BIGGEST MISTAKE You Can Make When You Sell Your Home

Don't leave money on the table. Today I'm going to talk to you about the literally the biggest mistake that I see when homeowners are thinking about getting their home ready to sell. Literally the biggest mistake. This is not even a question. And then after I go through that, I'm going to share with you the five pillars, the five things you need to know in order not to make the biggest mistake possible when you're going to sell your home. So I understand this because I work with thousands of people. Now I've worked with people who have gotten to closing and people who have not gotten to closing. And because of that, I can tell you there is a common denominator in the people who generally do not get to closing. So I have seen homeowners leave money on the table and it really frustrates me to see this happen, to know that these mistakes could have been avoided. So let me tell you about a story with a seller that I've been working with for numerous years. He had called me over to his house a few years before he was thinking about moving and I had talked to him about what updates to make in his home, what to spend his money on, what not to spend his money on. And he chose to update his kitchen based upon the fact that he was going to be there at least the next five years. And he knew that they wanted to enjoy it as well. I gave him some advice on what he needed to do in his master bathroom, what he needed to do in his kitchen, also with the rest of the house, with carpeting, flooring, things like that. And we had a partnership. We had no agreement. We had no reason for him to call me other than I was just giving him free advice. And you guys know that a lot of agents will do this for you, free of charge, no worries, no problem. So finally, one day he said, you know what, Katie, I think I'm ready to sell. Why don't you come over and talk to me about the house and let's see what price you'd put it at. So I go over to the house and I gave him a market evaluation and I told him $749. And I thought that in the marketplace that was maybe, I don't know, pushing it just a touch, but I knew that market innately. I knew it really, really well. I grew up in the same area. I had a lot of other homes on the market in that neighborhood. So I knew what buyers were saying when they were coming into the homes in the same location. So I knew all of that. I understood the dynamics. So then he also went and he got another evaluation from another agent. I don't always think that's a bad idea. And the issue was that agent came back at $599. Now remember, I told them $749. And so that was a huge $150,000 difference. How in the world could we possibly have had $150,000 difference? Now the other agent was experienced. However, she did not sell as much in the neighborhood that I sold. She did not know the little, little things that were going on in the market in that specific area. Because I did, because I had listings in that specific market. So she came in at $599. I'm at $749. And he said, what's the story here? So I went back and I did my comps and I said, gosh, I really, really believe you are at $749. I know this market. I know exactly what's going on here. And so he went with me. I don't always want to go with the agent who has the higher price listing. I always talk about that. However, I did really come in strong and I said, I really believe $749. And guess what? It sold at $749. So now what does this show you? It shows you that agents can be wrong. There are many, many agents who are wrong out there. And I've seen it. I've seen this situation happen. I can't even tell you how many times where an agent prices a home incorrectly. Now this video is not about pricing. It's a big mistake that you can make when you're selling your home, but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about choosing an agent who understands the dynamics of that market. Because if that seller had chosen that agent, they literally could have been leaving $100,000, $150,000 on the table when they sold their home. Literally could have left that on the table. Now, like I said, I see this happen in so many instances. It's not about overpricing. It's about choosing the right agent. Because if you choose the wrong agent, you could lose a lot of money and you could have an immense amount of stress. I have seen this happen over and over again. I have taken listings from people who they've been on the market for numerous months, even years. And the main reason they have been on the market for that long is because of the agent. I have viewers like you who are emailing me saying, what should I be doing? Well, listen, if your agent is not telling you your price is too high, that agent is the problem. So what I'm telling you is that the biggest mistake you can possibly make when you go to sell your home is choosing the wrong agent. Because the bad advice can have a cost. You just won't know how much until you've lost. And that is the truth. I have so many people who come to me after the fact saying, we should have gone with a different agent. Because they really determine your path. Now, many of you are going to say, real estate agents are worth anything. And I hear that all the time, but I have seen it from the inside. So the rest of this video is really going to show you how to choose the right agent. Because this other agent that they chose to interview was very experienced. But how did that agent not know what the price of the home should have been? I'm going to walk you through the five things that you need to know, the easiest way for you to determine if you're choosing the right agent. Before I get into that, I'm going to tell you that your first mistake, if you haven't downloaded our seller's playbook, is the place to start. Now, this 32-page document is full of information. It's totally free to you. We've had over 10,000 downloads of this document. People use this as their guidelines and their way of navigating the process, whether you're moving in a couple of weeks