Home owners who are trying to sell their home right now or considering putting their home on the market are facing enormous challenges. With so much inventory available, the challenge of getting your home to stand out is incredibly difficult!

If there's a single mistake that I can identify in the current marketplace, it's choosing the wrong agent to help them list their home. Here's the catch: Every listing agent you meet with is going to tell you that they're the right person to get the job done!

How Do You Choose?

Who do you believe? What criteria is used to determine how quickly your home is going to be sold, and at what price? Everyone approaches this problem a little differently, and those differences can make a big difference between getting your house sold and having it languish on the market.

The common mistake I see is people who select an agent based on what the agent says the sales price should be.

Over-promising, Under-delivering

I sold a home in Waldorf this year, in the Bannister subdivision. The owner wanted to make sure that it sold quickly, and we spoke frankly about the market and what it would bear. When the home sold, it took a lot of hard negotiation, but the price came in exactly where we said it would from the get-go. The homeowner was have to have sold it, and our honest opinion of the homes value was very accurate.

Low and behold, the next door neighbors decided that they wanted to sell their home as well. They had seen our sign go up, saw the mailers we sent out when the home went on the market, and saw that the property sold quickly. They did their homework and asked my clients about the sale. They heard that the contract on the home was right in line with what they had expected, and so they decided to give us a call to see about listing their home.

I did the market analysis on the property to determine the value and likely sales price, taking into account improvements, quality of maintenance, etc. and sat down to discuss their home. When I explained to them where and why I felt the value of the home would fall, they were unhappy, to say the least.

I explained the fact that the market is dropping, and overpricing their home would lead to it selling for even less than my assessment had come in at, and they decided they wanted to get a second opinion on their home's value. I suggested that we could list the home for what they wanted and then re-evaluate the price if we didn't see any buyers.

As I left their house, I suspected that because my evaluation was too low there was no way I was going to be getting the listing. I could understand their frustration with me. This was THEIR home. How could I not see the true value of their property??

A week later, the home was listed with another agent, and more than 10% higher than my CMA came in at. I had lost the listing because my evaluation was too low. I was disappointed, but I knew there was no way the property could sell at that price.

4 months later, the property was under contract. It had been listed at $334k, and when it finally sold, the closing price was $298k. Nearly 12% difference between list price and sales price! They had let the home sit for 4 months through a falling market and were forced to lower the price to just under what it's sales value had been when they had listed it.

The mistake was in choosing an agent based off of their value opinion.

What Should You Look For?

Because each agent approaches the way to get a home sold differently, you need to look at the big picture. What does the agent do marketing-wise? Not all agents spend the same amount of money on their listings, so you need to be confident that your agent is going to MARKET your property well.

Ask yourself this: Is it possible that your home is overpriced? If it's not, then you should be getting buyers in to see your home.

If you are seeing buyers, are they writing offers? If they're not, then you may need to re-evaluate the price, or consider home staging to make the home more appealing. If your home is not in tip-top shape, you're not going to see top dollar on your investment.

As the market continues to get tighter, I see more and more agents list homes without the right tools to get them sold, and I hear more and more stories from homeowners who haven't been able to move. Selecting the right Realtor can be the difference between whether or not you get that home sold!

Is your home visible on the internet? Online marketing is the number one way that people view homes that they might be interested in buying. make sure that your agent is using innovative methods to help promote your home. Are you listed on Trulia, Zillow, Realtor.com, Craigslist, etc? You need to be! There's no reason why you wouldn't want your home to be seen by as many potential buyers as possible!

Think about what your potential agent does to market properties, and make sure that you're getting someone who has the best potential to get your home SOLD. Selecting an agent based off of their price analysis can be a serious mistake.

Ask your Realtor if they'd be willing to start at a higher price so that you can see for yourself how much traffic the listing gets if you're unsure of their evaluation. Any good agent is going to be willing to work with you and possibly list your home for more than they recommend to help ease your fears. We're professionals, but we're also human, and we all make mistakes from time to time, so if you feel it would be better to start higher and work down, that's completely understandable!

~Jonathan Benya
Century 21 New Millennium
9405-A Chesapeake St
La Plata, MD 20646
301-609-9000
301-653-8116
Waldorf and Southern Maryland Real Estate
Southern Maryland Real Estate Blog