Is your listing agent only exposing your home to half of the potential buyers? And of those half are they the least likely to
purchase at full price or even afford to purchase your home at full price.
Follow me on this and it will be very evident to you if your agent is really an "expert" or an idiot.
if your home is valued at lets say $300K, your "expert" agent, who probably was working in retail (nothing wrong with retail) before getting their license tells you that "the fair market value of your home is $300K, so I suggest a listing price of $299,950.00" Now this sounds reasonable, its listed at fair market and should expect a fair offer, or is it. I would like to suggest a listed price of $300,000.00, here is the reasoning, first of all does $299,950.00 really sound cheaper than $300,000.00? Really? Ok maybe it sounds $50.00 better, but are you willing to pay $50.00 more to have less than half of the qualified buyers even find your home, let alone write a full price offer??????
Lets look at how people search for homes, they search in price ranges ie $250-300, $275-300, $300-325, $300-350K, etc. you get the idea. So a listing at $299,950.00 will only show in half of these searches correct? And which half is searching that price, the lower half, the ones that are stretching the limits of their search to find your home, and guess what, they want to offer you $275K because after all that is what they are really comfortable affording. They just happened to look a little higher hoping to get you to come down to their comfort zone.
Now lets look at the buyer that is searching your home and it comes in at the bottom of their price range, they can easily qualify, are much less likely to low ball an offer and they feel that they are saving money, because after all they were looking to spend up to $350K.
I get so frustrated when I see the retail mentality in pricing our listings. I have written about this in the past and have seen a few other savvy agents also post regarding this issue. Isn't our goal to get as many possible buyers to our listings as we can so we can get the highest and best offer in the shortest amount of time, if you insist on having unique list prices and ruling out half of the buyers, why not do your clients a favor and list the home for $300,050.00, at least you will be getting in front of the half that can afford to buy your home!
Even if the "expert" does all the "right" other things, staging your home, brochures, just listed cards, Open houses etc, they are not working in the best interest of the client if they are only showing it to the bottom half of the buyers!
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