Selling Soulfully with Jennifer Allan

QUESTION: "Should I try to enforce a "pre-qualified buyers only" requirement on my listings? If so, how?"

JA's ANSWER: Every once in awhile I'll hear an agent say that he (or she) restricts showings on his listings only to buyers who are already pre-qualified for the purchase price. His rationale is that it's inappropriate to inconvenience a seller by allowing showings to buyers who in all likelihood cannot or will not purchase the property.

I disagree - I think it's simply a matter of setting appropriate expectations with a seller. In 12 years, I have never had a seller ask me to screen buyer showings, probably because I warn them upfront I have no control over who looks at their home. Some will be real buyers, some will be agents previewing the competition for their upcoming listing and some will be buyers out for the first time who won't buy for six months. 

"However," I continue, "any activity is good activity, even if it doesn't result in a sale, because the home has been exposed to one more (actually probably two or three more counting the Realtor & buyers) and exposure is always a good thing. We should do everything we can to encourage showings, rather than look for ways to trim them down. I'd much rather risk your being a bit inconvenienced by lookie-loo's than miss a previously lukewarm buyer who suddenly turns into a red-hot one."

My sellers ALWAYS say - "Of course! We want as many people as possible to look at our home!"

As a wise (wo)man once said... "Unseen is Unsold!"

www.SellwithSoul.com

Okay, rumor has it that the real estate market is in a slump. Is it true? S'pose so, everyone says it is.

I've been previewing my little heart out here in Charming Old Denver, catching back up on the market since my return to the trenches. I gotta tell ya, if YOUR market is anything like MY market, I can see why buyers aren't buying.

The inventory is CRAP! I've looked at 25-35 houses in the last two weeks and of those 25-35 homes, I found 4 that I would actually consider showing a buyer. The others? Well, they're way overpriced (like up to $100,000 in a $350k - $450k range), and/or they show poorly and/or they're HARD to show.

Now, these properties aren't listed by "discount" brokers or otherwise unpopular types - they're listed by some of the biggest names in the area.

I'm dismayed and frustrated. I actually HAVE buyers that would like to buy something, but I have nothing to sell them. And I blame the listing agent community. It's our job to tell our sellers what they need to do to in order to sell their homes. I really want the listing agents in my area to do their job better so my buyers will fall in love!

Now I remember why working with buyers frustrated me. No, not because "buyers are liars" or because I hate being run all over town. I don't mind that. What I do mind, deeply, is the inability, even in a "buyer's market" to find enough decent listings to show my reasonably fussy buyers.

Okay, that's my rant for today.

Related Rants

Preview Ten Listings and Report Back
Get Good... Or Get Out!
What Our Sellers May Not Know... But Need To

Last fall, I wrote a book specifically for the NAR convention called: 74 Ways to Sell Your Listings in Today's Market.

But after it went to press, I slapped myself in the head because there's one topic I didn't cover in the book and I should have.  So, I'll address it here. 

The question I didn't answer was: "If I do each and every one of your 74 thingees to sell my listing, can you guarantee that it WILL sell?"

Nope.

Sure wish I could. With all my heart, I wish I could promise everyone who buys my book and puts my advice into action that their listings will sell within xx days. But that would be a lie and I'd never lie to my friends.

Here's the thing. There simply may not be a demand for your listing right now. There may literally be NO buyers for what you're selling.

I had a broker once who made the statement "There's an a$$ for every saddle." Cute, huh? All she meant was that every home will sell eventually. And it was true, back then. Today? Not so much.

There simply aren't enough buyers out there. Very few of today's buyers are willing to take a chance on their home purchase. If your listing offers any sort of investment risk, it may not be sellable. Right now, anyway.

So, if your listing isn't selling and you've done everything you could possibly do, it's NOT YOUR FAULT!  Please stop agonizing over what else you can do or who else you can call. You've done your best and none of us are miracle-workers.

Stop losing sleep. Rest easy. You're too cute to look so stressed out!

www.SellwithSoul.com

Got this idea from Herb Hamilton's featured post today "Doom or Gloom or Huge Success."

Active Rainers - let's have some fun. In the next 48 hours, go out and preview ten listings in your area. Any ten you want. Make it easy on yourself and preview the ten homes closest to your home. It'll take you an hour or two.

Then report back. Of those ten properties, how many are being competently marketed? How many are not?

To my way of thinking, here's what "competently marketed" means:

• The home is easy to show (yes, even on Sunday)*
• The sellers know to be gone for the showing*
• The home is clean, tidy and smells good*
• It is, of course, priced well
• If there's a brochure box, it's full
• The MLS description is enticing and intriguing, not to mention accurate
• The MLS listing includes great photos
• There are no barking dogs locked up in the laundry room*
• There is no lingering odor of Football Game Chili in the air*
• The lockbox and key work smoothly*

*If you're saying that these are seller responsibilities and beyond your control, you're wrong! It's our job to make sure our sellers know THEIR jobs as partners in the home-selling process.

