Selling Real Estate: A Look at Home Seller Trends

So, recently, I covered some of NAR’s buyer trends from their 2008 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers.  This time we’ll dive into the trends of sellers in 2008.

What Sellers Want Most From Real Estate Agents

As you can see, across the board of level of service brought by agents, sellers wanted real estate agents to help competitively price their home.  What’s curious is that sellers that utilized a “fee for listing” agent, most wanted”Help sell[ing] the home within specific timeframe.”  Sellers that utilized a “full-service” or “limited-service” selling agent wanted price assistance more than anything else.  If nothing more, this shows that sellers, on the average, get that price is the issue in selling their home.

Price Is King

At our core, real estate agents know that price is king.  Well-price a listing and all of sudden you have buyers battling over who gets to purchase the property.  Screaming deals don’t last long at all.  How many times have you had to explain this to a crestfallen buyer as they missed out on a great deal on a great home?

And NAR’s trends bear this out:  For those properties on the market for less than a week, a full 90% sold for 95% of list price or better.  The longer a property is on the market, the less it will sell for.  This simply means that what sellers know they want most from a real estate agent is exactly what they need.

Where’d the Real Estate Agent Come From? [Hint: not the stork!]

No, the stork does not deliver real estate agents.  63% of the time, sellers found their agent via referral or prior work with them. If you are not talking with your past clients, you are leaving a huge amount of money on the table.

63%!!

That is a tremendous number and should motivate real estate agents to do two things immediately:

1. shore up some kind of auto-prospecting to increase the number of clients you work with;
2. create an automatic, yet personalized follow up system.

Yeah, but would they work with ME again?

Well, unless you did a hideous job, didn’t communicate and effectively just showed up to claim a check, your sellers may not use your services again, but that’s just a guess.  If you didn’t treat your sellers that way, then 85% of your selling clients have said that they Probably/Definitely would work with you again.