How to Call a Listing Agent Without Being Annoying (as a Buyer's Agent)

By Jacqueline Smith

Jacqueline Smith started in real estate in 2015 and sold 52 homes her first year in the business as a solo agent. After considering growing her own team, and exploring different team models, she decided to partner with Place in 2017. The partnership allowed her to fast track her growth, and provide better systems and models to her agent partners. Her and her team in Vancouver Washington now close over $165M in annual sales volume, while keeping the quality of the agent and client experience at the forefront.

The call isn’t optional, it’s just uncomfortable. We hear the same hesitation from agents at every stage of their career: What if I sound unprepared? What if I’m bothering them? What if I ask the wrong thing?

That hesitation is normal. It’s also costing offers. A listing agent who hears from a prepared buyer’s agent forms an opinion fast, and that opinion follows the offer onto the table. The agents who make this call well aren’t naturally more confident than everyone else. They just know what to do before they dial.

Do your homework before you ever pick up the phone. Read the private remarks. Read the seller disclosures if they’re available. Read the listing itself, all the way through, before you call.

This isn’t about being thorough for its own sake. It’s about the first impression. If you call and ask something that’s already answered in the private remarks, that’s the moment a listing agent decides how much they want to work with you. Prepared agents get remembered. Unprepared ones get tolerated, if they’re lucky.

Insight beats information, so ask different questions. There’s already a lot of information sitting in the listing. What you’re actually calling for is insight, the kind you can’t get anywhere else.

Good questions sound like this: Have you received any offers yet? What matters most to the seller when they’re evaluating offers? Is there anything I should know that isn’t obvious from the listing?

Questions to leave out: anything that asks the listing agent to negotiate before there’s even an offer on the table. A good listing agent isn’t going to tell you what their seller would accept sight unseen, and asking puts them in an impossible spot. Their job is to represent the seller. Yours is to represent your buyer. The call works best when both sides remember that.

The tradeoff: a short call takes more prep, not less. A two-minute call sounds easy. It isn’t, if you actually want it to be worth the listing agent’s time. The tradeoff is real. Doing the reading up front costs you a few extra minutes before you dial, so the call itself can stay short and sharp. Skip the prep, and the call gets longer, more awkward, and less useful, for both of you.

Respect their time and the rest takes care of itself. Everyone on the other end of that call is busy. They have their own clients, their own offers, their own list to get through today.

Be direct. Be polite. Get to the point. If you’ve done the reading, this part is easy, because you already know what you’re asking and why you’re asking it. You won’t find yourself hemming and hawing to fill the silence.

What this really comes down to. Before your next offer, do the reading before you dial. Walk into the call with two or three questions that actually matter, and leave out the ones the listing agent can’t answer anyway.

That’s the whole difference between a call that strengthens your offer and one that gets you filed away as “that agent.” If you want to build habits like this into how your team writes offers, let’s talk about it. Reach out anytime.

If there’s anything we can help you with in your business, we’re offering free strategy sessions focused on the right levers for your season. Just reach out, and we’ll get something on the schedule.

Call or text us at 360-800-1334, email us at jacqueline@evergreenrealestatepartners.com, or visit evergreenrealestatepartners.com.