Price Adjustments- how to avoid the pitfalls of overpriced listings

Looking at the market statistics I realized to my surprise there was a huge number of overpriced listings sitting on the market. I established this by how many homes have been on the market for over 30 days without a single adjustment. Clearly, we either have unmotivated Sellers , or a lot of overpriced homes out there.
As a general rule, we should be getting 1 offer for every 10 showings. If you aren’t even getting 10 showings, then your home is likely too high. If you are also getting a lot of showings and no offers, then, it‘s still too high.
The challenge is though, once you have the listing, how to get that home adjusted? We all know as Realtor’s that it is very difficult to get that adjustment after you’ve listed the home. Especially if the motivation isn’t there.
We’ve changed our business plan a little. We try to only focus on listings that have motivated Sellers; Sellers who are really interested in selling their home and moving. Often the homes that are priced too high don’t have highly motivated sellers.
In the initial phone qualification we find out if they are motivated. Easiest way is to ask why they are selling. Once we establish a good motivation, we ask them if they understand that we are the real estate experts and they are hiring us based on our knowledge and ability to sell. This sets the mindset that we are professionals and that the advice we give is important to take.
In our listing presentation we cover the market and the homes that are priced “in” our market and the homes priced “on” the market. We run the numbers of average showings per week in that area and we also look at the competition. Knowing your stats and knowing what the competition looks like is crucial. We also make sure that most of our listings are staged professionally; at the minimum have a stager come into the listing presentation to make sure that they are told what sells a home physically and what buyers who are motivated would like to see.
You might find that you have a Seller that wants to “try” a price a little higher than you have recommended. In that case we always ask for an upfront adjustment dated 2 weeks after the initial listing date. This way, we are appeasing the owner’s price and we are also sticking to where we believe the price should be. There are far too many obstacles involved trying to go back for an adjustment.
If they agree initially on your price, we set a price adjustment for 3 weeks. We explain that we might not get to that point but that if the feedback comes in that the home is priced too high we need to keep up with the market. This way we are keeping the pricing ahead of the market.
On the first and fifteenth of every month we review our listings and select 1 that is most likely to move with an adjustment based on location and condition and set our goal to get an adjustment on that price.
Now if we’ve tried everything possible to get an adjustment and the owners simply won’t budge, then, you have to decide if you want to work with an unmotivated seller. With the cost of advertising and marketing involved in selling a home, it makes very little sense to keep the listing if the Sellers aren’t trusting your advice. Sometimes, it’s easier to let them down now than later.