Struggling to Get the Price Just Right

That's why Peek prefers to offer a compromise to sellers who insist on a price that he thinks is too high. He will offer to list the home at the inflated price for a specific period of time, say two weeks to a month. If the house fetches good offers at that price, that's great. But if it doesn't bring any? Then Peek drops the price to what he originally thought was appropriate.

If a seller doesn't agree to this, Peek may make the hard decision to walk away from the listing.

Rob Bergman, an agent with the Georgetown office of Re/Max Allegiance, knows firsthand how steadfast sellers can be when it comes to pricing their homes. Earlier this year, a seller wouldn't compromise on the price of his Victorian house, refusing to list it for anything less than what he thought a four-bedroom house should nab.

Problem was, the four bedrooms in this Victorian on the north end of Capitol Hill were not typical: On both sides of the upper floor, residents had to walk through one bedroom to get to the one immediately adjacent to it. Bergman tried to explain to the seller that this quirky feature would knock the house's price slightly below what the standard four-bedroom Capitol Hill house would earn.

The seller, though, wouldn't listen, according to Bergman. Three months and no good offers later, the seller admitted to Bergman that he indeed had overpriced the house. Bergman lowered it to what he thought reasonable. Two offers came in immediately.

The seller, though, lost out. His home not only sat on the market three months longer than it should have, but it also brought in even less than what he could have moved it for had he priced it according to Bergman's original wishes. The reason? The market had slowed even more in the three months the house was on the market.

Bergman says he did his part: He told his client beforehand that all this would happen. The client, though, didn't listen.

And that's a lesson to all sellers today. This might be the time to lower expectations and listen when an agent offers pricing advice.

"He told me that he was wrong, but that he just had to try it," Bergman said. "It cost him $30,000 plus three months on the market. That's an expensive lesson."

Price may be the biggest issue upon which sellers and their agents disagree, but there are two other, smaller matters that can also drive the occasional stake in the relationship.

There's what agents see as reluctance among some sellers to put in the work necessary to make their house look its best. In today's market, homes need to be in their absolute best shape, agents say. Owners who resist painting dingy walls, removing all those extra pieces of furniture and fixing broken light switches run the risk of scaring off potential offers.

"They used to be able to just roll the houses out and not have to do anything to them, but those days are gone," Bergman said. "Most people now realize that they have to present the home at its best to get top dollar."