Should You Ever Take An Overpriced Listing?

You have to qualify your seller! If your seller doesn’t have to sell their house and they aren’t sure where they want to move—that’s not a motivated seller. Don’t take the listing. It’s not worth it. Pass the listing to another agent, get a referral fee, and spend your time working on real sellers.

Consider the scenario: You take an overpriced listing, the seller is unmotivated, and you end up selling the home for 20-30% less than it was listed for. Here’s the outcome: Your seller is disappointed because they feel like their home is worth more (even if it wasn’t), they’re likely not to use you again and they probably won’t refer you.

Just as much as clients are interviewing you to see if you are the agent they want to work with, you are interviewing them! Do they have pie-in-the-sky ideas about what their home is worth? Are they going to be difficult? Do you have a motivated seller? A yes to any of these questions means they are not likely going to be worth taking on as a client.

Generate so you don’t have to tolerate

You don’t have to put up with crappy clients who have unrealistic expectations!

You need to make sure that the seller is motivated to sell and that they are willing to make some concessions in order to get the deal done. I created a pre-listing questionnaire that gave me some insight into how motivated the seller was. It asks questions like “When would you like to move?” and “When would you like your home to be on the market?” The answers helped me determine how motivated the seller was and how willing they would be to lower the price. I would also consider taking an overpriced listing if the seller would agree to automatic price reductions. So if a house is listed at $500,000, then every 30 days the price automatically drops $10,000.

You’re right, taking an overpriced listing gets your name on the sign—a pretty typical way to market yourself. It’s a way of business but it’s definitely not the best way. You might as well throw your business cards on the ground and hope someone will pick one up.

If you work by referral, no one is going to refer you for selling their house for tons less than what it’s listed for. Don’t waste time and energy. A warm referral is infinitely better than your name on a for sale sign.

Learn more about pre-qualifying your clients.

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