It's important that you choose an experienced agent who is there for you. Your agent should be actively finding you potential homes, keeping you informed of the entire process, negotiating on your behalf, and answering all of your questions with competence and speed.

When you use a buyer's agent, consider using a Buyer - Broker agreement. You will see more properties as this frees up your agent to not only investigate properties in their Multiple Listing Service, but also they are actively finding homes that are listed as "FSBO", or homes that sellers are thinking about listing.