or you're moving in 10 years. This is going to show you exactly what you need to do in order to get your home ready to sell. Where should you put your money? What updates should you make? In addition, all of the questions that I'm going to give you in this video are in that playbook. So I want to make sure you're downloading our playbook and let's get into those five things to help you prevent choosing the wrong agent. How do you choose the right agent to know that you're getting the right advice that you need? Because you're a newbie, right? You don't know necessarily what the market's doing at that moment. You really haven't seen all of the transactions, all the mistakes that have been made and all the advice that has been really, really bad. So let's start with the most important thing that you need to understand when you're choosing a good agent. This is absolutely, hands down, what you need to start with. And that's understanding their professional experience. Most agents are going to say they're experienced and new agents usually rely on the fact that their brokerage has sold a lot of deals. First of all, take that off the table. It doesn't matter what brokerage your agent is at. Not at all. End of story, okay? Just don't even think about that. It only matters how many transactions that your specific agent has sold. So when we're looking at referring out our viewers and sellers that we're working with, you know, we really are starting with the basics of saying, you know, in the last three years, I prefer, you know, maybe like 150 transactions, which is about 50 deals a year. Now, when the market's a little lower, it's a little hard to hit that. But by doing 50 transactions a year, that agent is successful. That agent has had to navigate the market, has had deals that falls through and really is a full-time agent. Okay, now I'm talking about a single agent. I'm not talking about a team. That's a whole other story. Now, if the agent is selling like, I don't know, 300 homes in three years, 100 transactions, that's a lot. Okay, now that is a lot. That means that they probably have support. That means that they probably have a team. So what you need to understand, is it that agent or is it their team that's selling that many transactions? Very, very important. Because if you go to an agent thinking they sell three or 500 transactions in the last three to five years, and then you're getting handed off to a team member who maybe has only sold 10 transactions in the last three years. So I'm really looking for that experienced agent who is doing the work themselves and they probably have some type of a support team. I'm looking for a minimum of five years in the business. Now, can you be a great agent at three years? Absolutely, you can. And you can be a great agent at two. A brand new agent does not have the experience to really advise you the way a more experienced agent will. Now also, if you're looking at an agent who's been in the industry over 20 years, you may want to see, are they still working full-time? Because as an agent, it is hard to continue to open doors day in, day out and still do this full-time. So I look between the sweet spot of five to 15, 17 years of a really solid agent selling 150 homes in the last three years, maybe the last five years if their market is slower or they have a higher price point. Keep that in mind, the higher the price point, the fewer transactions they're going to have. So I definitely want an agent who is working full-time, non-negotiable. And you can outright ask the agent that you're interviewing. I also want an agent who understands your specific market. Now, I believe in the Chicagoland area, I can go in and sell anybody's home in anywhere in the Chicagoland area. Now, am I the best singular agent in a very specific suburb with a very specific subdivision? I may not be because I may not know the nuances of the market. So you really want to make sure you have somebody that understands your market. And if they don't understand your market at that very, very tight level, you need to know that. And that's okay for them to tell you that as well, because they probably are super experienced and can navigate any market in any area in kind of the towns that they do work in. The number two thing that you need to look for when you're looking for a good agent so that you don't make the biggest mistake and leave money on the table is what is their marketing look like and how is their presentation? Now, I'm going to talk about marketing in a couple of different ways. Just because an agent has really good social media does not mean they are a good agent. It means that they are a good marketer of themselves. This is really, really important to understand. Are they marketing themselves? Or are they trying to sell the homes that they have as listings? As a real estate agent, you have to market yourself. That's what you have to do in order to be successful. So I'm not opposed to an agent doing marketing for themselves. We do it, and I love watching a lot of agents who do great social media to market themselves. But just because they have a strong social media presence does not mean that they are experienced. And this is a really big mistake that people make is they think that their social media experience is really how they're marketing homes. So I want you to understand the distinction between marketing of themselves and marketing of their homes. Now, to go into understanding how they market their homes, I want you to look at their listing photos. I've done a lot of videos on how photos should look for listings. And if any of their photos look like the ones that I'm showing you here, it's probably not a good sign. And so when you're looking at these listing photos, I want you to look at them. Are they looking crisp? Are they looking clean? Are they looking bright? Are they looking fresh? That's how you can tell what their listing marketing looks like. Now, if they have a strong social media presence and their listing photos look pretty good, that's