When you are selling a luxury-priced home in today’s marketplace, it’s absolutely crucial to choose the RIGHT agent to sell the home. A unique home requires a unique marketing plan to secure top dollar. Most homeowners have absolutely no idea what criteria they should be utilized when choosing the best Realtor® to sell their house and unfortunately, a large percentage of them make a critical mistake in the agent that they select. As a matter of fact, recent stats show that more than 55% of all luxury-priced homes don’t sell at all after being on the market for a full year! These homeowners have no pre-determined questions to be used during an interview and they have no qualifying standards to decide which agents are even qualified to sell their property correctly. Most home sellers admit that they don’t know how to choose an agent specifically for the luxury market. They make the mistake of hiring a "neighborhood agent" that they’ve seen some marketing for without realizing that there’s a good chance this agent sells less than half of the homes they represent.
There’s no question that working with affluent buyers and sellers requires a special type of talented agent and those agents are hard to find. Uneducated homeowners will simply interview 2 or 3 agents they’ve heard about in the past and choose someone based on their charging a low fee. This almost ALWAYS ends in disaster.
If you are selling your home, it’s one of the most important financial decisions of your entire life. It’s crucial to have a pre-determined set of questions and qualifications you can use during the interview to choose the best agent for the job. You certainly don’t want to mess up something this big in your life by choosing an agent based on their personality or a low commission. Frankly, if they can’t negotiate for themselves, they certainly won’t have the ability to negotiate for you. This means you may end up with a very low sale price. And if their sales success percentage is low on the listings that they represent, your home may not sell at all.
On the following pages, you’ll find a list of the selection factors to consider as you weigh each luxury agent against one another to ensure that your home sells quickly, sells correctly and sells for the highest amount of net profit.
1. Agent must have a tremendous multi-media direct marketing campaign specifically for affluent buyers that would want my property.
2. Agent must be able to demonstrate how they can make my luxury home stand out above all other luxury-priced homes for sale in this area.
3. Agent must be able to confidently describe the exact type of buyer that will want my home based on specific amenities and selects.
4. During our meeting, the agent should demonstrate specific marketing list selects that will target the most opportune buyer.
5. Agent must be able to show a detailed marketing campaign to target buyers that are moving up to this price range and down to this price range.
6. Agents must have formal training by being certified with Premier Luxury Marketing Consultants and have access to their promotional resources.
7. Agents should not pull out glossy magazines and brochures pretending to "showcase" the home, yet not be able to show you their marketing budget.
8. Agent should demonstrate their knowledge of marketing by showing me where thousands of dollars will be invested to promote the house.
9. Agent should be able to show me local, national, and international marketing that will attract affluent buyers in this specific price range.
10. Agent must show how they can target market affluent buyers based on income, net worth, specific selects, interests, and subscriptions.
11. Agent should demonstrate their complete marketing plan including online and offline promotions that will happen with my home.
12. Agent should have direct access to marketing list brokers that have merge-purged lists of affluent and ultra-affluent buyers.
FACT: According to many industry experts, one of the biggest reasons a homeowner doesn’t sell their home for their desired price or within an acceptable timeframe comes down to the agent they hire for the job. Selecting a "discount" real estate agent may cause you to sell for far less than the homes are selling for in the immediate area, if you eventually sell at all. If the agent you select plans to simply take some photos, put a sign in the yard, advertise it on a few websites and hold an open house, frankly you can do that yourself and experience the miserable results it creates. Why would you pay someone to do that? A good question to ask the agents you interview is "What can you do to sell my home that I can’t do on my own?" If they don’t have several good answers to that, they aren’t worth ANY fee. You get what you pay for and if you aren’t going with a full-service marketing professional, it may cost you tens of thousands of dollars as well as months and months of stress and disbelief as to what’s happening with your home.
FACT: An agent must understand the art and science behind pricing a home correctly. This has changed drastically over the past 5 years. As an example, pricing a home at $999,900 does not look “cheaper” than $1,000,000. It simply eliminates virtually HALF of the buyers that would be looking for a home like yours online. If their search criteria is $500,000 to $1,000,000 your home will be in that list. If they choose $1,000,000 to $1,500,000 you do NOT come up in that search. Only an agent operating in the ignorance of the 90’s would price a home at a number that would eliminate 50% of your desired buyers instead of pricing it at an even number. This is a great test to see if your agent understands today’s marketing world. If they don’t, you should remove them from your home immediately.
