Stop Scarring Sellers!

Anthony Lamacchia – April 16th, 2018

Hey, everybody. Have you noticed there’s a ton of scared sellers out there? Worried sellers, however you want to phrase it. We’ve been unleashing a new campaign over the last couple of weeks. We even launched a television ad today to go after the sellers that want to sell. Want-to-be sellers is probably the right term. Want to buy a new home but they’re scared. They’re literally worried. They’re worried that they’ll have to move twice. They’re worried that their house will sell so fast that they won’t be able to find the house they want in time.

Then they think, “Well, I have to move twice. Where will I go. I don’t want to. I have no place to live.” It’s a huge problem in the market. I estimate there’s over 100,000 people in Massachusetts that are in this situation, hence why our inventory is so low. Then the more scared sellers there are, want to be sellers there are, the lower it pushes the inventory. This is a problem across the country with millions of people.

About three weeks ago I was on the– about a month ago, I was on the side of a mountain, Jay Peak and Vermont, skiing. I’m thinking about this endlessly with my kids. They’re following me down the mountain and it finally hit me. I said, “We are the problem.” Us realtors are the problem, me included. All of you. We are making this problem worse. Why? How many realtors are friends with tons of realtors on Facebook? How many times in a given week do you see a realtor saying, “Listed a home, five offers sold in a day. Oh my God. Yay.” Wow, sold in a day. Oh my God. It kind of rhymes, right? That was unintentional.

Seriously, think about it. How many times do you see this in a given week on Facebook? You hear realtors talking about it. “Listed a home, 75 people at the open house, sold it right there on the spot. 50,000 over asking price.” That was exciting. That was good news to a seller five years ago, four years ago. Now it scares them. They’re literally thinking, “What do you mean? Houses are selling that fast? Where am I going to go?” That’s what they’re thinking. That’s what I mean when I say we’re the problem.

How do we change that? This is what hit me on the side of a mountain. You have to change the way that you’re talking to sellers. You have to change the way that you’re publicizing your sales. We used to do a big campaign years ago. “Sold in three days, sold in four days.” That was cool. That was attractive. Now, scaring sellers away. “Oh my God, if my house sells that fast, where would I go?” Think about that. Change your phrases, change the way you’re doing things. Think about your messaging.

We did a great blog about a month ago that our inside sales group started using with sellers. It’s really helped. We’ve been sending it to sellers that are concerned about this. That are in this situation. We also recently, as of two weeks ago, put out a whole bunch of videos on them. I’m going to, or someone on our marketing team, probably Lindsay who is holding the camera, is going to put the links to some of these things in the comments here. Take them, think about them, maybe use them with your want-to-be seller/buyers and I’m going to talk about this more.

We have a big training on Wednesday for our LaMacchia Realty Realtors, obviously, and our national customers. We have over 12 weekly customers now that tune in to our training. We’re going to be talking about this exact thing, because as I said, we have to change the way we talk because we’re scaring so many sellers. Think about that. Take it in. Change the way you say things, and I’m going to have more for you on this later this week. Thanks, everybody. Have a wonderful week.