a plus, that's a great sign. Because most likely, somebody is not going to find the listing on social media. So whether or not they're posting the home on social media is not going to get the home sold. So you really need to be looking at these photos rather than kind of the social media. Now, also you need to look and see if they have a functioning website. As a real estate agent, there can be a thousand types of websites that we can have. And to have a good functioning website is a lot of work because we're individuals, we're entrepreneurs. And so to make sure all the links work, all the photos are working is a lot of work. Now, if they do not have a functioning website, that is a huge red flag for me because that means they don't know how to market themselves. Okay, keep that in mind. If they don't know how to market themselves, how are they going to know how to market your home? So it's really a red flag if they don't have their own individual site, not their brokerage's site, an individual site that they've had to put together, that they've had to write the copy for, that they put up all of their listing photos. So while marketing is not the exact indicator of are they a great agent? If they have great marketing, that is a huge step, a huge pillar that they need to have. So if you go back and you look at the pyramid, you're going to see number one right there is the experience. Now let's layer onto that the marketing and you've got the fundamentals of the makings of a great agent. So pillar three is how you are going to figure out if this agent that you're choosing is good is what is their communication like and what is their support like? This is also a little hard to figure out, but you're going to get some really good indicators right up front when you make this initial impression with this agent. As I'm going through this, I'm talking to you about all the things that we look for. If you're feeling like you need some help from us, go ahead, fill out the form here, and we're going to help you get to this point. Now, I want you to wait until the whole end because I want to explain to you before you just say, oh no, we're going to go and just get an agent from Katie. I want you to hear the whole thing through in what we're really looking for when we're referring. So going back to the communication and the support, like I said earlier, when we're looking at the number of transactions an agent has done, there comes a point when it's too many transactions for an individual agent. That's when they might get too big. And you need to be thinking about that because if they're doing too many transactions, they're not going to give you the attention that you need. So remember, if you're in a higher price point market, there are going to be a fewer number of transactions. If you're in a low price point market and maybe like 250, something like that, your agent needs to be kicking those out. And we're probably looking 50 to 80 deals a year. Now that is a lot. That is a lot of deals. Even the higher price points, if you're looking at maybe 25 to 50 deals a year, a fair amount at probably the over million dollar mark as well. That is a lot of work. And you have to keep in mind that they're not going to give you the attention that you're looking for. They're not going to give you the support that you're necessarily needing. And so you want to understand how much is too much, how much is too many transactions. And so when we're referring out agents, we're looking to see how many transactions are they doing and do they have support if they're doing more transactions? And what I mean by support is, are they having other agents work with their buyers? Because typically the listings are where these solid, solid agents are working. It's on the listing side. They're not necessarily working with the buyers. So when we're talking about listings, we're looking at different qualities than if we're looking for a buyer's agent. Right now today I'm talking to you basically about listing agents. So when a listing agent is doing 60, 70 transactions on their own and they have no support, they have no team, that's hard. That's really hard to do if they don't have a transaction coordinator. Because there is a lot of things that happen in real estate. You don't see them. You don't know. You think that all we do is just take a few pictures and upload them in the MLS. That's not true. There are hundreds of tasks for every single deal that we're working on and we can miss them because there are a lot of them and things come at us 24-7. People are texting us at the middle of the night, asking us if they can see a house. And so if they do not have support, if agents do not have support, that can be a red flag depending on how many transactions they're doing. So it is this give and take because remember, too many transactions and if they have a team, you might not get that agent helping you at all. So when we're looking for agents, we are going in to see, is this agent actually going to help on the listing? And we specifically sometimes will reach out to a team leader. I will ask a team leader, hey, I have a listing referral, but I only want you working on it. Are you going to be doing this? And they may say yes or they may say no. I'm going to hand it off. And then we decide if that's going to be appropriate. Now for a lower price point home, the teams are actually quite good because they have a lot of systems and a lot of processes. But if you're looking for a lot of handholding, a bigger team is not necessarily going to be the communication or the support that you're looking for. So this is definitely a balance too. So how you can tell what is their communication like? Literally, you reach out to the agent and you see how fast do they respond to you? That is a key indicator when we're interviewing our agents and we're sending them out to our sellers, we tell our sellers, now note, how fast do they respond to you? How attentive are they to you? How empathetic are they to you? These are all the things that you