FACT: Listing your home at an unrealistically high price will nearly ALWAYS result in a sale price that is far below the area average comparable sales. When a luxury home is priced above the competition (even if only $10,000) it will oftentimes sit for months & months generating “lowball” offers. And frankly, even if you could get a buyer to agree to pay what you are asking, if there are no sales within one mile that are comparable, the home won’t appraise that high and the contract is dead. A few years ago you could get it to appraise higher than the area sales. Unfortunately all of those appraisers are in prison now so your home will not be able to sell for more than the comparable sales per the new appraisal guidelines.
Helen and Spencer are both working on the sale of your home together, rather than simply a lone agent trying to do it on their own. In hot markets and slow markets, our homes are selling faster than the national average and we many times end up with multiple offers on our listings, driving the sale price ABOVE the offering price. Selling your home quickly will allow you to make your housing transition under your terms and most importantly, net a higher sales price. Trying to pinch pennies by hiring someone that’s “cheap” may cause you to have your home listed for over 6 months, ultimately getting an offer at 15% to 20% under the value you originally wanted. This is tens of thousands of dollars to your bottom line. Speed of sale is critical to your home sale success, especially in affluent price ranges.
The only thing that affects the value of any given object is supply and demand. An agent that can demonstrate a huge marketing campaign can increase the demand for your home. This may drive up the final sales price of your home by $50,000 to $75,000 more. The net profit you’ll end up with once your sale is completed will be directly affected by the quality of the agent that is marketing your property.
Let’s face it. Selling a luxury home is one of the most complex transactions you’ll experience. With all of the target marketing, disclosures, disclaimers, and contracts, this takes a professional that handles affluent home sales on a regular basis. Selling your home quickly will eliminate the inconvenience and hassle of preparing your home for showings day after day, week after week, and month after month. Less hassle actually comes down to getting TOP dollar with FAST home sales. Only the best agent, certified in the luxury market will do.
If you feel like you may be a good fit with us and you’d like to sell your home fast and for top dollar, simply call us at (207) 776-5140 or (207) 329-5526. After a brief phone consultation, if it feels like a fit for us, we will arrange for an appointment where all of your questions can be answered, your home evaluated and if we accept your listing, the agreement can be reviewed and approved by both parties. Most importantly, we can consider timing, pricing and marketability to ensure that moving forward would be in the best interest of your family’s immediate housing goals.
If you are planning to interview dozens of agents and choose someone because they promise you millions of dollars or low fees, you needn’t bother calling our office. We do not participate in such auditions or interviews. You should only call when you’ve made the decision to try to retain LaCount Real Estates's representation on your home. Interviewing a couple of other agents will usually bring you to that realization very quickly. You’ll find that most agents are woefully unqualified to create a target marketing campaign to market your home to the most opportune buyers.
We are more than happy to meet with you with absolutely no obligation on your part or ours. This is a good time to answer any of your questions, demonstrate how we can net you a MUCH higher figure on your home sale than any other agent and of course provide our own "Agent Appraisal" for the true value of your home when using a superb marketing plan. We’d simply schedule a no obligation, in-home meeting to take a look at the home and discuss several different options for you. But we simply do not have the time to meet with uncommitted home sellers or “agent shoppers”. As an advanced warning, some weeks will prove to have a waiting list for an appointment and we’re unable to schedule the first meeting immediately. Plan accordingly. If you do plan to shop agents, please do so before calling us. You can simply use this Agent Selection Guide to ensure you’re hiring an agent that’s qualified to sell your home fast & for top dollar.
When La Count Real Estate handles your home sale, there are several key marketing plans that begin to get your home sold FAST and for TOP DOLLAR! The first step will be to map out a custom target marketing plan for your home.
If you are ready to get your home sold now, you will obviously take immediate action to schedule the first interview. But even if you are reading this Agent Selection Guide several months before you are planning to sell, it is appropriate to meet NOW, not later. We have a special "HEAD START PROGRAM" to ensure that your home is ready to sell when the time comes and that it will be up to standards so that we can accept the listing and sell it quickly. The Head Start Program is a very popular free consultation for luxury home sellers that plan to sell within the next 6 months and they’d like plenty of time to plan accordingly.
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