Be Unbeggable

Who needs whom more, when an agent sits in a seller's lounge and hears an asking price well above anything the street has sold for? If the honest answer is the agent, the mandate gets signed at the seller's number. The board goes up, buyers compare it with recent sales and walk on, and the bank's valuer comes in low for the one buyer who does apply for a bond. Months later the price comes down anyway, except now the listing looks tired and the seller blames the agent. Begging for the mandate won nothing. It only postponed the honest conversation and made it harder.

Being unbeggable is what allows an agent to state the true figure and be prepared to leave without the listing. It cannot be announced. It is built underneath, from other work and some savings, so that one lost mandate is a disappointment rather than a crisis. Sellers can usually feel which kind of agent is sitting across from them, even when they cannot say how, and the one willing to walk away from a wrong price is often the one they call later about the right one.