Surely I’ve touched on this subject before, but this time around, I have an intimate knowledge of the situation since I was involved in the (attempted) sale at some level.

I was going to call this blog post, “Accepting Current Market Conditions,” but I feel that this is really more about sellers making every possible wrong move during the listing process, and effectively making it impossible to sell their properties…

Much to the chagrin of my readers, I’m going to have to be even more intentionally vague with this story since it involves a former client of mine.

But first, I should emphatically state that this post isn’t meant to reflect any jealousy or bitterness on my part, since my relationship with this seller ended without a successful sale of her property.

I should also state two facts as I now sit in my seventh year of real estate:
1.  I have never had a listing that I did not sell.
2.  I have never had a seller terminate our listing before a successful sale.

Well, that is, until this latest experience with……ummmm…..we’ll call her “Agnes.”

Agnes owns a condo in a fantastic pocket of the downtown core, but unfortunately, it is located on the worst street, and in a rather old building.

When I first met with Agnes, I told her that I’m known for my brutal honesty.

There’s no point in holding anything back, I always think.

I told her that her street rates a “C” compared to the more sought-after streets, and her eleven-year-old building doesn’t get any attention as far as the neighbourhood goes.

People want new product, and in our market and in this area, eleven-years-old is, well, old.

Her building has no cool name, and it has no cool lobby.  There is no signage or frontage, and no concierge.  The halls are bland and the decor is old, from the carpets to the wallpaper.

It wasn’t going to be an easy sell, and as I told her, we’d have to do everything right.

We started off on the wrong foot right away as I told her we should list the property at $369,000.  The same model unit had previously sold for $363,000 and $368,000, and that was in a much better market.

Again, I make no secrets; everybody should know that March was hotter than May or June.  Right?

Agnes wanted to list the property at $379,000 because another agent had told her it was worth that.  I told Agnes, “Of course he told you that – he’s trying to buy the listing.  He’ll tell you it’s worth $399,000 if it gets your signature!”

Even $369,000 was a stretch, but I was willing to try it.  I had to talk her down from $379,000…

But our first monumental mistake (and I say “our” because I am equally to blame for not putting my foot down) was that Agnes wanted to “hold back” offers for eight days.  She wanted a specific offer date, “just in case,” as she put it, there were two interested buyers.

I stated that we’d be lucky as hell to get $369,000, and she shouldn’t worry about getting multiples because it was never going to happen.  But she said if I got to list it at my price, then she gets her hold-back.  Who was I to argue?

On the second day of our listing, an agent called me and said that her clients were VERY interested, and asked me to “keep her in the loop,” meaning that if we were going to look at a “bully” offer, she wanted to know.  I told her that she should encourage her own clients to submit a bully offer and that we’d look at her offer in ten minutes if she could get it on paper!  But she said her clients wanted to wait until our scheduled offer date because they were uneasy about the whole “bully thing.”

Sure enough, when I called this agent on our offer day, she informed me that her clients had found something else, and had bought three days ago.

Our offer date came and went, and we didn’t get a sniff.

I’d be lying if I said I expected any different.

Three weeks passed, and Agnes became very discouraged.  I tried as hard as I could to not offend her when I explained the obstacles we faced, but I don’t feel that she ever really understood.

Then she told me that she had spoken with another agent, and he suggested that they under-list the property at $339,000 and try to get multiple offers.

I told her that this was a terrible idea and that I wanted no part of it.

I asked her, “If you get two offers and the highest is for $347,000, will you take it?”  She said, “NO,” without hesitation, and I told her, “Then it’s an even worse idea than it was thirty seconds ago.”

But she was steadfast on the idea, and she insisted that we terminate our agreement so that she could work with another agent.

I wanted no part of her, and she wanted no part of me, and it marked the first time in my career that I was unsuccessful in selling one of my listings.  I’m sure this happens every day in our industry, and it won’t be the last time that it happens to me.  Agnes and I parted on good terms, and I wished her the best of luck.

A week later, the property was re-listed at $339,000 with another agent, and there was a “hold back” on offers.

I studied this listing carefully, not because I was bitter, but because it marked the changing of our marketplace.

On offer day, a colleague of mine called me and said that her client was willing to offer $350,000, and asked me if I had any “inside knowledge” of the situation.  Even though I was no longer working for the seller, I declined to comment, other than to say, “If your client wants to offer $350,000, then I suggest you do that.”

Offer day came and went, and the next day, the property was re-listed for $365,000.

And now, the seller has a monumental hill to climb in order to sell her property.

Why?

Well, in my opinion, she has essentially blacklisted her own property.

When Agnes first suggested that we list the property low and try for multiple offers, I told her that if we were unsuccessful, and we had to re-list at $369,000 again, the entire market would think we were insane.

Information is very easy to come by in my business, and every Realtor (and his buyers, by default) would be aware that the seller at 123 Fake Street listed the property three times, with two different agents, at three different prices.

Everybody would know that the seller is being unreasonable, and surely has unrealistic expectations.

I explained all this to Agnes way-back-when, and she still wanted to go ahead with her strategy.

But now what does a buyer make of the situation?  The seller couldn’t sell the property at $369,000, so she dropped her price to $339,000.  But then, she increased it to $365,000!  What is she doing?

That “PC” on the listing stands for “price change,” only instead of seeing a price drop, we see a price increase from $339,000 to $365,000.

As buyer, or a buyer-agent, I would want nothing to do with that situation, that property, and that seller.

And that is why this seller has blacklisted her own property.

The fact remains, the comparable properties sold for $363,000 and $368,000 in a hot January-March market.  Her property is probably “worth” $355,000 now.  But she won’t face facts, and she won’t accept current market conditions.

I was brutally honest, probably to a fault with Agnes, but I thought she needed some “tough love” in order to get a grip on reality.  Her condo is essentially ignored by the market and most buyers wouldn’t know the building is there unless they were specifically directed to it.

The building is old and certainly is nothing special, and this means a tough sell no matter how you look at the silver-linings and positives.

But when you over-price your property to begin with, then play pricing games, then piss off bona-fide buyers who submit honorable offers, then you’re blacklisting yourself and your property.

The irony is, I showed this property to a buyer last week when it was listed at $339,000, and my buyer said, “It’s not worth it.”

I wonder what he’d say now that it’s listed at $365,000?

I truly wish Agnes and her new agent all the best in selling this property.  Anybody who holds grudges in this business surely won’t be in it for very long, and I would continue to show the property if it were priced reasonably.  I owe professionalism to my buyer clients, and I can’t exclude any listings from our viewings, regardless of a decreased sales commission, or a bad experience with a “former” client.

But in my professional opinion, a property like this isn’t worth viewing because the seller won’t accept current market conditions, and you’re better off looking for a seller who actually wants to sell…