Deerwood Realty and Friends Podcast
An agent has shared her opinion on Pocket Listings…I offer mine…should be good
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Thoughts:
1. This is from a real estate agent that has benefitted from pocket listings in the past.
2. Some sellers prefer the process..the motivation being privacy, cleanliness, flexibility, or other issues. So I think we can all understand that. And, there are certain parts of the real estate community that work in this manner. For example, investors typically flourish in a closed market.
3. This agent, based on her experience, sees that pocket listings do a major disservice to the seller…and I agree.
The biggest issue is that you are restricting the market, so buyers aren’t really in competition with anyone else when they make an offer. This can lead to a property being sold for far less than “market value”
4. With the National Association Of Realtors “clear cooperation policy, deals are falling apart…in her words. I don’t know that is true or not….deals can fall apart for a bunch of reasons
5. No Commitment by the seller to actually go through with the sale….this is something that I’ve sort of come across.
6. My biggest issue with pocket listings is the opportunity for elements of racism and other forms of discrimination to come into play. As in, I won’t sell my house to someone of color…with our traditional listing structure, its pretty open. When we get an offer, we have to present it to the seller. If the seller has some sort of issue with the buyer…we as agents probably don’t know and so we are not complicit. Contrast that to a “pocket” listing, where only a few agents know about the listing at all. No one by the listing agent and the seller know what sort of discriminatory practices may be going on.
7. I’ve had a few sellers call me and tell me that their house was for sale…and that I should bring my buyers…but the odds of me having a buyer interested in the EXACT thing the pocket listing has to offer is less than 1%. Typically, my buyers are looking for a specific location, with specific features, with a specific price. And, they find these houses on the MLS…it’s not through word of mouth.
8. We don’t do pocket listings at my office. Mainly because it does a severe disservice to the seller. But also, we don’t typically get famous clients or have situations where sellers require the utmost privacy. Also, a pocket listing works best when you have an office of like 100 agents…we have 2. Me getting the word out is literally one text to Jan. We have had times where sellers need to sell quickly, but that hasn’t been an issue for us…close in 30 days and abundance of offers has been the norm.
Source: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/business/article253448969.html
https://southfloridaagentmagazine.com/2021/09/01/karen-matluck/
https://karenmatluck.com/about/karen-matluck/
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