Perusing today’s Carnival of Real Estate, I came across an interesting post from Florida broker Bryant Tutas. The challenge here is to tell someone their precious house–the depository of their hopes and dreams, their nest egg, and an expression of their personalities–is not nearly as valuable as they had hoped, all while courting their business. Not simple.
I knew it was going to be a tuff one, but I felt up to the challenge. The challenge was, they had been listed for 6 months with another Realtor at $360,000, when the house, maximum, is worth only $299,000. They had already told me on the phone they were ready to reduce to $340,000. So I really had my job cut out for me. I won’t take an overpriced listing so my goal was to get them to reduce $65,000. Also, since they were with a discount Realtor before, I needed to raise the commission a couple of points as well. So, if you do the math, we are looking at more than a 20% reduction in their anticipated Net.
Big challenge, but I woke up this morning ready to face it. I had prepared an analysis, to take with me, that was over 70 pages long. Now I don’t know how you do your CMA’s but 70 pages is a little over the top to say the least. It included:
- Details on similar homes with pools.
- Details on similar homes without pools.
- Details on every pool home that had sold near theirs this year.
- A list of every home on the market in their area.
- A list of all of my sales YTD.
- My grocery list from last week.
Anyway, you get the point. I was loaded for battle and well prepared to defend my position.
For the record, the couple hasn’t yet signed up, but he’s confident they will.