See, here's the thing. Our job, as real estate agents, is not to prospect prospect prospect until our fingers go numb. The reason we have a license for what we do is because we provide an important service to those people who honor us with their business. We owe it to our sellers to give their listings our full attention and commitment ... instead of fitting in our home-selling activities around our prospecting efforts.

I'll betcha that out of the ten listings you preview, very very few will meet my standard of competent marketing. I'll betcha most will fail miserably. I'll bet it will be clear to you which homes are marketed by someone who gives a damn about selling their listings... and which ones are marketed by someone who has better things to do.

Imagine if we all cared about selling our listings. I mean, really really cared. Imagine if we all had the guts to tell our sellers what's what and why. And how. If we all spent just one hour a day making sure our listings are being properly marketed and presented to the market.

We could turn this mess around.

www.sellwithsoul.com

copyright Jennifer Allan 2007 

Unless you've been hiding under a rock since August of 2007, you know that the real estate market in most areas of the country has sustained a massive blow to its ego. Not that things were booming before August, no, we were all a little nervous about and frustrated with our slow-moving inventory, but we figured we'd snap out of our doldrums soon enough.

BAM!

Along comes the mortgage crisis and, just like that, a good chunk of the home-buying public is suddenly un-mortgage-worthy. Crap.

So here we are.

As I write this, it's late 2007. Sellers are slashing prices, buyers are making ridiculous offers and closings are canceled without warning when the lender closes its doors two hours before. Sheesh.

Not fun.

So, what's a nice real estate agent to do?

1. Cry
2. Quit
3. Adjust

I'm going to assume that anyone reading this has decided to Adjust. And you know what? If you make it through this crisis, you'll never look at the career of real estate sales the same way again.

Because, in order to survive, you're going to have to Get Good. Really, really good. Forget about prospecting, forget about networking, forget about lead generating. You need to focus on Selling Houses.

Yeah, Selling Houses. You know, that activity for which you are licensed?

Trouble is, Selling Houses in a Sucky Market is a lot of work. You're going to have to do things you've never had to do before. You're going to have to solve problems that, at first glance, seem unsolvable. You're going to have to communicate difficult concepts to people who don't want to hear them.

In short, you're going to EARN your commissions. And you'll be a much better agent because of it.

And... when the good times return (and they will), you'll have set a higher standard for yourself ... and for your business ... and you will be an exceptional real estate agent. Not just good... Exceptional.

Go, you!

www.sellwithsoul.com

What if...

Your accountant prepared your taxes using last year's rules?

   Your physician treated your arthritis with an expired prescription?

      Your painter painted your house using 5-year old paint?

        Your child's kindergarten teacher taught using 1970's methods?

          Your stockbroker traded using 1990's strategies?

               Your real estate agent priced your home using early 2007 comps?

copyright Jennifer Allan 2007

Yep, that means exactly what you think it means. If you are not a good real estate agent, get out of the business now before you spend one more dime or dollar on your personal marketing or MLS dues. Give your overpriced listings to someone else who will price them right and market them intelligently. (That way you might actually see a few dollars from your efforts down the line when the referral fee comes due after closing.)

Gone (for now) are the days where being a good real estate agent meant you were a Good Prospector. NO ONE IS IMPRESSED with your listing inventory or even with the number of marginally-qualified buyers you're driving around.

All that matters are closings.

And you know what? You don't create closings with expert real estate prospecting. You create closings with expert real estate advising.

I don't care how good of a salesperson you are, you cannot sell a house to anyone. You cannot sell a house for anyone. Your new job description is to use the brain and creativity God gave you to best advise and serve your client.

If you don't know how to sell a house, other than to plop it in the MLS, create a brochure and put a sign in the yard (and oh, yes, enter it on Craigslist), then you have no business tying up a seller's valuable marketing time and energy.

Let a GOOD agent handle the listing... one who:

• Knows how to properly price a home and absolutely refuses to overprice

• Has the balls to be direct with sellers about any obstacles to sale and insist that they be corrected or priced for

• Has the manpower connections to help the seller prepare his home and/or get through inspection.

• Is willing to risk upsetting a seller by insisting that he allow short-notice showings and that he vacate the house during showings

• Knows how to take good digital photos and post them online

• Knows how to explain the marketing process to the seller so that the seller feels involved, committed and included (and therefore cooperative!)

• Keeps the seller updated on local market activity and trends

• Ensures that the brochure box is always full OR pulls the damn box off the sign

• Ensures that the key works in the lock and doesn't accept the excuse that "there's a trick to it"

• Is pleasant, respectful and responsive to buyer agents who express interest or have questions.

• Is a respectful, creative and effective negotiator

• Insists on a home staging consultation

• Offers 7 day/week showing service

• CARES almost as much about selling that home as the seller himself

(Feel free to add to this list...)

