Y’know, it’s tough being a listing agent. No matter how good of a job you do, the margin for error is huge. If you sell the house too fast… you blew it on the price and “cost your seller money.” If the house takes too long to sell… well, we all know what happens then. We didn’t live up to our promises and we disappointed our seller.
I’ve decided that the best time for a house to sell is about two weeks after listing. Unfortunately, I don’t know of any way to make THAT happen with any regularity, but if I come up with something I’ll let you know.
Anyway, I just had a listing go under contract with multiple offers. Fortunately (for me), a good friend of mine had the same thing happen to him just a few days earlier and (unfortunately for him), his seller wasn’t prepared. She blasted him for underpricing her home and told him, rather snottily, that she had no intention of making any repairs at inspection.
So, Miss Smarty Pantz me, I warned my sellers up front about what I just named “Seller’s Regret.”
Here’s the thing. In today’s market, almost every seller will experience Seller’s Regret. But it’s their choice (sort of) which type of Seller’s Regret they’ll experience.
Type 1: “Damn! We underpriced our home! We should have priced it higher! That darn Realtor – she cost us money!”
Type 2: “Crap. I wish we’d listened to our Realtor upfront. We should have made the repairs, staged it right away and priced it lower. Now, five months later, our listing is stale, we’ve paid $9000 of interest-only mortgage and are fair game for low-ball offers, if we get any at all. Let’s look into renting it out (heavy sigh).”
If your seller is lucky enough to experience Type 1, he may never know the pain and angst of Type 2 and he may always wonder if he should have/could have priced it higher. My sellers admitted they had a twinge of doubt when the offers started coming in, but said that because we’d talked about it ahead of time, they felt pretty good about the outcome.
Whew. It's tough being a listing agent!
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The Daily Seduction
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Good morning Jeniffer,
It is difficult to cover all bases when doing a listing presentation. Fortunately for you, you learned of aan experience and conveyed the details to your seller.
What's actually REALLY helpful to me in this situation is that I'm experiencing Seller's Regret Type 2 personally. I have two houses on the market that aren't moving and I wish with all my heart that I'd:
1) Staged
2) Repaired
3) Priced right
So, it's easy to share those feelings with sellers since I'm going thru it, too.
good post...you hit it right on the nail..this is exactly what happens....
As long as you went over the comparables with the seller and they were in agreement with where you were going to put it on the market at, I don't see where a seller would have a leg to stand on when saying that you priced it too low.
That said, I have seen agents who were more interested in getting a quick sale (and therefore a commission check) than they were in serving the seller's interest. I once bought a home because an agent had convinced the seller that his home was worth $30,000 less than it was. When he argued with me about where to list the property at and mentioned the price that this "expert on the neighborhood" had told him, I told him that I would buy it at that price, which I did. When we had it appraised it actually came in $5,000 more than I had told the guy!
I was left scratching my head over what that other agent was thinking????
Bob Mitchell
ValueList Real Estate Services, Inc.
Even though there is so much to talk about in a listing presentation, I think this concept slides in easily when you're talking about pricing...
When I met with my sellers with the multiple offers, the first thing I asked was "Are you okay with this?" to get any angst they were feeling about the quick sale ON THE TABLE as soon as possible. I didn't want them sitting there stewing (they weren't, but I wanted to know for sure). They're really happy.
Kris - I agree about "30" being the magic number - I talk with my sellers about the "30-day sale" and that we need to price to sell in 30 days to avoid getting stale!
Bob - thank you - we're a smart bunch, eh?
Jennifer- I think in this market sellers would love to have the type 1 regret vs. type 2! The challenge for me is getting the sellers to listen to the facts and figures. Too many sellers have a inflated opinion of their property vs. the competition on the market.
Best,
Scott
Jennifer, good post and so true. I would still prefer to have the offer quick and go through the exercise with the seller that we did the right thing instead of having to figure out how to move a stale listing.
Dave
Jennifer,
Good points about the seller regrets. We hear about buyer regrets, but many times I think sellers have regrets too. Unfortunately, most of the time it is the agent's fault.