Dirty Little Secret behind the Biggest Real Estate Magic Trick
Don’t let the seeds of doubt steal your money
Don’t let the seeds of doubt steal your money
The FSBO Seed of Doubt
It’s there. You know it’s there. It’s been there since you were in grade school. Self-doubt.
Just a bit of self-doubt acts as a regulator as we are growing up. Sometimes it keeps us from doing foolish and stupid things. It keeps us in line a bit.
But there also must be a balance. Too big a seed can cause us to be shy and unwilling to take the normal chances involved in childhood. We may be viewed as introverted or, worse, unsocial.
Most of us get that bad seed under control sooner or later, and we learn to live with it. Only in rare circumstances, those that might be new or strange to us does it surface and cause us any trouble.
Selling your own house is one of those circumstances for some people. It is not an activity one does each day. And some parts of it are complicated. But when you decide to sell your own house, something inside you asks “what if you can’t?”
Sometimes your friend or neighbor asks you if you have gone crazy.
They may tell you about a person they heard of who tried it and lost a fortune and ultimately ended up selling to an ax-murderer who tried to kill them as a part of the negotiation process.
So you doubt yourself in the beginning. A little.
Here Comes More Doubt
Then agent after agent contacts you, trying to get you to list your house with them. They tell you the horror stories and the war stories, and they tell you that in the end you will get sued anyway.
In fact, they keep on coming. They come in long lines, each one speaking of your doom, telling you that you will NEVER sell it.
On top of that, it has now been for sale for a month. Four weeks and no offers yet.
So you start to doubt yourself in the middle. A lot.
Then some agent says the right thing at the right time to catch your ear, the right promise falling on the fertile soil of your self-doubt, and you choke.
Last week one of my customers emailed me and said she had run out of time and was putting her house with a traditional agent. I wished her well and removed her house from the MLS. The agent, of course, established a contract pledge from her for approximately thirty thousand dollars of her proceeds for commission. Then the agent convinced her to reduce her price just a little- another twenty-five thousand dollars. Then the agent put her house back on the MLS.
The Magic Happened
As it happened, the ultimate buyer arrived in two weeks on a trip he had planned for a good while. The buyer was pleased that he had saved $25,000 buying the house. The agent was pleased to have earned $30,000 in commissions. The seller may not have actually sold her house any quicker, but she did not have that extra $55,000 slowing her down anymore.
And the agent still thinks he pulled a rabbit out of the hat.
“When you list your house with me, it’s almost like magic!” the agent said.
Originally written by Don Martin in one of his blogs on July 5, 2015. Updated June 19, 2019 & Nov 10, 2021.
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