenders Kelvin Leerdam and Victor Rodriguez and Peruvian striker Raul Ruidiaz scored second-half goals to spark the Sounders over Toronto FC 3-1 in Sunday's MLS Cup championship match.

A noisy crowd of 69,274, the largest in the history of Seattle's NFL and MLS stadium, roared in delight at the final whistle as the Sounders collected a second title in four campaigns.

"The atmosphere was amazing," said Spanish reserve Rodriguez, who was named the MLS Cup Most Valuable Player. "I will remember this moment as long as I live. I'm really happy."

It was the third championship match meeting over four seasons for Toronto and Seattle, but their first on US soil.

The Sounders won the 2016 crown on penalties after a goalless draw but the Canadian club avenged the loss by capturing the 2017 title 2-0.

"We are so competitive," Rodriguez said. "We have really good mentality always. And at home with our fans it's a little bit easier for us. I'm proud for all my teammates. We really deserved that."

Dutchman Leerdam's blast deflected in off Toronto defender Justin Morrow but officials chose not to call it an own goal in the 57th minute, the score against the run of play giving the Sounders the lead for good.

Rodriguez took a centering pass from Uruguayan midfielder Nicolas Lodeiro at the top of the box and smashed a right-footed shot into the far corner in the 76th minute.

Ruidiaz added Seattle's final goal in the 90th minute, netting his seventh goal in six career playoff matches.

American Jozy Altidore, who came off Toronto's bench in the second half after missing most of the playoffs with a quadriceps injury, scored in the third minute of stoppage time to avert a shutout for the Reds.

Leerdam, a 29-year-old Suriname-born right back, hit a shot that was going wide before striking Morrow.

It wasn't the first costly mistake by Morrow in an MLS Cup final. In 2016, he missed Toronto's last penalty kick off the crossbar just before Seattle's Roman Torres netted the title-taking kick.

- 'A dangerous team' -

It was the second MLS title for 57-year-old hometown coach Brian Schmetzer, who began his playing career with the original Sounders in 1980.

"It's a good moment for Seattle and the fans and the players, who have overcome adversity all year," he said.

"The first goal, Kelvin got the deflection and that got us started. My team is a dangerous team and that really got us going."

Toronto sustained early pressure, with Canadian Jonathan Osorio and Frenchman Nicolas Benezet forcing saves by Seattle goalkeeper Stefan Frei in the first 11 minutes and Sounders winger Jordan Morris denied on a counter-attack by Toronto goalkeeper Quentin Westberg.

Frei deflected a Benezet shot with his left arm in the 36th minute and Westberg saved a Ruidiaz right-footed blast from the heart of the box in the 45th minute to keep the game scoreless at half-time.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

How Accurate Are Local Home Sale Prices?

As you search for a home online, one of the more important statistics you’ll encounter are prices for homes that have sold recently in the area you want to live in. This is the best way to get a feel for the local market. In fact, identifying recent sales prices of “comparable” homes is basically how appraisers determine values.

How Sales Prices Work

Sales prices, sometime called closed sale prices, differ significantly from list prices, which basically represent only what the seller is asking for the house. Nor are they pending sales process or contract prices, which are the amounts sellers and buyers initially agree to but often change before closing.

Sales prices for individual homes that you see on real estate web sites come from brokers who report prices to their local multiple listing services rather than waiting for prices to be posted publicly at courthouses, a process than can take months.

But How Accurate Are They?

A new study has found that the prices consumers see on web sites were wrong an average of 8.75 percent of the time—in most cases higher than they should have been. The economists who conducted the study looked at 400 transactions in a Southeastern state from 2004 to 2008.

They compared prices from MLSs with the official prices and found that errors weren’t spread evenly over the time period but doubled in one year to more than 15 percent of transactions in 2006, when prices peaked and began to fall in the housing crash, followed by nearly as many errors in 2007 and 2008, when the crash accelerated. One example was 22 percent higher than the actual sales price.

How Do Errors Happen?

The timing of the errors suggested they were not random mistakes but were driven by marketplace conditions.

From the evidence, the authors of the study suggested two viable explanations for the market-driven error rates. The first was that some brokers intentionally inflated sold price information in the MLS, perhaps to make it appear that they negotiated a higher price for their clients.

“I don’t think agents were deliberately misstating prices, though that’s a story that fits the facts,” said Dr. Kenneth M. Lusht, one of the study’s three authors, in an interview. Lusht is Distinguished Professor of Real Estate at Florida Gulf Coast University.

