What are the red flags when hiring a listing agent?
The biggest are: a recommended price far above every other agent with no comparable sales to support it; pressure to sign immediately; vagueness about what marketing is included or who pays for it; a long agreement term with no cancellation path; no verifiable recent sales near your home; and a fee described as fixed by the industry rather than by them. Any one of these is a reason to get more opinions.
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Take the unsupported high valuation seriously, because it is the costliest. An inflated price wins the listing and then produces a stale property, a sequence of reductions, and a final sale price below what a sharper initial price would have achieved — with your carrying costs funding the education. Ask for the comparable sales. If they do not exist, the number does not either.
Urgency is the second signal. A listing agreement is typically a multi-month exclusive commitment worth thousands of dollars in fees. Anyone unwilling to let you compare it against alternatives is telling you the comparison would not favour them.
Be specific about vagueness. “I do a lot of marketing” is not a plan; a written list of deliverables with costs attributed is. The same applies to fees: ask what is included, what is billed separately, and what happens to the fee if the home sells in the first week to a buyer the agent already knew.
Finally, be wary of anyone who frames the commission as an industry standard rather than their own price. It is not a standard, and an agent who says it is either has not thought about their pricing or is hoping you will not.