After going through the process of buying and later selling a home in Montreal, I’ve come to believe most people ask the wrong questions when vetting a real estate broker. General questions about experience or years in the industry rarely reveal much. Here are the five questions that actually gave me useful, specific answers when I started asking them directly.

“How Many Deals Have You Closed in This Specific Neighborhood?”

This question separates brokers with genuine local knowledge from those with broad, general experience. A Residential Real Estate Broker who’s closed multiple deals on your specific street or in your specific pocket of the city tends to have sharper pricing instincts than someone with plenty of citywide experience but limited familiarity with your particular area’s nuances.

“What’s Your Average Time on Market Compared to the Area?”

A vague “I sell things fast” answer isn’t useful. What I actually wanted was a specific number I could compare against the broader neighborhood average. Brokers who could answer this precisely, and explain why their listings tended to move faster, gave me a lot more confidence than ones who deflected with general reassurance.

“Walk Me Through a Recent Multiple-Offer Situation You Handled”

This question reveals actual negotiation skill in a way that generic questions never do. The brokers who could describe a specific, recent situation, what happened, how they advised their client, what the outcome was, clearly had real experience navigating competitive scenarios. The ones who gave a vague, generalized answer hadn’t necessarily dealt with this often, or weren’t being fully candid about it.

“What Brokerage Are You With, and What Does That Actually Mean for Me?”

I didn’t initially realize how much brokerages differ structurally. Some operate as loose networks of fairly independent agents. Others function as coordinated teams with shared resources and consistent standards across every transaction. Comparing a few different real estate companies montreal sellers actually rely on revealed genuine differences in support and marketing reach that weren’t obvious from a single conversation.

“How Do You Prefer to Communicate, and How Often?”

This last question isn’t about credentials at all, it’s about fit. Some brokers default to frequent detailed updates. Others prefer to handle things quietly and only check in when a real decision needs to be made. Neither is wrong, but figuring out which style actually matches what you want tends to make the entire process a lot less stressful, regardless of how experienced the broker is on paper.

Why These Questions Actually Work

Generic questions get generic answers. These five forced every broker I spoke with to give specific, checkable responses rather than reassurance, which made it a lot easier to compare candidates honestly instead of just going with whoever gave the most confident-sounding pitch.