I sold a house just before the pandemic struck. The realtor I chose, via a friend-of-friend connection, operated several agencies each with several agents; I would guess he had a few dozen people total working under him.
One thing quickly became apparent as we moved through the various processes involved in selling a home – he had his agencies and his agents optimize for volume. In the regions of CA where he operated, "throughput" was definitely not an issue, and so deliberately pricing homes low would cause them to sell faster and allow him / his agents to move onto the next client faster. Given the context, it seems clear to me this would yield more over the long term than fighting tooth and nail to drag out individual transactions to eke out every possible penny.
I caught onto this just before officially listing my house, and insisted we increase the asking price (recommended by him / his team) by 10% – a move he / his team objected to rather frankly. Nonetheless, the sale was completed within 6 weeks or so, at my asking price.
(And seems worth adding he never said thank you for the 10% [relative] extra he earned on the commission)
I sold a house just before the pandemic struck. The realtor I chose, via a friend-of-friend connection, operated several agencies each with several agents; I would guess he had a few dozen people total working under him.
One thing quickly became apparent as we moved through the various processes involved in selling a home – he had his agencies and his agents optimize for volume. In the regions of CA where he operated, "throughput" was definitely not an issue, and so deliberately pricing homes low would cause them to sell faster and allow him / his agents to move onto the next client faster. Given the context, it seems clear to me this would yield more over the long term than fighting tooth and nail to drag out individual transactions to eke out every possible penny.
I caught onto this just before officially listing my house, and insisted we increase the asking price (recommended by him / his team) by 10% – a move he / his team objected to rather frankly. Nonetheless, the sale was completed within 6 weeks or so, at my asking price.
(And seems worth adding he never said thank you for the 10% [relative] extra he earned on the commission)