so steve jenn obviously you guys have a great home it's gorgeous and we're gonna walk through the plan on how we're gonna work together to get that property sold did you guys have a chance to look at everything that we dropped off before our meeting yes yeah cool so before we jump into it i want to understand kind of just so that i'm on the same page and i'm clear you know why are you guys selling like what's the motivation behind leaving this property well we have kids we need more space you know we want more property different school district need more room got it and so what would you say steve is you know when you think of a move like this obviously movies have fun right you're gonna have you've got young children um you probably haven't done this very many times in your life steve what would you say is the biggest concern you have about moving right now probably cleaning out the closets yeah getting everything out of our house i mean that's that's mainly it yeah it's just the move itself um and making such a big change yeah makes total sense and so jen i mean is there any concerns that you have just up front just so i'm on the same page about selling the property um i mean kind of coordinating showings you know we live in the house we have kids it's kind of hard to get everyone out of the house so that could be a struggle but that's kind of the main concern i guess cool so so this is what i want to do i'm going to walk you guys through exactly what i'm going to do to get your property sold and then at the end of our meeting the three of us can have a conversation and talk about whether or not it makes sense to work together does that seem fair yeah it's fine all right cool so the first thing i want to walk you guys through is the the pricing strategy when it comes down to selling i mean the most important thing is how do we position your property in such a way that it becomes the obvious choice because what we want what the three of us want is to control the process to have all the leverage in the negotiation would you guys agree yeah so so understanding that the home has to sell not once not twice three times in order for gen steve for you guys to get paid can i explain yes okay so for a lot of people they're very they're very clear on getting the house on the market going through showings going to the offer process which is the first time it has to sell right we've got to get it on the market we've got to position it in a way which we're going to talk about just a minute so that buyers come in and give us a great offer that both of you say yeah this makes all the sense in the world that's the first sale now the second time it has to sell is the home's going to most likely go through a home inspection when that buyer when we accept an offer that buyers most likely going to want a home inspection it's paid for by the buyer and they're going to want to come in here lift up lift open the hood and make sure that there's nothing that they don't you know see that's wrong with the property does that make sense makes sense now to set a good expectations more times than not i mean inspectors are going to find little things they're going to want to nitpick the home it could be a little frustrating during that period of time just know we've got some options and even if the buyers want to renegotiate again if we do this right you can hold the keys to the leverage and the negotiation so that you completely drive the process and then the third time the house has to sell is the buyer's home appraisal so what happens is when we hit this when we hit the market and we have an offer we've got a legal contract at x price the bank or the buyer's lender is going to want to justify that price and so our job my job as your agent is to uh position the property with the appraiser so that we don't have any appraisal issues does that make sense what happens if it comes in low yeah awesome questions we have a bad appraisal yeah great question so during the home inspection and the home appraisal if in uh if something is found or it's a low appraisal to your to your point you can renegotiate you're not obligated steve jen to do anything okay so if the home doesn't appraise for the agreed to price let's just say we sell it at you know 250 000 and the home appraises for 240 and there's a 10 000 discrepancy we can renegotiate to a point that you guys are comfortable with or you're not obligated to do anything we can put it back on the market and find a completely new buyer that makes sense that makes sense all right cool so the first thing i want to walk you guys through is just a quick market snapshot of what's happening right here just in your neighborhood i'm going to walk you through the full pricing strategy in just a second but just right here in royal case okay when you guys bought the home you guys bought it at 165 homes are selling for on average 220 000 which is great news values are are up quite a bit here in the neighborhood now i want to walk you guys through what's happening i want to give you a framework so you know what to expect when we hit the market the first thing i want to bring your attention to is the number of homes for sale right now in the neighborhood is one this property i'm going to talk about it here in just a second serves as our competition now when i say that jen what what comes to mind uh that we probably need to be priced similar to the competition right yeah be better than them well that's exactly right i mean this property buyers that want to look specifically in royal oak estates only have two to choose from yours and this one and see even your