Is your Realtor® giving you the correct comps for your home purchase?

That's funny, Juli.  The only thing the agent got right was the city.  I wouldn't even dignify this with an answer.

Who does this agent think he's fooling? I feel bad for his clients if he doesn't even know how to pull appropriate comps.

Juli,

There's a term for those kinds of comps:

Zestimates.

SO important!  I opened up a mailing by a local real estate agent for my neighborhood last week...and he was using comps that were already outdated in our quickly escalating neighborhood.  While most above average homes are selling at over $100.00 a square foot in our community of like homes, he had comps all in the 80's.  YIKES.  Not providing a service to sellers in my book!

Juli ~ some agents just don't pay attention to what they are doing, case and point in this story.  So sad!

Juli,

Sometimes people just do not want to listen.  They are not aware of the area and what pricing is.  That is a great reason to make sure you have and agent that has sold in the area.

Oh good lord.  A lot to compare with a 1970's home to a practically new 2003 homes.

Yup, I've seen it on many levels -- listing agent prices it too high and there's no comps to support the value, or the listing agent buys the listing then tries to chew it down in a few weeks.  In your case that buyer's agent doesn't not how to comp a house.  His clients probably spent five hours in a fevered pitch looking up listing on ZTR and thought they were so savvy.

Hi Juli, Good points. At the end of your post, you invite the buyer to ask their agent if something seems out of line, then if in doubt, to call you for a free market analysis and a chance to earn their business. I assume that you only want buyers who don't have a Buyer's Agent, or a seller who has not listed, or you want to earn the business of buyers - at what stage in the process if they are already having an agent pull comps? Our markets may be a bit different, and this is interesting. By the way, I've been through this too, and generally I share with the agent the comps that I used to price the home, and explain in detail why we selected the "correct" comps. Then it's up to the clients to determine what to offer/accept. Thanks!

Hi Julie,

Great post!  I like to present the comps we used in a marketing piece about the property that stays at the seller's home for any potential buyer to peruse.  A smart will looking at the marketing piece and verify the information provided to the buyer clients when discussing their offer price.

Best of GREAT success to you always!

Doing a cma was the most time consuming process I went through to determine a price to list or offer. 

This is such a great point. I can't count the number of times I've received less than adequate offers from an agent claiming the comps don't support our asking price because they've used the wrong comps, dated comps, etc. I will always be ready to respond with the "real" story. Lots of times they do get it and come back with a better offer. Sometimes they don't--I think those agents might not be going back to their clients with better comps because they don't want to look stupid.

I participated once in a CMA workshop, and it was really amazing the different market price estimates that a room of 10 agents came up with.  They were all quite different. 

Juli, preparing a market analysis for a home is an ART - and sometimes, some agents are not honest with what they present to their client - may be, to write a low ball offer?

Oh boyyyyyyyyyyyyyy gotta love that one!

BTW, had an "In person" presentation on one of my listings a couple of months ago and the broker showed.  "I prepared a BPO for you" (he says to my sellers) "because I have done 100's of BPOs!" 

^^YAY YOU, I have done thousands.  We ended up selling it to someone else ABOVE what they were trying to negotiate.

Juli, Condition is another important aspect.  Don't use a comparable that needs updating and compare it to a home that has just been completely renovated.  It's too bad the buyer's agent didn't use the right comps.  How can he go back to his client and say I screwed up by $135,000!  We know that's not going to happen. 

This is one of the most difficult lesson for new and sometimes not so new agents to understand.

I fault the broker for not training them.

It's probably a lack of competence rather than dishonesty that is behind faulty comparables in a market study. And with multiple MLS databases that sometimes overlap a particular area, some agents don't know where to look in the first place.