3 Keys to Getting Listings Priced Right

SUMMARY

Price is the most important thing to get a listing sold. Here’s how to get the listing priced right every time:

1.       “What the market is saying” is the only authority.

2.       Absolute Certainty.

3.       Buyers have to love the house AND the price, or they offer low or not at all.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

If a house is overpriced, it is not going to sell, and that is just a reality.

Hey there. It’s Kevin Ward, the founder of YESMasters Real Estate Success Training, helping you get more yeses and more successes in your business and in your life, and if you’ve been a real estate agent for any time at all, you and I both know that the hardest yes to get is getting a seller to say yes to the right price. Getting listings priced right, not only is it the most challenging thing over and over that agents typically have to deal with, it is also the most important thing when it comes to selling a house. If a house is overpriced, it is not going to sell, and that is just a reality.

The question is how do you get sellers to price the listing right? Because let’s face it, most of the time you can figure out pretty easily what the right price is for a house. Now, it’s easy to kid yourself if you get emotionally attached to the listing or you’re afraid if I don’t tell them what they want to hear, they’re not going to give me the listing and all that, but when it comes down to it, an agent can figure out, one, what the right price is to list a house at, and if you list it at a price and it doesn’t sell quickly, then you know the solution, and that is to adjust the price. But it’s still hard, right? It’s hard to get sellers to buy into it.

So I want to talk about the three keys to getting listings priced right and getting sellers to agree to price it right, and I also want to tell you that if you want more deep-dive training on how to do this, how to present this and all this, I’m going to put a link below to my online course called Double Your Listing Power, where it goes deep and it goes deep in all elements of how to get listings, how to price them right, how to get them sold, how to set appointments, all that. If it takes you from A to Z, the whole process of lead generation, lead follow-up, converting leads into listings, and converting listings into sales. It takes you through the whole process. But in this video, we’re just going to dive into the three most important keys to getting a listing priced right.

Number one is to make it or keep it about the market.

The key to getting a listing priced right is for you to communicate and help the sellers understand that it is the market that determines the price, not your marketing strategy, not you, not them, not how much they owe, not how much they want, not how much they need, none of that. The only thing that determines the value of their house is what is actually happening in the real estate market in their neighborhood. That is it. So you always make the price about the market. You always speak in terms of what the market is saying. And so if you’ve got a copy of my book, The Book of Yes, in the listing presentation script it says, “Based on what the market is telling us.” That’s the conversation. It always has to be about the market.

Now, that means a couple of things. Number one, it means that you have to know the market. You have to know the global market, meaning the whole city, the whole market area you’re in. What are the trends, what are days on market, what’s happening to prices and so forth. You got to have a clue of that. Are we in a seller’s market or are we in a buyer’s market? Second, it means you’ve got to know the market in terms of the actual comps, the houses that have sold recently that are comparable to theirs, and that is what determines the value of their house. What’s on the market right now doesn’t really determine the value of their house. Okay? Doesn’t determine it. It determines what people want to get for their house, but you don’t know what they’re actually going to get. Right? But what people have actually sold houses for in the last few months, that tells us what homes like theirs are actually worth, and that is all about the market.

And so if you ever get caught in this trap of, well, I think we should price it here, or I think we should do it here, because the moment the seller says, “Well, I don’t like your price,” and it’s almost like you need to correct them and say, “Well, just to be … I hear what you’re saying, and frankly I don’t like it either. I just want to be clear, though, that that’s not my price. I don’t get to pick the price on your house. I basically have to deal with what the market is saying.” And as long as you keep it about the market, here’s the beauty and the power of it is, they can’t argue with you. They can argue with you when you make it your price, but they can’t argue with the market because if they argue with the market, they’re always going to lose. Right?

So you’re dealing with facts, you’re dealing with reality. You’re not dealing with your emotions or what you think, or when they come at you and go like, “Well, I don’t like your price. I think you’re just trying to under price it and sell it quick.” Well, Mr. Seller, I hear what you’re saying, however, it just doesn’t work that way. I’m dealing with what the market is saying, and you can see from the comps here why I’m suggesting this price, because that’s what the market is suggesting. Always keep it about the market.

Number two the second key is absolute certainty on your part.

You got to be certain about the right price, right? I tell my coaching members, you can be wrong on the price, but you can never be in doubt. It’s okay to be wrong, but it’s not okay to be in doubt. You have to be certain on the price, which means when you’ve found out everything you can about the house, you do the comps and you’ve studied the comps and you’ve now found the closest, most comparable sales to the subject property, and you show up at the house and you see the house and you confirm that it’s what they told you over the phone and so forth, you’ve got to be certain when you say this is the price that we need to list it at, it is the price.