need to understand and pay attention to. And that's the purpose of finding an agent kind of early and seeing, engaging with them. Are they following up with you every week or every month? Do you want more attention? Do you need more attention? Do you want no attention? What is it that you're looking for? That's why engaging with an agent early is really significant to figuring out like how they respond to you. Are they real? Are they authentic? Now, many people are thinking they don't want to talk to an agent too early because they don't want salespeople calling them and, you know, hammering them. But what my thought is that, yes, you want to choose your agent early because you want a long-term relationship with this agent who's going to advise you in the updates year over year over year. That's really the ultimate goal. And that's why you should be finding an agent. If you're thinking you're moving in two years, find an agent now because you want that agent to come in. You want to interview these agents and you want to say, hey, listen, I want to work with you. Maybe I'm interviewing other agents and then see how they fight for your business. See what they do. See how they respond to you. See their emails. Are they remembering you? Are they not remembering you? Do you like them? Do you not like them? That's going to give you more of an opportunity to make sure that you've chosen the right agent. And then if you choose wrong in like a year down the road, you're like, I hate this agent. Then you can go and you haven't made the mistake of choosing the wrong agent. So the fourth thing you need to understand, the fourth pillar, the fourth way you're going to figure out if your agent is a strong agent, is a good agent, is honesty and professionalism and truly authenticity. And so this is really hard to figure out. And when we're looking at referring agents out to our sellers, we are looking to see, do their transactions match up with their social media? Are they more fluff in their social media than they are in their real transactions? How are they coming across in their videos? What is their interaction with us? Okay, we can tell in initial interactions if they're honest and if they're professional. It's very hard for you though, as a seller, to really understand that because, you know, you're not in this all day long. You don't really see the signs. So I'm going to give you three things to figure out. Is this agent, you know, honest? Are they professional? Do they have authenticity? First of all, you don't want an agent who is spending more time promoting themselves than working in the business. Now, I said that earlier, that's kind of hard to figure out, but you want to see somebody who's promoting themselves, but are they promoting themselves in the real estate world? Or are they promoting themselves just because they're great people and fun and you should just use them because they have a cool Instagram account? You should also look at the client reviews. Now, client reviews, a lot of them are full of it, like they're not real. And a lot of them just are kind of blanket statements. Maybe they're friends, maybe their relatives wrote these reviews. But a good agent is spending time getting good testimonials. And if you go into some of these testimonials and read them, you'll be able to see the ones that are real and maybe the ones that are maybe a little more fluff. Hey, would you give me a five star Google review? The ones that are real are going to go in depth, really in depth on what made their experience great. And that's really important to see. Are they talking about how wonderful this person was personally? Are they talking about the team and the great support that they had with the team? Are they talking about the transactional process, the stress-free? That's what you're really looking for. Not just, oh, this is a great agent. She has, you know, 550 Google reviews. Not really. You want to go in and you want to read them and look at them. Now, here's the issue. A lot of real estate agents have a lot of different platforms they can put their reviews on. You know, this is really hard as an agent because you cannot take the Zillow reviews and put them on Google. You can't take your Google reviews and put them on Zillow. So when you're looking for reviews, don't ping the agent because they don't have a lot of Zillow reviews, but maybe they have a lot of Google reviews. Typically, what has to happen is an agent has to pick a path to go down to get those reviews. We have one system. We're looking at Google reviews for us. Going down one singular system in order to get those reviews. And finally, the third thing I'm going to tell you about figuring out if this person is honest and professional is are they willing to walk away from their commission? Now, this is very, very hard to understand. The agent should put you over their commission. And there are agents that do this. They allow you to cancel your listing at any time. They are advising you. They won't take an overpriced listing because they know it's not going to sell. So it's important that you try and figure that out. Again, I've got a lot of stuff in my seller's playbook that will help you get to these questions that you can ask these agents. The last pillar, the fifth pillar is the most difficult pillar. OK, I told you the first one is the most important, right? The experience, the most important. This is the most important one that you get to choose. And only you decide this. So when referring out our agents, what we tell people is that the four pillars we are going to give to you. We are going to give to you the experience. We're going to give you the marketing. We're going to give you the communication support that you're probably looking for. And hopefully we're going to give you the honesty and professionalism. The fifth part of this is really up to you. And that is your gut. Your emotional connection and personal rapport with this agent. That is what we are giving to our sellers. We hope the only decision that