Samuel Clemens once said there are lies, damn lies and statistics. (Actually, multiple sources are credited with this gem, but that's another story for another time.) And statistics often are the basis of many real-estate professional's listing presentations - days on market, average sales price compared to list price, and percentage of expired listings.
Pardon me while I step to the front of the room ...
"My name is Jonathan Dalton, I'm a real-estate professional, and I have had expired listings."
In truth, I'm neither ashamed nor proud of that fact. My job is to sell homes and these are cases where the homes I was contracted to sell did not sell. As with any endeavor, there were things that could have been differently though I'm not sure the result would have been any different.
In and of themselves, though, expired listings tell very little about the sales skills of the agent who was hired to market the home. True, it's possible the house didn't sell because the agent stuck a sign in the yard and walked away; marketing plays a definite role in home sales.
But at the end of the day, I always look to the three mainstays that have the most impact on whether a home will sell and for how much: condition, location and price.
So I look back at the home in Peoria's Alta Vista Estates. I suggested one price. The owners selected a price $34,000 higher. That was January. Now, with agent number two, they're at my suggested price. And the home is still on the market two months after my listing expired. Would it have sold at the price I had suggested way back when? I think so, but who knows.
There's another home in El Mirage. Here, I suggested the market average and in retrospect I ought to have suggested pricing below the last sale. When that idea was mentioned, though, the seller fell back on the advice of a friend who told her to save the price drops for the negotiations after an offer's been made. This home has yet to return to the market.
In Surprise, I listed a home where the owners started at a price about $10K - $15K what I first had suggested. It's still available, now on its second agent, at a price where we'd received a then-lowball offer months ago. Should I have been more forceful in suggesting price reductions? Probably.
Price reductions are easier said than done, however. One owner accused me of wanting "to put a notch in your belt" by selling the home for less than it was worth. This home, now no longer listed by me, is priced about $18,000 over two similar homes and there are three others less expensive. Markets determine what a home is worth, not real-estate agents. The market was telling these owners something. They choose to believe something else.
Could it be something other than price? Possibly, but I'm not sure what that would be. Unless the second agent in is no more capable to sell than I was. And the third agent, the fourth, etc.
Location, condition and price ... if locations didn't change and the condition is the same ... what else can it be?
(c) Jonathan Dalton, 2006 / Jonathan Dalton's Arizona Homes | 
