The Wrong Agent Can Cost You Thousands. We Help You Hire the Right One.
We evaluate agents the way institutional investors evaluate their vendors. Track record, market coverage, negotiation history, and fit. Then we match you with the one who fits your situation. The best part? It costs you nothing.
On a $750K home, the gap between a top and below-average agent averages ~$41,000. Most sellers never shop more than one.
What the research says about agent selection
80%
of sellers contact only one agent before hiring
NAR Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers, 2025[1]
~$41K
gap between a top and below-average agent on a $750K home
Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, Working Paper 2022-11[2]
49%
of active agents sell zero or one home per year
Consumer Federation of America, 2024[3]
How It Works
A structured process. A better outcome.
01
Discovery Call
We map your timeline, price expectations, and what a failed sale looks like for you before we look at a single agent.
02
Performance Screening
We evaluate candidates on actual performance data, including transaction history, days on market, list-to-sale ratios, and other relevant metrics for agents specific to your Northern Virginia submarket. Not ratings. Not referrals. A short list built on what the data shows.
03
Recommendation Report
You receive a ranked short list with our reasoning behind each candidate. A documented recommendation so you can make an informed choice.
Using Vetted Agent costs you nothing.
It can even save you on commission.
Here’s how it works:
You’ll pay a commission to any agent you hire. When you use an agent we recommend, we receive a referral fee from that agent when you close. While commissions are always negotiable, agent commission rates are typically the same or better going through us than going direct.
A note on commission: we recommend based on net value to you. Our recommendation includes a comparison of all costs, including commission, so you can see your total cost for the transaction cleanly for any agent we recommend. The process is transparent by design. If we recommend an agent who charges a higher commission, you’ll be able to see the exact reason why.
The Problem We Solve
And How We Solve It
Nearly 80% of agents on major platforms carry perfect or near-perfect ratings. That number makes it nearly impossible to differentiate on reputation alone. Real estate transactions involve many moving pieces, and buyers and sellers do not always have full visibility into what is being done behind the scenes. A five-star review means the client was satisfied and the transaction closed. It does not mean the agent performed their job well. We check what reviews and ratings do not show, using data that is not readily available to consumers.
Transaction volume in your price range. Days on market relative to local averages. List-to-sale ratios. Market coverage in your specific submarket. We also evaluate whether candidates can articulate a clear strategy for your specific situation.
This approach was built on the same evaluation framework used to assess vendor relationships in commercial real estate. The methodology transfers. The rigor is the same.
Before starting Vetted Agent, founder Jake Lind worked at JLL, a Fortune 500 real estate services firm, evaluating contractors and consultants for high-stakes commercial projects where a bad hire costs months, thousands of dollars, and numerous headaches. He designed Vetted Agent to apply that same due diligence to the most important hire of your home sale. He helps buyers and sellers find the right agent across Northern Virginia including Fairfax, Loudoun, and Prince William counties.
Right Fit Guarantee
If the agent we recommend isn’t the right fit, we fix it.
If something goes wrong, tell us. We’ll go back through your shortlist, work through the decision with you, and if you move forward with a different agent from our process, we’ll stay involved to make sure it runs correctly from start to finish.
If you’re still not satisfied after that, we’ll credit our full referral fee back to you at closing.
This policy is administered at the discretion of Vetted Agent and applies where a genuine quality issue exists. It will not be honored where the sole purpose appears to be recovery of the referral fee.
Ready to find the right agent?
Start with a 30-minute Discovery Call.
There is no cost to you for the for our service. We receive a referral fee from the agent you choose, paid at closing.
Sources
Note that we use peer-reviewed research, independent/non-profit research, and government research, or regulatory organizations (such as NAR) as sources.
Click each citation to view the exact quotes from the research papers.
[1] NAR Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers, 2025 (Page 95 and 98): https://www.greaterbergenrealtors.com/….(link shortened)
Quote from page 98: “Eighty percent of recent sellers contacted only one agent before finding the right one to work with to sell
their home, consistent with data from last year.”
NOTE: The choice in language on both page 95 and 98 is noteworthy. Both pages state sellers found the “right” agent, framing the lack of agent comparison by sellers as something positive. We believe sellers (and buyers) should understand multiple options before deciding which option is “right” for them.
[2] Cunningham, Chris and Gerardi, Kristopher S. and Shen, Lily, The Good, the Bad, and the Ordinary: Estimating Agent Value-Added Using Real Estate Transactions (September, 2022). FRB Atlanta Working Paper No. 2022-11 (Page 0, Abstract) https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4277192
Quote from Abstract: “We find that exchanging a listing agent in the 25th percentile for one in the 75th would increase the final sales price by 5–6 percent, and a similar exchange for buying agents would lower purchase prices by 4–6 percent. The interquartile range of agent fixed effects from our model of time-on-the-market is 17–25 days. We do not find a significant trade-off between price and time-to-sell, however, as agents who obtain higher prices do not take longer to sell, suggesting that they are not simply setting higher reservation prices.”
NOTE: ~$41k number used on the website represents 5.5% (middle of range for listing agents) of a $750k home (approximate median home price in Northern Virginia).
[3] Consumer Federation of America. (2024, January 26). NEARLY HALF OF REAL ESTATE AGENTS SOLD NO OR ONE HOUSE THIS PAST YEAR · Consumer Federation of America. https://consumerfed.org/press_release/nearly-half-of-real-estate-agents-sold-no-or-one-house-this-past-year/
Quote from Paragraph 3: “The CFA report examined the annual number of home sales of 2,000 randomly selected agents working for major companies in four diverse urban areas – Central Pennsylvania, Orlando (FL), Tucson (AZ), and Minneapolis (MN). This research revealed that nearly half of the agents (49%) sold only one or no homes the previous year and that nearly three-quarters of the agents (70%) sold five or fewer homes. “