“A sign of wisdom and maturity is when you come to terms with the realisation that your decisions cause your rewards and consequences. You are responsible for your life, and your ultimate success depends on the choices you make.”

– Denis Waitley

Accepting personal responsibility for our actions and decisions is one of life’s scariest yet most liberating lessons.  It’s scary because if things don’t go well, we cannot point the finger at anybody else, we have to face up to our own choices. It’s liberating because it gives us the personal power to take control of our lives.

Of course the opposite is true, although it may seem less scary to place the responsibility for our life onto others, doing so removes our personal power. It can lead us to being stuck in a ‘victim’ mindset – where we are at the mercy of others. This can be a very depressing space to be.

Selling your property, and more importantly maximising the profit from your sale, is no different. Many sellers think that real estate agents are responsible for ‘Selling’ their property. This belief robs them of their power to maximise their profit.

The sad thing is that in order to protect their commissions, the traditional real estate industry wants you to believe that they, and only they, have the power to sell your property.  Nothing could be further from the truth, so lets clear this up right here and now.

After 25 years in real estate and helping close to 1000 clients sell their property, I’ve discovered there is one simple thing, that above all, dictates if your property sells or not… your price.

Bottom line, if the price you want is well above where the buyers are currently prepared to pay – your property will not sell.  Now I’m not saying that you cannot increase your selling price by taking proven actions like presenting your property well. And yes, the quality of advice you receive from your agent, your strategy (approach to the market), smart marketing, and the negotiation skills of your agent will all help ensure you get the absolute highest price possible. But the fact remains, if the buyers in the market don’t see the value you are expecting, they will not buy. Any honest agent will tell you that, despite their skill, even the best presented and most brilliantly marketed homes will remain unsold because of price.

Now here’s the thing, who is in control of the price you are prepared to accept? You. It’s your property and only you can sell it by accepting what the best buyer is prepared to pay. The agent doesn’t sell it – they advise you, they market the property, they handle inspections, they negotiate on your behalf and they facilitate the process. But only you can actually sell it.

So the reality is that you, and only you are in control of whether your property sells or not.

Let’s for a moment assume that you genuinely want to sell and are prepared to accept the best price currently available in the market. Your next goal is maximising your profit from the sale. As previously discussed … Profit = Sale Price – Expenses. So after getting your sale price as high as possible (we will cover the formula to achieve that in future articles),  the next step is to minimise your expenses.  This is where the traditional real estate industry takes your power away.

Lets say that you accept ultimate responsibility for selling your property.  You understand that your actions and decisions affect the outcome. You follow a proven formula to maximise your sale price. You seek quality advice from an agent with your best interests at heart. You work hard to present your property at it’s best and you price it realistically. Within two weeks you get multiple offers and sell for a premium of $400,000. You were dream clients. Your agent only outlaid $800 in marketing costs and invested 7 hours of direct work on your behalf.

Your neighbours down the road on the other hand accepted no responsibility for the sale of their property.  They disregarded their agents advice, put little effort into presenting their property and were unrealistic with their asking price.  After 3 months of constant advertising, open homes every weekend & turning down two fair offers… they finally relented and accepted a sale at $400,000. The agent outlaid $4,500 in marketing costs and over 30 hours of direct work.

Why is it that you (who did everything right and therefore achieved an easy sale) have to pay the same commission as your neighbours down the road?

Here in lies one of the fundamental problems with the traditional real estate industry ‘commission-only’ model. It gives you no ability to reduce your selling costs and benefit from taking responsibility for your own property sale.

This is why we’ve developed a more efficient fee structure, where the easier your property sells (because of your decisions and actions) the less you pay. Your selling costs are directly related to the actual amount of work required to sell, which in turn is directly related to your decisions.  This not only empowers you to take responsibility for your sale, it also rewards you for doing so – by substantially reducing your selling costs and therefore increasing your profit.

So take back your power and the ability to maximise your profit by firstly accepting responsibility for your sale and secondly taking responsibility for how you engage your agent. (Have another read of “What is your real estate agents ‘Job Description’?).