they have to make is, do I like this person? Now, the problem is, is in the past, many of you have probably chosen your agent based on gut alone. And as you can see, that is the least important thing that you need to be deciding in choosing a great agent. So when we give you agents, we are giving you agents with all of these four other criteria. We do get a gut feel from them as well. But we are not you. We don't know if you like people who talk a lot. We don't know if you like people who are super detail oriented. We don't know if you like people who are super driven. So we're going to give you three agents to choose from. And then you are going to go with your gut. Now, you can absolutely do all of this by yourself. I will tell you that we referred out almost 500 sellers just this year alone. And the work that we've done on this is very difficult. The reason it's so difficult is because agents, some of them are really bad. Like we will reach out to agents and they will not respond to us. They won't even acknowledge us or they're super rude to us. And so I think, well, gosh, we're not going to refer this agent. And these are agents who have a lot of transactions. These are agents who have a lot of business in these towns. But when you look at the five pillars that we want you to look at, we're ruling people out if they don't match these. We are giving them to you so that you can say, I'm going with my gut on this one. And that's the only thing you need to choose. Now, as I said, all of these questions that you need to ask these agents that you're interviewing are in the seller's playbook. And you can absolutely do this yourself or you can choose to have us help you find an agent. Now, as I said, we've done this a lot. We've got our system down. We've got our process down. We understand we're going to refer you multiple agents in your community. We're going to decide if based upon your home, based upon what you've told us, if you need a team, if you need an individual support, if you need somebody really, really high touch or somebody who's not high touch, we're going to understand if you need a go getter or you need somebody who's like just really a great, great person. Now, we refer multiple agents to multiple sellers over our time doing this. And I'll tell you, we can tell when somebody's great, like when we feel good and we are on it, we feel really good about referring these people. And I'm working with you. And Lisa, as you guys know, my daughter works with me as well. And we find these agents. I am knowing exactly who you are and what your situation is. Now, if you have an agent that you're already working with and you think this is a great agent, sure, go ahead and shoot me an email. Now, I am going to be honest that we do get a referral fee on the other side from the agents if you successfully close. Now, here's the thing, though. Sometimes some of the agents that we have referred go into these sellers and they up their commission because they are having to pay a referral fee. Now, if you hear that from one of the agents that we referred to you, that is an agent you should not choose. Like, literally, no way. The referral fee that we are getting from them should come out of their total commission that they normally charge. They should not be charging more because they got your referral. So this cost to you is free. The reason I do this is because I have this immense pull. I really am here and passionate about making sure that you get the most amount of money for your home when you go to sell. It is a very difficult, traumatic experience for many, many people. And many of my audience are really over 55 and haven't sold a home for a long time. And it gets to the point where you just truly didn't realize how hard this was going to be. And I hate to tell people this in the end. And I'm always like, well, if you watch my videos, you would have known. I'm trying to prepare you. I'm trying to make sure that you get the most amount of money when you go to sell your home. So as I said, we've referred many, many successful sellers and they have become really friends of mine. And they're in our Facebook group and we talk back and forth. And I help them get their homes ready for sell, whether it's now or in the future. And now I just don't like to talk to you guys when you're in pain or you're in trouble. I want you to talk to me early enough. I want to build that relationship. I want to build that rapport with you. So the next thing for you to do so you can avoid the biggest mistake and leaving money on the table when you go to sell your home is the first thing. Absolutely free. Download that Seller's Playbook, OK? And all of these questions are going to be in there. And if you feel like you want to go and do it yourself, absolutely go. No worries on your own. Do it. The second thing is if you really do feel like you need help with this and you are looking for a partner in this and you're looking for a concierge for you, we can help. Go ahead and fill out the form. We're going to get on this and we're going to help you find the agents that fit for you. Now, we will provide you two to three agents depending on who you are, your area, things like that. We have a back and forth where you can email me, you can call me and you can say, hey, you know what? I'm trying to decide between these two agents. Can you help? And we do. We talk it through. And I say, you know, both agents are really good. What does your gut tell you? Because when we put these agents in front of you, the only thing you need to know is your gut. Who do you like? Who do you feel comfortable with? And what is your gut telling you? So I want to help you from making the same mistakes I've seen thousands of people make. And that is to make sure that you have the right agent. I know these videos, people hate the agent videos, but this is so important for you to understand that if you choose the wrong agent, you could be going down a path that is going to cost you an immense amount of stress and an immense amount of money.