Many buyers think their house is worth more than the market thinks it is worth. So you may find you are aiming too high and become stale.
I think you meant sellers, not buyers...
I agree, many do. Do you? If not, and you are able to price the property correctly, what makes you uniquely different from those thousends that have sold their properties privately?
How many properties on the market with agents are over priced? Would you agree it's a significant number? Or is it only the "clueless" private sellers (and according to your logic most private sellers are clueless) that get greedy?
You keep going on about
others, but I'm talking to
you guys here and I am assuming that most here are sensible and reasonably knowledgeable. I fully expect that agents will try and shake any private sellers confidence and that's fine, it is part of their job. But there is no
logical reason that if a seller prices, presents and adequately advertises their property that they can't sell their property and save them selves many thousands of dollars.
The problem is that many private sellers don't give themselves the same chances to sell a property as they would give an agent. Often they give up to early, don't properly advertise, don't allow or plan for a reasonable campaign time frame and go into it on the basis of "I'll give it a little go and if I don't sell it virtually immediately I'll go to an agent". It's a self defeating attitude. The agent then says "see, told you it doesn't work" and has successfully made another (sheepish) industry client.
Has every one here sold their property almost immediately with an agent? Or isn't it the case that more often than not it takes a lot longer than you where hoping for to get an offer. And when you do, it's usually lower than hoped for (you simply have to listen to the market, says the earnest agent)? Be honest with yourself, it's often the case is it not? But do you condemn it as a failure of the agency system? No! You try and rationalise it (with the helpful suggestions of your trusted agent) as market forces, conditions, location, presentation etc etc etc. Yet if the same thing happens to someone selling privately you loudly cite it as evidence that selling privately
clearly doesn't work. Why?
I can tell you why... in a single word: Conditioning.