Most sellers don’t interview agents. They call someone they know, take a referral from a friend without asking many follow-up questions, or go with whoever sent them a postcard in the mail recently. I understand why — hiring an agent feels awkward to approach as a business decision, especially when there’s a personal connection involved.
But here’s the reality: the agent you hire to sell your home will have more influence over how much money you walk away with than almost any other decision you make in the entire process. Their pricing strategy, their marketing, their negotiation skills, their communication — all of it directly affects your outcome. That deserves more than a gut feeling and a familiar name.
These are the questions worth asking before you sign a listing agreement with anyone — including me.
How Many Homes Have You Sold in This Area Recently?
Real estate knowledge is hyperlocal. An agent who primarily sells in one part of Metro Atlanta does not automatically have meaningful knowledge of what’s happening in another part. Buyer behavior, pricing dynamics, neighborhood-specific demand, which features matter most to buyers in a given area — all of this varies significantly from one market to the next, and an agent who doesn’t work a specific area regularly won’t have an instinctive grasp of it.
When you ask this question, you’re looking for recent sales — within the last twelve months — in or near your specific neighborhood and price range. Volume matters too. An agent who has sold two homes in your area in the past year has a different level of market fluency than one who has sold twenty.
You can verify what an agent tells you. Sales records are public. A good agent won’t hesitate to show you their track record.
What Is Your List-to-Sale Price Ratio?
This is one of the most revealing performance metrics you can ask an agent about, and it’s one that most sellers never think to request.
The list-to-sale price ratio measures how close to list price an agent’s listings actually sell for, expressed as a percentage. An agent with a 98% list-to-sale ratio is consistently getting sellers within 2% of their asking price. An agent with a 94% ratio has a meaningful gap between what they’re promising sellers and what they’re actually delivering.
A low ratio can signal one of two things — and both are worth understanding. It may indicate that the agent is overpricing listings to win the business, knowing that the price will have to come down later. This is called buying the listing, and it’s a common practice that benefits the agent in the short term and hurts the seller significantly. Or it may indicate weak negotiation skills that result in accepting lower offers than a more skilled agent would have pushed back on.
A consistently high list-to-sale ratio, combined with reasonable Days on Market, is one of the clearest indicators of an agent who prices accurately and negotiates effectively.
What Is Your Average Days on Market?
Average Days on Market across an agent’s listings tells you a lot about how they operate. It reflects how accurately they price, how effectively they market, and how well they prepare sellers before a home goes live.
An agent with a consistently low average DOM is getting homes under contract quickly — which typically means they’re pricing correctly, marketing aggressively, and sending well-prepared homes to market. An agent with a high average DOM may be struggling with any or all of those elements.
Context matters here. DOM averages vary by market conditions and price range, so the number needs to be evaluated relative to the broader market average in your area. An agent whose average DOM is consistently below the market average is outperforming. One whose average is consistently above it has some explaining to do.
What Does Your Marketing Plan Look Like?
Putting a home on the MLS is not a marketing plan. It’s a starting point. What an agent does beyond that basic step is what separates a home that gets broad exposure and strong showing activity from one that sits quietly and waits for buyers to find it.
A real marketing plan includes professional photography — not smartphone snapshots, but a skilled real estate photographer whose work makes your home look its absolute best in listing photos. It includes video or virtual tour content for buyers who are searching remotely. It includes targeted digital advertising that puts your listing in front of buyers who are actively searching in your price range and area. It includes social media presence, agent-to-agent outreach to buyers’ agents who have active clients in your market, and a clear strategy for the first week on market when exposure is highest.
When an agent describes their marketing plan, listen for specifics. Vague answers about “extensive marketing” and “getting your home maximum exposure” without concrete details about what that actually means are a red flag. Ask for examples. Ask to see listing photos from their recent sales. The quality of their marketing work is visible — you just have to look.
How Do You Communicate and How Often?
The most consistent complaint sellers have about their agents — by a wide margin — is lack of communication. The home is on the market, showings are happening, and the seller is hearing nothing. No feedback from showings, no market updates, no proactive outreach. Just silence and uncertainty.
Before you hire an agent, ask them directly: how will you communicate with me, and how often? What can I expect after each showing? How will you keep me informed about what’s happening in the market? What’s the best way to reach you if I have a question?
A good agent will have a clear, specific answer. They’ll tell you that you’ll receive showing feedback within 24 to 48 hours. They’ll tell you they do weekly check-ins during the listing period. They’ll give you their cell number and tell you to use it. An agent who gives vague or noncommittal answers to this question is showing you, before you’ve even signed anything, what working with them will feel like.
Can You Walk Me Through Your Pricing Strategy?
An agent who can’t clearly explain how they arrived at a recommended list price has not done the work. Pricing a home correctly requires analyzing recent comparable sales, evaluating active competition, assessing your home’s specific condition and features relative to the market, and making a strategic judgment about where to position the home to maximize interest and outcome.
That process should be explainable. When you ask an agent to walk you through their pricing rationale, you should get a clear, data-backed answer that references specific comparable sales and explains how your home compares to them.
What you want to watch out for is an agent who simply validates whatever number you had in mind, or who suggests a price significantly higher than the data supports without a clear reason why. This is buying the listing — telling sellers what they want to hear to get the business, with the intention of managing price reductions later. It feels flattering in the moment and costs sellers real money over the course of the listing.
The agent who gives you an honest, data-driven price — even if it’s lower than you hoped — is almost always the better choice than the one who tells you what you want to hear.
What Happens If My Home Doesn't Sell?
This is the question most sellers never think to ask, and it’s one of the most revealing questions on this list.
Every agent walks into a listing appointment confident that your home will sell. But markets shift, pricing miscalculations happen, and not every listing goes under contract in the first two weeks. What happens then?
A good agent has a clear answer. They’ll talk about monitoring market feedback and adjusting strategy accordingly. They’ll discuss the triggers for a price adjustment and what that process looks like. They’ll explain how they stay engaged and proactive when a listing isn’t moving rather than just waiting and hoping.
An agent who hasn’t thought through this scenario — or who gives a dismissive answer that assumes the question doesn’t apply to them — is telling you something important about how they’ll perform when things get challenging. The easy part of any listing is the first week. What distinguishes great agents from average ones is what they do when the easy part is over.
Ask the Questions. Make the Decision.
Hiring a listing agent is a business decision, and you have every right to treat it that way. A good agent won’t be put off by direct questions — they’ll welcome them, because they know their answers hold up.
If you own a home in Metro Atlanta and you’d like to sit down and ask me every one of these questions directly, I’d welcome that conversation. My free CMA Zoom call is exactly that kind of conversation — honest, direct, no pressure, and completely virtual so you don’t even have to leave your couch. Ask me anything. I’ll give you straight answers.
Ken Mandich is a Realtor® and Listing Expert with Complete Realty Team, serving Metro Atlanta with a focus on Cobb and Cherokee County. You can reach him at 404-410-6465 or [email protected].
