When You Feel Like You've "Gotten Screwed"

We went on a listing appointment several months ago and after giving it some careful consideration, priced the home at $2 Million. The seller said they were talking to another agent but never told us who it was.

When the seller went radio silent on us, we already had a good idea they were going with the other agent. Sure enough, we lost the listing.

When it hit the MLS, we were surprised to see the listing price was $2.5 Million, a full $500K over where we'd priced it. It was a nice home but didn't have a stick of landscaping, fencing, or even a pool. We pointed all of those things out to the seller but they obviously didn't trust our judgement.

We kept up with the home wanting to see if we'd really missed the pricing that badly but sure enough, it sold right where we predicted at $2 Million. Out of curiosity, I looked the agent up. Not only had they never sold a home in this area they'd never sold a home over $350K. That told us exactly what had happened.

We never had a shot at that listing. The seller was using us to price their home because we're the leaders in the area by a substantial margin. They wasted their time on the market with a riduculous listing price and we'd wasted our time preparing for the listing presention and pricing their home.

This will eventually happen to you if it hasn't already and unfortunately, there's really no way to prevent it. Fortunately, it doesn't happen a lot and most homeowners are honorable and respectful of your time. When it happens, you just have to chalk it up to the cost of doing business and move on.