There isn’t one standard way to sell a house – every agent does it differently, mostly based on their skill set and ambition in life.  My new listing in Spinnaker Hill is a good example!

It’s a tract neighborhood of one-story houses from the 1970s, and most of them haven’t added square footage so comparing the recent sales is fairly simple.

In the post-frenzy environment, appraisers are reluctant to go back more than the standard six months for comparisons, and they will place the most weight on those in the same tract (see above).

The different ways that listing agents sell houses can be broken into three categories:

1. Listing agents who make a deal with the first buyer who calls, and shuts out everyone else.

This is what happened when an out-of-town agent listed the home on Daisy that’s pending, which is the identical house to what I’m selling, with less ocean view.  It is 100 yards away from my listing, and many people at my open houses asked how I could expect to get $1,600,000 when an identical match was $400,000 less (that buyer lives in the neighborhood and has told everyone about his good fortune).

2. Listing agents who practice the 3P marketing plan (Put a sign in the yard, Put it in the MLS, and Pray).

You can see the varying results in the four recent sales in the post-frenzy era. Nobody knows how long it will take to find a buyer, and what they might be willing to pay – and three out of four took quite a bit less.

3. How Jim the Realtor sells his listings.

I thought the house needed to much work to bother with staging. But it didn’t stop me from recommending a list price that was full retail, or retail-plus – ESPECIALLY with the model match at $400,000 less.

After a vigorous open house extravaganza that 230+ people attended, I received five offers, and four were over the list price. You can tell from the comps that we had a real concern about the appraisal, and it would play a vital role in the decision made by the sellers.

After giving all five of the buyers three chances yesterday to improve their offer, the sellers decided that it boiled down to two contenders:

$1,755,000 cash and no appraisal contingency.

$1,776,000 with a $1,000,000 down payment and no appraisal contingency.

We took the cash deal initially, but the buyer got the yips the next day so we sold to #2.

How much would any other realtor have gotten?

Are you thinking of selling your house? Let’s talk!