Selling Your House is a Lonely Business

Today is our house auction day.

I hope none of my readers are real estate agents, because I'm going to state a few things about them.

We've sold quite a few homes in our married life - probably more than your average married couple. We have tended to live a little bit like gypsies We build, we live, we sell, we buy, we build..... and so on. I am hoping that our move to Tauranga will be of a more permanent nature.

But I think Rob and I must have baby-faces, because every agent we have worked with treats us like naive children who must be taught the rules before the game continues.

But we think we know the game now - quite well enough to play our own, with our own rules.

Who does a real estate agent work for? The client selling, or the client buying? In fact, it is neither. They work for themselves. They're not really interested in anything except getting a sale, and getting their bite out of it. So they don't care what you get for your house as long as you get something so they can get something.

Our land agent very 'helpfully' gives us feedback from the people who have come through it during the open homes. A few positive comments, but alot of negative ones. So much of the feedback is about our lack of landscaping outside - the driveway just has gravel. There are no established shelterbelts.

For one thing - lots of country houses just have gravel on their driveways because they are long driveways. And as for the shelterbelts - the house is only 4 years old. How fast do they think trees grow? We do have a large fledgling orchard, and a 50 tree truffiere, and fully fenced around the entire property.

You know what I think? I think because they cant find fault with the house (and they can't - it's perfect), they have to find some negative to try and get you to lower your expectations on the price. I think that it is a training tactic given to these land agents.

The first open home we had, a family spent nearly the entire hour and a half here at the house. But the agent chose not to tell us this. why - because it showed a keen interest in the house which had been on the market less than a week.  How do I know they were here that long? Because I have a lovely friend living next door who was out with her binoculars. Haha! The agent did seem surprised when I asked her about it. LOL!

* Never under any circumstance tell land agents you have a found a house you want to buy. That just gives them leverage to pressure you to lower the price.

* Set your bottom line and never deviate - unless of course 3 or 4 years have passed and the house still hasn't sold.

* And don't tell the land agent what the bottom line is!

We love our house. We built it, and we know what it is worth. It is not a 'cookie-cutter' house like so many around our neighbourhood. We will not be moved to sell our house below the GV (government valuation), just because the land agents are trying to get a sale out of us so they can have a good Christmas. We know what we're doing. And we have God on our side.

Anyone who knows their Dickens will be familiar with General George (Bleak House).
I like what he says about lawyers - so true. My husband has to work with lawyers on a daily basis in his job and you should hear his opinion on the subjecct. Well, I think land agents are in the same classification...

'I do not like the breed.' General George of Bleak House by Charles Dickens