Questions Every Greater Boston Home Seller Should Ask Before Hiring a Real Estate Professional

This is the single most revealing question you can ask a listing agent. It shows whether their listings sell for what they promise. Our listings sell at a median of 100% of asking price, and 60% sell at or above asking. Ask any agent for this number. If they dodge it, that tells you everything.

Days on market reveals whether an agent prices to sell or prices to sit. Our listings move in a median of 7 days. A home that lingers usually signals a pricing problem, not a market problem. Ask any agent for their median days on market, then compare it to the town figures below.

Volume shows whether an agent's approach works at scale. Over the past 10 years our team has closed 714 transactions worth $371.5 million. We work most heavily in Watertown, Belmont, and Waltham, and consistently represent listings and buyers through Boston proper, Greater Boston, and typically within an hour's drive of our Belmont office. Ask for real closings, not just years in the business. A long career with few sales is a warning, not a credential.

Yes, and you should. Do not trust, verify. Ask any agent for a list of their closed transactions and for client references, then check them. Closed sales are also recorded publicly at the registry of deeds, and three generations of our family have worked these towns. Any agent confident in their numbers welcomes the scrutiny. An educated seller is an empowered seller, so ask.

A real answer involves recent comparable sales, current market conditions, your home's specific condition and features, and how buyers in your town are behaving right now. Beware the agent who names a high number just to win your listing, then pushes for price cuts later. Correct pricing from day one is what produces our median 100% sale-to-list result.

Pricing only makes sense against current data. Below is where each of the eight towns sits today, from MLSPIN. Median price, days on market, sale-to-list ratio, and active inventory tell you whether you are pricing into a fast market or a patient one. Any agent should be able to walk you through this for your specific town.

An overpriced home sits, and a home that sits gets stale. Buyers wonder what is wrong with it, and you end up cutting the price and selling for less than if you had priced it right from the start. Buyers will overpay for good value, but they will not stretch for a listing that looks overpriced. Correct pricing creates competition, and competition drives the final number up.

Usually no. In a market where our listings sell in a median of 7 days, the most competition happens in the first days on market. Price for that window and you create urgency and multiple offers. Price high hoping to negotiate down, and you miss the very buyers who would have competed. The strategy should fit your town and your goal, so ask any agent to explain their reasoning.

Here is the honest answer most agents will not give you. Marketing does not sell your home. Marketing gets the right buyers through the door. What drives the price up is pricing strategy and buyer psychology. We price to create competition, then make sure every qualified buyer sees your home in the window that matters. Ask any agent to explain how their marketing and their pricing work together, because one without the other does not produce results.

Preparation is where quiet money is made. The right improvements, staging decisions, and repairs before listing can lift your final price well beyond their cost. A good agent walks your home and tells you honestly what is worth doing and what is not. Ask what they recommend and why, and whether they coordinate the vendors to get it done.

Look for a specific plan, not vague promises. Professional photography, accurate and compelling listing copy, syndication to the portals buyers actually use, and timing the launch to maximize the first-week surge of attention. Ask to see how they have marketed homes like yours. The plan should feel deliberate, because a scattered approach wastes your most valuable days on market.

A seller almost always gets the most money when the listing is exposed to the broadest possible market. More buyers means more competition, and competition is what drives the final number. We stand by that, and it is the advice we give first.

There are real exceptions. Some sellers need privacy for personal or professional reasons. Some homes are not in condition to be marketed the way an average listing is. A property may not qualify for conventional financing, which narrows the buyer pool before it ever reaches the market. Those situations are legitimate, and in those cases a limited marketing approach can serve the seller well. What matters is that the decision is yours, made with the tradeoff in front of you.

Article 1 of the REALTOR® Code of Ethics says our primary duty is to you, the client. Keeping a listing out of public view may conflict with that duty, because a smaller audience usually means fewer offers. It may also benefit you in the right circumstances. Both are true. Any agent who presents off-MLS marketing as a benefit without naming the cost is not giving you the full picture.

Coldwell Banker has a program called Exclusive Look. It gives our internal network advance notice of what is coming to market, and it was structured specifically to avoid Clear Cooperation issues: no agent gets access to the property until it is officially on the market, and every showing is subject to the same criteria that apply to everyone else. Participation is the seller's choice, not ours.

Ask any agent whether they intend to market your home off-MLS, what audience you lose by doing it, and whether they or their brokerage benefit from the arrangement. The answer to that last one tells you a great deal.

Yes. Fees are negotiable, and they always have been. There is no fixed rate that applies to everyone. What matters is what the fee buys you: pricing strategy, preparation, marketing, and negotiation. We will show you the service levels we offer and what each one costs, so you can decide what fits your goals. Ask any agent to lay this out clearly.

Focus on net proceeds, the amount that lands in your pocket after everything. That is the only number that matters, and it is the number you should compare between agents. A lower fee on a lower sale price often nets you less than a full fee on a higher sale price. We will walk you through the real math on your home so you can compare honestly.

The honest answer is specialization. Selling a home well is not one job, it is several, and each one is a distinct skill: pricing the home to the day, preparing it to show at its best, marketing it to the right buyers, running showings, reading buyer psychology across competing offers, and negotiating the terms that protect your bottom line. Discount and non-traditional models save you money by collapsing those jobs into fewer hands, or by removing some of them entirely. That is the trade you are actually making. You are not paying less for the same outcome. You are paying less because fewer of those specialized jobs get done, or get done by someone doing them part-time alongside everything else.

On the largest financial transaction of your life, a generalist handling most of the seat is the risk, not the bargain. We do one thing, and we do it every day: sell homes in these towns. The parts a leaner model leaves out, the preparation, the pricing strategy, the marketing, and the negotiation, are the exact parts that produce sales at or above asking. Ask any model you are considering which of those jobs they actually perform, and which ones quietly become yours. Then compare on net proceeds, the number that reaches you at closing, because saving on the fee means nothing if you leave more than that on the table.

This is where an agent earns their fee. The goal is to create genuine competition and then read the offers for more than price: terms, contingencies, financing strength, and certainty to close. On one Waltham listing our approach produced a winning offer that beat a competing escalation clause. Ask any agent how they run a multiple-offer situation, because the process is what protects your final number.

A signed offer is not a closed sale. Inspections, financing, and appraisals all carry risk, and a skilled agent manages each one so the deal holds. In Massachusetts the offer to purchase is a binding contract, so the handling matters. Our director of operations coordinates every deadline and milestone through closing. Ask any agent who manages the transaction once you are under agreement.

Because the highest suggested price is the easiest promise to make and the hardest to keep. Some agents win listings by naming a number they cannot deliver, then push for cuts once your home sits. Compare agents on their sale-to-list ratio and days on market, not on who flatters your home the most. Interview more than one, and choose the agent whose numbers back up their pricing.