Know The True Value Of Your Home
Even though many real estate agents strive to do their best for their clients, there are always those who are prepared to deceive homeowners, especially about the true value of their property.
The risk of an estate agent deceiving a vendor arose when a homeowner decided to sell and asked an agent for a quote on the value of their property. The danger was that an agent would over value the home to win the listing.
Almost everything in real estate is focused on finding sellers. Agents need homes to sell – no listings means no sales. Homeowners who were thinking of selling often sought the opinions of several real estate agents, and probably the most dangerous question you could ask an agent is “What is my home worth?” Some agents know that vendors would be asking other agents the same question and feared if they told the truth they would not win the sale.
Usually the agent who told the biggest lie about the home’s value was often the one chosen. Such lying could lead to a situation where, having listed a property at a high price, the agent then needed to condition the vendor into accepting a lower price – the true value of their home.
There are two stages to the conditioning process. The first is ‘activity’ conditioning, where the agents do, or appear to do lots of work. This stage can last for several weeks, sometimes months. It depends on your resistance or how urgently you need to sell. You may think all this activity is to sell your home, however, its sole purpose is to soften you up for the second stage of the conditioning process – the ‘crunch’ conditioning. Intense pressure is used to get you to accept a lower price. The crunch occurs when you are desperate to be rid of the pain of conditioning. If you are not ready, the agents have a number of high pressure tactics to make you see reason, or as they often call it ‘realistic’. The agent will commence a campaign – advertising lots of inspections – all aimed at getting lots of people to see your home. It is called exposure, and it seems so sensible, but it is just part of the conditioning process, designed to soften you up for the crunch.
Activity conditioning damages the value of a seller’s home and is one of the major reasons why homes sold for thousands of dollars below their best market value.
To protect themselves from this, vendor’s need to have a good knowledge of the current market – what comparable homes have recently sold for, the current strength of the market, and what is available now for sale. Vendors should price their property close to the market price when they want to get the best price the market will pay now. Overpricing NOW usually leads to a LOWER price later. Of course, if you don’t really WANT to sell your property at the best market price for TODAY, it might be best to keep it off the market until you DO want to sell it for the best market price of that time!
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