Selling a Home is More than a Numbers Game

The problem for real estate agents is that all too often in sales we operate on a self serving broker’s decades old playbook that has no relevance to our current real estate market. Brokers are obsessed with having lots of listings – the more the better.  Personally, I prefer fewer listings that will sell quickly with less hassle. However, many in the industry do not feel the same way. Many of the everyday ideas we use everyday in our industry are real estate holdovers from the pre-Internet age where all agents represented the sellers, and the key to survival was always being the top listing agent. “List to live,” was the war cry of every real estate broker and trainer in our industry. Why?  Because it is free billboard advertising around town.  The goal of most agents under the tutelage of the broker was to get the listing at any cost. However, in the mix there was always a mixture of successes and failures.  Some homes would sell quickly while others would linger for quite a while and then expire or were withdrawn by a frustrated seller.  To the agent that questioned the process, it was always described as a “Numbers game!”  Basically it was described as “You win some you lose some!’  The process was always about getting the listing, and even if was overpriced.  It was the visibility the listing would have to attract other buyers and sellers that was the life blood of real estate survival and success. In the rush to obtain the listing all too often pricing and appearance were just small irrelevant details that were often overlooked, and in doing so…questionable real estate listings were added to inventory.  Back then, all of the above really didn’t matter.  In a good economy – homes sold! Perhaps those strategies worked then, but are they working now?  My thoughts are no!

Since the advent of the Internet we are now agents that have to deal with very informed buyers.  They have access to a plethora of information about listed homes, price per-square foot, neighborhood home prices, demographics, price drops, and how long the home has been on the market can be had with the click of a mouse. On a Google or Bing map buyers can see an aerial view what is around your home or property and decide for themselves if it is a bargain when they compare one home against a dozen others.   It is the real estate principle of substitution.  Why would a homebuyer pay more for basically the same home that is in better in the same neighborhood?