“The second thing that could have happened, and it’s pretty likely, is that when you’ve got a down market, buyers get cold feet. They start thinking about not going through with the sale and giving up their deposit. So another story that’s consistent with what we found is that the price the broker submitted was the agreed upon price but between that the time he submitted it to the MLS and the settlement day the price was changed and the broker never changed the data because there is no incentive to do so.”

Whatever the cause of the errors, the study concluded, “Regardless of the motivation or source of the error, the result is the same—a misstated price.”

 The Bottom Line

More research is needed to confirm whether a real problem might exist and to measure its scope. Moreover, few markets today are falling at rates close to those of the period covered by the study, so at most errors are less frequent and less severe than those in the study.

However, in the meantime consumers relying upon sales data originating from multiple listings services should see if they can find other sources for sales that they are relying upon to set a sales price, price an offer or negotiate and final price.

source: totalmortgage.com

How to Tell if Your Local Real Estate Market Is Healthy

At its simplest level, real estate economics is a matter of supply and demand. Too few houses for sale to meet demand and prices rise. Conversely, if the local for sale inventory exceeds demand, prices will fall.

If supply and demand are in balance, though, prices will stabilize and homes will sell at prices closer to their true values without the unhealthy side effects of an unbalanced market—bidding wars and prices so high that they shut out first-time buyers or so low that they suck away equity from homeowners.

During the current recovery, rapidly rising prices have created bubble-like conditions, threatening some Western markets and raising the specter of the crash that contributed to the default of more than 5 million families.

Markets can change quickly, but it is not hard to tell when supply and demand are so out of balance that they create abnormal changes in the market that make it difficult for buyer or sellers.

Here some ways to assess a market’s health.

Rapidly rising or falling prices.

These are the symptoms that the market is out of balance and is causing damage to either sellers, buyers, or move-up buyers. Generally, an annual increase of 5 percent is a very healthy rate of appreciation.

Prices above that level and prices that are depreciating on annual basis suggest that they market is out of balance. Over the past three years, national average price has risen about 20 percent, according to CoreLogic.

Months’ supply.

Housing economists track the balance between supply and demand with metric known as “months’ supply.” It presents how many months it would take to use up the current supply of homes at the current rate of demand.  It takes into account current inventory, rate of replacement and the rate of disappearance. A six-month supply is considered healthy.

Time on market or days on market. 

This metric is simply the median time that homes are selling in a market. For a specific listing, it’s the number of days a listing is active in a multiple listing service before a buyer makes an offer that the seller accepts.

It is less accurate than months’ supply because MLSs reset the clock tracking time on market if the property is delisted and then listed again, often by another broker. “Time on site” a similar measure, also can be confusing since it measures only the days a listing has been on an aggregator site like Zillow or Realtor.com. It might have been listed on its MLS for s longer period of time than on an aggregator site.

When days on market exceed 90 days, it’s a good sign that either there is something wrong with the property or it is priced too high for the market.

List-to-sale, sale-to-list, or list-to-close ratio.

This is a sales metric used by real estate professionals to measure whether homes are selling more or less than the asking price in the local market. To calculate the metric, divide the actual sale price by the property’s final list price and express the result as a percentage. It can also be calculated using recent sales prices in a market.

Buyers, sellers and real estate agents can use the ratio to determine a strategy for price negotiation. A ratio above 100 percent means that it is a strong sellers’ market and homes are selling for more than their list price, suggesting mufti bid situations. If a home’s ratio is below 100 percent, the property may have had serious repair issues or was overpriced initially. When the ratio is below 100 percent on a market-wide basis, it suggests demand is soft and still softening, forcing owners to lower their prices after they listed their homes.

The bottom line? There are plenty of ways to get a feel for the housing market in your area as long as you’re willing to do a little research.

source: totalmortgage.com

The Anatomy of a Property Listing

Have you ever wondered where the information that makes up online property listings comes from? Or maybe how you know that information is current or accurate? Or even if there’s a place to see a new listing before other buyers?

Well, it all ties back to something called an MLS.

The rise of the MLS

The content, format, and filing of listings are governed by multiple listing services, the more than 700 local organizations created to match sellers with buyers. MLSs were around long before the Internet, but the migration of real estate listings online suddenly gave them value as content.

