Struggling to Get the Price Just Right

In a perfect world, Dianne McDermott and her clients would never disagree.

Unfortunately, McDermott, a real estate agent with Re/Max Advantage Realty in Howard County, doesn't work in that perfect world. In real life, she and her clients occasionally struggle to compromise on some of the most important decisions involved in selling homes.

One of the most common causes for disagreement? Setting a sale price.

This shouldn't be surprising. Many home sellers remember last year, when the local real estate market was red hot. Houses sold in days, attracting multiple offers. Sellers could pick and choose the best.

That's no longer the case. The Washington area market, like much of the rest of the country, has shifted. Those multiple offers? They're long gone. The days of selling a home for higher than list price? Gone, too.

Problem is, many sellers have yet to accept this new reality, according to agents.

"The market changed quite suddenly," McDermott said. "It happened so much faster than it did in the early 1990s, the last time the market had a slowdown. Back then, it was more of a gradual thing. This change happened all of a sudden. Everyone knew it was going to happen, but no one knew exactly when."

The change means that agents are more frequently finding themselves at odds with sellers who still want top dollar for their homes. It also means that agents have to be more creative to keep their clients happy.

Sellers and their agents are supposed to function as a team, working together to get the best price, in the shortest time possible, for a home.

This happens, however, only after agents and their seller clients agree on what can seem like an unending string of questions: For how much should the seller list the home? When should the home be open for showings? What improvements need to be made before the home hits the market? How flexible is that asking price?

It's unrealistic to expect that sellers and their agents will always agree. But what if compromises are hard to come by? How can agents and sellers come to terms?

If they don't, the home-selling process, already challenging, can turn nightmarish. The best agents, and the most successful of sellers, find a way to turn disagreements into, at least, compromises that everyone can tolerate.