You’re about to face one of the largest financial transactions of your lifetime. You need to hire a real estate agent and you need them to know their stuff. But who’s got the time to spend hours and hours grilling a bunch of agents on their strengths and weaknesses?

You need to get in, get out, and get down to business either buying or selling your home.

To that end, we’ve put together this easy-to-follow rubric for how to interview real estate agents on your initial phone screen. We recommend that you interview at least 3 top agents in your area before you hire one, so the goal is to get all the information you need to make a smart hiring decision in 15 minutes or less per call.

Good news: if you found the agent on the other end of the line through HomeLight, we can save you some time on these calls and safely assume that they work with homes in your price range, they’ve got great stats, their sale to list ratio is good, their days on market average is excellent, and they’re out-performing the agents in their area for properties like yours.