[legion]

Finding a good realtor in a new area is dumb luck.

I've worked with five realtors in my life.

Realtors 1 and 2 we used as buyer's agents and were "retired on the job". We spent the first hour+ of each appointment while they did MLS searches and we sat in the office. Both tried to talk us into spending more than we were comfortable.

Realtor #3 promised a flat-rate no-service MLS listing. He basically took my money and spent 45 seconds creating a hack of an MLS listing which drover potential buyer's away. The final straw was that his lockbox ran out of batteries. I had to cut it open to get my key back. I ended up having to sue him to get my money back.

Realtor #4 was the replacement for Realtor #3 and came recommended by a friend. With her help, we got the price correct, started getting traffic, and sold in a couple of months (after being on the market for over a year). I gladly paid her commission after treading water for so long.

Realtor #5 was my relo realtor to Georgia and my selling agent leaving Georgia. We did Zillow and realtor.com and found a list of houses we wanted to look at our first day house hunting in Georgia. We hated every house that we picked out. Realtor #5 listened to our comments on the houses, and knew how to read between the lines on Atlanta-area real estate listings. On the second day of house hunting we looked at houses she suggested and found two we really liked.

Selling, she helped us set a price (which I thought was way too high at first) and get the house staged. We ended up selling for cash at asking price.

Then we used Realtor #4 again to move back to Illinois. As we had a newborn in Georgia, I had to make the house-hunting trip by myself. She helped us find a house and reminded me of my wife's preferences. The first time my wife saw the new house was at the walkthrough and she was very happy with the realtor for keeping me on track.