You got to have absolute certainty because if they ever go like, “Well, do you think we could get it for more?” And you go like, “Well, you know, I don’t know, blah, blah …” The moment you say, “I don’t know,” what you just told them is, “Aha. He’s not certain. She’s not certain,” and the moment they believe you’re not certain, now they can’t trust you because “Well, you know, I trust me more than I trust them, and if they don’t know what the right price is because they wavered on the right price.” If you ever waver on the right price, they can’t trust you. And so like, well, I trust me more than I trust that agent, so I’m going to go with my price because I want to play it safe because what sellers are afraid of is they’re afraid of making a mistake, and where they’re going to get certainty about the right price is it’s got to come from you.

When you give the seller a price and say, “Based on what the market is telling us and after looking at your house, I’m suggesting we list the house at $1.5 million, and you can see why that’s the right price, correct?” And they go, “1.5 million? I was hoping for 1.6. I mean, don’t you think we could get 1.6?” Then you can reply with, “You know what? I hear what you’re saying. I wish we could get 1.6. Unfortunately, that’s not what the market is telling us.” You can feel for them. You can tell them, “I hate the price.” You can tell them, “I know. I was disappointed too, but unfortunately that’s what the market is telling us.” And so it’s you keep it about the market number one, and number two, you got to be absolutely certain. So when the seller returns with, “Well, can we try it at a higher price?” Well, I mean we could, but it would be a mistake.

What they’re needing from you is they need to know that you are certain. The moment you waver on it, they’re not going to trust you, and they’re going to want to go with their price because they don’t feel safe with your price because you’re not confident. When you’re confident, they now can have confidence in you and follow your lead.

Third, buyers must like the price.

I know the sellers have their price in mind. They want their price, but when it all comes down to it, what are buyers going to believe about the price when they see it? They’re going to like it, or they’re going to hate it. Are they going to feel like that’s a great price? Are they going to feel like that’s a ridiculous price? Because there are two things about a buyer buying a house. They’re buying the house and they got to buy the price.

If they love the house and hate the price, guess what? They’re not going to be excited about buying the house, so when they come to see it, they’ve seen the house on the Internet. They love the pictures, they love the description, they love the neighborhood. Everything’s awesome, but that price, it’s ridiculous. And buyers then position themselves emotionally to not like the house. And so what happens is, when a seller prices it high, your responsibility is to help educate them that when you price it high, you force buyers to not like the house because they don’t like the price. They’re going with the mindset of, “I like the house, but I don’t like the price.”

It’s kind of like you take somebody, if you’re looking for a boyfriend or a girlfriend, and they’re good looking but they’re a jerk. You know, I like the way they look, but they’re a jerk. So if you like the way somebody looks but they’re a jerk, you got to protect yourself from falling in love with that person because if you do, you know you’re falling in love with a jerk, right? They can fall in love with the house, but they think, “If I fall in love with this house, the price is going to mess me up. I’m going to pay too much for it.” So now they’re holding themselves back.

When buyers love the price, and this is so important for you to help sellers understand, when buyers love the price, they get emotionally attached to the house. They love the price and they love the house. And so what happens is it literally forces demand for the house. The price forces demand. Not just the house that creates demand, it’s the price of the house. So when you got a great house and a great price, now the buyer goes like, “I like it. I want the house, I like the price,” and what that does is that creates other buyers at the same time going like, oh, 10 buyers like the house, but all of them know the price is too high, so they all go like, “Well, we like the house, we don’t like the price,” so only a couple of them are going to actually go look at it and they’re not excited about it.

The power of emotion, when buyers fall in love with the house and they like the price, is now you get their emotion, their desire for the house. They want to win. They get emotionally attached to it, and that’s what drives prices up in a market is when you have multiple buyers wanting the same house.

Back in the old days, whenever getting the word out to all the buyers was slow and it took a long time, it was different, but we’re not in the 1900s anymore. We’re in the 21st century, and everybody knows about every new listing the day it comes out, and every buyer out there, they see it, they see the house, they see the price, and they know the comps. Not hard for them to figure it out now, so they look at it and go like, “Ah, that’s priced too high,” and guess what? They’re not excited about looking at the house. If your sellers want to get the best price for the house, they’ve got to price it in a way that buyers love the price, and when they love the price, demand for the house goes up, which is how they get the highest price of all.

So there’s a whole lot of things that go into pricing strategy, but these are the three biggest keys that if you can get your sellers to understand this, it’s about the market, not about what they want. Understand that you know what’s up and you know what the right price is. Lastly, understand that if they price it too high to test the market, all they’re doing is turning buyers off. Buyers don’t like the house, they’re going to come in low, and they’re going to come in slow if at all, but when they price it right and buyers love the price, they’re going to come on hot and they’re going to come in high with those offers because they’re afraid that if I don’t come in high and hot, I’m going to lose the offer.

If you got more ideas or thoughts about getting listings priced right, make sure you post them in the comments below. Let’s carry on the conversation. Make sure you give the video a thumbs up if it helps you. Share this with other agents in your office that are struggling getting listings priced right, because it is so, so important. And if you haven’t done so yet, make sure you subscribe to the channel, and I’ll look forward to seeing you on the next video.