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Agents and brokers are used to the new rules of the present down market, where homes are still selling fast but not as quickly as in previous years.
But some of their clients haven’t yet gotten the memo that the pandemic-era housing frenzy is over.
“It’s a house, not a sandwich,” Portland-area real estate broker Sarita Dua, of Keller Williams, said. “It’s supposed to take some time. But they got so conditioned based on what their neighbors did.”
Managing client expectations is still a struggle more than a year into the current housing downturn, Dua said Tuesday as part of a panel of real estate professionals at Inman Connect Las Vegas. They discussed strategies for guiding reluctant sellers through today’s tricky housing environment.
One of the biggest challenges agents face is trepidation from seller clients who feel pressured to stay in their current homes rather than move to houses that will come with higher mortgage rates, said Talia McKinney, a salesperson at Ryan Serhant’s New York brokerage.
McKinney said that clients often focus on the rates rather than the benefits of listing homes in a market in which buyers are still jockeying for relatively few home listings.
“We’re in real estate and we do this every single day,” she said. “So we need to be those people who are like, ‘This is a time when we can benefit financially, and you can get a lot more money than you were thinking than you could have otherwise.'”
However, listing a home and buying another is a complex choice for any real estate client, and agents can help clarify the decision. In the case of first-time buyers, reluctance to buy because of high rates could mean paying more for housing in the long run — including up front in the form of rents.
“You’re going to pay a mortgage anyways, whether it’s yours or your landlord’s,” Dua said. “So it’s actually understanding that programs are out there. There’s [mortgage rate] buydowns. There’s concessions.”
In New York, McKinney said she is seeing all-cash buyer and investor activity at all of her price points, which range from $4,000-a-month apartments to units that list with a sale price in the tens of millions. Any time this many cash buyers and investors are in the mix, it can be a boon for sellers listing their homes — and McKinney argues clients should be made aware of how they stand to gain.
At the same time, Dua said, selling a home isn’t the right call for everybody right now. And real estate agents should always listen closely to their clients’ desires, concerns and fears before giving advice.
“I look at it this way: I’m going to be their Realtor today, tomorrow or 10 years from now, and I want to find the right solution for them,” Dua said.
