Welcome back to Mike Ferry TV. My name is Tony Smith, filling in for Mike Ferry this week remotely. All right. Here we are. Halfway point. It is June 16th, halfway point of the great month of June, and we are at the halfway point almost of 2025. We still have a lot of time this year to achieve the goals we set out to achieve. However, this year the market has started to shift in many parts of the country. Have the number of listings in your market started to rise? Is the inventory up? Has the number of sales maybe stabilized or even declined a little bit in the last little bit of time? Okay. It’s happening in most parts of the country. You know, if I’ve been selling real estate for the last few years and I have this pattern and this history, take a listing. It sells right away. Take another listing. It sells right away. Take a listing. It sells. And then almost suddenly take a listing. It’s not selling. Take a listing. It’s overpriced. It tends to cause a little chaos in our business. So, we have to adjust very quickly to what’s going on. One of the first ways that Mike would suggest that we adjust is spend some time on getting our listings sold. So, I want to cover a few points today about things you should maybe consider when it comes to getting your listings sold.

1) Price the listing the day you take the listing 

The first thing I wrote down is price it right the day you take the listing. Oh! Ta da! Okay. Well, that sounds obvious enough, but the reality is, is that when a market starts to shift a little bit, there’s sometimes isn’t data. I mean, there aren’t hardcore closed comps that prove this lower price for a little while. You know, you can’t go and say, here’s three homes just like yours. And they sold for less money, right? You have a growing list of active properties. You have some pendings and then the solds. So, we have to spend more time on that market analysis, you know, does it make a lot of sense to pull comparable sales that are 60 or 90 or 120 days old? Does it make sense? That number probably doesn’t work today. Should we probably be looking at pending sales a little closer? Should we definitely look at positioning within the active listings that are there, maybe even being priced below the lowest active sale? We have to get the property priced right to begin with, which means we probably need to spend more time working on the delivery of that. Isolate the pricing portion of your presentation, work on the delivery, spend more time on the CMA, and less hone and refine our ability to come out of the gate with the right price. Okay.

2) Introduce the seller effectively to price adjustments 

The second thing I wrote down is we need to start introducing the seller effectively to price adjustments. We recommend that you put a price adjustment form in your Pre-listing package. Okay. That price adjustment form is designed to show them and start sharing with them the. That’s normal. Right? Um, start introducing price reductions to your presentation. Were you aware that there’s 50 properties per week in our market that are actually adjusting their price today? Right. If we can get the seller accustomed to the to the belief of adjusting price, then we have a much better chance of them actually adjusting their price when it needs to be adjusted. That makes sense to you, I hope. Okay.

3) Work with our sellers about getting their property in the right condition

Look at three, uh, you know, buyers have multiple choices now. For many years, they had no choice. And when there was no choice, condition didn’t matter that much. But now that they have choices, condition of the property is imperative. It’s important for us if we want to get our listings sold, that we start teaching and training and working with our sellers about getting their property in the right condition, right from the gate. You know, we have to have those tough conversations at times. Um, your house is cluttered. Um, we need to clean up the front yard. Would you consider, you know, having the carpets cleaned, painting, uh, getting the house in the best position possible for day one of the listing? It’s. It’s tough at times, but it’s part of our job. So, can you start working with the sellers and have them understand condition more? Have you ever heard this statement? Uh, we’re now effectively in a beauty contest and a price war when it comes to selling your property. A little bit like that. So, let’s make sure that we bring our properties to market in the best condition possible, right along with condition. You have to consider show ability. Right? You know, uh, are these the days of, you know, appointment only on Tuesday? Only if I feel like it. Well, these are the days where we have to, you know, really help our sellers understand that if your property is not easily showable easily accessible, if we don’t make it simple for the buyer and the buyer’s agent. They have choices. They’ll just move on to the next one. So, condition of property and show ability are key factors.

4) Become an expert at the market statistics

Look at point four. If you want to really get your listing sold, you have to become an expert at the market statistics. All right. Uh, when the sellers are a little bit confused and maybe there’s a little conflict on pricing. We need confidence. We need authority, and we need to be able to deliver that. One of the simplest ways is to understand the market stats. How many homes are for sale in our market today? How many homes are selling per month compared to this time last year? How? What is the average time on the market for a property that sells, and how is that changed over the last few months? How many homes are just not successfully selling, expiring, withdrawing, canceling? Right. Um, you know, virtually our job is to understand those market stats. And can we bring those stats to a seller in a way that they understand it. You have to spend the time. Probably should be spending an hour or more a week really understanding the market conditions. You know, previewing property is not a bad idea. Taking a look at the properties that are actually selling in 30 days or less, probably not a bad idea.

