Listing your house

So you’ve decided to sell your home and have a fairly good idea of what you think it is worth. Being a sensible home seller, you schedule appointments with three local listing agents who’ve been hanging stuff on your front doorknob for years. Each Realtor comes prepared with a “Competitive Market Analysis” on fancy paper and they each recommend a specific sales price.

Amazingly, a couple of the Realtors have come up with prices that are lower than you expected. Although they back up their recommendations with recent sales data of similar homes, you remain convinced your house is worth more.

When you interview the third agent’s figures, they are much more in line with your own anticipated value, or maybe even higher. Suddenly, you are a happy and excited home seller, already counting the money.
A Sales Practice Called “Buying a Listing”

If you’re like many people, you pick Realtor number three. This is an agent who seems willing to listen to your input and work with you. This is an agent that cares about putting the most money in your pocket. This is an agent that is willing to start out at your price and if you need to drop the price later, you can do that easily, right?
After all, everyone else does it!

The truth is that you may have just met an agent engaging in a questionable sales practice called “buying a listing.” He “bought” the listing by suggesting you might be able to get a higher sales price than the other agents recommended. Most likely, he is quite doubtful that your home will actually sell at that price. The intention from the beginning is to eventually talk you into lowering the price.

Why do some agents “buy” listings this way?

Because they know that it’s one thing to “get the listing” and it’s another thing to “sell the listing”. Once they have the listing and put in on the market at your price, they can simply lower it, and lower it, and lower it until it actually hits the market price where it will sell (probably very close to where the other Realtor told you it would).

The best thing to do is to select a Realtor that you like and trust, with the knowledge and experience to get your home sold. When emotions are not involved, the list price of your home is relatively simple to figure out when compared with recent sales in your neighborhood in the last 6 months. Remember, your listing agent would like to sell your home at the highest price too!!