Jay,
Regarding your first question, we are all interactive beings. It's difficult for us (all people) to not consider what the person with us wants.
Let's say you feel like going to see a movie, but don't have one in mind. You look at what's playing and choose one. But if you ask someone to go with you, you might choose two vs. one. Maybe even three. The person asked to come with you will ask which ones you might want to see, and won't consider the other dozen movies not on your list of three.
People change what they do based on what you do. It's natural and human, especially with subjective decisions.
An agent is like the second person in the example. The one asked to do something with the seller who has already decided to sell. Without the seller's input, they might list the home at $599,950. But once the seller says $709,950, the discussion takes a turn. The agent is "talking the seller down" vs. giving the seller a list price from scratch.
The same way moviegoer #2 chooses from the 3 vs. the 15 movies, an agent will be moving the seller off a number, if there is a huge variance between theirs and the sellers. The result may be better than if the seller chose the number, but not as good as if the agent chose it without considering the seller's wishes.
I wrote this a couple of years ago, but it is even more important in today's market that the seller do this, and especially at this time of year when you need to be more right than you do in January or February of any given year.
Buyers ask more sincere, open ended questions, than sellers. When a buyer asks how much home they can afford to buy, they rarely have an arbitrary number already chosen, based on what they want to buy. They may have a number in their mind already, but it usually will be based on reliable sources of information. They may have used on online buyer quliafier that used accepted ratios based on gross income. They may have already been prequalified by a lender. The number comes from a reliable source.
A seller on the other hand often has a "want" number before they call an agent that is not based on a reliable source. This is especially true if they are coming from a position of "needing" X from the sale to buy Y that they have already seen.
In today's market the seller's number may be based on what they owe, vs. what a buyer may be willing to pay.
Let's assume that there are 100 things you need to tell a buyer and a seller. By the time a buyer chooses a house and closes escrow, you have a long trail of advices during that time so that by the end you have told the buyer the 100 things they need to know. A seller on the other hand usually stops listening to a great extent once the home is listed for sale. Unfortunately more of the 100 things you need to tell them needs to be told before the home is listed for sale.
A buyer chooses an agent for all the right reasons, and often chooses the agent who agrees with them the least. A buyer WANTS to know where they are wrong with their thinking, to avoid making costly mistakes.
A seller on the other hand is most likely to choose the agent who agrees with them the most. This causes the agent to come from a place where they agree as much as possible, even if the seller is incorrect in their thinking. Is that "lying"? Maybe lots of sins of omission...
Often the seller wants the home listed right away, so the timeframe to deal with those 100 issues is pressed and stressed, and you end up hitting on the most important 10 vs. all 100.
If the seller is pressing to get the home listed in two days and is not asking what they should do to get the home ready for sale, it's obvious they already think it is ready. So introducing a list of things that need to be done becomes more difficult and you tend to cut the list down to the MUST do vs. SHOULD do. Much like the 15 movies that becomes a list of 3, the overall advice to a seller gets cut down from 100 to 10 to 20.
Sellers have a "tone" more than buyers. Buyers ask and we answer. Sellers always have a bias toward their product as in "I don't have to..., I don't want to..., I need...", Buyers want to do all the things they should do...sellers more often have a list of all the things they won't or do not want to do.
Seller's questions almost always relate to their immediate neighbors, and the real info may lie outside of that neighborhood. But a seller often will not "go there with you" and the conversation keeps coming back to "Joe across the street."
The ebb and flow of a discussion and information is a two way conversation. What hand how the person asks it...influences the response.
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