Real estate professionals are in an unusual position in the service industry – it’s hard to reconcile the old saying that “the customer is always right” with a job description that involves educating these same customers. In particular, listing agents often run into prospective sellers who have an unrealistic view of what their homes are worth. In this video, Tom Iovenitti looks at the problem from a different angle, taking into account the current market situation and his years of real estate experience. It’s definitely worth a watch, particularly if you’re trying to figure out how to succeed at your next listing appointment.
Today, I want to talk about seller’s idea of value. I’m sure all of you have been acquainted with a seller who has a value on their home that doesn’t really seem to fit with what you believe the comparables might be. I have to tell you, in today’s marketplace, almost invariably everything that you’re bringing to market, as long as it’s priced correctly, will sell. There’s just a number of buyers out there today that are looking to pick up these properties. Most of them are cash buyers. So I would say this: If, before the sellers were a little bit reluctant to listing their properties, and today they have an idea of value that they would like to try, you know, the way that properties have been selling in the past few months, it wouldn’t be beyond me to try to take a property and see what you can do with it. Some of these things are still going 30, 40 thousand dollars above asking price. And I know that’s going to make it a little difficult on the appraisal, but at this point, you need to take everything you can and list it. Because the inventory’s extremely low. The NoDs, the Foreclosures, the short sales… they were not as prevalent in the market place as they had been in the past five years. Matter of fact, overall short sales were down to only 24% of the marketplace. And that’s considerably less than what it used to be in prior years. So you can see that the sellers have taken it for five or six years, lowering, lowering, lowering their prices. Today, there’s an opportunity, even though it wouldn’t be back to what I believe 2005 or 2006 pricing would be, for you to start moving the market just a little bit and hedging it. So if the seller has an idea of value, and they’re hearing all the news on the media, just like you, my suggestion is to probably take and work with it. But be careful. Overpricing it can hurt them as well.
This is Tom Iovenitti from ReboReports, just giving you a hint on what you should do. I hope you go out there and make a lot of money. Again, thank you for listening.