5) Thoroughly pre-qualify a seller

Okay, stats look at number five. Since motivation is critical today, our ability to fully and thoroughly pre-qualify a seller is important. Is this a time where we should be spending a lot of our effort on a non-motivated, uninterested seller? No. This is the time that we should be spending our time with the motivated ones. So, we’ve got to be willing to ask all the questions, even the hard ones. We have a pre-qualification script. We recommend that you use it. Okay. You might even consider adding additional questions to that script. Mr. seller, if by chance you don’t get your home sold, what’s plan B? Well, we’ll just stay here. It’s fine. Okay. Um, Mr. Seller, I have to ask you a question. You only can pick one. What’s more important to you? That you get your home sold and you get moved near the grandkids? Or that you get the price that you’re asking for the home? Well, we get our price or we’re not moving. Okay, maybe not so motivated. Uh, Mr. Seller, are you willing to do whatever it takes in this market to get your home sold? Tough questions, but we have to be willing to ask. If we don’t get fully pre-qualified, fully motivated sellers into our queue, you know, 4 or 5 really unmotivated, unruly sellers will drag you down, won’t they? Pre-qualify is key.

6) If a listing is not sold within 14 to 21 days, consider this following presentation

Look at number six. Look at this. If the listing is not sold within 14 to 21 days, consider this following presentation. If their motivation is still strong, um, to be the number one or number two property in your market for sale right now, I’m going to suggest a price of X, which is actually 5% below the sold comps. Can you have that tough dialog with somebody that’s been on the market for 2 to 3 weeks? Right. It’s important that we learn to have these little tougher, confrontational dialogs with the seller about price.

7) Ask the seller, “Do you understand what these statistics mean and how they affect the sale of your property? Are you 100% clear?” when going back to work for price reductions 

How about this number seven when going back to work for price reductions? Um, ask the seller, do you understand what these statistics mean and how they affect the sale of your property? Are you 100% clear? That’s a tough question. Do you understand what these statistics mean and how they affect the sale of your property? It’s good communication. Okay. Speaking of communication, when properties are on the market for a long period of time, communication becomes critical. You know, we have a whole generation of real estate agents that have never experienced listing a property, having it be on the market for 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 weeks without an offer. They’ve never experienced it in their whole life. Maybe it’s you. Okay, so what do I do if I’ve never experienced that? And it’s three weeks into my listing and no one’s even threatening to write an offer. Some agents just stop calling. Okay? They don’t have anything to say. So, your communication week in and week out. Communication is critical. And I would ask you to look at maybe two things when it comes to communication.

First, I would ask you to bring out that plan of action. We have a plan of action that has been created. Hopefully you have a really strong plan of action, a series of all the things you do to get your listing sold. Okay, so we recommend that you bring that plan of action. You get that in front of the seller, and you follow along with that seller week in and week out with the actual steps that you’re doing to get their home sold. They need to know that you’re doing something. Okay. Get that plan of action back in their hands.

And then number two is consider this little cadence, if you will, with the seller. Week one. We talk about everything we’re doing and the work we’re going to do to get the home sold. Week two we talk about the results of those efforts, the showings, the lack of showings, the offers, the lack of offers, what’s happened in the market, the competition. And then week three, we address the price. Repeat. Okay. You could actually go on and on with the seller. If you follow that little cadence with each of the sellers you have. Right. Kind of important if we look at it. Are you communicating with your clients the way you should be communicating? Okay.

8) If you had a seller that’s been on the market for 30 days or more and has not sold, consider going back and re-qualifying that seller

And then the last one that I wrote down for today. Okay. If you have had a seller that’s been on the market for 30 days or more and has not sold, consider going back and re qualifying that seller. Consider re reminding Re-asking rechecking. Uh, are you still interested in getting to next to the grandkids? Are you would you still like to get there before the summer is over. Has anything changed with your motivation? Sometimes the motivation changes, but our commitment to coming back to the seller after 30 days live would be great. Sit down with the seller and go back over their motivation why they’re doing this in the first place. It shows commitment on your part, and it shows you possibly some challenges you might be faced with in getting the listing sold. All right, so here we are. Uh, most of the agents in North America do not know how to list property. You do? Uh, most of the agents don’t know how to price property. I hope you’re learning to. And most of the agents in North America don’t know how to get their listings sold, because they haven’t had to know how. Our job now is to dive into this. When your listing sells, you get more referrals. Thanks for spending a little bit more time with me here on Mike Ferry TV. We’ll talk to you soon.