Realtor Tactics You won't see from us

Transaction fees

This is simply a way for real estate companies to extract some of their marketing expenses from their clients at closing. You might (or might not) notice it as a line item on the closing statement.  It could be $250 or even more.  It is beyond me how a real estate company can justify this add-on expense for what they are supposed to be doing in the first place ... creating a successful transaction.

Marketing fees

If an agent asks you to pay for their marketing expenses to sell your home, you should ask "Why should I?"  If the agent sells your home, they should gladly accept the marketing fees as a cost of doing business.  And if the agent doesn't have the confidence they can can sell your home, why are they taking the listing in the first place? 

By the way, if the agent asks you to pay the expenses up front and then offers to reimburse you at closing, what they are saying is "We're not sure we can sell your home, but if You take all the monetary risk, we will give it a try and reimburse you at closing"  No problem if the home sells, but if it doesn't, the seller is out the money.  The agent has just gotten some free exposure by having their sign on the home (and quite possibility picked up a buyer or two for another home along the way) at no cost.  That is what I would call "a sweetheart deal" for the agent.  We only take listings we believe we can sell and we gladly accept all monetary risks.  And if you are curious, every home we list costs us about $500 right up front.

Offering to buy your home If we can't sell it

Why would any agent ever buy any home they themselves cannot sell?  The answer is simple ... they will only offer to buy it at a severely discounted price.  They don't want to get "stuck" with your home any more than you do.  When your agent takes off their "agent" hat and puts on their "investor" hat, make sure you know the difference between the two.

Guaranteeing a seller we can sell their home

We tell our sellers right up front, there are no guarantees we can sell their home.  I cannot speak for other markets, but in Lubbock County, there is a lot of competition for buyers at every price point.  Your home might be competing with hundreds of others.  All we will promise is your home will be seen and it will be beautifully presented to the world.  Regardless of what you might hear, that is all any Realtor can do.  We cannot manufacture buyers. 

Placing "Sold" signs on homes before they close

Sure, putting a "Sold" sign in front of a home when it goes under contract makes the Realtor look good.  But it can be awfully embarrassing for the homeowner and the agent when they have to take that "Sold" sign down and put the "For Sale" sign up again.  Anything, and I mean anything, can happen on a transaction once it goes under contract.  We always play it safe and never consider a sale a sale until it's a sale. 

Taking a listing we know we cannot sell

If our opinion of value is within a reasonable striking distance of where the seller thinks his home will sell, we will take the listing and work it to the very best of our ability.  However if we see no possible way for us to get to the price the seller wants, we will ...

thank the seller and "pass" on the listing opportunity.  We don't have to resort to placing signs in yards of homes we know we cannot sell to fish for buyers.  We attract many thousands of visitors to our site every month whether we ever put a sign up or not.

give the seller the option of paying for our normal marketing expenses up front.  Although, this is normally our cost, if a seller is convinced their home will sell for substantially more than we think we can sell it for, we'll offer to let them share the risk with us.  By the way, the $500 marketing fee covers our hard costs, not the endless hours of preparing the home for the market on our site, Realtor.com, and the MLS.  We might roll the dice with our time depending how busy we are at the moment, but not the $500 hard costs.

Sure, sometimes we just "miss it" on pricing.  Every good agent has many listings every year that don't sell.  But we didn't overprice the home intentionally.  We may not even know we missed it on pricing until we have had a chance to market the home for several months.  The market moves fast and waits for no-one.  When that happens, we will have frank discussions with the sellers.  We will show them the activity on their home and together, we will come to a decision as to whether to continue the listing at a reduced price or terminate it.


Sign-in Sheets

We don't put out "sign-in sheets" for a good reason.  We consider that dinosaur marketing (much like leaving flyers in front of a home).  If a buyer walks into a home and sees a sign-in sheet with the names of 50 people who have walked through it, what does that say to that buyer and the buyer's Realtor?  And what if the home has been on the market for 2-3 months and there are only 3 names on the sign-in sheet.  What does that tell the buyer or their agent?  We know who is going through our homes.  We are immediately notified by our showing service after  every showing so why tip our hand to the buyers? 

Open Houses

Open houses are dangerous to the agents, they are dangerous to the personal property in the homes, and in our opinion, they just don't work.  Who knows who is walking through that home?  We prefer to always have an agent with any prospective buyer so there is some accountability.

So why do some agents like open houses?  They are hoping they can meet a buyer.  They know the chances of any one buyer walking into a home off the street and purchasing it are slim, but if the agent can develop a relationship with that prospect, maybe they can sell them another home.  With the web traffic our site generates, we don't have to hold open houses to find buyers.

Working For Free

Sorry about this one, but as much as we love what we do, our families have all grown tremendously fond of eating and having a roof over their heads :-)  We cannot afford to offer ridiculous commission rates to get business.  We have tremendous marketing expenses, which probably resulted in your finding our site in the first place.  Always remember, if a Realtor is offering to work for you for almost nothing, that is the only thing they have to offer ...  and that is exactly what you are going to get!