It would be funny if it weren’t so serious. One of the most important jobs that a real estate agent has is to protect the interests of their sellers. Still, time after time, whether through laziness, lack of education, fear of upsetting their client or simply not knowing what to say, we see photos that are more than a little comical in MLS.
If a listing looks like this, the agent should be fired. If an agent agreed to take this listing, in this condition, they shouldn’t be an agent. Do I sound harsh? Here’s why I say this.
The homeowners don’t usually know better. Oh sure, “They should.”, you think. I mean if you are going to put your home up for sale then it should look at least as good as if your in-laws were coming for the holidays, right?
It is a real estate professional’s job to educate their sellers on what they need to do to sell in today’s market. For most people, this is their biggest investment. I should be handled with maximum respect, regardless of it’s list price.
Speaking of list price, however, how are real estate agents listing this price? Have they lowered the price? Is it listed the same as the other comparable properties? If it’s the same, it’s not going to sell. If it’s lower, how much lower? Would it have been more cost effective to higher a home stager to come in and get this house in order?
Finally, whjy oh why would a real estate professional take this listing? They know what feedback will be. They know that the only potential buyers that will even think about this home are buyers who are looking for a steal. Is that the buyer they’ve prepared their sellers for?
A real estate agent will have to pay to market this property – each and every month. They will have to have rough conversations with the home owners recommending price reduction after price reduction. After all of that, it probably still won’t sell. Why waste the time or the money?
Too often I find the truth falls into the fact that agents don’t want to have the conversations with the home sellers. They don’t want to tell them that their lifestyle will kill any possibilities that their home will sell. The beautiful thing is that home stagers can do that. We’ve been trained to do that. We know they often won’t like us and that we may end up offending them, no matter how we try, but we help make sure that homes don’t look like the above photos.
Home Stagers get to be the bad guy. We get to help clients understand that this will probably mean not selling the home, or taking huge price reductions just to get anyone looking.
Pin It
Leave a Reply