The biggest web sites attract millions of unique visitors a month. The most attractive and most current listings attract not only home buyers but online peeping Toms, or “lookie loos,” who aren’t interested in buying a house but like to check out the interiors of their neighbors’ homes and ogle the digs of the rich and famous.

The Internet has greatly changed real estate, but the dominant role of MLSs remains intact. They are the foundational databases that all other real estate sites rely upon for content, from the big national sites like Realtor.com and Zillow to sites hosted by local brokers and agents.

In order to get your home listed on your local MLS, you must work with a broker who is a member. Today, in most markets, if you want to market your home yourself, you can get your home listed by a broker who charges only flat fee rather than a commission.

Listings as an art form
Writing listings is a fine art. The objective is to tell prospective buyers just enough to get then interested in touring the property but not so much as to disqualify it. Many times, prospective buyers will end up purchasing a property quite different from what they have in mind.

A good listing needs to draw them in enough to take a look at the property even if its size, price or location may not conform to what the buyer has in mind.

Listings are produced by the real estate agent representing the seller using a template designed to create content that complies with local MLS rules. The template includes the basics: beds/baths, square footage, lot size, age, utilities and appliances, school district, and more. A mini industry provides brokers with professional photos, “virtual tours” (still photos with a voiceover and music), and videos, which usually do a better job selling a house than words alone.

Obviously, you will see only the home’s features on the listing—not the next door neighbor’s messy back yard or the highway under construction across the street.

Timing listings

A particularly important piece of data is “time on site,” which is different than “days or time on market.” The former refers only to the days that have elapsed since the listing was posted on a particular site. It may—or may not—have been listed on the local MLS for a much longer.

Knowing how long a property has been listed is particularly valuable information. If it hasn’t sold in more than 90 days, that suggests the property might be overpriced for the market. The longer a property has been on the market, the more careful a buyer should be–but the stronger your bargaining position will be as well.

Most multiple listing services require that members release new listings to the service within a short time frame of obtaining the listing, usually 48 hours after signing up a seller. But before that, the brokerage may list the property on its own site, giving its customers a head start.

Getting the jump on other buyers

If you know where you want to buy, it’s a good idea to bookmark local brokers and check out new offerings on a daily basis. In recent years, a new tactic to let buyers know that a new listing is in the works before the home is ready to be shown called “coming soon” builds advance buyer interest in a property.

“Coming soon” is not a new idea. Real estate agents have been sticking “coming soon” signs in the front yards of their clients for decades, especially during sellers’ markets. Now on leading sites you’ll see complete listings marked “coming soon” to premarket homes up to 30 days before they are available to be toured or to accept an offer.

Targeting listings to reach buyers

Once on the MLS, listings can go many places, with the consent of the listing broker. First, the broker and agent listing the property have first shot at posting the listing, then the local MLS will make it available to other brokers and agents.

A number of MLSs have their own consumer-facing sites. MLSs also have agreements with the big national web sites like Zillow and Realtor.com to provide their listings directly from the database. Syndicators like ListHub work directly with brokers to place their listings on sites as diverse as newspapers, magazines, real estate franchises, and regional brokers beyond their local MLS. Brokers get feedback and can tailor their outreach to fit their marketing plan.

Online MLS listings are remarkably timely. MLSs on the large national sites are updated as frequently as every 15 minutes with new listings, sold listings and price changes. Web sites with properties that are not listed on an MLS, like “for sale by owner” listings or “pocket listings”, may not be as current.

Nowhere else in the world can you see so many properties for sale, displayed accurately and attractively. The Internet has truly put America’s real estate for sale inventory at the fingertips of buyers, making it possible for them to monitor virtually all the possibilities within a neighborhood and price range. Sellers now can reach not only a buyer in the same community, but also a relocating family across the nation or an investor actor the globe.

source: totalmortgage.com

5 Can’t Miss Tips When Choosing A Realtor To Sell Your Home

Selling a home can be tricky and complex. One of the most important decisions that homeowners need to make when selling is who they will hire to sell their home.

A top notch Realtor® can make the difference between a home selling or not. Many homeowners take hiring a real estate agent too lightly, which can ultimately lead to a seller losing thousands of dollars and creating additional unnecessary frustration and stress.

If you’re planning on selling your home in the near future, it’s important you understand what it takes to choose a top Realtor.® Below are 5 can’t miss tips to help increase the odds of hiring the best to sell your home!


