Email Elizabethoverpriced listings
Why Agents Accept Overpriced Listings
Why agents accept overpriced listings was written by Elizabeth for another web publication, previously. This information is completely current in today’s market as well. Enjoy. — JaCi Wallace
So, the for sale sign goes up down the street, and the first thing neighbors will do is call the listing agent to ask, “How much?” (Unfortunately, that’s often the number that gets stuck in that neighbor’s head when that person decides to sell the following month / year, but that’s another story and another blog.) A neighbor’s first response upon hearing the price is often, “Wow. That’s a lot.” And about half of the time, they are right; it is a lot — sometimes way too much.
It doesn’t take long for others in the neighborhood to wonder why that agent would accept an overpriced listing. They know why the seller will do it. Sellers do it because of ignorance of the market, or the agent misleads them, or sometimes it’s just sheer greed. But agents should know better, right? Some do, some do not and some just don’t care.
Read more about Reasons Why Agents Accept Overpriced Listings
Call Weintraub & Wallace Realtors with RE/MAX Gold if you are interested in professional representation when pricing your home. We can be reached by telephone at 916-233-6759.
Weintraub & Wallace
Why Buyers Will Not Make Offers on Overpriced Listings
Overpriced listings are not the best thing for a seller, yet some sellers are simply too close to the product to be objective. They struggle. Well, we don’t want to leave money on the table, is a common comment. Another: buyers can make any offer they want, right? And both of those ideas are myths. It is pretty much impossible to leave money on the table in a competitive bidding situation. Followed by buyers won’t offer at all.
In my 44 years of experience in real estate, overpriced listings can happen because the agent is watching for clues from the seller. Those clues might tell the agent if she doesn’t appear enthusiastic about the seller’s suggested sales price, the seller will list with some other agent. No wonder so many people do not much like real estate agents. Some agents only want the listing instead of what is best for the seller.
I’m not saying that this Sacramento Realtor never takes overpriced listings because I certainly do now and then. There are times I can show the seller all the comparable sales, invest a considerable amount of my time not only providing statistics but my reasoning as well. And sellers will still say, “I think we should start at XYZ price because we can always come down.”
Sure, but that strategy most often hurts the seller. Agents spot the price drops, the days on market, and they want to take advantage of the seller. Human nature. I always tell my sellers the price I believe the market will bear. Then, they can make their own decisions based on facts. If they choose to enter the realm of overpriced listings, at least they know they are going against my advice.
This keeps me from feeling too badly about overpriced listings because I know in my heart I have been honest with my sellers. I don’t ever want a seller to ask: why didn’t I tell them? Because it is my job as a listing agent to convey that information.
More often than not, though, buyers just won’t make an offer on any overpriced listings. They feel the seller might be unreasonable. Or stubborn. Plus, they don’t want to offend. It really is in the seller’s best interest to be priced appropriately. But I don’t shove that sentiment down their throats. Some already do a good enough job slicing their own.
The Most Important Real Estate Tip This Realtor Learned From Marge Reid
This home on Vallejo Way took almost a year to sell at its highest price ever.
When I read that Marge Reid had died on October 7th, the news snapped my breath away. I was lounging about Sunday morning reading the Business section of the Sacramento Bee when I spotted an ad. It was right next to the ads for homes for sale and other agents advertising services. The ad was a reduced version of the death notice for Marge Reid that had appeared in the paper in the local section a few weeks earlier. Although it’s odd to see something like this in the Business section, that was a good place to put it because many of us who knew Marge Reid do not read death notices on a daily basis. It was also a nice way to let clients know her daughter and son-in-law are carrying on the family business.
Marge Reid had worked at Lyon Real Estate for 43 years before branching out on her own 5 years ago. How do you like those apples? An 85-year-old woman started her own family business. You’re never too old to start a new business. I had been talking to a prospective seller yesterday morning, and we were discussing at what age a person seems old. She suggested that age is when that person is at least 20 years older than you. Anything younger than that is not old. But that doesn’t apply to Marge Reid. She never seemed “old” to me. Experienced, yes, but old, no.
I might be going out on a limb here but I’m going to say it anyway. I believe that Marge Reid never met a listing she didn’t like. That was the impression she left me with. Some agents develop a superior attitude and won’t work on an overpriced listing. I once asked Marge about the price of a listing because it seemed too high. Marge’s attitude was walk down the hill and get them all. She didn’t judge people or refuse to take a listing that I knew about. There was nothing condescending about her. Marge was a legendary success in Sacramento real estate.
As such, I adopted the same principle. I rarely reject a listing, unless I don’t like the seller. But never over the sales price. One of my very early listings in Sacramento was a home on Vallejo Way. The seller had always been loyal to a different Land Park real estate brokerage but that broker refused to take his listing. The broker told him his asking price was unrealistic. So, he turned to Lyon Real Estate and to me. I wondered what Marge Reid would do. Well, Marge Reid would take the listing. I asked a coworker in my office and he said I should become the Queen of Vallejo. The price was $100,000 too high but I attempted to get it for the seller.
I was the Queen of Vallejo that summer. An open house every Sunday. After a couple of months, the seller agreed to drop the price.
By the time we got to the second price reduction, it seemed like a good idea to remove the listing from the market and put it back with a new MLS number. At that point, this home in Land Park sold with multiple offers at $10,000 over list price. After a Sunday open house, I had one agent in the kitchen writing an offer and another in the dining room writing an offer. While this seller did not get the $675,000 he had hoped to obtain, he did pocket $585,000. I had erased any doubt left lingering in his mind that his price was obtainable. I never did not want to work with him. He had a good sense of humor and I liked him.
