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Anthony Lamacchia – June 28th, 2018
Hey, realtor friends, would you like some tips on dealing with For Sale by Owner objections and sellers who are tempted to go For Sale By Owner, what to say to them? I’m here to talk to you about that, Anthony LaMacchia here. Last week a realtor friend from another company reached out and said, “Hey, do you have any tips for me on you know I’m going on a For Sale By Owner listing appointment?” Then it was like coincidentally, two people in our company had mentioned it after that. Part of the reason that this happens is we’re in a hot market.
Even though, granted, in the last week or two, inventory has gone up and things have cooled slightly and it’s not as strong as a seller’s market as it was, but for all intents and purposes and for the purpose of this discussion, we’re still in a seller’s market. When you’re in a seller’s market, all of a sudden sellers start looking for discount brokerages, they start considering selling on their own, but what I’m going to talk to you about in this video is sellers that want to sell on their own.
The big question I got from that other realtor and from two realtors in our company, “Well, what do I say?” My answer was, “tell them the truth.” Tell them that God’s honest truth that, “Hey, Mr. Seller/Mrs. Seller, selling a home in this market, you’re right, it’s not that difficult because inventory is low and there’s more buyers than there are sellers, but selling a home and selling a home for more, or selling a home for the most money, is two different things.” Even though it’s easy to sell a home, pretty much it’s easy in this market to sell a home in the first six months of this year with inventory being so low, selling them for more is the differentiator.
Oftentimes what sellers do is they’ll list For Sale By Owner or they’ll do an entry only company and offer something to a buyer-agent, offer some kind of compensation and then cut the listing agent commission out and by the time they’re done maybe they’ve saved themselves 1 or 2%. What they don’t realize is that a bunch of things. I could go on and on all day, but I’m going to try to point out the most important ones.
Number one, the buyers know when it’s For Sale By Owner. The buyers say to their agents, if they have one, or to the sellers or to each other before they make their offer, “Hey, this seller’s not paying the full commission, so why should we have to pay as much for the home if they’re not doing that?” They are inherently always less willing to pay as much as they would than if it was on the open market. That’s one big piece of the pie with respect to buyers.
The other part of it is, I don’t care who you are for a home seller and I don’t care what skills you have, you will not get that home, the treatment online and you will not be able to negotiate as well as a realtor can. Even a realtor who frankly isn’t that experienced, they’re going to do a better job exposing your home than you are naturally. Also, when it comes to negotiation, I mean, I love when I hear sellers say, “I’m a good negotiator,” then you literally watch them blow a negotiation and scare a buyer off and then sell for 10,000 less two months later.
Anyway, I’ve seen that a few times back when I was selling years ago. Anyway, these are the types of things you have to point out to the sellers is the discount, the buyers are interested in having it passed on to them. The exposure, sorry, Mr. Seller, you’re not going to get it the exposure that I can, and if you’re a really good realtor at a good brokerage they’re going to have special agreements with Zillow and realtor.com and Trulia and you should be explaining that to the sellers.
Those are big pieces and then negotiation. Really, let’s face it, in negotiation, one wrong comment from a seller can cost them $10,000 in a snap and there goes 1%, 2%, 3% and all of a sudden they didn’t make up anything. You could also talk to them about the workload that goes into selling a home. People think it’s just so easy and especially these days, they think it’s easy. I will admit, many times it is easier nowadays than it was 10 years ago when it was a struggle to get a buyer into a home, but there’s still a tremendous amount to do and a lot goes into it to do it the right way, to expose the home correctly, to bring in the maximum amount of buyers.
The other thing that you could tell sellers, which this is a little bit controversial and some of my realtor friends might not like me saying this out loud, but I’m going to explain it because I like to be real in these videos. Here’s some truth, sellers, and you should explain this to your sellers, I’m not talking to sellers right now, I’m talking to realtors, but you should tell sellers the truth.
Realtors are not that excited to show For Sale By Owner homes, they’re just not. They’re not that excited to show homes that are offering discounted commissions. You, Mr. Seller, would you be excited if you had a buyer that was interested in this home and this home was while offering X%, but all the other ones were offering Y%? Do you follow me? Explain that to them, go into that with them. Many times they simply don’t realize it and you should just go over it with them. That’s all for today, folks, I hope you enjoyed this and I hope it helps you on your next listing appointment. Thanks.
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