Soon after he listed his large, new Royalwood
custom bungalow with ComFree the nuisance
realtor calls started.
“You’ve been up for awhile now and still haven’t
sold,” they’d invariably start. “You’ll never sell
with them. Put it up with me on the MLS. You’ll
sell faster and I’ll make you so much more I’ll
cover my own commission.”
It’s the textbook “Big Lie” all realtors have to
tell, and you have to believe, or they and the MLS
are in big trouble.
It’s not true or, at least highly suspect, because
A) it’s unprovable and B) it goes against the marketplace
law of supply and demand that says that
the price of any home will be set by the price of
comparable homes it is competing against now.
Not by which sign is in the lawn. But you have to
believe the “Big Lie” or you will see no reason to
sign over a big chunk of your home equity to
them. And our Royalwood client didn’t.
The realtors’ problem this time was that there
were already three other MLS-listed homes for
sale on his Royalwood street that had been up as
long or longer than his ComFree home. They hadn’t
sold either, so why switch, our client reasoned.
He also reasoned that if he were to factor a commission
into his current asking price, no buyer
would ever pay that.
He was right. After listing with ComFree on
Aug. 1 his home sold Sept. 8 for $725,000, for a
saving in commission (assuming a 6% rate) of
$43,500 and a further saving in GST on the commission
of $2,175. His total cost with ComFree:
$734.
His home would have had to have sold for
more than $770,000 for him to have walked
away with the $725,000 he did. He knows the
marketplace would never support that.
And the three MLS homes on his street were still
unsold at the time of writing.
The Royalwood owner who had received the
realtors’ nuisance calls had one question for us at
ComFree. “Why aren’t you calling the owners of
those three homes on my street still up on the
MLS? Why aren’t you asking them why they’re
still listed with a realtor?”
One reason is that once you sign an MLS contract,
they make it very hard and time-consuming
for you to get control of your home sale back. But
that’s grist for another column.
