Telling Sacramento Sellers What They Don’t Want to Hear

You can’t really be an effective Sacramento real estate agent if you’re not willing to tell sellers what they don’t want to hear. That means you have to figure out how to share bad news in such a way that people don’t immediately take off their shoes and start beating on your head. There is a way to frame bad news. Not necessarily like the cat on a roof story.

I don’t know how one can expect a seller, for example, to make a decision without all of the information necessary to weigh the facts and come up with a response. I suspect that some real estate agents are too worried that they will hurt another’s feelings or worse, that maybe the seller won’t list with them if the seller gets upset by the news. But you can’t tiptoe around on little cat feet. That’s not helpful for anybody.

Not everybody appreciates a person who is straight forward and direct. There is a way to be straight forward by tempering the news a little bit because if you just blurt it out, in our present society, people will accuse you of being rude. Oh, my god, my ears. What did you say? I’m ugly and people don’t like me? Of course if you don’t care what they think — and sometimes, let’s face it, we don’t — then it doesn’t matter.

A guy called me this morning to talk about his listing. He was unhappy because his agent doesn’t communicate with him and makes him feel like he is not a priority. He gave me several examples, so I have to kinda agree with him, even though I realize there is always another side to every story. He said he knew his listing was priced too high but he needed that amount in order to pay off his loans.

What?

Why didn’t anybody say anything to this poor guy? Why are they letting him rot in MLS, hopeful yet frustrated? This makes no sense to me whatsoever. He talked to several agents. Even if they explained the truth and he didn’t listen, it still doesn’t explain why his home is in MLS the way that it is.