I have to say that every house I have ever bought (going back to 1986), I found myself and asked an agent to show us.

I have alerts set up so that anything that matches my criteria hitting the MLS comes to me in an email every morning.

But it would probably be good to start talking to buyers agents and find one you like and get along with.

Are you a cash buyer? If not, you should probably talk to a lender and getting pre-approved.

Once you view the house and decide you like it, you should ask the agent to find out things like
-Foreclosure Status?
-Short Sale Status?
-Any right of ways?
(I usually find all the stuff out and more myself before I even go look at a house)

I think you're talking about interviewing potential buyer's agents, not what to ask them about houses you want to see.

As with seller's agents, I approach it in the same way I do when hiring someone: outline the important characteristics of the candidate and then design questions that will help me determine who's got those characteristics.

What I want (your list may differ):
1. Someone who knows the area, the neighborhoods, and has a good sense for market value in each.
2. Someone who is willing to show me any house, not pushing their own listings or steer me away from others. Good balance of offering guidance/opinion without pushing me.
3. Someone who can help crunch numbers on comps so I can determine a fair price to offer.
4. Someone that will advocate strongly/negotiate well for me. I'm a good negotiator, so if there's going to be someone between me and the seller, I need a representative who I'm not second-guessing and saying "I wish I could just talk with the seller directly."

Note that in my case I'm usually buying a house in a new area, so I'm more in need of help as to neighborhoods and values as I'm coming in blind.

So my questions for a buyer's agent would include:
1. I'm moving to town. I'm looking for a house with (these) characteristics. What neighborhoods are likely to have what I'm looking for? What price range should I expect? If your price range is more the critical factor, then I'd say: I'm looking for something under $XXXK. What can I get for that?

2. How do you typically go about showing me homes? Let them talk about how they'll hook you up with an auto notify from their MLS, but see if they do any additional screening or hunting for you. Screening can be a pro or con: either helpful in cutting through stuff that's not going to fit it for you, or their way of pushing what they want you to see. Figure out where you stand on the issue and interpret their answer accordingly. They may want you to drive the process (look at the listings, do drive-bys, let me know which ones you want to see inside) or they may prefer to steer. Again, you've got to pick what fits your needs/wants the best.

3. If I like a house, how will you help me come up with a good/fair offer price? I might even pick a house that I thought was overpriced and have them give me their opinion on what a good offer should be. I want someone that crunches numbers, not someone that goes by gut feel or says "offer X% less than list."

4. If there's a significant difference in price between me and the seller, what kinds of things will you do to try and make the deal happen? I want to see creative negotiation abilities.

Then I'd throw in some behavioral questions:
1. Tell me about a time you had a customer with very specific/narrow needs in a house and it was tough to find something for them. How did you handle it and what was the result? I'd love to see someone that went the extra mile (beyond MLS) to find the right home.

2. Tell me about a time during negotiations where the buyer and seller were far apart. How did you bridge the gap and make the deal happen? (Similar to #4 above)

3. Tell me about a time where you represented the buyer and the seller was emotional/unreasonable and threatened to kill the deal. How did you solve the problem? I want to see how well they can influence the other side.

Hope that helps.

Posted by barbcollins
I have alerts set up so that anything that matches my criteria hitting the MLS comes to me in an email every morning.
How do you do that?

Weedy: Wow! Kudos. Exactly what I was looking for. I sorta had all those ideas rattling around my head, but with all the other noise rattling around its been hard to put it all together. Great list. Thanks.

marti8a: The current realtor we're working with put our criteria into their matching system and it sends an email when there's a match. Problem is that in 3 months there's been 4 matches, and they've all sucked. Additionally, I use the website RedFin, which I find to be faster at listings in my area than my realtor's system. Redfin sends me emails within minutes of a listing.

barbcollins: We're at the point where we need to know about the houses that aren't in the MLS. Pocket listings, people likely to sell, houses that were pulled off market, the "insider knowledge."

Some background for y'all: We signed a P&S to sell our place back in early June, but pushed the closing out to August (4 more days). Scoured the MLS but nothing suitable. Our current agent started pushing us to buy smaller fixer-uppers just to get our foot into our target town. Then tried to push more expensive properties. Went so far as to call our bank and have them re-evaluate just how much max $$$ we could afford!

We know what we want. We know where we want it. Now we need someone who can "bring the magic" and make the right house come to us. Not someone who will simply "watch the MLS." H3ll, I do that 6 times a day.

Which brings a follow-up question: How do you find the star buyer agents to interview? I don't want to interview 50 people. I want to know which 3 or 4 are the "best" buyer agents before I spend time on interviews. All I could think of was to data-mine the sales records from the last 6-12 months to find who represented the most buyers in our target towns., cross-referencing with those agents that actually live in those towns.

"How do you do that?"

I use a local website; www.franklymls.com
It's the best if you are in the MD/DC/VA area.

I am sure other's like redfin, listingbook, etc will do that also.

Have you tried visiting Open Houses and chatting with the agent? Thats how we found our Realtor when we planned to list our house. We attended Open Houses as often as possible and got to meet many Realtors. We watched how they showed the houses, answered questions, how knowledgeable they were about the home and the neighborhood.

When we met the Realtor we chose, I knew it right away. There was chemistry plus I was very impressed how well prepared she was regarding the property and the neighborhood.

We planned to rent for 1 1/2 years until my husband retired and we asked her to help us find a house.

She was a very skillful negotiator and previewed every home before showing it to us. It saved us a lot of time as she knew what we wanted and only took us to homes which filled the criteria. She managed to negotiate the price quite a bit below the asking price which made us very happy. Turned out to be a wonderful experience due to her excellent skills and personality.

Jane

One of the reports on our local MLS (you have to get them through a realtor) that include volume and $$ for sales where they represented buyers. See if a local office will run that for you.

Or you could ask for all the data sheets on homes that have sold in your target area in the past year. Look at both listing and selling agents, as the listing agents might actually be those more likely to have pocket listings. See if a few agents jump out that way as likely candidates.