Over the weekend, I watched one of those real estate "reality" shows. I don’t remember the name of the show. It profiled two sellers and their homes.
The first seller owned a million dollar home. The listing agent recommended that he have his home staged. The cost for the staging was $2,000. The seller thought the home was fine, but listened to their agent. The staging went well and the home looked 10 times better. They never revealed if the listing sold. The lesson I took from the situation was:
Make sure your listings show well.
This is even more important in a slow market. If you can get a buyer through your listing, it better look show well! There is way too much competition to mess around these days. Many homes sit on the market for months. If I were listing homes (and I’m not), I would probably require that all of my sellers have their homes professionally staged. Don’t let your sellers call the shots. They don’t know what they are doing. Your the expert. The listing agent on this show did an excellent job by having his clients stage their home.
The second seller had found their dream home. The home was more expensive than they could afford, which meant that they needed to sell their current home for top dollar. Two agents (partners) met with the seller and provided a listing price range of $450,000 to $475,000. They explained that pricing was key in today’s slow real estate market. The seller said they needed to sell the home for a minimum of $525,000 in order to be able to afford their dream home.
Well, what would you do? Would you list the seller’s home at $525,000 knowing that it was substantially over priced?
These agents did. They listed the home at $525,000. They then had a broker’s open and regular open houses, too. They spent money advertising the home in the newspaper. They spent a significant amount of time preparing for and hosting the open houses. Guess what happened?
Nothing. Hardly any showings. Zero offers.
The seller finally realized that they couldn’t afford their dream home now. They took their home off the market. My question is: Why did these agents bother listing the home? It was obviously not going to sell. It was overpriced by at least $50,000. It was a complete waste of time and effort.
Your time is extremely valuable. Every second you waste on overpriced listings costs you money. These agents could have used their time to design a new marketing program. Instead, they spent close to 10 hours sitting at an overpriced home. They could have used the money spent advertising this over priced listing to test a new marketing campaign. They didn’t…
Don’t fall into the trap of taking any old listing. Don’t set yourself up to fail. This is a very COSTLY mistake. Only take the listings that you can sell. It will save you a significant amount of time, money and stress. Let your competitors waste their time listing over priced homes.
Rob Minton
