Selling a house is a big task. When you are thinking of selling your house, it is natural to have a lot of questions. What’s the exact value of my home? What time would it take me to close the sale? Where do I find a good realtor? On doing a Google search of the last question, you would get a lot many options and two companies will appear often during your search: Redfin and Ideal Agent.
What are these companies? What do they do? How does Ideal Agent work? Should I work with Ideal Agent or Redfin? Let us find answers to these questions in this article with the help of Ideal Agent and Redfin reviews.
About Ideal Agent
Ideal Agent is an online service that matches you to a top real estate agent in your area when you want to buy or sell a house and is looking for an agent. In exchange for a listing fee that is 2 percent lower than the customary 3 percent fee, the company pairs you with a realtor. Ideal Agent claims to work with only the top 1% of agents, in terms of sales made in their local markets.
Like other agent matching services functional in the US, Ideal Agent is also available free of charge without any obligation to work with the agent you match with. As per the Ideal Agent reviews, the reduced 2% listing fee does help you save some money when selling your home. But the discounted rates are still not the best in the market. Other internet providers are available that provide a comparable service for less money.
Also, while sellers get a reduced listing fee of 2%, home buyers have no option to save with Ideal Agent. Also, you get matched with only one agent unlike multiple agents possible with other brands. So, Ideal Agent matches you with a top local agent but does not offer a better saving option or more agents for you to compare.
Ideal Agent generally has a nice group of agents and it offers good discounts to home sellers. But as per the many Ideal Agent reviews online, you can do better than Ideal Agent if reaping savings on commission is your main goal.
How Ideal Agent works
The ideal agent matching service is simple and easy to use. There are four basic steps if you are wondering how does Ideal Agent work:
You fill out the information about your home.
Ideal Agent gathers basic information about your property via an online form, which serves as a lead for them. You have to fill in your home details and description, your contact details, and how fast you want to sell your home.
Your information is stored in Ideal Agent’s database
Ideal Agent then stores the information you filled as a lead in their database. They then match you with a prospective agent as per your zip code and agent availability.
You interview prospective ideal agents
After connecting you to an ideal agent, you don’t need to go back to their website. You won’t have an agent dashboard to see any details about the recommended agent. What happens then is that the prospective agent contacts you to better understand your requirements and start the listing paperwork.
You can interview the agent and see if she is the right candidate for the job. In case you are not happy with the recommendation, you can request another agent. It can take you up to two weeks to find an Ideal Agent, and you haven’t even listed your house during that time. Whereas, a flat fee MLS service like Houzeo could get your house listed on your local MLS within two days.
You sign the listing agreement
Once you are satisfied with the agent recommended by Ideal Agent, you can sign the listing agreement and take things forward. After the signing, your home gets listed on the MLS, and your home selling process officially begins.
About Redfin
Redfin has a good name in the real estate industry as one of the largest discount real estate brokerages in the country. You can search for local listings as well as get connected with local agents using Redfin. The company works with agents who are okay to offer home sellers a discounted listing charge of 1.5% in place of the traditional 2.5% to 3%. As per what the company says, if you buy a house with Redfin, you only pay a 1% charge. But you can expect some form of Redfin hidden fees to sprout up during the process.
The company also offers an iBuyer service called RedfinNow, which makes cash offers for homes. You can find Redfin agents accepting a discounted listing fee or even charging a lower fee in case you are buying with Redfin. The company also offers services like arranging for upgrades of your home and finding you a mortgage lender.
You may have visited their website while searching for real estate listings or figuring out what your home is worth using their free automated valuation model that instantly estimates your home’s value based on comparable sales made in your area. But if you work with one of the Redfin agents, what do you get in exchange for a lower commission? Let’s find out.
Should you choose Redfin?
Of course, Redfin offers you savings in listing agent commission. Even when you buy a house with Redfin, the company receives its 3% buyer agent commission and splits a piece of that with you, the buyer. The amount is based on a sliding scale and you can see that amount on each listing shown on Redfin. The company can do this as it pays its agents not as a percentage of commission but at a flat rate. Also, you may be required to pay Redfin hidden fees in the process.
Redfin also has one of the most perfectly designed real estate search engines. While you don’t get the latest results like that in the MLS, Redfin’s results are good enough for the real estate market in the US. You can use this feature even without choosing Redfin as your home buying or selling partner.
Redfin also pulls a good amount of data for each listing. Standard listings don’t have much apart from property specifications. Whereas, Redfin pulls in data from various sources and includes data like schools in the locality, local pricing data, etc. which helps speed up your research.
So, Redfin gives you more than one reason to choose it. But you must compare the site with another top, high-tech real estate websites like Houzeo.
Final word
So, should you work with Ideal Agent or Redfin? The quality of agents from Ideal Agent is high and it also offers some discounts if you are selling a home. So, it’s definitely worth considering. But you must compare the company with other options. Ideal Agent falls short in terms of agent quality, savings, and agent choice.
Selling with Redfin is also a good idea if you want full control as home sellers don’t always get personalized attention from Redfin agents like the case with the traditional agents. So, you must not expect a customized experience with Redfin.
The final decision to list with Redfin or use Ideal Agent comes down to your personal preferences but Redfin is, for most sellers, better than Ideal Agent.
