By Carole Hawkins, [email protected]
What’s your comeback for that tough customer question? Hear what the Dueling Panels had to say about it.
Two teams of real estate veterans battled at this year’s REBar Boot Camp over how to respond to niggling comments and pointed queries from homebuyers and sellers.
Judges cried foul at answers that missed the point and a crowd of Realtors cheered their favorites. Who won? You be the judge.
Customer: “I want you to know, I am not giving my house away. I’m not going to even counter that offer.”
Leigh Brown, Communication Crushers: “Mr. Seller, I understand how you felt like you were giving your house away. If we priced it at zero dollars, that would be giving your house away.
“However, instead of getting all mad at the offer you have, let’s get mad at all the people who traipsed through your house and did not take the time to write you an offer.
“And, let’s work with these people and see if we can’t find a happy medium.”
Alexis Bolin, Objection Outlaws: “Mr. and Mrs. Seller, I can understand how you feel. In fact, I think that’s such a lousy offer, what we really ought to do is get rid of it. (Bolin rips it up.)
“Then I’ll just sit here with you for as long as it takes to sell it. I’ve got my extension ready. So, let’s just go ahead and fill that out. In six months we’ll see how you feel about things.
To the audience: “When I rip up the contract — and I want to challenge you all to do that— all of a sudden everything goes quiet. And then I say: I’m glad I got that off my shoulders, I’ve got the original in the files.”
Customer: “You just don’t understand, this is our inheritance and there are five of us. We need more money than that.”
Craig Wilburn, Communication Crushers: “If you don’t sell your house at all because we lose this offer, how much do you benefit in that scenario? I’m going to help you maximize how much there is for each of you by getting this thing negotiated for the highest possible price.”
Debbie Kirkland, Objection Outlaws: “Your momma would roll over in her grave if she heard you arguing over her house, so let’s sit down and have a chat.
“I want to figure out exactly what your motivation is to sell and how we’re going to divide this up in a timely manner.
“Think of me like your momma’s sister.”
Customer: “We know the carpet looks really bad. But we just want to give a carpet allowance. If we put something in here, we might get something the buyer doesn’t like.”
Alexis Bolin, Objection Outlaws: “One of our senior appraisers has a phrase: Carpet never ever wears out, it uglies out. And buyers don’t buy ugly. We have an ugly price and we have a price with nice new carpet.
“We need to either replace the carpet or we need to put the ugly price on the house.”
Craig Wilburn, Communication Crushers: “Very rarely does a buyer want to pay full price. Any time they see something about your house they don’t like, they want to pay less.
“Typically the amount of money they think it costs to replace the carpet is three times as much as we can get it done for today.”
Patti Ketcham, Communication Crushers: “But one word of caution — if we’re going to pay $7,000 for the carpet, we don’t get to add $7,000 to the sales price.
“Cost does not equal value and you’re not going to get your money back.
“You’re just not going to be able to sell the house without doing it.”
Customer: We appreciate all the work you’ve done, but Zillow says my house is worth X.
Alexis Bolin, Objection Outlaws: “Zillow is not an appraiser, it’s a search engine. The bank is not going to loan a nickel based on what Zillow has to say.
“Zillow is overzealous on their Zestimates. I think they drop a pin and draw a circle with your house as the dot in the middle. So, God forbid you’re a $500,000 house next to a $100,000 neighborhood.
“Let’s look at what sold in the MLS, what’s sold in your neighborhood. And, let’s not look at what somebody in the cloud, who has never seen your house before, has decided it’s worth.”
Doreen Peeler, judge: “It sounds like you don’t like Zillow. And I like Zillow. A lot of consumers are going on Zillow. We’re looking at all the prices. I thought Zillow was the No. 1 site.”
Wally Conway, judge: “My agent advertises on Zillow, but you don’t respect it. What is this?”
Leigh Brown, Communication Crushers: “To the audience: We do ourselves a disservice complaining about a website we don’t control. It’s bad manners and it make us look small.
“That’s why I say, it’s a great website — for cocktail parties.
“I have the Zestimate for my own house in my listing presentation. I show sellers why my Zestimate happens to be inaccurate, based on three things Zillow cannot account for, which are location, condition and upgrades. It takes away their defensiveness, because I’m talking about my own home.”