This post started as a comment on Renee Burrows' featured blog, but I had so much more to say that it just seemed natural to start my own post out of it. Thanks Renee for the inspiration...
So we were talking about overpriced listings and wether it is ethical or not to take one. I try to avoid taking overpriced listings by showing my clients that numbers don't lie and that no matter how much they want their house to be worth and how much I really want to take their listing, reality is that a reasonable buyer will only pay for a home so much.
I arrive at my listing presentation and after I've dazzled ;) my prospective seller with everything I will do for them and why I am the best person to sell their home... I get to the point they really want to hear: price.
I begin by explaining to the seller that I cannot control the market (and neither can they), that a reasonable buyer does research prior to shopping for a home and they know how much homes are worth in their neighborhood. I tell them that while we cannot control the market, we do control the marketing plan, so what we need to do is price their home right and then I'll begin to market it so we can find a qualified buyer.
I then move on to explain the results of my thorough CMA, and preface the explanation with "I am not just going to throw numbers at you, I have a pricing strategy that I put in place for all my listings". I show them the results of my CMA which includes averages of actives, pendings and closed and I show them how I arrived at an average price range. I don't give my clients an exact price, but rather a price range (within 5% of the average price), so they can determine a listing price within that range according to their urgency to sell. I learned an amazing technique that has proven very successful to me by reading Matt Jones' Ultimate CMa's techniques.
Since I started doing this, I haven't had one sellers told me that they want a higher price than the average price range, but I do have a come back if they say they want to try a higher price just for a couple of weeks... "Well MR. Seller, I do not agree with you and I think it will hurt your chances to list at such high price, but if you really want to list higher for two weeks that is perfectly fine, but let's just not do it in the first two weeks..." :) The first two weeks of a listing being on the market is when it is most active and if you have an overpriced listing you'll blow the excitement a new lisitng creates.
Comments(0)