Fine point, Mansur,

My eyes did not register the words "to you" when I first read your post.

So I read your answer again and I went back to read Greg’s posts, again.

I'll summarize it - he thinks one agent gave a low number, one gave a high number. I did not think Greg implied that either agent was untrustworthy.

I inferred that the two agents had wide differences of opinion. I inferred that Greg did not have confidence in the quality of their opinions. People, even pros, can have differences of opinion without having their trustworthiness called into question.

My problem is with the semantics of the word "trust." I choose to define trustworthy narrowly as in having confidence that someone is honest and ethical. The word “confidence” may be used in a wider definition to include confidence (or lack of confidence) in a persons skills or knowledge, or of the quality of their work.

If someone is honest and ethical, but can't be trusted to tie their shoelaces so they they stay tied, I don't call the person untrustworthy. I might observe that the child is not competent at tying laces, but I would not say that she didn't seem trustworthy.


Consumers demand that agents to be 100% honest, 100% ethical, 100% trustworthy, they don't give much slack on that.

If they have 100% from the agent in those areas, they are sometimes willing to accept someone who is only 95% competent, 90% brilliant, and 85% hardworking.

Thus consumers are willing to work with agents that are fairly, very, or highly competent. But they only want to work with agents that are TOTALLY trustworthy. This is one of many reasons we have to be extremely careful when we use the words such as honest, ethical, and trustworthy.

In addition to determining an asking price, you need to get an idea of when and if your house will sell. How many houses have sold between $200k and $300k? How many are under contract? How many were taken OFF the market? How many homes sold last year for the month that you would likely close? What is the average time on the market? If there are 75 homes on the market and last Oct, 20 homes sold but this year only 10 homes sold and last year only 5 homes sold in Dec, is it going to be worth the effort to even put your home up for sale?
Ruth

I strongly disagree with Mansur. He does not have enough information to make a negative assesment of the trustworthiness of the two agents that analysed your home. I am surprised by you, Mansur, you usually have better answers.


Square footage being only one component of the CMA, It is quite likely that both agents believed they were using comparable and competing properties in their analysis.

The CMA compiler will usually calculate a dollar figure for square footage variances if most other factors are similar.

For example, If I am analyzing a 1700 square foot 3 bedroom 2 bath home and the best comps (other than square footage are a 1500 sq footer at 240K and a 1900 square footer at 270K. I might just split the difference and ESTIMATE $255,000. That means I would be guessing that the additional square footage was worth about $75 per foot. Notice that does not hold true for the entire square footage, it is just a number for only the variance.

Notice that the value per square foot of the smaller home is higher per square foot ($160 per SF) than the value per square foot for the larger home ($142 per SF)

Because of that price per square foot difference, the analyst still wants to use homes that are reasonably similar to the subject home. Comparing a 900 square foot home and a 3000 square foot home should almost never be done.

Greg, your home will not only be competing with the homes on the CMA, it will be competing with many of the homes in Hayes, and nearby towns as well.

A third type of analysis that I do as a check on the first two analytics is to see what other homes the buyesrs will be looking at if we pick a particular price point.

If the house comps out at $270K and there are fifty houses just as desirable that are priced the same or less, then I want my seller to go UNDER the competition.

Your competition will include short sales, foreclosures, and some extremely motivated sellers that HAVE TO SELL (Capital letters, underlined, bold, italicized) You merely "want to sell" (small font letters)

If you can't beat the competition on price and / or condition, consider leaving it off the market until values go higher. Of course the value of big homes might also go up, if the value of your smaller one increases.

It could very well be that one agent was trying to "buy" your listing by overpricing it. The other may very well have been lowballing for a quick sale. If, as you said below, neither had comps that matched closely, could the correct number be somewhere in the middle? I give my potential sellers an overview of the market in their area and this lets them come to a conclusion on their own where they out to price price to sell in a minimum amount of time.

I have the comps for both. The low baller gave me comps of homes w/ less sq. footage. The high baller gave me comps with higher sq. footage. Maybe there were none with the same or close too? I don't have a clue.

Greg,

I would interview a third agent with another company and get their opinion as well. That is a large gap for any area. Also ask to see the comps of each agent that should have given you a comparitive market analysis and question their pricing (how they got that specific number?)

Good luck on your sale!

Good Question. Someone has not done their homework. The first question I would ask would be do both work in your immediate area? What experience do they have? Do they both have the correct measurement of the home and beds and baths? Did they explain their reasonning for both of their prices?

This would be my starting point.

Questions drop me line.

Patrick J Tivnan
Investing In You

I was interviewing agents. No I didn't call them back because I felt one low balled me and the other was going too high. As a side note, realtor that came in w/ the lower price was the agent for a builder. We were going to put a contract on a new home. I think he wanted to get my house sold as quickly as possible due to the contingency of selling my house. We decided we want to move from this area so we didn't end up signing the contract. We are in no hurry to move so we don't feel the pressure some do. We just want a bigger place b/c we just had twins, have a five year old, and grandma is going to move in w/ us when we do move into a bigger home.

Make sure that anyone that tries to value your home shows and explains to you how they came to that value. They should be showing you homes similar to yours in the same area and condition that have sold recently. Make sure that what they tell you makes sense to you. Don't allow them to try to talk down to you or tell you its something you won't understand. If they don't do this, give them the boot. There are plenty of honest, ethical Realtors that will do this.

Greg, This is a regular occurance. What did the Market Analysis state for each party? Your Realtor/Agent should be referring to some data to justify their recomended listing price. Hate to be too obvious here but didn't you ASK THEM what's with the difference?
My experience in the business brings up all sorts of different scenarios for the price difference. We have a Realtor in our area who regularly "buys" listings by coming in outrageously over everyone else. He then immediately begins to request price reductions. Your market may be such as the lower priced agent feels the market is realisticly at THAT price point. The question for you are you interviewing agents who give you the biggest price or the Realtor who gets your house sold? Call them both back and ask them why the big price difference?

Are you saying you interviewed two agents or that two are listing your home? Hopefully you meant interviewing because having two listing agents could be very challenging. I am not in your area, but what I would suggest you do is ask for supporting data to back up their recommendation of price. Did either of them show you comparable sales in your area? What is the time frame each of them are looking at comparables? Have they both seen all of your competition? How did they say your home compares to the condition of the others? When you see the supporting data from each, you should be able to find the discrepancy, whether that be in how far they went back for the comparables or what area or homes they chose, etc.