experience how do buyers shop based on price yeah i mean the comparison shop right they're gonna look at this property they're gonna look at your property and they're gonna compare the two features and benefits and the price that we're offering and determine which one is the obvious choice i think you would both agree that one what we want to do tonight is come up with a plan so that your house is the obvious choice and this property actually helps us sell would you guys agree that's great okay cool so the next thing i want to walk through is the number of homes with offers right now there's nothing you probably heard on the news there's this lack of inventory there's no homes out there which is very very true so there are no homes in your neighborhood right now that have an accepted offer however in the last six months four homes have sold which we're gonna talk through in just a minute the question the the most important thing i'm gonna talk a lot about tonight is days on market it takes just over 30 days for a home like yours in this neighborhood to hit the market get an offer okay i'm going to talk a lot about that that number just a second and then the average list price ratio this number at 95 steve represents how much sellers in your neighborhood jen are getting for their asking price 100 000 house on average and they're getting 95 of that asking price does that make sense makes sense okay what my goal is my goal is to get more than the average matter of fact i want to position your home in such a way gen that we get not only more than 95 but we get at or above our asking price would you agree yep i mean that's the goal right is to get as much as we possibly can for the home definitely now you talked about showings and getting the kids and it's going to be we're going to talk about that in a little while as well on average jenna takes six private showings for an offer to come to fruition meaning we've got to show the home to six buyers on average in this neighborhood for us to get an offer again my goal is to make sure that that number is as low as possible and i'm going to walk you guys through tonight my plan on how i'm going to do that because i think we're all on the same page but we like to show it as few times as possible get the dog out get the kids out as few times as possible you get a great offer yep yeah i agree you agree all right very good so let's talk about the days on market for a second this number is going to drive the entire process of selling your home so let me explain when your house hits the market and a buyer walks through the front door on the first day and they give you a low ball offer steve how do you think you'd respond to that i'd say no you'd say no jen what would you say no why because everyone's selling for over asking price right now that's right so if someone watches the one they're on the market that's exactly right so do you believe that if someone walked through the front door the buyers probably are aware of that the agents communicating that the chances of them writing a great strong offer on day one is going to be our best opportunity to get the highest price would you agree yeah now let's let's reverse that for a second let's pretend your house sits on the market for 90 days someone walks through the home steve they love the home and they turn to each other and say honey we want this house what do you think that offer is going to reflect if you've been on the market for months and months it's going to be low because it's been sitting there something's got to be wrong with that somebody's got to be wrong or in a market where everything's spread yeah things are selling so fast there's no incentive for the buyer to give you a great offer if you're the only if you're at the only house that's been sitting on the market for months and months and months that makes sense yeah so let's go through the full pricing analysis so that we're all on the same page and so i want to verify a couple things so when you guys bought the home you guys bought the home um in 2004 at 166. 5 is that right yeah okay and public record has your living square foot at 974 square feet three bedrooms two full full baths with the finished basement that other full baths downstairs is that right okay so let me walk you through probably one of the most important things we're gonna talk through in our work together this serves this is similar to an appraisal okay so when i talked to that bank's appraiser like i talked to you guys about before this is the documentation i'm gonna i'm gonna serve to him or her so that we're on the same page so we justify the highest price this is the property jen that we're competing with right now this one on kenwood now this has a garage i know ours doesn't have a garage this has a two car garage they're listed at 250 000 3 bedroom one and a half bath a little bit bigger than ours and they've been on the market for 13 days okay so they're with inside that 30 day time for that time frame and they're asking 250. okay and so did you guys have a chance to look at the pictures i sent you on this property yeah it's not nearly as nice as our house yeah of course right i mean at the end of the day i mean we want to we want to make sure that you again are the obvious choice so what we're going to talk a lot about tonight is making sure that when we hit the market that the buyers agree with you that the buyers look at this house look at our house jen and say well obviously yours is the obvious choice right these four homes are the facts these are the four homes that actually came on the market and went through that process that