Reston Real Estate: What Drives The Move?

This is a sponsored post from Eve Thompson of Reston Real Estate. For a more complete picture of home sales in your neighborhood, contact her on Reston Real Estate.

In real estate, one of the things that agents look for in buyers and sellers is motivation. People have to have sufficient motivation to put themselves through the challenges associated with buying or selling a home. It’s a lot of work.

While there are a few that seem to enjoy moving, most of us require some serious reasons to uproot ourselves and move. Home buyers and sellers are almost always going through some large life event — a change that is big enough to generate the necessary motivation to go through the process of buying or selling. It might be a happy change, a new baby, a new job, a new season in life; or it might be a sad change, the loss of partner, a job, an illness, a death.

Whatever the change, it makes the work of being a Realtor interesting. Agents get to walk along side and hopefully be of some assistance in someone else’s transition. Good agents will take the time to understand the forces behind the deal rather than focusing exclusively on how many bedrooms and bathrooms are needed.

Communication is a tricky process; unless an agent gets behind the “what” and digs into the “need” there’s no way to help a buyer get to the best home choice. Buyers in particular have a tendency to translate their wants into a list of rooms that a prospective house must have. So the need for a home office often gets described as an additional bedroom when in fact all kinds of space might work equally well as a home office.

It’s the agents’ job to get the buyer to go a little deeper in explaining how they will use the space that the buyer says they need. On the selling side it’s the agents’ job to help the sellers present their homes in ways that will demonstrate flexibility in how spaces can be used.

If you’re entering the market to buy or sell, you’ll set yourself up to succeed by being open to suggestions. If you’re buying, agree to see properties that on the surface might not seem to fit. If you’re selling hear your agent out when they make recommendations on how to present your home; they’re working for you.