Fool's Gold

Don't Overprice Just to Get a Listing

Commercial real estate brokers are, mostly, optimistic people by nature. They typically want to help their clients achieve their goals and maximize results. They use many approaches to marketing, negotiating and especially, pricing, a property.

Acting in good faith, they sometimes overprice a property when they sign a listing agreement with the hope of pleasing their client. This is done with best intentions but eventually ends up in repricing the property to sell.

Fool's Gold

Another approach to getting your listing is to dazzle you with what I call “fool’s gold”. This is when a broker intentionally claims they can get above market pricing for your property just to get the listing. Later, as interest lags and their energy wanes, they will tell you something like this – “after testing the market, we have found your property to be overpriced and you need to drop the price in order to get it sold”. Often, they do end up selling the property at, or even below, the market value just to get a deal done.

I realize this is a harsh characterization of some of my colleagues but it does happen. Thankfully, this is the few, and not the many, in my personal experience.

Get the Best Results

All of our clients want to get the best results when they sell. They want a smooth transaction, they want to avoid re-trades, and they all want to end up with the highest net proceeds at closing. The best way to achieve this is by thoroughly evaluating sales comps [historical data], the competitive inventory on the market [current data], and trends in the market i.e. is it going up or crashing down [future data].

Price to Sell

We developed an approach that is transparent, thoughtful, and effective. We carefully research sales comps, evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of a property together with our clients, and go to market with a realistic price. So, in the end, they feel like they got the best outcome possible and didn’t end up chasing fool’s gold.

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