Not only that, but a while after all of this happened, the Vallejo seller introduced me to the seller of a two-story Spanish home next door. She had tried unsuccessfully to sell through several other Realtors. She, too, had harbored unrealistic expectations. But I listed that home and I sold it. Now I can tell people I have sold the entire block, adding there are only two homes on that block.
When I mentioned to my team member, Barbara Dow, who is reaching a milestone herself this winter, that Marge Reid died at 90, Barbara said the smartest thing. She said that means she has another 20 years before retiring. We all tend to turn to our own mortality in times like this. Marge Reid taught me the lesson to accept all listings. Eventually a home will sell. Apply patience. Do your job. There are agents who disagree with this philosophy, but I am not one of them.
Rest in peace, Marge. You will be missed by many in Sacramento.
Reasons to Validate Overpriced Listings in Sacramento
A luxury home on the water in Sacramento, by Elizabeth Weintraub.
A pile of newsletters travel through my email each week, many of which I do not open. I just look at the headlines. I send out my own newsletter every week to thousands and thousands of subscribers. About.com will not let me tell you how many subscribe to my homebuying newsletter, but it’s an astonishing number. I don’t know why people care what I have to say or why they even read it. Some send me emails that say they have no interest in real estate at all, they just want to see what I write. Which floors me.
Lately, the sentiment I see throughout the real estate industry appears centered on overpriced listings. Much of it is giving advice to sellers but mostly to their agents. This advice is do not overprice and do not take an overpriced listing. In some ways, this is very insulting, and I’m gonna tell you why.
The notion that we as real estate agents, for example, are the Know-all and Be-all in real estate is absurd. You heard me. Yes, we are real estate professionals but that doesn’t mean we know exactly how much a home should sell for. Because we don’t. We know the price that is likely to attract a potential buyer; we know how much previous buyers have paid for similar homes. We know what is in pending status and the inventory on the market now, but we do not have a crystal ball. We are also not appraisers, but that’s a whole ‘nother story.
As a listing agent, I can help a seller to choose a sales price, but I do not choose the price for them. I am a Sacramento listing agent who works at the discretion of the seller. The seller has a very high percentage stake in the sales price, more than 90%. My stake is a relatively small slice of the pie. My job is to sell the property. I market real estate to buyers. I am a salesperson. The day a listing agent forgets that is the day an agent should quit.
Agents: I say who died and made you ruler of the universe? I want to grab these people by their shoulders and shake sense into them. It is silly to proclaim to the world that you and only you know the magical list price number for a seller. You don’t. You don’t really know how much a buyer will pay until you try to get it. You don’t really know how much a home will appraise for until an appraiser appraises it.
I have sold homes in my life that never in a million years should have sold at some of the prices they sold at, according to regular comps. There are many ways to evaluate a sales price. I tend to get the price the seller expects. Because that is my job. My job is to sell real estate in Sacramento. I am very clear and focused on that job. If I believe I can sell it, I’ll take the listing.
I recently had another home in Sacramento appraise at a value that astounds the neighbors. It astounded me that a buyer was willing to purchase the home under the terms and conditions it required, including price. Not only was the buyer willing to pay that price, but the home appraised at that price. I listen to my gut instincts, but I also listen to the seller. Then I formulate a marketing plan, and I sell that home. Real estate is not a black-and-white business. It’s a moving business. Constantly in motion. Like the Everglades.
While Elizabeth is in Cuba, please enjoy this previously published elsewhere blog.
Will a Sacramento Seller Sell for Less than List Price?
Buyer’s agents in Sacramento continually hear the question from buyers which, they in turn, pass along to the Sacramento listing agent: Will the seller sell for less? It’s not always phrased in those exact terms, but that’s what everybody wants to know. And that’s the one thing they cannot know and will never know unless they write an offer. For starters, no listing agent worth her salt is about to disclose to anybody for any reason how much her sellers will take to sell that home.
You might wonder why not. Because the listing agent has a legal fiduciary duty to the seller of confidentiality. The list price is the sales price. Period. If the seller prefers a range of value, then the sales price will be listed as a range of value indicated by a big ol’ V that nobody understands so nobody does it. Second, the listing agent doesn’t know what her seller will do because the listing agent is not the seller. She doesn’t own the home, and she can’t make decisions for the seller.
Every so often, I receive an email from a buyer’s agent that lays out all of the reasons why that agent’s buyers are such spectacular human beings and why they deserve to get an incredible break on the sales price — primarily because they are looking at a home the buyers cannot afford to buy. In my mind, of course, I wonder how that is my problem and what that has to do with me, Al Franken? I mean, why doesn’t the agent show her buyers the types of homes that her buyers can afford to buy? Why is she showing her buyers homes that are too expensive for her buyers?
You know why she’s performing such an unproductive service maneuver? Because she doesn’t want to take a chance that her buyers will dump her and run off to some other real estate agent in Sacramento. She wants to make her buyers happy. She wants to do what her buyers ask of her, like any agent. But somewhere along the line, an agent needs to educate her buyers. Explain the market, how pending sales are moving, supply comparable sales and provide education. Buyers are not real estate agents. That’s why they hire an experienced real estate agent: to guide, assist and help them to buy a home.
When an agent sets aside her professional self-worth in a feeble attempt to keep unreasonable clients happy, she loses credibility with those clients, which in turn makes clients miserable. It’s not a win-win.
Further, when a buyer is pre-approved to buy a maximum amount, buyers should look at homes priced below that maximum amount. At homes they have a chance in hell of buying. Buyers should not ask their agents to show them homes that are listed higher than that price point unless those homes have lingered on the market and are stale, overpriced. You don’t ask to see a brand new listing and expect to a seller to accept a lowball and sell for less. It doesn’t work that way. Well, maybe it does on HGTV, but not in the real world of Sacramento real estate.
