Getting to the heart of it!

Ask yourself if any of your listings are overpriced and I bet the answer will be yes. Why would sellers really wanting to sell, stand in their own way by pricing themselves out of the market? It was proposed in our seminar yesterday by David Knox, that sellers would overprice for only two reasons: Motivation or Education. They either lack a true motivation to sell right now or we have failed at educating them about the proper price for the market conditions. Since I know we all know what we're doing, I think the former is true. We just aren't used to asking questions like a five year old to get to what is really most important to them. The only way to allow a seller's true motivation to reveal itself is to ask good questions and put the seller in a future scenario that keeps them in the house asking, what then? It is difficult to do this because we just hate to be the bearers of bad news.

However, if you believe our job is really to help buyers and sellers achieve their goals, how can we continue to allow them to believe that the methods they are taking will get them there?

Imagine the doctor who has to deliver news of terminal cancer, but decides to allow the person to believe that the treatment will cure them because having that conversation would be too difficult. Not having that difficult conversation is the equivalent of malpractice in both professions. We need to have the heart to heart with ours sellers and let them go graciously if they aren’t really motivated. People move for reasons; not money. You will salvage a relationship and future client and save yourself a lot of frustration.