Author's note: in case my mother sees this, I hit post before sundown and Kol Nidre
Fair enough. And not at all surprising, since nearly all the surveys in which real estate agents as a group are rated somewhere just this side of your average state politician or used car salesman, the caveat nearly always given is “except for my agent.”
To be honest, I’m all for loyalty. It’s something that is in remarkably short supply in an industry where the prime qualification to be hired by someone isn’t necessarily the knowledge you have or the service you provide but rather your relation to a seller or buyers’ third cousin’s brother’s girlfriend’s hairdresser who sells part time in between coloring appointments.
At the same time, it also strikes me there ought to be some reality checks in place.
Take, for example, a seller I spoke to this morning whose listing had expired a few months ago. It seems the trouble was other agents “weren’t doing their job” and only would show “their own listings and not somebody else’s.” The listing agent, I was told, held open houses every single weekend and put the home in the MLS and because of these other agents, the house didn’t sell after being on the market for 18 months.
Yes, 18 months.
Now, my takeaways from this story are a little different than the seller’s.
First of all, this situation would seem to prove my long-standing argument that open houses don’t sell homes. Quite frankly, even your average cat after running into the same sliding glass door over and over again eventually learns the effort is futile. If holding open houses x number of times per month doesn’t sell the home, why exactly would you believe x times 18 open houses are going to do the trick?
What the seller sees as hard work instead was little more than busy work. Unless the agent got some buyers out of the deal.
Second, as I explained when asked why I didn’t sell the home when it was on the market for 18 months, I explained quite simply that the marketing wasn’t such to bring this home onto either my radar or that of my buyers. Photographs don’t necessarily make all the difference between selling or not but they certainly can sway buyers whose emotions are driving their buying decisions.
Hey look, kids! It’s a hallway! What an incredibly unique feature seen only in 95 percent of all homes.
Is this a submarine, because it seems like this photograph was taken in mid dive in rather dim light …
And let’s not forget the photo of the kitchen which, rather than highlighting the corian counters and decent cabinetry, makes the kitchen look small by hiding most of it behind a counter top three feet away from the lens.
There’s a reason I got smart a while ago and started using a professional photographer onany non-short sale listing over $75,000 …
This would not be considered a huge kitchen. But it sure looks a hell of a lot bigger than the one above, doesn’t it? Want to see a bathroom?
I’d also show you a photo of a hallway but, oddly enough, I just don’t have one of those handy.
Now, these were two things I was able to identify within about 42 seconds. Though a hand-written note is on the way to the seller, odds are he’ll not pick up the phone to call because, well, he hates all agents except for his own.
That’s a shame. Because the basic reality is there are no unsellable homes. There only are homes one agent can’t seem to get sold.
Comments(16)