This checklist is for a seller in Nashville, Franklin or Brentwood interviewing agents for a high-value home. Each section names what to ask and where to check the answer yourself.

Why verification matters above $2 million

An agent’s case for a luxury listing usually rests on a ranking, a list of past sales and press coverage. All three can be checked, and all three are easy to misread: a ranking can describe a different class, city or year, and a clipping can feature a house without naming who listed it.

Tennessee’s advertising rule supplies a working standard. TREC Rule 1260-02-.12(7), September 2025 revision, prohibits unsubstantiated selling claims and misleading statements or inferences, and requires any offer, guaranty or warranty used to induce an agency relationship or contract to be in writing, with all pertinent details on its face. Use it as a test: ask for the source of every claim, and for every promise in writing.

The checklist at a glance

Each row is covered below. Run the same list on every agent you interview, including one you already know.

Start with the license and the firm

The Tennessee Real Estate Commission regulates real estate brokers, real estate firms and other license types. TREC’s site links Verify a License to the Department of Commerce and Insurance public search at search.cloud.commerce.tn.gov, a page titled Verify Public Search, and the short address verify.tn.gov leads to the same page. Look up every agent before the listing appointment, then compare the license with the marketing: Rule 1260-02-.12(3)(c) requires advertising that refers to an individual licensee to use that licensee’s name as licensed with the Commission.

Look at the firm, too. Rule 1260-02-.12(3)(b) places all advertising under the direct supervision of the principal broker and requires it to list the firm name and the firm telephone number on file with the Commission, with the firm name in letters the same size or larger than any licensee or team name. Rule 1260-02-.12(5)(a) requires both to appear conspicuously on each page of a website, and Rule 1260-02-.12(3)(f)2 treats a team’s use of terms such as Realty, Company or LLC, which suggest brokerage services independent of the firm, as misleading advertising.

Ask about discipline directly as well: has any complaint to the Commission resulted in disciplinary action against the agent’s license? TREC’s site has a page for consumers to file a complaint.

Read a ranking by its class, its geography and its year

The RealTrends Verified program is a useful example, because its own FAQ explains how to read it. RealTrends defines a team as two or more licensed agents operating together under a unified brand and business structure, and it ranks teams within five size classes set by licensed-agent count.

Because ranks are published within each class, more than one team in the same city can hold a rank of 1, one per class. When you hear that a team is first in a city, the next question is: first among which teams?

• Geography. City rankings follow the agent’s or team’s physical location as submitted, not where the properties sold were, which matters for a home in Franklin or Brentwood.
• Measure. Ranks are published by volume and by transaction sides, and an agent who represented both buyer and seller may count the transaction and its price twice. Volume leans toward price and sides toward count.
• Scope. Production counts residential transactions only. Commercial sales, rentals, leases, land, lots and referred business are excluded.
• Year. RealTrends states that its 2026 rankings show calendar year 2025 data, and a profile states its sales year. Write both, as 2026 (2025 production).
• Thresholds. National and state rankings require a team to close 40 residential sides or $16 million in volume; city rankings, 25 sides or $10 million.
• Verification. The preferred method is RealTrends’ automated electronic verification, in which the managing broker verifies the stated production, with MLS data, CRM reports or a signed broker letter as alternatives. Under the electronic method, RealTrends states that if the managing broker does not sign the verification letter, the agent or team is not ranked.
• Coverage. Participation is voluntary, with a $195 annual submission fee, and RealTrends states its lists may not include every real estate professional. A ranking is evidence when present. Its absence proves nothing.

To check a ranking, search the name on the RealTrends Verified site; RealTrends states that a profile shows national, state and city ranks.

Check sold history in your price band

A ranking is an annual total. You need something narrower: evidence the agent has recently sold homes like yours at prices like yours. Ask for closed sales in your price band, with the address, date, list price, sale price and the side the agent represented, and with co-listed sales marked. An MLS sold list for your price band, printed by the agent, is a reasonable starting document.

Then check it. The Davidson County Assessor of Property’s Real Property Search looks up a parcel by owner, address or parcel ID. The Assessor keeps a Property Record Card for every parcel, about 236,000 in the county, and lists its transfer data as sales amounts, dates, and deed volume and page numbers. Agents are not on that list, so the record confirms the sale and its amount, and the agent’s documentation connects the agent to it. The Assessor cautions that its quarterly recent-sales reports are not a complete listing, and in August 2024 it posted a notice about problems with its property search. For a home in Franklin or Brentwood, run the same check with the Williamson County Assessor of Property. You need the address, date and price, never the owners’ names.

