Are the Prices Right?
By Chris Ryan, Real Estate Business Magazine, January/February 2009
“Yes, you did. I remember. I’m so sorry.” Those were the dreaded words Cheryl Fairbanks, CRB, CRS, GRI, e-Pro heard the last time she took a listing with a verbal agreement that the seller would lower the price if the house wasn’t under contract within two weeks. The 30-year veteran Dallas/Fort Worth-area broker had personally brought in two different buyers who — without Fairbanks divulging the market value to them — made offers that were exactly the amount at which she had told the sellers the property would sell. “Mr. Seller flatly refused both offers,” says Fairbanks, a consultant known in the industry as “The Pricing Pro.” At the end of two weeks, she met with the sellers to discuss lowering their price to the range she had recommended at the initial listing appointment. “When I mentioned that they had, in fact, agreed to lower their price, Mr. Seller — a macho, deer-hunting type of guy — shoved his chair back, jumped up and declared, ‘I never said that!’ and stormed out of the room,” Fairbanks says. “Mrs. Seller looked at me with tears in her eyes and mouthed, ‘Yes, you did. I remember. I’m so sorry.’” She released the couple from the listing that night, and their house never sold.
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