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After Your Listing Expires
After your Listing expires, is a great article previously written by Elizabeth for another website. This situation described below happens all the time to agents when they expire out or cancel a listing to obtain a new MLS #. Why pull a new MLS #? By design to freshen up a listing with a price reduction, it sells homes. Enjoy, as it is a good read.
— JaCi Wallace
When a listing expires, all of a sudden, sellers start to hear from real estate agents. They will receive letters in the mail, telephone calls and a few aggressive agents may even show up on the doorstep, ringing the bell. All this activity might make a seller think, “Hey, my property is really hot!” But you might be better off looking in the mirror to find the reason your listing expired.
Because the first question a good real estate agent is going to ask is why are you selling? They want to find out your motivation. It’s not idle curiosity that makes an agent ask. Agents want to know your reasons to sell to determine whether you are truly a seller or a pretend “wannabe” seller. Since agents are paid on commissions, it doesn’t make much sense to work with a seller who doesn’t really want to sell.
If your motivation is in check, then there are six other factors to consider after your listing expires. We can explain and help.
Call Weintraub and Wallace with RE/MAX Gold, if your listing has expired and you want to relist. If you need real estate assistance, we are always here to help. Call Weintraub & Wallace Realtors at 916-233-6759.
Elizabeth Weintraub
Weintraub & Wallace
Why is My Phone Number Still in MLS on an Expired Listing?
Client asking, why is my number in MLS when my listing has expired?
Like an expired listing, my time in Hawaii has now expired and it’s time to come home. I received the gift of a few more unexpected days in Hawaii when last Tuesday I missed my flight on Hawaiian Airlines. However, I was able to rebook for Friday without much trouble. Which is how I came to find myself sitting on my lanai enjoying my last 24 hours in Hawaii when a new client called. She asked: “Why is my phone number still in MLS on an expired listing?”
See, wherever I am, I answer my phone. Especially when a client calls. Yet another simple way to minimize or eliminate client frustrations. It’s the little things, like answering your darn phone, that keeps people happy with you. Happy clients = 5 star reviews. This particular property, I should point out, is not MY expired listing. I don’t have expired listings. My listings sell. This was an out-of-area listing agent who let the listing expire.
I smiled at my cellphone. Explained I probably won’t find her number in MLS and offered to check for her. We take out personal info as standard protocol when listings move from active to sold (or to expired listing). She wanted to know: Well, then how are they calling me? Sure enough, no publication of personal information. No phone number on the expired listing.
Then I launched into my explanation of the expired listing ambulance chasers. These can be experienced agents, but generally not. It is usually a brand new agent trying to find business. The rationale is the seller wanted to sell at one time, so why not go after that dead business, just lying in the bushes? These agents buy personal information data through brokers who sell it. They can also buy that information online. Everything is available for a price.
To work expired listings, they use an aggressive approach. Agents know the the tough competition from those who chase expireds. Aggressive behavior like that is often a turnoff to sellers. It’s a different approach to selling than focusing on what is best for the client. It’s more of an approach of what is best for the agent.
I always warn my sellers about what will happen if we pull a new MLS number to reset the days on market. It’s like a flood gate opens. Once a listing is re-listed, sellers in Sacramento can expect their phones to blow up because agents don’t bother to check if it’s back on the market. Some of them don’t check the National Do Not Call registry, either.
When Home Sellers Hire the Second Listing Agent
In my real estate business, which covers the Sacramento Valley over four counties, it seems more and more sellers are calling me to ask why their real estate agent can’t sell their home and asking me to be the second listing agent. In fairness to my fellow real estate agents in Sacramento, some of those situations are not always the first agent’s fault. Or, it could be simply a personality clash between the parties. Whatever the reason, the fact remains I pick up a good number of listings and sell them when other agents cannot. It goes in cycles but this year that number seems to be much greater.
