Every article about hiring a listing agent gives you a list of questions. Most of the lists are fine. The problem is that the questions are the easy part, and the reason most sellers end up with an average agent instead of a good one is not that they did not ask the right questions. It is that they did not know what a good answer was supposed to sound like.
The sellers I have watched pick good agents all did roughly the same thing. They interviewed two or three agents instead of one. They asked questions that invited specific answers. And when an agent answered with a rehearsed pitch instead of an actual explanation, they noticed, and they picked the one who did not.
The interview itself is the test
Here is the easiest upgrade you can make to the whole process: interview at least two agents, and preferably three, before signing anything. Most sellers do not, because the first agent was usually a referral from a friend and it feels awkward to keep shopping. I understand the instinct. I have done it. I still think it is a mistake.
An agent who knows you have not talked to anyone else has less reason to sharpen their answers, and you have no frame of reference for whether what you are hearing is good, average, or bad. Two hours spread across two or three interviews is the cheapest investment you can make in a transaction that is about to decide tens of thousands of dollars in outcome. Do it.
The nine questions
1. Can you walk me through your CMA on this house, comp by comp?
A good agent already has a CMA ready for the interview and walks you through it without being asked twice. They name each comp, explain why they chose it, and tell you what they adjusted up or down and why. A bad agent hands you a printout and says “based on the comps, I would price it at $X.” If they cannot show their work in five minutes, their price is not worth more than a Zestimate.
2. How many listings did you close last year, and how many were in this price range and neighborhood?
You are not looking for the biggest number. You are looking for specifics. An agent who closed 42 listings across a whole metro area may not know your specific neighborhood’s micro-market. An agent who closed 18 listings all within three miles of your house almost certainly does. Either can be the right answer. Neither is automatic.
3. What is your average days-on-market compared to your local board’s average?
Good agents know this number without looking it up. Bad agents either do not know or give you a vague “a few weeks.” If they know their average and it is meaningfully shorter than the board average, ask what they do differently. If they know it and it is longer, that is also fine if they have a reason (they specialize in a price band that sits longer, for example). The goal is not the number itself, it is that they track it.
4. What will you do in the first two weeks if we get no offers?
This is the “how do you handle failure” question. A good agent has a specific answer. They will adjust photos, revise the MLS description, rerun the comp analysis, or recommend a targeted price reduction with a specific rationale. A bad agent says “we will see how it goes” or “that will not happen.” The ones who say “that will not happen” are the scariest because they have not thought about it.
5. After the NAR settlement in 2024, how do you handle cooperating buyer-agent commissions?
This is a 2026 question that would not have been on any listing agent interview list before August 2024. The NAR settlement changed how buyer-agent commissions are advertised and negotiated, and any agent listing houses in 2026 should have a clean answer. A good agent explains their default approach, how they discuss it with you during the pricing conversation, and how they handle offers that come in with different cooperating-commission structures (or seller-concession-based buyer-agent fees). A bad agent either waves it off (“nothing’s really changed”) or clearly has no idea what you are asking about. For the full breakdown of what the settlement changed, see our dedicated explainer.
6. What is your marketing plan beyond MLS syndication?
The honest answer for most agents in most markets is “not much, because MLS syndication does most of the work.” That answer is fine if they say it honestly. An agent who claims they have a proprietary marketing system that no other agent uses is either exaggerating or running a content operation that has nothing to do with selling your specific house. The ones who say “professional photography, the MLS listing, and a clean listing description do 80% of the work, and I focus on making those three as good as I can” are usually telling the truth.
7. What do you think we should do differently from how the last seller on this street priced their house?
Good agents know which houses sold on your street in the last six months. Really good ones have opinions about how those sales went and what the other agent did right or wrong. If your agent has not thought about the last few sales on your actual block, they are not local in any meaningful way.
8. Who exactly answers my questions during the sale, and how fast?
A friend of mine hired a high-volume agent whose name was on the sign but whose assistant ran all day-to-day communication. That arrangement can work fine, but only if the assistant is good and the agent is honest about it. The bad version is when you think you hired the person on the sign and you end up talking to three different people who are not quite coordinated. Ask directly.
9. What are the three things you are going to push me on that I probably will not want to hear?
This is the best single question on the list, and it is the one most sellers do not ask. A good agent has an immediate answer (price, staging, availability for showings, some version of the three). A bad agent says “we will work together as a team” or something equally empty. The good agent is telling you, up front, that you are going to have a disagreement about something, and giving you a chance to see whether you can hear that kind of feedback.
The thing underneath the questions
After all of this, picking a listing agent mostly comes down to whether you trust the person to tell you the truth when the truth is inconvenient. Everything else is negotiable. A good agent with the right instincts will run an average listing well. A great agent with the wrong instincts will run a great listing poorly. The questions are a way to find the first thing, not the second, and the second thing is actually more important.