The local market conditions appear to be getting worse every day, mostly because the headline writers and social-media experts are piling on now.  What can listing agents do?

When most agents are content to show their listings and then go wait by the phone, there are alternatives. Hat tip to our manager Steve Salinas for bringing up the Reverse Offer technique in our sales meeting!

For two years, the buyer-agents have just been telling their clients to bid hundreds of thousands of dollars OVER the list price, so now they may need some help with advising their buyer on how to proceed in this market.  When a buyer shows some interest in the home, the listing agent can reach out to the buyer’s agent with more than just a casual request for feedback.

The Reverse Offer is where the listing agent suggests price and terms to the buyer-agent that might be the foundation of a potential deal. It needs to be handled tactfully, and with the seller’s knowledge so it’s not a breach of fiduciary or a waste of time.

It can be as casual as mentioning any needs the seller might have in their exit plan, or for terms that would be advantageous to the buyer like seller financing or rate buydowns.  But it can also be as formal as issuing written offers signed by the seller for the waiting buyers to consider – here’s more:

https://www.alexwang.com/blog/considering-the-reverse-offer

It’s worth considering because what’s the alternative? To just sit by the phone and hope it rings, and when it doesn’t, go tell the seller to dump on price?

This is the Wait-and-See period when buyers are so comfortable on the fence that it’s going to take something different to get them to buy a home.  Dumping on price during the Wait-and-See period only makes the home buyers think that if they just wait longer, the prices will go down more.

Agents should offer their sellers some alternatives to that!

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