Performing "Listing CPR"

Resuscitating a Cold Listing

Clients may not always appreciate it (or even know), but there's a big difference between what an attentive, skillful Realtor does in the course of marketing a home (a "listing" in Realtor-speak), and what someone less capable or motivated does.

To take just one example, consider what happens when a home fails to sell after an appropriate amount of market exposure (the more expensive the home, the longer the market time you'd realistically expect).

A Realtor doing the minimum will simply let market time mount, and hope a decent offer materializes before the listing expires.

A more engaged realtor will suggest that the client cancel and re-list, to re-attract the market's attention.

"Reintroducing" a Property

By contrast, a Realtor offering the highest level of service will formally "re-introduce" the property to the market.

That means not just going through the motions to cancel and re-list, but also:

--Putting the home back on Broker Tour (Tues.) and doing a Sunday open house.
--Networking the price reduction to other Realtors via email, office meetings, and the Internet.
--"Freshening up" the photos and literature.
--Tweaking the marketing language on MLS.
--Addressing any easily corrected showing objections.
--Revisiting the "comp's" ("comparable sold properties") and recent activity to determine the likely selling price (monitoring the market is really an ongoing task).

Coordinated and done well, all of those things collectively act like a listing "booster shot," and dramatically raise the odds of the home selling.

Of course, one might argue that the very highest level of service would be not having to do any of those things . . . because the home sold quickly in the first place!

However, whether or not that happens is ultimately more in the hands of the homeowner -- and the listing price they choose, the amount of fix-up and staging they do, etc. -- than the Realtor.