Know How To Interview Prospective Realtors

The first step to successfully hiring a top Realtor® is knowing how to interview. Some homeowners will actually skip the interview process and will hire a real estate agent because they are a friend, family member, or neighbor. While it’s completely possible their acquaintance is a top agent, it’s vital to make sure this is truly the case.

Once a homeowner decides which Realtors® to interview, they must prepare themselves for the actual interview process. It’s important to know what the top interview questions to ask a Realtor® are! Here are five of the best questions to consider asking:

• Are you a part-time or full-time agent?
• What is your list price to sale price ratio?
• What methods do you use to determine the value of a home?
• What methods of communication do you use with your sellers?
• How many homes did you sell last year while representing sellers?

These are just five of the best questions to consider. There are many more and it’s extremely important that a homeowner asks these questions. Some are more difficult to ask than others, but a homeowner will thank themselves in the future when they have a successful and enjoyable home selling experience!

Request To Contact Past Clients

One recommendation for homeowners who will be choosing a Realtor® is to ask if they can contact a handful of their past clients. It’s important to understand that some people will not allow or want a real estate agent to provide their information to prospective sellers, however, a top agent should have many past clients who would be willing to talk with prospective sellers.

If a homeowner gets the chance to talk with past clients, they should be asking some important questions. Below are five of the top questions a homeowner can ask a past client.

• How was your experience working with him/her?
• Did they deliver on what they told you they would do for you?
• Was there anything you felt they could’ve done better?
• How was their communication?
• Do you feel they earned their money?

Check the Realtor’s Sales History

The number of homes a Realtor® sells is not a guarantee that a homeowner will have a great experience, or a miserable one.

The reality, though, is that anyone who has sold fifty homes in a given neighborhood has more experience than a brand new Realtor® out of their local real estate academy. Three things to consider finding out about a Realtor’s sales history include:

• How many homes have you sold in my neighborhood?
• How many homes on average do you sell a year?
• What percentage of your business is repeat and referral business?

These questions can often shed some light into whether or not an agent has a solid sales history or not. Every agent starts at zero in their career at one point or another, but experience comes with time and transactions.

Find Out How the Realtor Plans to Market Your Home

One of the top three reasons why a home will sell or not is due to the marketing and exposure a home gets. It’s critical that homeowners find out exactly how a real estate agent plans on marketing their home.

Since all Realtors® run their business differently, they market their sellers homes differently. Some will literally place a sign in front of a home, enter it into their local Multiple Listing Service (MLS), and pray that it sells. These are sometimes classified as a post and pray Realtor® and are Realtors® that should be avoided at all costs.

Homeowners hire a Realtor® to sell their home should be aware of their web presence, first and foremost, and also what other marketing channels they plan on using. Five of the most important marketing questions to ask include:

• Do you have a website?
• What type of traffic does your website get?
• Is it local traffic?
• Do you have a real estate blog?
• Does your website and/or blog rank highly on Google and other search engines?

There are literally dozens of questions that homeowners should be asking a real estate agent when it comes to their marketing of their listings. In 2016, since the majority of buyers are beginning their home search online, it’s critical that their website ranks highly on search engines. The higher a Realtors® page ranks, the more exposure for a seller’s home.


For example, a seller in Rochester NY would love to put their home in front of anyone who is thinking of moving to Rochester NY, right? Of course they would! It’s huge if a Realtors® website is ranking within the first couple results for search terms such as “moving to Rochester NY” and other variations of this search term.

Don’t Choose a Realtor Because They Offer the Lowest Commission

Last but certainly not least, when a homeowner hires a Realtor® to sell their home, they should not do it based solely on the fact they offer the lowest commission. Commission is negotiable, yes, but it’s also important to be aware of the many home sale gimmicks and discount brokers that are out there.


If a real estate agent is offering the lowest commission, you need to be absolutely sure they are going to provide the same services that other Realtors® would. Four questions to ask include:

• Will you still pay to advertise my home in the newspaper?
• Will you send direct mailings to my neighbors?
• Do you have a top website?
• Do you pay to advertise on Facebook?

While it’s possible the Realtor® offering the lowest commission may be the best one for the job, it is important to proceed with caution.

Final Thoughts

Hiring the right Realtor® is critical. Not doing so can be a huge mistake, and a costly one at that! By following the 5 tips that are listed above, a homeowner will greatly improve their odds they will hire a top producing Realtor.

source: totalmortgage.com