Fortunately, as the second listing agent, I do sell those listings. And I sell those homes at top dollar; it’s not like I list them for less than the previous sales price, because usually the price stays the same. What I look for is what are the challenges to selling the listing. All listings contain some kind of challenge and there are no slam dunks in this business. It’s easy to pick out the attractive selling points but it’s much more difficult to address the challenges, isolate the drawbacks and make those bad things appear insignificant. But that’s a specialty developed through decades of experience, I guess. It’s why my homes for sale in Sacramento tend to sell for more money –well, that, and I tend to play well with others.
I just closed a home on Friday that had previously been listed by another real estate agent for 5 months without selling. The first thing I do is scrutinize what the other agent has done and then, as the second listing agent, I don’t do those things. That’s an oversimplification but my goal is not to duplicate failure. Looking up the first agent’s listings, it was clear that most of that agent’s inventory is languishing on the market for an extremely long period of time. You’d expect to see long days on market for a short sale but not in a bunch of equity listings.
I studied what I did not like about the photographs and marketing comments and eliminated those negatives from my marketing strategy. Further, the previous agent did not hold open houses. Some mega real estate companies do not support agent open houses. Lyon Real Estate, where I work, is a big proponent of open houses. It’s true that most buyers don’t buy directly from an open house but the publicity does help to sell that home. Lyon Real Estate is the market leader in the Sacramento Valley.
My charming group of dedicated real estate agents on the Elizabeth Weintraub Team worked diligently with me to sell that home. I kept in constant communication with the seller, advising her of our efforts. I’m happy to report that the home sold. For all cash. There was no appraisal to contend with, so the seller got exactly the price she wanted — which was excellent because the comparable sales were few. The home is situated on a busy street but I worked around it. It was also overbuilt in comparison to other homes in the neighborhood, but I worked around it.
Most of my clients call me first, thank goodness. But it’s OK if I am the second listing agent. It’s not that difficult to cancel a listing contract. If your home hasn’t sold and you’re shopping around for a new Sacramento real estate agent, call Elizabeth Weintraub at 916.233.6759. I don’t mind being the second listing agent. I will get the job done for you.
Why Sacramento Listings Are Withdrawn, Canceled or Expired From MLS
Not to have a single withdrawn, canceled or expired real estate listing in today’s Sacramento real estate market is completely impossible among top producers, yet some websites rank agents by percentage of listings sold. If a Sacramento real estate agent had only two listings a year — and that’s about the number of listings that most agents list — and she sold one and the other seller canceled, the agent would show a 50% ratio, which is really bad.
There are many reasons why a home listing in Sacramento might not see its way to closing, and most of those reasons are out of the agent’s control. Let’s take a look at withdrawn or canceled listings, for example. This is excluding a canceled listing that comes back on the market with a new MLS number to reset the days on market, or is off the market for a spell during a winter vacation or improvement project. Typically, 3 things cause a canceled listing:
- Insanity
- Exhaustion
- Overpriced
Insanity. When an agent deals with a large cross section of the population, she is likely to encounter a few sellers who suffer from sort of mental incapacity. They could be completely psychotic or simply bipolar but not every seller is balanced. Is it the agent’s fault that she doesn’t have time to administer the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory test prior to accepting the listing?
Exhaustion. This happens more frequently during short sales because these types of transactions take much longer than other types of home sales. If the buyer, for example, drops dead or buys another home (same thing to the seller, basically), thereby canceling, the short sale can start over. There are many reasons for short sale rejection, and sellers need patience to eventually close. Some sellers give up the fight and choose foreclosure.
Overpriced. This is the most common reason for a withdrawn, canceled or expired listing. It is the worst mistake a seller can make, but sellers choose the sales price. When a home doesn’t sell due to price, sellers become angry at themselves and some of that anger ends up hurled in the agent’s direction, too, because who wants to squirm in their own hostility all by themselves? Misery loves company.
There is a guy in my real estate office who makes a very good living by working with withdrawn, canceled and expired listings. He spends all day in a space about the size of a phone booth calling these sellers. Can you imagine his phone conversations? The guy has got to be an armadillo in disguise or a saint, I’m not sure which.
In any case, all of these canceled listings can affect an agent’s percentage performance on some websites, and percentage of listings sold is not an accurate indicator of the agent’s actual performance.