• A listing is not a sale. Homes listed show access to sellers; closings with a recorded amount show how the work ended.
• A listing price is not a sale price. Press and marketing often report the asking price. Check the recorded amount.
• A buyer-side sale is not a listing. Both are real work, but different work. If you are hiring a listing agent, know which is which.

Look for press that names the listing agent

An article about a property is evidence about an agent only when it names the agent in a role: as the listing agent, as holding the listing, or quoted by name on the market. For each clipping, note the outlet, date, role, whether the figure is a listing or sale price, and any co-listing agents. Ask whether it is independent reporting or a sponsored placement or press release, and keep the date attached: a 2019 article describes 2019. If a clipping calls a sale a record, trace the claim to the recorded sale before giving it weight.

Ask for the marketing plan and the private-listing policy in writing

A marketing plan for a high-value home is a sequence, not a list of channels. Ask for it in writing: what happens before launch and in the first weeks, who pays for presentation, where the listing will appear, and what you will be told and how often.

Decide first whether to begin privately. A private phase can suit a small and identifiable buyer pool, a flexible timeline or a situation where privacy has value of its own. It suits a broad-market property far less, because public exposure brings competing buyers. Compass, for example, describes its Private Exclusives as properties accessible to 340,000 agents in Compass’ network of brokerages and their serious buyers, within a three-phase plan: a Private Exclusive phase to validate pricing, a Coming Soon phase listed publicly on Compass.com and Redfin.com, then the broader public websites. Whatever the brokerage, get four answers in writing:

• Which brokerage and MLS rules apply to a private phase for this property?
• How long will the private phase run, and what triggers the move to public marketing?
• How will buyers be qualified before a private showing? Qualification should be financial only, proof of funds requested the same way from every buyer.
• What will you report from the private phase, so I can judge whether the price is holding?

A home that has been marketed publicly cannot return to being unseen, so settle the sequence before anything is shown.

For work before launch, Compass describes its Concierge program as fronting the cost of services such as staging, painting, flooring and landscaping, with zero due until closing. Compass states that payment comes due when the home sells, when the Compass listing agreement is terminated, or 12 months after the start date, that fees or interest may apply by state, and that loans are made by Notable Finance, LLC, not Compass. See the Compass Concierge page and the current terms.

Ask how the agent will price a home with few comparable sales

At the upper end of the market, the list price rests on little data, and a reduction is seen by the same small group of buyers who saw the first number. Ask for the reasoning behind the recommendation:

• Which sales are in the comparable set, and why each was chosen.
• How far back and how far out the search went, and how older sales were adjusted to the current market.
• On an estate parcel, how the land was valued apart from the improvements, since the land’s value depends on what its zoning district permits.
• Which sale is the closest superior property and which the closest inferior, and where the recommended price sits between them.
• When the price will be reviewed, and what happens if the early response does not support it.

The 2025 Davidson County reappraisal value is a mass-appraisal figure produced for taxation, not a list price, and neither is the highest number heard at a listing appointment. The estate tier’s mechanics are set out in Nashville Luxury Real Estate: The Estate and Penthouse Guide 2026, and the full seller sequence in Selling a Home in Nashville: The Complete 2026 Guide to Pricing, Costs, and Timing.

Get agency, compensation and the listing terms in writing

Under Tenn. Code Ann. 62-13-405, a licensee who personally assists an unrepresented seller must say, verbally and before providing any real estate services, whether the licensee is acting as a facilitator, agent, subagent or designated agent. That status must then be confirmed in writing before the earlier of signing the listing agreement or presenting an offer, and the licensee obtains a signed receipt that includes the Commission’s address and telephone number. The disclosure is not the agreement that creates the agency relationship, which is a separate written agreement under 62-13-406. Under 62-13-403, a licensee owes every party duties that include reasonable skill and care, disclosure of adverse facts the licensee actually knows of, honesty and good faith, and timely accounting for trust deposits.

The National Association of REALTORS states that agent compensation for home buyers and sellers continues to be fully negotiable, and its settlement FAQ states that compensation is not set by law; NAR’s practice changes took effect August 17, 2024. Treat any figure presented as the standard rate with caution, and write the fee and what it funds into the listing agreement. In NAR’s consumer guide, an offer of compensation is a payment from the seller or the seller’s agent to another agent for bringing a buyer; the choice is yours, and your agent may make one only with your written approval of the amount. Offers of compensation cannot be listed on a Multiple Listing Service, but NAR states that sellers can still make them off an MLS and can offer buyer concessions on an MLS.

Putting the checklist to work

Ask every agent the same questions in the same order. The differences show in the specifics: a ranking with its class and year, a sold list you can check, a private phase with a trigger, a price with a comparable set. An agent who answers with sources makes the decision easier. One who answers with adjectives asks you to decide on trust.

Frequently asked questions