How To Sell Your Home
The owners of 24 Frost Lane have a terrific house, a beautiful 1929 Normandy renovated to turn-key condition. It’s light , airy and includes great lawns and gardens, a skating pond and a pool. When you have location and the right house on your side, all that you need to sell your home quickly is to price it correctly. Wilson Alling of New England Land Company combined his extensive experience with that of a few other agents and came up with the spot-on price of $4.1 million. In a burst of brilliance, the owners took his advice. The house just came on the market; spotless, tidy (not un-lived in, just clean and neat) and looking fabulous.
So here’s what happens when someone does all that: the house appears on the open house circuit and every knowledgeable agent recognizes its value. This creates a sense of enthusiasm and urgency. Enthusiasm, because we all love discovering houses we’d be proud to show our own clients and urgency because we know that it won’t last. Every agent I spoke with on the Tuesday open house circuit agreed that the star of the day (year?) was this house. Multiple showings have been scheduled and I predict it will have an accepted offer by the time this article sees print.
Contrast this result to that of the typical over-priced listing. Agents see it, yawn, and earmark it for a later date when the owner comes to his senses. No enthusiasm, no urgency, no sale.
The owners of Frost Lane will be through the process of selling their home quickly, suffering the minimum of inconvenience while receiving a far better price than if they’d marked it up, let it linger on the market for months and months and finally accepted a desperation price. It’s your choice which of these routes you prefer; judging from the number of over-priced homes on the market, it seems that the majority of Greenwich home sellers prefer the latter. I find that odd.
We’re From the Government . . .
If the seller is paying the commission on the house you seek to buy, who does your agent represent: you or the seller? Not so long ago, the answer was the seller, and I used to froth indignantly at agents who I felt had confused their loyalties at the expense of my clients. My outrage was misplaced. While a correct enunciation of agency law, that law did not reflect reality (what? A legal principle askew from reality?). In fact, buyers’ agents work with their clients to find them the right house at the best price and have no feeling of loyalty toward the owners of the 20-30 houses they may walk through. After some mid-western lawyers got upset about this (and won a law suit or two), state legislatures took it upon themselves to amend the old law of agency and create the position of “buyer’s agent”.
So far, so good. In many states, such as Maine, potential buyers are handed a piece of paper that discloses that their agent will be representing them, not the seller. Everyone’s happy and off they go house hunting. Our own legislature, typically, was more ambitious. We are now required to present new clients with a three page, single-spaced legal contract binding them and us to a buyer’s representative agreement. We must get this signed at our first face-to-face meeting before our new clients know us or trust us and, just as I would, they whine about having their lawyer review the damn thing before they’ll sign it. That’s when we have to place a pistol to their head and a pen in their hand, a bit of brutality that accomplishes the job, but also imparts a chill into the subsequent motor tour about town that doesn’t come from the Mercedes’ air conditioner.
We agents could, of course, simply ignore the document, but as President Nixon famously (claimed to have) said, “that would be wrong.” The Smith & Wesson approach occasions the atmospheric difficulties referred to above. So generally, we mark down “zero” as the commission due from the buyer, emphasize that we will look only to the seller for our payment, drop the effective period of the agreement to six seconds and end up with a meaningless contract. This satisfies the legislative intent but brings in a load of unnecessary sturm und drang that starts the house search off on very awkward footing indeed. Thanks, Hartford.
The owners of 24 Frost Lane have a terrific house, a beautiful 1929 Normandy renovated to turn-key condition. It’s light , airy and includes great lawns and gardens, a skating pond and a pool. When you have location and the right house on your side, all that you need to sell your home quickly is to price it correctly. Wilson Alling of New England Land Company combined his extensive experience with that of a few other agents and came up with the spot-on price of $4.1 million. In a burst of brilliance, the owners took his advice. The house just came on the market; spotless, tidy (not un-lived in, just clean and neat) and looking fabulous.
So here’s what happens when someone does all that: the house appears on the open house circuit and every knowledgeable agent recognizes its value. This creates a sense of enthusiasm and urgency. Enthusiasm, because we all love discovering houses we’d be proud to show our own clients and urgency because we know that it won’t last. Every agent I spoke with on the Tuesday open house circuit agreed that the star of the day (year?) was this house. Multiple showings have been scheduled and I predict it will have an accepted offer by the time this article sees print.
Contrast this result to that of the typical over-priced listing. Agents see it, yawn, and earmark it for a later date when the owner comes to his senses. No enthusiasm, no urgency, no sale.
The owners of Frost Lane will be through the process of selling their home quickly, suffering the minimum of inconvenience while receiving a far better price than if they’d marked it up, let it linger on the market for months and months and finally accepted a desperation price. It’s your choice which of these routes you prefer; judging from the number of over-priced homes on the market, it seems that the majority of Greenwich home sellers prefer the latter. I find that odd.
We’re From the Government . . .
If the seller is paying the commission on the house you seek to buy, who does your agent represent: you or the seller? Not so long ago, the answer was the seller, and I used to froth indignantly at agents who I felt had confused their loyalties at the expense of my clients. My outrage was misplaced. While a correct enunciation of agency law, that law did not reflect reality (what? A legal principle askew from reality?). In fact, buyers’ agents work with their clients to find them the right house at the best price and have no feeling of loyalty toward the owners of the 20-30 houses they may walk through. After some mid-western lawyers got upset about this (and won a law suit or two), state legislatures took it upon themselves to amend the old law of agency and create the position of “buyer’s agent”.
So far, so good. In many states, such as Maine, potential buyers are handed a piece of paper that discloses that their agent will be representing them, not the seller. Everyone’s happy and off they go house hunting. Our own legislature, typically, was more ambitious. We are now required to present new clients with a three page, single-spaced legal contract binding them and us to a buyer’s representative agreement. We must get this signed at our first face-to-face meeting before our new clients know us or trust us and, just as I would, they whine about having their lawyer review the damn thing before they’ll sign it. That’s when we have to place a pistol to their head and a pen in their hand, a bit of brutality that accomplishes the job, but also imparts a chill into the subsequent motor tour about town that doesn’t come from the Mercedes’ air conditioner.
We agents could, of course, simply ignore the document, but as President Nixon famously (claimed to have) said, “that would be wrong.” The Smith & Wesson approach occasions the atmospheric difficulties referred to above. So generally, we mark down “zero” as the commission due from the buyer, emphasize that we will look only to the seller for our payment, drop the effective period of the agreement to six seconds and end up with a meaningless contract. This satisfies the legislative intent but brings in a load of unnecessary sturm und drang that starts the house search off on very awkward footing indeed. Thanks, Hartford.
posted by Chris Fountain at 8:59 AM
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