How should sellers shop for a realtor?

In America, the key to selling a property is to have it listed on the Multiple Listing System (MLS). It's not a big-name listing agent that will make things happen. In fact, the choice of realtor is almost irrelevant, except that the most successful – the one will the most listings – will have less time to push a given property among the many others listed in their portfolio.

The people that sell real estate are buyer's agents that show what falls in the target needs and price range of their client. So what's a homeowner to do when it's time to picking a listing agent?

Easy; push the selling commission down. Refuse to go with the “customary” 6% and push for 5% or even 4%. If that works, the intelligent thing to do is to allocate that cost saving into a lower selling price to further guarantee that the property will sell as soon as possible.