One of the classic article-title tricks is to ask a rhetorical question, and then answer it, so you may be thinking that’s where we’re going.

It isn’t. This is not a trick, and it’s not a rhetorical question.

I really want to know: What do home sellers want?

If you’re a seller, then you should have one really really good opinion, so please comment scroll down and hit the comment key, and let me know. If you’re an agent and you take more than three listings per month, than I want to hear from you, too, because presumably you’ve answered the question well enough so that sellers choose you over and over again.

Every so often I get a bit obsessed with that question, because our web sites let us meet so many buyers, but few sellers. Yet overall we do every bit as good a job for our sellers as we do for our buyers. Vicki’s listing on Sandhurst is closing in a couple of days. Go Vicki! Some of our other listings have taken a bit longer to get sold in this market, but if you’ve seen our outlays of cash and time on them, you’d probably be pretty impressed.

Yet we don’t connect with that many sellers on line.

Is that because people looking for a home are looking for a home, and we provide that, while people looking for an agent are looking for something different?

Reputation?

A bargain?

Someone in a pin stripe suit?

Someone who seems to care for them more than the other guy?

I’ll Tell You a Secret if You Tell Me One

I’m thinking maybe if I share a secret, you’ll tell me one.

So here it is, truth or dare: I am competitive. I hate to fail. As someone (Woodie Allen?) said, “It’s no crime to fail, but it’s no great honor, either.” In school I was an A Junkie. On the Internet, it’s top of the search engine results or it ain’t worth playing.

You get the picture.

If I were to just work my business on purely capitalist principles, I probably wouldn’t even be here on line asking sellers what they want. This is a buyers’ market. If it was strictly about the money, I can assure you of this: In this market, buyers are cash in the register, while listings are things we spend time and money on with an uncertain reward.

But it goes beyond money for me. Darn my ego — I don’t just want to make money, I want to go home at the end of the day thinking that Elite Properties has succeeded awesomely as a listing firm as well, because I hate to fail.

I have an idea for the Elite Online Listing that I’ll be developing in the next few days, because I think it’ll help our sellers be wildly successful, and will help us be wildly successful helping more and more sellers.

But I don’t know: maybe it’s just another project.

Or maybe, just maybe, what you want in this market where six out of seven listings fail to sell in any given month (or fourteen out of fifteen, depending on your county) — maybe what you want is a guy who hates to fail. I hope that’s what you want, because if you do, have I got a company for you.

But I still don’t know, so I’m asking again. I told you my secret. Now you tell me yours.

What do home sellers want?

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