Selling or Buying a House or Condo can be a very, I stress, very stressful time. As an agent, I try to reduce that as much as possible. In most cases its just a matter of patience and time before a buyer or house comes. You only need one buyer or one house to buy.
With this stress of buying or selling a house, I notice many people instead of listening to their Real Estate agent, they start listening to their friends who know nothing but what they heard on the news, or they start making up theories as to what to do next.
Here are a few things that I’ve heard that people under stress have told me.
1. We need an open house every week. While “an” open house is good to bring a few people in, open houses weekly, just looks desperate. It got to a point where these people wanted me to sleep over to have daily open houses to anybody driving by. I kept telling them their house was overpriced from the beginning.
2. More Showings = Sold House: Do you need 150 noisy neighbour showings on the weekend, or do you need 5 interested people who qualify to buy your house and make an offer on Monday?
3. We Can Do This Our Selves: While some people may be able to sell or buy their own Real Estate, (Shameless promotion coming) I think its crazy to think that. One of the reasons why I think its crazy is that there are so many rules and regulations, lawsuits, marketing, appointments, phone calls, countless hours of paperwork, referrals of other services etc.
While some people can sell or buy their own Real Estate, I don’t recommend it. Hours upon hours of training, years of marketing schooling, photography, video, and of course negotiation, and there is much more. nuf said!
4. What’s The Difference Between you and the Next Guy: I always say the same thing. I’m Kit from the future & their Pinto from the past.
5. This is an agent thing but its funny. “Free Market Evaluation”
When did Agents charge for evalutations? What year was it?
6. “I’ll Never Buy or Sell this house”. While there may be struggles with either side of the transaction, I’ve never had a solution that couldn’t solve these problems. The crazy thing would be to do the same thing over and over. Either the market changes to buy or sell a house, or your plan will change. Either or, it will get done.
7. My house is worth more! Everybody thinks their house is worth more. In some cases upgrades will increase the price, but generally speaking everybody thinks that they should sell their house high, and buy a house low.
8. Foreclosures: Everyday, I get asked to be put on the foreclosure list. Banks are not stupid anymore. They will price the house according to market conditions, unless you live in the U.S., or in a really struggling market. THE BANK WILL NOT LOSE MONEY.
9. A House on the market for a long time will accept less money: Generally speaking there are a few reasons why a house will stay on the market, the first reason being that it is overpriced. The second being that it’s overpriced and there is something wrong with it. The Third reason being its overpriced & The owner is not gonna budge.
10. We Should Limit the Amount of Pictures or Video. I’ve heard this from agents as well as sellers. Try to keep the mystery about the house. All this does is expose your house to people not interested in your house. If your house is not desirable to people looking at photos or videos, then there is something else wrong. Price, Location, market or anything else could be the reason for your house not selling. MLS limits photos to 9 anyway.
Ernie Arrizza 