Believing is seeing...

“I’ll see it, when I believe it.” (Dr Wayne Dyer), from a post last week in the Jack’s Winning Words Blog.

Read it again. That’s where we are with a lot of sellers right now. They don’t believe it, so they don’t see it. They don’t believe that it happened to them, to their house, to their equity. It may have happened to a neighbor down the street; but surely their house was spared and didn’t loose any of its value. They just don’t see it, because they don’t believe it.

Other sellers just don’t see the time that it’s going to take to get back the lost equity in their homes. They don’t believe that the so-called experts are right about it taking 10 years of more and they certainly don’t believe the Realtor sitting there in front of them who just told them the same thing. They see things coming back in a few months, if they just wait it out a little longer.

And what about those lowball offers that they might have been getting? They just can’t see “giving away their house, “ at those ridiculous offer prices. They don’t believe that the comps used by the other agent reflect the current reality. After all they used houses that were foreclosed or in short-sales; surely those don’t count when someone is looking at my house. I can’t see it.

And now, they say; you’re telling me that I need to lower my price again. What is this, some kind of bait and switch game you’ve been playing? We’ve only been on the market for 4 months. So what if we haven’t had a showing, it must be something that you’re doing wrong as my agent. It’s a great house and I can’t see that there’s anything wrong with my asking price.

What’s an agent to do with a non-believer? Educate, educate, educate! There are tons of articles and news reports and other third-party material out there to use with the non-believers. Sometimes it takes lots and lots of repetition to get the point across. Sometimes it takes more drastic actions – drag them out and show them what the comps and what they are selling for in this market. Sometimes it’s just a lost cause and you need to cut bait. You’ll see that too, when you believe.