I firmly believe that if you don’t feel really excited about your chances of selling a home, it will be hard to find someone who is really excited about buying it.
While visiting many offices across our network and sitting down to discuss stock management, the first thing I look for is how agents are reacting to their stock.
If an agent is not energised about driving traffic, animated and excited with purchasers, and confident that the next inspection will create a sale, it is fair to say the house is probably not priced correctly.
When I was a young auctioneer, I conducted an auction where the agent believed the reserve was going to be X and had, in their words, “no one interested in the property”.
After I saw the reserve was actually X minus 10 per cent, much to the agent’s surprise, within two hours of me conducting the auction with no bids, the agent generated three offers, and the property was sold that afternoon.
What I learnt then, and still believe strongly today, is that you only have to look at your energy towards your stock, which will give you a great indication of how well it is priced.
However, there needs to be some practicality to this.
If you are excited about the stock and it does not sell in a relatively short time, it is fair to say that your assessment of value is on the high side.
Cast your mind back to when the market was booming and every property sold for more than we thought it would.
We were wrong on the way up, and we will be wrong on the way down.
The market will continue to ebb and flow and invariably create the same flow of energy in agents.
Every agent and agency runs an SME (small to medium enterprise), underpinned by how the operators feel at any given time.
As days on market rise and clearance rates drop, this invariably saps agents’ energy.
Your energy and focus need to be on tasks and processes you can control; driving traffic to properties, asking the right questions, drafting quality vendor reports and having in-depth and direct vendor meetings.
These are all the things that are controllable.
Our data shows that the agent’s chance of selling a home drops quite dramatically after 60 days.
As the days on market drag on, the chance of the initial agent selling the property drops away, and the percentage chance of the next agent selling the property increases.
All that has happened is that the initial agent’s energy has dropped, which will invariably lead to a lack of communication and relationship with the current vendor.
Many agents believe that the second agent’s chance of selling increases as the vendor has already been educated on the market.
If that were the case, the property would have already sold.
I have spoken to many owners who have appointed a second agent, and their comments are always; no communication, no offer, no reports, and we were kept in the dark about what was occurring around the sale of their property.
Funnily enough, they never highlighted rising interest rates or the economy, only that the agent was not performing.
Days on market and clearance rates are controllable, but it’s a bit like the chicken and the egg.
You need to ask yourself what controls what?
If you control your processes and your energy, that might be a good place to start.