i outlined with you they got an offer they went through the home inspection they went through the appraisal they got paid and now they're moved okay a couple key things here so if you look at the range they're selling from 220 to 237 okay we can't put all of we can't put so much weight on what someone's asking i think you guys would agree we can only look at what has actually happened would you agree with that yeah so the homes are selling between 220 and 237 regardless of what they ask for now here's the critical thing remember i talked about the days on market what's the average time frame steve that homes are selling for in your neighborhood 36 days 36 days i want to show you something these two homes that took look how long they took to sell one took 96 days the other one 126 days jen what happened here in your opinion they listed too high and it got stale that's right both of these people try to list really really high steve they ended up having to come way down on their price because to your point earlier the buyers walked through their home this guy was sitting in the market for almost six months and they had no incentive to get a good offer so they negotiate a lower price based on what they were asking can you see that yeah so based on the market based on us having no garage you have the finished basement i mean my recommendation and the market suggests steve that the home should sell about 240 000 now the choice that you guys have to make tonight is do we want the 240 000 on day one or do we want it in a few months from now okay and the reason why we look at 240 is if we go to 239 and we compete with this house at 249 to your point i agree they don't have a finished basement they have a two-car garage yours has a finished basement no garage okay i mean the buyer's gonna have to make a decision to say okay how much is it going to cost me to put up a garage but i can have an updated home and i want the buyers to to essentially worry about that and not you so the market's suggesting a list price of 239 is that something that you guys are comfortable with i think so i mean you're the expert jen yeah i mean i don't know i still think ours is nicer than that one active though like would it be worth putting a garage in well i mean i don't recommend that you come out of pocket with money at this point until we have real time feedback from a real buyer because i would hate for us to spend 15 17 22 000 on a garage not get that money back and now i'm the bad guy right yeah what i would prefer to do is get the house on the market and let the buyers respond so here's a recommendation if we compete head-to-head with this property at 249 one of three things is going to happen can i explain what you want and what i want based on what we talked about before is when we hit the market at 249 we should anticipate tons of showings and offers within the first two weeks now here's what we know we can only go off the fax this house has been on the market for almost two weeks as we're having this conversation they have not accepted an offer we know based on the market they've had tons and tons of showings they have no offers at this price so the first thing that we want to have happen is we hit the market and we get an offer within that time frame the second thing that can occur which is what's happening to these people is we get a lot of traffic we get a lot of we get a lot of showings we get a lot of interest no offers at all so steve if that happens to you what do you think the market's trying to communicate so we have a price wrong yeah i mean they're just not in line with what the home has to offer yeah and we can have a conversation at that time about making some adjustments the third thing that can happen jen which i don't think would happen in this market is we go into the marketplace at 249 and no one comes to see the home i mean based on the lack of inventory it's not going to happen it could happen i don't foresee that happening so based on that i'm comfortable putting the house on the market at 249 to compete with this head-to-head assuming that that we can always come back to this conversation so that we're on the same page because what happens if we sit on the market for too long then we get a low offer and that's the last thing that the three of us want would you agree i agree so we can go on the market at 249 if that's where you guys are comfortable with based on the assumption that within the first two weeks we should be talking about a legal contract and an offer that we're excited about is that fair it's fair okay cool all right so the next thing i want to walk you guys through i'm just going to make a note of that so we're going to go on a 249.
there's here's what i believe i believe that in a relationship between a seller and a listing agent and a listing broker that the sellers are the employer and the agent is the employee thus i work for you would you guys agree with that yeah okay so there's a couple of things that i want to walk you guys through how i'm going to steve transfer the risk and transfer the accountability off of you jen and on to me to perform okay okay so the first thing is my easy exit listing agreement okay how this works steve is if we decide tonight that working together is a good idea you're never tied down to a long-term contract okay now this does a couple things number one it ensures that i do what i say i'm going to do tonight because otherwise you can fire me jen at any time does that make sense yep does that seem fair for you guys yeah yeah i think so okay good i mean because what my goal is tonight is for you to make a