Summary
When multiple agents market your unit and use different pricing strategies, potential buyers may be confused.
Some agents may take photos of less visually appealing parts of your unit when marketing, which may leave potential buyers with a bad impression.
When multiple agents are involved in the marketing process, they will try to convince you to lower your prices to match the buyer’s price.
Article
One of the main reasons why people are unable to sell their property is because of control. There are two ways of selling property: 1) Getting one agent to take charge of the marketing and negotiation process of the unit and 2) Getting multiple agents to market the unit until one of them secures a buyer.
Different pricing strategies
When I first started doing real estate, a lot of people were opting for non-exclusive, open listing. I found it intriguing, but I gave it a try and became one of several agents marketing a property. The owner would tell me a price that he wants so that he can have control over the selling process.
However, when I looked at property portals like PropertyGuru, I realised that there can be up to five different agents marketing the same property using different pricing strategies. When multiple agents are using different pricing strategies such as view-to-offer and negotiable, buyers start to get confused.
Different unit images
The second problem arises when the property is not too visually appealing. For example, while some agents may only take pictures of the more appealing parts of the unit, other agents may take pictures of all the different rooms in the unit and even use videography. As I previously mentioned in the first part of this series, the pictures you post should give online viewers a good first impression. Only then will they actually give you a call and pay a visit to get a feel of the property. This is especially true since many buyers will do the renovation after purchase. It will be a shame if buyers do not have a good impression of the property simply because of how the property currently looks in the pictures.
Different motivation and incentives
Finally, one of the most important and overlooked aspects is how the number of agents affects your control of the entire sales process. When only one agent earns the money while multiple agents market the unit, the process becomes more complicated. Every single agent will become motivated to help the buyer instead of the seller. Since the seller will only pay the agent that brings him a buyer, the agent will be incentivised to help the buyer by convincing the seller to lower his price to what the buyer wants.
If only one property agent markets the property, his only job is to convince the buyer to pay what the seller wants. Should the buyer insist on a lower price, the property agent will not push the seller to drop the price and instead search for another buyer who is willing to pay higher prices.
Whether the seller or the agent has control over the whole process is one of the most important factors to consider. Once you have control over the whole selling process, you will have control over the buyer and you can bring the process smoothly to completion.