Expert, localized Los Angeles answers provided by Heather Roy

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Selling Out Of Town

  Dear Ms. Lank: I own property in another state. I am considering selling it. I do not know any real estate agent in that  area. What is the best method of finding an agent? 
 
 

If you're going to go out there, I'd suggest what my husband (who is a Realtor) did when we were settling an estate and needed to sell a house in Montreal.  To learn which brokerages were active in that area, we drove around the neighborhood and noted the phone numbers on "for sale" signs. Then we called three firms and invited them to send someone over.  The third agent we interviewed was perfect, understood just what problems we faced doing this from out of town, volunteered to handle details like lawn mowing and forwarding mail, and took us through to a fine painless sale.

If you're doing it all long-distance, send for the local newspaper out there and explore web sites, to study real estate ads for that neighborhood. You should be doing that anyway, if you plan to market property there. Your best bet is hiring an agent who may already be working with buyers for that part of town.

    Edith
Originally published on March 6, 2006
 
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