The usual questions are the wrong ones
Commission and list price matter, and neither predicts how your home performs. The Mashore Group would rather be judged on the five below, because those are the ones whose answers change the outcome.
Ask them before you sign, not after, and compare how specific the answers are rather than how confident.
What is the plan for this house specifically
Not "do you run ads" or "are you on social media". A plan: what happens before the home goes live, which platforms carry the campaign, what the property's own page looks like, and how buyers outside the immediate area get reached.
Ask for it in writing before you sign. An agent who cannot produce it in advance will not produce it afterwards either.
Look specifically for what happens to somebody who views the listing and does not call. If the answer is nothing, the campaign ends at exposure, and exposure is the part every agent in the county can do in twenty minutes.
How will you reach Silicon Valley and the Peninsula
This is the San Ramon-specific question and most sellers never think to ask it.
The city sits at the southern end of the county on the 680 corridor with direct access to the Tri-Valley and on toward Silicon Valley. Buyers from San Jose, Palo Alto and the South Bay look here regularly, because the commute to campuses along the 680 and 237 corridor can be materially better than from the Peninsula.
If the marketing plan does not deliberately target that pool, a meaningful share of your potential buyers never sees the house. Many of them were not searching "San Ramon" at all until something put it in front of them, and that is the entire point. Our selling in San Ramon page covers how we do it.
What are your negotiation credentials
If the marketing produces real competition, the outcome is decided in the offer review rather than in the campaign.
Not every higher-priced offer is better. Financing strength, contingency structure, appraisal gap provisions, closing timeline and overall buyer certainty all change what an offer is genuinely worth to you. An agent who reads those clearly is worth considerably more than one who sorts by price and takes the top number.
Krista Mashore holds the Master Certified Negotiation Expert designation from the Real Estate Negotiation Institute. Ask every agent you interview what specific training they hold, then ask for examples of how it changed an outcome.
Can you show me results from your last three listings
Not testimonials and not a sold list. Actual marketing results.
How many people did a comparable listing reach. How much video watchtime did it generate. What did the campaign consist of, and what were the days on market and the final price against list.
An agent running genuine campaigns has these numbers because the platforms report them automatically. An agent who does not will offer effort in place of evidence. Be skeptical of any figure quoted without a way to verify it, including ours, and ask what produced it.
What is the pre-listing timeline
The first two weeks are the highest-traffic window the listing will ever have. Buyers watching that neighborhood, that price range and that attendance area see it the moment it appears and form a judgment almost immediately.
If the house is not ready, that window closes at a cost you cannot recover later. Ask for the sequence in order: who does what, by when, and what has to be finished before the photographer arrives.
Then ask what happens if the first two weeks are quiet. A good answer describes what gets reviewed and when a decision point arrives. A weak one tells you to be patient, which is not a plan and is usually the beginning of a price reduction.
Ask which half of the city they are pricing against
This one is not on most lists and it matters more here than anywhere else in the county.
West and central San Ramon was built through the 1980s and 1990s. Dougherty Valley went up largely in the 2000s. They do not price alike, and an agent who has pulled comparables from the wrong side of the city has produced a number that describes a different house.
Ask which sales they used and why those. Start from what your home is worth and make them show the working.
And who handles escrow
The month after acceptance is where transactions quietly fail, and it is almost always a missed deadline rather than a disagreement.
Ask who tracks the documents and the dates, and whether you will be chasing updates or receiving them. A licensed transaction coordinator handling it is a different proposition from an agent doing it between showings.
If your buyer is likely to be relocating in from outside the county, ask how that changes the escrow timeline too, since remote signings and out-of-area lenders both add steps. Our relocation page covers who those buyers tend to be.
Then compare the answers
Vagueness is not a personality difference. It is a preview of how the listing will be run, and it shows up first in whichever answer the agent gives fastest and least specifically.
Our free seller guide covers the whole process, and get in touch with The Mashore Group when you want us to answer all seven for your house.