Who’s afraid of the big, bad iBuyer? (Part 1)

Are you still trying to scare sellers into working with you? Reminding them how “daunting,” “challenging,” “scary,” “time-consuming” and “emotionally draining” selling a home can be?

Cut it out.

Because while agents are promoting fear to get listings, real estate iBuyers are spreading sunshine and unicorns and the promise of a quick, easy transaction.

Quit it with the “5 Critical Mistakes Home Sellers Make” articles, the hugely long list of ways to prepare the home, complicated staging instructions, the wrong improvements sellers make.

Because while you’re scaring the pants off of homeowners to prove the “value” in working with you, real estate iBuyers are standing by, whistling the new real estate tune, “You Don’t Need to Do Any of That if you Sell your Home to Us.”

The best value you can offer is the truth

Sure, selling a home can be stressful for uninformed homeowners. But, if they’re aware of what is coming – each step they should take at each stage of the process – they relax.

It’s because the stress comes from fear and the fear is of the unknown

Zillow Offers, among other real estate iBuyers, plays on this fear as well. But they do it by contrasting the fear you spread with the glitter and rainbows of their services.

Not only have agents handed over their listing information to Zillow and then agreed to pay huge money for real estate leads gained by advertising these listings, but they’ve provided numerous examples of why working with an agent is unpleasant and working with Zillow is easy-breezy.

I’m sure they’re grateful for the marketing fodder.

Competing with real estate iBuyers? It’s time to change your tune

Yeah, time is money. And, never is that more abundantly clear than with iBuyers. Home sellers are literally trading a huge chunk of their home equity for a quicker close.

Now, sometimes this is justified. I’m reminded of my childhood home. By the time my mother died, her forgetfulness had allowed the loan to become so delinquent the home was in pre-foreclosure.

The lack of any maintenance performed over the past 25 years rendered the home just about inhabitable. There was no question that myself and my siblings wanted out from under it, whatever the cost. “Sell it quick and we’ll take hit on the inheritance,” we decided.

We were the perfect real estate iBuyers client (although they’d not yet been invented at that time).

But think about it: how many clients have you had, in all of your years selling real estate, who were in a similar situation? We’re willing to bet that it’s not many.

How do people who’ve never worked with home sellers know what they want?

I may be wrong, but I think that Zillow’s lack of direct real estate consumer contact, their dearth of relationships with these people, makes them ignorant to what home sellers really want.

Coming from an exclusively tech background, it’s highly unlikely that Jeremy Wacksman, Zillow’s president and co-head of Zillow Offers, has ever worked with a home seller. Yet, according to Henry Grabar at Slate.com, Wacksman claims to be all-knowing about what home sellers want.

Money, he claims, is “not what most consumers care about. What they care about is pushing the button and making magic happen.”

Who knew that selling quickly was worth giving up a huge chunk of equity?

As a boot-on-the-ground, you know, without a doubt, that home sellers want one thing above all else: the most money possible.

Besides, committed real estate agents are and always have been the seller’s “magic button.” It’s presentation and marketing that get homes sold for top dollar and, quite often gets them sold quickly.

Competing with real estate iBuyers is a no-brainer

Let’s make a pact: No more negativity in your marketing. In fact, do what the iBuying industry is doing to real estate agents: market against them.

The operative concept to implant in the public’s mind is:

Do you really want to trade your equity for time?

They will walk away with more money if they work with you than with real estate iBuyers, at least at this point.

But, that’s only one way to compete against real estate iBuyers. There’s a second part to this post, so check back soon for our 4 Brilliant Tips to Beat iBuyers.

Generate more leads with this one secret that will blow your mind

Zillow spends more money on ads than any agent could ever hope to compete with. Here’s some of the best tactics you can learn from these marketing giants to stay ahead of Zillow: