What Does an Experienced REALTOR Provide You?

Does it matter how much experience your REALTOR has?

According to every real estate author it does. However what are the statistics that backs this up?

Well, rather than just passing on information, we did a little fact checking and found that your REALTOR’s experience have little effect on the amount of cash you recieve when you sell your house.

We took some time and compared currently active real estate licensees with listings in the Central Ohio Multiple Listing Service.

Year	Listings	Days On Market	List Price	Price/Ft
All	17,052	122	$218,366	$116.34
2007	27	127	$295,817	$168.46
2006	574	88	$195,240	$110.81
2005	1,026	107	$191,833	$104.66
2004	1,186	112	$193,875	$108.55
2003	1,267	109	$189,107	$105.00
2002	770	117	$205,837	$114.93
2001	715	106	$215,731	$114.45

So what does this mean? Not a lot. It basically is showing that more experienced REALTORS are getting more listings. I’m sure that shocked anyone that is reading this.

Two numbers on this chart really jumped out at me.

The Days on Market for 2007 designees. We are only 90 days into the new year and the average days on market is longer than they’ve have their license. How is this possible? The days on market does not reset for expired listings, so it would appear that a lot of the 2007 listings were expired listings. Which would lead to …
The Price per Square Foot for 2007 designees. The average price per square-foot for members of the Columbus Board of Realtors is limited to $116.34, but these new agents are a whopping 45 percent higher. While some of these I’m sure are worth 45 percent more than average; many of these could be termed as “Buying a Listing”. And it becomes more obvious — especially only three months into a year — when a new agent does this.

One of the things I found interesting is that people licensed in the past three-plus years have lower days on market average than those with older licenses. I would have expected the days on market for those from 2004-2007 to be higher than the average.

So when it comes to listing your home, it appears that an agent with at least six months of experience is going to know how to list your home. (And, I’m going to say that most of the 2007 listees “know” that they are over-pricing their listings.)

Of course, listing your home isn’t really what you want to know about. How will that agent help you sell you home? Well …

Year	Sold	Days on Market	Sold Price	Price/Foot
All	4,794	116	$167,231	$96.95
2007	4	226	$213,425	$105.50
2006	85	82	$179,340	$102.01
2005	237	103	$151,705	$95.23
2004	212	117	$161,457	$96.11
2003	299	111	$173,826	$101.53
2002	175	115	$156,689	$95.89
2001	188	119	$168,699	$96.95

This chart is for properties that have sold since January 1. However, we’ll toss out the 2007 class since they’ve only closed four transactions this year.

A couple of things jump right out…

The average sold is $10 less per square-foot than the average listings, this would net to a difference in price of $18,750 in our current market. Have we seen a correction?
The price per square foot is pretty balanced. The 2006 listings are higher, but with less than 100 listings, a couple of “good” sales can skew the statistics.
The Days on Market has been consistent regardless of the “age” of the agent.

So, from a monetary stand-point it doesn’t seem to matter whether your agent has six months or six years of experience. Now, we aren’t saying that experienced agents bring more to the table than just money. But when it comes to selling your home, it doesn’t appear that the experience makes any difference.