decision with with absolute confidence that you're hiring the right agent without any reservations or without any concern because here's the number one complaint in the industry is sellers like you hire an agent like me and from that day moving forward everything goes downhill the communication is lacking they don't do what they say they're going to do and most agents are going to want you to steve sign a six-month contract and handcuff you to that contract whether or not they do their job does that make sense yeah so we put this in place in a listing addendum to ensure that you guys never run that risk assuming that we work together fair enough yeah all right cool the next thing i want to talk about is my smart seller program this program allows both of you to go out to the marketplace at the same time as me and and bring us a buyer because here's the reality we don't care where the buyer comes from only that the buyer pays you the most a premium for your home would you agree yes whether you find them i find them or another agent finds them we don't care would you agree with that conceptually where would i find a buyer well let's talk about that so what happens and it's not likely right it's not very likely in all the years i've been doing this that you find the buyer but this program allows you to do that and incentivizes you to do that which i'm going to walk you through see you in just a second but what what can happen is when your friends family members co-workers find out you're selling your home because your wife's such a great designer they might say holy crap jen i know you guys were selling the home bob and i would love to buy your home that happens from time to time okay if that happens and we'll talk about our flexible compensation we would only charge you a one percent commission to handle the entire transaction on your behalf and the buyer's behalf now steve to your point is it likely you find the buyer probably not probably not but we want to give you that flexibility to know that if you do you're incentivized is that fair yep okay cool the second way the buyer can come to fruition is if i put the house on the market and through my marketing efforts i go find a buyer steve who has no agent okay if that happens you would only pay a four percent commission does that make sense yeah and then go ahead question what do you do to find the buyer so yeah what marketing do you do to find the buyer yeah good question did you guys have a chance to look at my entire marketing strategy before i came over i did she didn't read it she's not interested i just looked at the price yeah yeah makes sense so we do a ton of proactive marketing i'll give you a couple examples so and you want an agent who's going to do more than just stick the sign in the front yard sit back and wait for another agent to sell the home you agree yep okay so some of the things that we're going to do is our google pay-per-click and our facebook pay-per-click campaigns what we do is you're obviously familiar with zillow right so what zillow does is they take your property they put on the market and they market it to specific buyers that are interested in that home well we're gonna do the exact same thing to your property we're gonna put your property jen in front of buyers who are willing able and financially qualified specifically on google and on facebook to get them interested not in an area but your home specifically does that make sense and i'll go through there's some other details as well but from a high level we want to proactively get the buyer now you have to say why would he want to do that well i'm incentivized you're happy if i find the buyer because you save money would you agree yeah cool now worst case scenario if another agent brings us the buyer we would pay them uh that that that agency their three percent my company would charge three percent now i want to walk you through our certified pre-owned listing as well okay some of our sellers in today's market um you've probably bought in a used car before i would assume at some point yeah oh yeah okay so when you see the certified pre-owned um when you buy a used car it's because of a certain uh reason and i want to walk you guys through this other option some sellers take advantage of of this and you guys will decide if it makes sense or not so we do all offer a certified pre-owned listing program here's how it works we talk a lot about tonight making your home the obvious choice right well another way to do that is to give confidence in the buyer that your house is more sound it's more solid than any other home that they could choose well how do we do that we do a pre-listing inspection before we hit the market i go out there i pay for a pre-listing inspection make sure proactively jen before a buyer walks through your property that any of the small things are taken care of we do a pre-listing appraisal to justify our listing price imagine a world steve we have an appraisal a legal contract that says that the home is worth 249 right and i can go into the marketplace and screen from the mountaintops that we've already justified that next is our professional cleaning so i'll have my team come in here we'll do a professional cleaning of the property i know you've got the young kids you guys got the dog we want to make that first impression as best as we can we also have a one-year home warranty which gives you listing coverage as the seller cover covering furnaces and and ac units while the homes listed and we give this to the buyer to give them confidence that if they buy your home they have a one-year home warranty that's