The gap between what vendors hope to achieve and what buyers are willing to pay has been getting wider.
But while many agents are riding out the current conditions, those with disciplined processes are still selling ten properties a month – and they’re not complaining about tough conditions.
Sales coach Caroline Bolderston believes there are a few key factors that separate them.
“Agents have lost a bit of control in this climate,” Ms Bolderston says.
“They feel like buyers are flaky, there’s not many of them. The new normal really is if you’ve got one willing, capable buyer for each property, that’s good.
“You should feel good about that. But agents wish it was different. They want there to be multiple buyers.”
That gap between expectation and reality isn’t just affecting agents.
It’s creating friction with vendors too, and it’s where many campaigns are coming unstuck.
The expectation gap
Ms Bolderston, who is currently working with a number of leading sales agents across Sydney and Australia, has noticed a pattern in her coaching conversations over recent weeks.
Vendors aren’t necessarily deluded about market conditions – they know it’s not a boom.
But they’re anchored to prices from twelve or eighteen months ago, when there were more buyers and different conditions.
“They’re looking backwards,” she says.
“It might be a property that sold in the building or on the street. It might have sold twelve months ago, eighteen months ago. And so they’re still hoping they can get the price they’d love to get if they sold back when they’re referring to.”
Here’s where it gets tricky for agents.
If you don’t back what a vendor is hoping to get, you often don’t win the listing. The business goes to the agent who appears to believe in the property.
“That’s an underlying situation that leads agents to being a little more passive when they actually win a listing,” Ms Bolderston explains.
“They’re not having the conversations they need to based on what the market is actually doing.”
Three prices, one conversation
The solution, according to Ms Bolderston, isn’t to simply tell vendors what they want to hear.
Nor is it to lead with a conservative valuation that makes you look like you don’t believe in the property.
Instead, agents need to have three pricing conversations – ideally before they even get to the listing presentation.
“You’ve got to talk about the aspirational price – what the vendor wants to aspire to,” she says.
“Then you’ve got to talk about a market price that would be representative of a competitive market. And then you have to talk about a price that we can almost guarantee, based on what the current conditions are.”
The key is framing these as options, not ultimatums.
“If they want to start with the aspirational price, there’s nothing wrong with that,” Ms Bolderston says.
“But this is where the agent’s process has to be very clear. Let’s take a two-stage approach. Let’s try for two weeks. If we haven’t identified a buyer, we’re not in negotiations, then we’ll look at how we’re going to position it and launch it for an auction campaign or whatever the chosen method is.”
What’s missing for many agents is time frames.
“The agents aren’t putting time frames on the strategy,” she says.
“It’s just ‘Great, we’ll go to market, let’s see what we can do.’ They’ve lost control.”
The question most agents forget to ask
Before any listing meeting, Ms Bolderston believes agents should be asking one crucial question – and it’s not about what the property is worth.
“Every property owner has a secret desire around price,” she says.
“There’s no way that any property owner hasn’t got a secret hope on price before they meet agents. You have to find out what the aspirational price is.”
The question she recommends is: “What would be your dream price? What would you love to get?”
It’s deliberately different from asking what they think it’s worth.
That question invites a valuation conversation.
The dream price question invites honesty about expectations.
“Once you know what that is, now you can have an honest conversation,” Ms Bolderston says.
“You can let the vendor know that we can absolutely test and work towards getting this price. So you can back that. But then you also layer in the price that the market might indicate based on recent sales.”
When agents only talk about one price – either too conservative or too optimistic – they either lose the listing or win it with a damaged relationship from day one.
Process precedes performance
Ms Bolderston recently worked with a sales associate whose listing had been on the market for nearly three months.
The owners had already bought their next property and were approaching financial pressure.
“Through my conversation I said, ‘Why is it taking the client to ask that question? Why haven’t you guys, two weeks in when you know the market’s not engaging, raised that then and there so you can make some decisions?'”
His answer was, “I don’t know. I just think we seem to be quite passive. We’re just going along waiting for something to happen.”
This is the pattern Ms Bolderston sees repeatedly.
When markets tighten, agents start describing conversations as “tough” and begin avoiding them.
But the reframe she suggests is that these aren’t tough conversations, they’re direct conversations.
“Have them every two weeks so you can assess where you’re at, make some recommendations,” she advises.
“The responsibility then goes to the owner to make the decision about which way they want to go next. But the agent has to guide them.”
The agents who aren’t complaining
While these patterns are showing up most clearly in Sydney right now, Ms Bolderston notes that every marketplace goes through cycles like this – and Brisbane and others may not be far behind.
“Agents that I work with who are highly process-driven regardless of the climate – they know their steps, they follow them every time – they’re the ones thriving right now, selling ten properties a month,” she says.
“They’re not saying the market’s tough, the market’s bad. Because their process adapts to any market.”
It’s a hangover from the boom years, Ms Bolderston suggests.
When everything was selling quickly, agents could afford to be less precise.
Processes slipped because they weren’t needed.
“When the market’s booming, agents lose their precision around their process because things just happen too easily,” she says.
“And then they’re caught out. When it shifts, it shifts slowly, it creeps in, but then when it hits, you’re stuck in the middle of campaigns.”
Her advice for anyone in that position now – or preparing for when it inevitably arrives?
“Process always precedes performance. Always. Don’t drop the process. That’s when you get caught.”