THE PUBLIC DESPERATELY NEEDS US RIGHT NOW. It's not all about us and our needs. Our clients need us to do our jobs exceptionally well to give all those FOR SALE signs a chance to be SOLDs. If and when that happens, the perception could possibly turn this mess around. WE OWE IT TO OUR ADORING FANS!!

copyright Jennifer Allan 2007

A fellow Active Rainer, who shall remain nameless in the interest of protecting her relationship with her clients, recently commented on one of my blogs as follows: 

"Jennifer I just wrote an email to a seller who has a very overpriced listing. They swore they'd lower in two weeks if no activity. It is now 5 months later and two very good offers that they rejected."

I asked her for an update and she responded with:

"Jennifer their response was 'they are perplexed that I didn't mention this during the negotiations.' I just don't understand which of the 12 emails and 10 phones calls where I told them the current market they missed."

So, I'm thinking... either these people are idiots, or they truly didn't "hear" what their agent was telling them. Let's give everyone the benefit of the doubt and assume the latter. I'd hate to call anyone an idiot.

Since the listing agent mentions emails and phone calls, I'll assume that emails and phone calls are how she communicated her news. I'd say she did her job.

But two things come to mind. The first is something I'll save for later in the interest of brevity. The second relates to how we communicate with our clients.

Again, it sounds to me as if our AR agent did a heck of a job communicating with her sellers. But, for the sake of argument, what if her sellers aren't auditory-types and don't "hear" well and/or aren't "good on email?" What if they are engineer-types and need to see charts and graphs and trends? Or what if they're visual and need photos and descriptive text? Maybe they would prefer a long, wordy emailed opinion without any data at all? Perhaps a face2face meeting would have done the trick? Or a tour of the competition?

Loreena Yeo (another AR friend who is also an engineer) is a master of the CMA. Her market analyses are works of art and they impress the heck out of me. But, but, but... if I were a seller, they'd be too data-intense for me.. I like pictures and descriptions, so columns of numbers and graphs of monthly trends shut me down. If my agent communicated market data to me this way, I'd be just as "perplexed" as the sellers described above.

Do you attempt to analyze your client to determine the best way to communicate with them? How many different delivery strategies ARE there to communicate with our sellers? Please share yours! 

http://www.sellwithsoul.com/

Copyright Jennifer Allan 2007

Okay, that's a little melodramatic and I don't have time to talk about everything I would change. And, frankly, I have no interest in ruling any world.

So, let me rephrase that. If I ruled my real estate company...

I'd pass this law: Any agent who works for me will have to prove to me, their queen, that the sellers they allow to hire them have either a strong NEED or a strong DESIRE to sell. No market-testers allowed.

My company's listings would be 100% marketable. My company's listings would sell. Buyer agents would flock to show my listings first because they are priced right, easy to show and smell good. Or if they aren't easy to show and/or smell awful, they are priced accordingly.

We'd take 60 day listing agreements and not a day longer. That's plenty of time to sell a home and frankly, I don't want my real estate sign sitting in front of a house any longer than that.

Sellers would have to sell themselves to my agents. My agents would have to sell their sellers to me.

If an agent didn't like my law, they could leave. But I think they'd love it once they understood it.

Read Part II Here

www.sellwithsoul.com

Copyright Jennifer Allan 2007

Loreena Yeo wrote a blog from her hospital bed today that, as her writing often does, inspired me to put my own two pennies on paper.

A few weeks ago, my partner and I put a Charming Denver Bungalow on the market. Our seller is one smart cookie and he's sold several homes on his own. We didn't want to insult his intelligence by boring him with all the details of having a home on the market; we figured if he had a question about the process, he'd ask. Oops.

Well, now he's asking. In a rather annoyed tone of voice, as if he feels blind-sided by what is happening to him.

And I realize that no matter how smart, how experienced, how cooperative a seller may be, we can never assume that he has a clue what is about to happen to him. And more importantly, what his role will be in the home selling process.

It's our job to make sure that our sellers understand...
1. What it means to their lifestyles be On the Market (basically, it sucks)

2. What they should expect from us (particularly the frequency of communication)

3. What we are expecting from them (see below)

4. How showings and feedback work

5. Why I won't be attending most showings (the buyer has his own agent)

If your seller has to call you to ask these questions after the fact, he'll likely have that annoyed-tone-of-voice with you, too!

It's also our job to be upfront with our sellers, no matter how unpleasant what we have to say may be for either of us.

Topics such as:
1. Why they need to SCRAM for showings

2. Why they need to accept short-notice showings and allow a lockbox

3. Why the market will not overlook toothpaste spit in the sink or eau d'Chef Boyardee in the air

4. Why they need to be pleasant to buyer agents who show up early or late

5. Why it's not okay to have barking dogs locked up in the laundry room

When your home is on the market, you talk about the experience with everyone you know. Especially if you're confused by the process which will translate into dissatisfaction with your agent. But yet... aren't listing appointments long enough without adding in all of the above??? How do you handle this issue?

Copyright Jennifer Allan 2007