DROP YOUR AGENT, NOT YOUR PRICE!

by Neil Jenman

The easiest way to sell any property is to drop its price

In most cases, however, owners should drop their agent not their price.

Agents always say the reason a home can’t be sold is because its price is too high. Nonsense. The truth is more likely because the agent’s effort is too low.

Most agents are lazy and greedy. Why work hard to find a buyer for your home at a high price if they can persuade you to lower your price?

Whether you sell for a high price or a low price, the agents still get a high commission.

Now, granted, price is important when selling a home.

And yes, all sellers (except you and me) want too much for our homes – or, indeed, anything we sell. Try and remember the last time you sold a car for the amount you hoped to get.

As a seller, you must give the agent a big incentive to get a big price for your home. And no, that incentive is not the commission because, as you have seen, agents get a big commission regardless of whether you get a high price or a low price.

The best incentive to give an agent to get you the highest price is, wait for it: NOTHING.

There is only one thing worse for an agent than not selling your home and getting a bad reputation and that’s seeing another agent sell your home.

If your agent thinks you are going to fire them and go to another agent, they’ll suddenly work harder for you. As the poet Kahlil Gibran wrote, “Love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.” So true.

Please understand: Sometimes you must drop your price. But only as a last resort. Dropping the price should be the last thing you consider.

And, seriously, if you don’t get the full price for your home, why should the agent get the full price for their commission? Unless, of course, they have tried many other methods of getting you a sale before they suggest you drop your price.

In business, dropping the price of anything is always the weak way. It’s what the worst salespeople always do, those who don’t have the skill or the energy to get you a high price yet.

So, what should agents do before they ask you to drop your price?

They should sift through all the buyers who have contacted them in the past three months. They should match the requirements of those buyers with the description of your home. And, in the first instance, they should ignore the price and focus only upon who might want your home.

Instead of saying to prospective buyers, “We have a home you might like but it’s a bit overpriced”, they should say – in an enthusiastic and excited manner: “We have a lovely home we think could be perfect for you.”

If the buyers ask the price of your home, your agent should say, “Well, let’s see if you like it first because if you don’t like it, the price doesn’t matter.”

Buyers buy with the heart and sellers sell with the wallet. If buyers fall in love with a home, it’s amazing how often they pay the full price of the home or find the extra money they need.

What’s most important – and skilled agents know this – is that prospective buyers must inspect your home. Inspections are vital – and not inspections from sticky-beaks, stump-kickers (the real estate equivalent of tyre-kickers) or nosey neighbours, but inspections from qualified buyers.

Most agents get at least a hundred prospective buyer enquiries each month. Many get several hundred, some get a thousand or more.

The buyer for your home is likely known to your agent right now. But most agents are too lazy to sift through lists of buyers. It’s easier to ask the sellers to reduce the price to the point where it’s so irresistibly low, the agent doesn’t have to do any selling.

So, if your agent is asking you to drop the price, you need to ask the agent: “How many prospective buyers have you personally contacted and told about our home?”

And don’t fall for the line: “We email our new listings to our data base every week.” Sending bulk emails to a data base without making follow up calls is lazy. Why should you drop your price for a lazy agent?

Unless the agent has done the hard work required to find a buyer for your home, don’t drop your price.

Drop your agent instead.

If you need real estate help, please call 1800 1800 18.

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