Last night I got a call on one of our listings from another agent. He asked several questions about the house, then said: "Are the sellers flexible on the pricing?"
My first thought was, how dare you? I mean, honestly, you haven't even seen the house yet, so why are you trying to negotiate on the price? Then I thought, why is he asking this? Is the list price out of his buyer's price range? Why is he considering showing them homes they can't afford?
Of course I didn't say any of this to him. I simply reiterated what the list price is and told him that if his buyers liked it, that we'd be happy to present their offer to the sellers.
Then he actually asked again if there was flexibility in the pricing. I just repeated my answer to him.
As I hung up the phone, shaking my head, I couldn't help but feel concerned. I guess that not all agents work as hard as we do to price homes accurately. Seriouisly, what is the benefit of pricing a home too high? I can't think of any! In fact to make sure that we price the home as accurately as we can, we use several different tools to help us come up with a price we think that the home will sell for. The usual results of that are when the sellers agree to list at the price we suggest, the home will usually sell quickly and for the most money. In some cases we've had bidding wars where the home sells higher than the list price, when this happens are sellers are usually very happy.
So what would you do? How would you handle this kind of question?
Comments(15)