What Questions Should You Ask a Real Estate Agent Before Hiring One?

If you are getting ready to sell a home in Melbourne, West Melbourne, Suntree, or Viera, you will probably talk to two or three agents before you choose one. They will all be friendly. They will all have a folder of marketing samples. Most of them will say some version of the same thing.

So how do you tell them apart?

You ask for numbers. Not opinions. Not adjectives. Numbers. Because in real estate, the words are free and the record is not.

That last number is worth reading twice. Almost a quarter of sellers do not believe agent self-promotion at all. And when those same sellers were asked what would make an agent's claims believable, the top answer was simple: real numbers to back them up.

There is no board that approves the phrase "top producer." No one checks it. An agent can print it on a business card the week they get licensed.

The same goes for most of the language you will see. Award badges vary widely in what it takes to earn them. Team totals can include the work of a dozen people. Career numbers may be twenty years old, from a market that no longer exists.

None of that is dishonest, exactly. It is just soft. And soft claims are easy to make, which is why everyone makes them.

The good news is that the real information is not hidden. Every listing, every price change, and every closing gets logged in the MLS. Any agent can pull their own record in a few minutes. So the question is not whether the numbers exist. It is whether the agent will show them to you.

Here are the four questions I would ask any agent, including me. Each one tells you something different, and together they give you a clear picture.

The same research found that 77% of sellers considered proven neighborhood experience either very important or an outright dealbreaker. On the Space Coast, that instinct is correct, and the reason is practical.

Value here shifts block by block. A canal that opens to the Indian River prices differently than one that does not. Direct oceanfront, ocean access, and a short walk to the beach are three separate markets with three separate buyer pools. Two homes with nearly identical square footage, one in Suntree and one a few miles west, can be worth meaningfully different amounts.

Then there are the things that never show up in a listing photo. Flood zone lines. Insurance costs that changed a buyer's monthly math this year. Which associations have healthy reserves and which are heading toward an assessment. Which streets appraise cleanly and which ones give appraisers trouble.

If your home sits on the water, in a gated community, or in a pocket where only a handful of sales happen each year, ask specifically how many of those the agent has handled. You can see how I approach waterfront and specialty properties on the Waterfront & Luxury Page.

Pay attention to what happens right after you ask. You will get one of two responses.

Some agents will answer with an impression. "We do really well." "We're very aggressive on price." That is not a lie. It is just not an answer.

Others will pull up the actual record and walk you through it, including the sales that got complicated.

For what it is worth, this is why we keep a running record of every transaction, pulled straight from the MLS. It comes out early in a listing conversation, not at the end as a closing move. If a seller wants to check a specific sale, the documentation is there.

One more thing worth saying out loud: the highest suggested list price is not the best listing presentation. It is the easiest one to give. Pricing above the market does not create a higher sale. It usually creates a longer one, and a longer sale tends to end lower. If you want a straight read on your own home's value, start with the Home Valuation Page.