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Sellers may think pricing their home high will create some negotiating room for them, but this strategy is seriously flawed as I point out in the book.

“But what this actually does is lower the number of potential buyers that see the home. And we know that limiting demand like this will negatively impact the sales price of the home.”

The better strategy is to actually price a home slightly lower than the desired price. This way ensures that more potential buyers will find the listing appealing and create greater demand. The end result of this approach is often a bidding war which results in a final sale price that is actually higher than what the seller was hoping for. This may be the single most important revelation in this section.

Another important point in this section is that the job of a good agent isn’t to just tell a client whatever they want to hear. They should be upfront and honest:

“Great pricing comes down to truly understanding the real estate dynamics in your neighborhood. An experienced professional real estate broker will take the time to simply and effectively explain what is happening in the housing market and how it applies to your home. You need a broker that will tell you what you need to know rather than what you want to hear.”

This explanation provides a great example of how to recognize a good broker and also how to identify a mediocre one. In any type of sales job it’s much easier to simply go along with a client’s desires rather than giving them what they really need. It takes a different type of mentality to tell them what they need to hear and many brokers are either unwilling or unable to adopt this philosophy.

When you look at hard numbers you can really get a clear picture of how effective a given real estate agency really is. In this book there’s a strong focus on the sale price to list price, as well as the average days on the market. The JRS Realty Group out performs the industry average by a wide margin. A typical agent achieves about 92% of the seller’s asking price on most sales – The JRS Realty Group consistently sells homes for 98.5% of the asking price. That can mean thousands of dollars in the pocket of the seller. They achieve this by following the guidelines in section two of this book on a regular basis.

One last thing that’s covered in section two of the book is the benefit of obtaining a presale appraisal. At a cost of a few hundred dollars a seller can get a clear idea of what their home is actually worth based on the market and the features of the home itself. This is a great approach to consider as it eliminates all the guesswork that might otherwise go into determining a home’s listing price. By pricing a home correctly in the first place there’s greater potential to maximize the profit from the sale.