Mediaboss Marketing

Q: With so much information available directly to home buyers and sellers, why is it still important to choose a knowledgeable real estate agent?

A: You can't speak generally about the San Francisco real estate market without recognizing that it really is dozens of micro-markets, which vary significantly in terms of how they performed last year and will continue to perform.

There is much more information available online to buyers and sellers, but ironically the need for good agent representation is more important than ever. There are so many different situations now - real estate owned, short sales, tenancy issues, homeowners association litigations - that need working out and also create opportunities. They also affect pricing. Agents need to invest the time to understand how these operate and how to manage these for their clients.

What is not new is that the best real estate agents change with the times and offer deep market knowledge to their buyers and sellers. You can't find that on a website on the Internet.

In 2011, my team and I spent huge amounts of time on market research training and strategy, and it resulted in our having the highest number of transactions in a market that was suffering in volume and liquidity.

- Jim Hurley, Vanguard Properties, (415) 321-7000, jimhurley@vanguardsf.com

This article appeared on page K - 2 of the San Francisco Chronicle

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Real estate agents offer deep market knowledge