3 Clichés Top Listing Agents Don’t Buy Into During A Market Downtick

The Henry Ford quote is clichéd, but true: “Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t, you’re right.”

Current talk among agents is frankly, a downer: That it’s more expensive to list as the market eats up days on market (DOM). Don’t be taken in by negativity. Making cuts to your marketing budget for professional photography, staging, video, social and print is akin to waving a white flag. There are other solutions.

A quick review of history

Listing agents need to keep it together by learning from history. In reality, the markets of the recent past, with their booms, bubbles, bursts and pandemic pivots, created far more nationally widespread financial havoc compared to the impact we’re feeling today. Smart agents were able to recoup while scores of others left the business.

Fast forward to today and to the real estate industry’s Newest Normal since last year’s class action lawsuit settlement, as smart agents adapt to the regulatory fallout — the new rules and regs addressing how sellers sell, with choices on commission-sharing and offer concessions, and how buyers buy, with choices on specialized buyer-agent service agreements. Smart agents have carved out their own new business model.

React smart, with smarter consultations

Short marketing cycles with low DOM require long pre-marketing consultations. Hold the marketing and self-promo portion of your seller consultation until later.

Lead, instead, with a smarter consultation, upfront, that educates the client to a critical strategy mix — right pricing with tip-top condition and negotiation solutions — that will guarantee a fast marketing cycle, few DOM and high seller premiums, and buy the listing agent an ROI marketing budget, in any market.

3 clichés seasoned real estate pros avoid

Here are the three clichés that seasoned professionals avoid to get their listings sold for high premiums and fewer days on market, without sacrificing marketing exposure through slashed budgets.

1. ‘I’m data-driven’

If you were an appraiser, that would be a feather in your cap. But you’re a consultant who doesn’t assign a price to a listing. Educate the seller (defer your marketing prowess to later) on two very opposing pricing strategies, detailing the benefits, risks and consequences. Let the seller decide which one works for them. Remember, no one cares “what you would do.” 

Right-pricing is based on a studied comparative market analysis (CMA) that:

• Heightens interest
• Boosts virtual and in-person showings
• Produces a sense of urgency
• Leverages negotiation to the seller
• Elicits a multiple offer buzz and offers in any market
• Adds as much as a 5 percent premium to the sales price

Speculative pricing builds in a baseless negotiation cushion that:

• Creates a feeling of indifference
• Computer-shuns by price points
• Frustrates and delays, causing a waiting game
• Shifts the negotiation to the buyer
• Encourages the lowball offer
• Slashes the price in repeated discounting, and a later sale

Right-pricing and its related concepts were coined by the Otteau Group, providing decades of insight to the public and to the real estate community, as featured in The New York Times, Bloomberg, PBS and other media outlets.

2. ‘Only primary rooms need staging’

Trying to save the seller money to win the listing by diluting the wow-power of staging, or skimping on your own staging budget, is counterintuitive. An investment in staging garners the highest ROI for the seller and creates a frenzied consumer demand for the listing in up-market and down-market cycles. 

Need convincing? Hear from buyer and listing agents

In the National Association of Realtors’ (NAR) Profile of Home Staging:

• Eighty-three percent of buyers’ agents said staging a home made it easier for their clients to visualize a property as their future home — critical when positioning your listing to stand out in a rising sea of unsold inventory.
• Nineteen percent of buyers’ agents said staging increased the dollar value offered between 1 percent and 5 percent — critical in a shifting market that awards negotiating leverage to the buyer.
• Twenty-one percent of sellers’ agents said they staged all sellers’ homes prior to listing them for sale. Staging represents one of the biggest ROI marketing strategies of agents who consistently top the industry.
• Ten percent of sellers’ agents said they only staged homes that were difficult to sell. All homes are challenged by diminishing demand in changing markets. Employ all your resources to benefit the seller.

The bare minimum, at least. The 3 D’s of staging

Include the 3 D’s of staging in your smart consultations at the outset, even before a professional stager is consulted. A simplified DIY list can provide staging value to prospective sellers to sell for a premium and to meet their timeline:  

• Depersonalize to promote mass appeal.
• Declutter to remove all distractions.
• Deep clean and deodorize to impact emotion.

NAR’s consumer guide provides step-by-step instructions. It’s a valuable deliverable for potential listing clients: NAR Consumer Guide – Preparing to Sell Your Home

3. ‘I don’t hear offers with escalation clauses’

So what you’re saying is that you are not skilled enough in counter-offers, can’t think on your feet to analyze every offer on the basis of its pros and cons, and are unsure how to formulate a response to keep the ball in play to maximize the seller’s opportunity to sell.

Only a “self-proclaimed expert” in seller negotiation, one who lacks knowledge, clarity and confidence, would shrug off written offers that don’t measure up to a seller’s offer guidelines. When markets shift, it is the buyer agent who sets the offer guidelines. It’s OK to collaborate with your broker on offers that challenge the status quo. 

Pro listing agents have the skillset to hear all offers, even those with non-traditional terms, home sale contingencies and various seller concessions. 

All offers are good enough when a listing agent and seller collaborate and strategize on terms, with give from either side. Every legitimately written offer is worth consideration, especially in markets that prompt verbal or lowball offers, or worse, no offers at all after 30 DOM, dooming the listing to repeated price reductions. 

Provide negotiation choices and suggested guidelines to the seller for the handling of offers, from market to market: 

• The single offer and counteroffer: Include creative solutions vs. quick compromise
• The multiple bid and sealed bid: Where the seller controls the negotiation
• The escalation clause: Adds the risk of leaving money on the table. Consider a traditional counter.
• The attorney review period (state-specific): Obligation to submit all offers to the seller where the ball is still in play
• The significance of backup offers in attorney review (state-specific): Offers submitted but held in abeyance 
• Contract acceptance: Align all parties for seamless flow
• Contingency control: Where sellers’ agents protect the seller’s equity 

3 facts over fiction: Price, condition and negotiation rule

1. Calling a price reduction a “price correction” (another cliché) is suffering the listing to a do-over that weakens the seller’s negotiation power and challenges a timeline.
2. “Saving the seller money” on full staging costs to win the listing leaves money on the table that belongs in the seller’s pocket.
3. Restricting seller access to negotiate all legitimate offers in writing, regardless of initial price and terms, is a losing scenario with serious risks.

All three missteps will limit your success, especially in changing markets where your expertise is needed and counted on.

By debunking all three clichés on price, condition and negotiation, a listing agent hits all three smart consultation points, earning a saleable listing that will limit DOM and win sellers a top premium for their home. It’s done in every market by skilled listing agents.