1. Daniel’s first point: Buyers care about what the house is going to cost them.

This from Mr. Swann: (emphasis added via quotes)

Our customers are telling us in no uncertain terms what they want: More! Newer! Better! Faster! “Cheaper!”

But even though too many homes are on the market, some of them are selling.

Which ones? Those homes that offer the greatest “perceived value to buyers.”

And where is that value perceived? In the quality of the home or in a “bargain price”.

One of the things I like best about listing appointments is listening to the sellers tell me what is wrong, in excruciating detail, with each one of the competitive listings.

At the end of the rant, I’ll say, “You’ve sold me.”

“Wh-uh-what?”

“You’ve sold me. You’ve looked at each one of those houses like a buyer would, and you’ve told me why every one of them is overpriced. Now tell me why buyers won’t say the same kinds of things about your home?”

2. Daniel’s second point: Don’t overprice it. This means price it to the market. Not “bargain price it” or “low ball it”.

Mr. Swann again:

We tend to be very careful about the listings we’ll take, because we want our homes sold in four days or four weeks, not four months.

But that leads us to “the most important thing you can do to make sure your home sells while others languish: Price it to the market.”

I want to talk about some innovative marketing ideas, but “no amount of marketing can overcome a too-high price.” If you are unwilling to “price your home to the market”, you might as well spare yourself the agony of listing it.

So Swann’s point is what? There is no point as far as ideas go. They both expound the same ideas.

Is it that Daniel uses simple sentences & crude drawings? Maybe he ought then condemn Hugh MacLeod’s cartoons or Kris Berg’s stick figures. Perhaps the haiku is next. Oh, that verbosity was beheaded.

We have gone from a sellers’ market to a buyers’ market in lightning speed. Not all sellers have been able to grasp such a dramatic change.

I write what interests me and makes me laugh. Agitating and aggravating my audience is not my intention, but sometimes it happens.

BTW: Don’t tell me what to do. I can think for myself.

Someone sent me Greg’s rant, but I had already read it, and it is the truth, I have turned down 8-10 listings this year.

We get it, sellers don’t. Any bit of encouragement is good.

There’s a saying in spanish that says “cada loco con su tema”!

I do like the direction Agent Genius has gone in providing quality “consumer” content with a no BS approach. That is why I was willing to write here and take pride in doing so.

As for the video and Greg controversy, I only state that it is good to focus on your targeted audience and know who that is. Here at AG, I write a little differently than I do at my own blog so it works a little better for your audience. Controversy, if properly directed can attract more “targeted” readers. Misdirected though, it can be destructive.

I watched the movie for the first time in my feed reeder. I think it was Joel’s post about it, but it could of been another as the movie was all over the place. At first glance, I didn’t like it at all. It actually made me roll my eyes a bit. After reading all the positive comments, I just assumed I must be interpreting it wrong, and decided to bite my lip.

But Greg’s comment reflected my opinion dead on so I finally decided to speak up. “Don’t overprice your home” might be good advice, but it comes off as low-balling. RE.net was all up in arms over the way Dubner & Levitt portrayed the industry in Freakonomics, but this sort of advice reinforces their position.

I’m not an RE agent, but I understand the frustration of trying to list a house when the owner thinks it’s worth more than it is. I get it. But the other way to look at is, I don’t need to employ an RE agent to sell my house for less than it’s worth. I can do that on my own, or even get Redfin to do it. I work with agents because I want to get the maximum value possible out of my home. I trust an agent to know the market well enough to do that.

I’d have to say, if the first thing an agent told me was to, “not overprice my home”. My reaction would be, “why is this guy already low-balling me? He hasn’t even seen my house yet.” To top off the movie, Daniel never even looked me in the eye when he said it. It’s the opposite of all his other great videos.

I don’t really know if Gregg is attacking AG in his last post. I took it to mean that Daniel never should have put it on HIS blog in the first place. I also didn’t take it as “GREG SAYS X, and that is the way of things”. I just took at as his opinion. Maybe the context depends on if a reader looks up to him, or over to him.