Joan Klein Super Lister

Effectively selling real estate and listing properties in Baltimore requires commitment, tenacity, and hard work.  I wanted to share with you an excerpt from an article written by my client who was so grateful for my assistance that he wrote a piece entitled, “Ten Secrets of a Super Lister”. We all have moments like this when our hard work is appreciated and our clients take notice.  

Secrets of a Super Lister #1

Top listers concoct an exquisite witch’s brew of flattery, tough love, and attention to detail. That blend keeps the sales process moving forward, like a good novelist’s plot….The super lister walks a tightrope between empathy and gentleness on one side and steely determination and toughness on the other. –P. Belz

Secrets of a Super Lister #2: 

"My agent evokes Civil War generals who led charges instead of remaining safely behind the lines. I was pleasantly startled when this delicate butterfly in a designer dress began staging our home and suddenly morphed into a lady wrestler type, manhandling furniture and working up a profuse sweat. I thought of those Civil War generals who never asked their men to do anything they weren't prepared to do as well, and won their hearts in the process. Her action created an immediate bond with me as it implanted the conviction that this agent would deliver good value. The paradigm for demonstrating inspiring leadership is limited only by the imagination and by no means should all agents start manhandling their seller's furniture." - P. Belz

Secrets of a Super Lister #3

My agent has the ingenious ability to make a seller feel his listing is the only one she's got while the house may actually be fairly significant in her portfolio. She accomplishes this through conversation and availability. Conversations never compared our house to other listings or touted her credentials. She knew what our house needed to compete in its class and worked toward that goal with realistic requests, praise, and minimal denigration of the home's functional obsolescence. Her availability was a fresh breeze through an industry-wide code red of voice mail. Not once did an assistant call. She called frequently and when I phoned she answered immediately. Neither of us text messaged. We both preferred live voices. Assistants only did non-client contact jobs such as website maintenance, listing processing, mass mailings database updating, sign placement, and photography." -P. Belz

Secrets of a Super Lister #4

Listing turnover rate is a critical barometer in forecasting success in real estate sales. An agent must use listing selectivity and pricing to achieve a low-enough average-days-on-the-market to reach their target income without having to carry an unwieldy number of listings. A super lister never has stale listings. They can intuit motivated sellers from time waters. Time is an agent’s most precious commodity and stale listings devour it mercilessly. Listing selectivity doesn’t equate with snobbery but simply means an owner must be willing to set a sale price reflective of the homes condition, market conditions, and projection of an average or below average number of days on the market. An owner also needs to be amenable towards lowering the list price at predetermined intervals based on an agreed upon number of showings and /or days on the market. It is important to note that houses are like horses in that the cheap ones demand as much time as the expensive ones and time is both the best friend and worst enemy of the real estate agent. My agent will list any price home if the seller fulfills the aforementioned conditions, which demonstrate motivation to sell rather than test the market and egregiously waste a professional’s time.” - P.Beltz