uh attached to the property does that make sense yeah yeah all right next is our virtual walkthrough and digital floor plan we work with a great company called windows still and so what we're going to do proactively with our premium listing is imagine you could walk through your home virtually without having to see it in person through the click of a mouse there's something called a matterport and we can have the company that we partner with create a digital walk-through experience for any potential buyers online and provide them with a digital floor plan so that before they even leave their couch steve they can they can picture themselves inside your property and then lastly we do a property inspection a waiver analysis so we can work with our lender to see if we can get an appraisal contingency waived on your property proactively so if you guys thought that that made sense we can talk through that that program seven percent commission does all that make sense and you guys think that that's all fair and how the flexibility works i actually have a several questions so on your seven percent commission plan um which is high anyway moving on does that still allow for the easy exit agreement yeah and what happens to all that data that stays with the property if we fire you yeah good question so all of the so these are just different options so what happens is depending on what program you pick yeah this always stays in place this stays in place and this stays in place okay because i never here here's what should happen if we leave here tonight and say yeah it's a good idea to work together i want you to uh not just think it i want you to believe that i'm doing my part in doing everything i possibly can to get the property sold and if there's ever a day steve where you feel differently i want you to hold the keys to your future okay does that seem fair it does and then i've had other agents because we're interviewing several agents that that offered to do it at five percent commission yeah is that something you're open to yeah makes sense it's a great question a lot of people have asked me that same question in the years i've been doing this and i guess can i share two reasons why that might be a huge red flag yeah okay so the first thing that i that comes to mind is if an agent steve is willing to discount or lower their actual income that they take to provide food for their family and they can't negotiate their own income how likely is it that they're going to fight tooth and nail to negotiate your equity it's probably not that likely would you agree yeah i agree and then the second thing to consider can i share with you how real estate commissions work yeah okay great so if we look at a three percent commission okay one percent goes to the agent's broker okay you don't think that the agent can get out of that do you no there's no way right the other percent of that three percent commission gem goes to the agent's bottom line that goes to their pocket that's how they pay their mortgage payment pay their bills save for retirement that's where that one percent goes the last percentage should go into marketing your property okay now do you think that the broker is going to get paid yeah right yeah i'm sure do you think they're going to pay themselves yes yeah well if they do it for five percent what do you think they're lacking on marketing marketing i would agree so the concern that i have is at the at the on-site of maybe thinking okay if i can find an agent to discount one percent it might cost you tens of thousands of dollars to have a weak agent that can't negotiate on your behalf and doesn't proactively market your home that sticks the sign in the front yard and sits back and waits for the other agents to sell the home does that make sense so so my recommendation is you know regardless if i'm the agent or not is that you work with an agent who doesn't discount the commission because at the end of the day you guys care about how much you net in your pocket bottom line from the home of the sale is that right that's what i'm talking about okay cool i'm into that okay good all right very good so any other questions on this do you feel like that's all fair yeah that's true okay so now let's break down the numbers right see if i know you're a numbers guy uh another engineer type so let's let's jump into it so there's three different scenarios right we talked about uh what the market suggests the home should should should come on the market we talked about 240 and we then we talked about listing the home at 249. 99 okay so let's take that as our as our scenario at 249. 99 so everything we talked about tonight's gonna be ten thousand dollars more based on that price okay so we take the existing mortgage we pay it off of 98.
5 that you jen you said you guys roughly owe is that right okay you've got state transfer tax of two thousand dollars you have your title fees and then you i put in here jen worst case scenario commissions of us having to pay another company their commission and so if the home sells at 249 in your pocket you're gonna get about 133 in your pocket net bottom line after it's all said and done and this is worst case scenario can i share with you why yeah the thing i didn't include here steve was tax pro prorations okay so the buyer that buys your home is to have to pay you guys back the property taxes that you have already paid on the home this does not include that so worst case is about 133 000 now can you guys live with that number yeah i can yeah jen yeah okay if that's your worst case bottom line i hand you a check at the closing table for 133.
