Jill Kushner - Specializing in The Colony Golf & Bay Club, Bonita Springs, Florida FL - Downing-Frye Realty Inc. - Jill Kushner, Realtor: Do We Want to List Your Home...or Sell it?

My 85 year old father announced that he was ready to sell the home he had built just a few years prior and transition into the less maintenance intensive home style of a condominium. He was quick to share with me why he felt his home should command at least a 20% increase over the homes recently sold in his neighborhood. His home had many unique features....things he thought were really valuable such as wood floors, a drain in the garage floor, "highboy" toilets, etc.
Now while the reader may find these things rather humorous, these are examples of features that sellers, with all their mental faculties, feel should merit a listing price $100,000+ over closed sales comparable property in The Colony.
Sellers are loathe to see themselves as "pedestrian" as their former high rise neighbor's (identical floor plan & floor height-mirror image) closed sale and certainly not as desperate. "Well, this side of the building is much more desirable than the other side," the seller insists.
I report to these sellers on how many days on the market (regularly over a year and often two) those former neighbors waited to get a contract on their high rise residence. How many price reductions and lost opportunities occurred with prospects flying in from points north for the expressed purpose of purchasing in The Colony and never even seeing their home because the listed price was so far inflated over the true market price.
Don't we want to list the price with more "wiggle room" than that, Jill?   Try as I may to explain my years of experience dealing with Colony prospects and the critical path area real estate agents use to investigate The Colony, and subsequently conveying to their client what value/price formula they should expect to pay, sellers insist on a listed price well above Colony average cost per square foot closed sales.   To the seller, it's all about how much better his place is than the other homes for sale.   This is not a proactive approach.   This is a version on the over-used seller retort, "Let's just test the market and see what we get. List it at the price that I feel our place should warrant".
Generally speaking, I thank the seller for the opportunity and then take a pass on these Colony sellers request to market their property.   From my own experience, these are folks who live in beautiful homes that, myself included, feel are undervalued in this market, who end up being disappointed when showings are rare, if ever.
Marketing a Colony home for sale is a partnership I enter into with the seller.   I invest heavily in the advertising, professional photography and the regular open houses.   The Colony is my turf and I frankly believe our community is the best value proposition in Southwest Florida.   But it's my responsibility to sell Colony homes not just list them.
Sure enough, these sellers are successful in finding some agent who will accept any price the seller proposes only to report that the reason the place isn't selling is because the price is too high.   This is a strategy of many an agent whose business model is about a lot of listings....not about performance.   These agents enter into this listing agreement with the full knowledge they will bludgeon the seller into price reduction submission over the course of listing period.
Inevitably, when this seller fatigues from lack of showings, proper marketing, attention of his property and contracts, he calls me back with a respect for my having enough courage to tell them the truth about his home in first place.   It is then that the home sells.