True Gotham

Perusing today's Carnival of Real Estate, I came across an interesting post from Florida broker Bryant Tutas. The challenge here is to tell someone their precious house--the depository of their hopes and dreams, their nest egg, and an expression of their personalities--is not nearly as valuable as they had hoped, all while courting their business. Not simple.

I knew it was going to be a tuff one, but I felt up to the challenge. The challenge was, they had been listed for 6 months with another Realtor at $360,000, when the house, maximum, is worth only $299,000. They had already told me on the phone they were ready to reduce to $340,000. So I really had my job cut out for me. I won't take an overpriced listing so my goal was to get them to reduce $65,000. Also, since they were with a discount Realtor before, I needed to raise the commission a couple of points as well. So, if you do the math, we are looking at more than a 20% reduction in their anticipated Net.

Big challenge, but I woke up this morning ready to face it. I had prepared an analysis, to take with me, that was over 70 pages long. Now I don't know how you do your CMA's but 70 pages is a little over the top to say the least. It included:

• Details on similar homes with pools.
• Details on similar homes without pools.
• Details on every pool home that had sold near theirs this year.
• A list of every home on the market in their area.
• A list of all of my sales YTD.
• My grocery list from last week.

Anyway, you get the point. I was loaded for battle and well prepared to defend my position.

For the record, the couple hasn't yet signed up, but he's confident they will.