We received three offers on our new listing, and all were around $2,000,000….well under the list price.

Once you get over $2,000,000, the buyers are putting up some fight.

If the only strategy is to take the best offer – by far the most popular realtor strategy – what do you do? Just select your favorite $2,000,000 agent with biggest down payment and shortest escrow? Or wait another week (or more) and hope there are two in the bush?

Those are the only two choices being employed all around the county. Home sellers have no idea how much money they are leaving on the table – and neither do the agents. It doesn’t occur to anybody that there is any other way to transact.

Spruce them up the best you can. Do the open-house extravaganza. Then counter ALL offerors for their highest-and-best…..and then tell everyone the current high price, and ask them to beat it. When faced with losing the house, buyers are much more likely to keep bidding.

I haven’t found any other agent who does it this way, but I hope they are out there.

I had the sellers agree to raise our list price to the agreed-upon sales price in order to send a message to the rest of the marketplace.  I don’t want any of the other listings nearby to drop their price, and I want to be supportive to other buyers in general that the market is fine. Three of the La Costa Valley Six listings have gone pending in the last week!

One more note. When possible, I want to pick the winner on Day Four – it is the peak of the buyer urgency, and interest drops off quickly.  Once a listing is more than a month old, buyers are going to lowball – why would you want to be in that predictament? Look how the views taper off:

When the saves are running around 5% of the total views, the online presentation is being well-received. Buyers must like the location, the photos, and the price to want to save another Zillow listing!

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Jim the Realtor
Jim is a long-time local realtor who comments daily here on his blog, bubbleinfo.com which began in September, 2005. Stick around!

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