The Cost of Getting to Sold

 

I have had some version of the same conversation with sellers in roughly half of the homes I have sold. It almost never happens during our first meeting, when we are still talking through the big picture and everyone is thinking about possibility. At that stage, the questions are usually hopeful ones. What could the home sell for? How much equity might there be? How quickly could we move? What would this make possible on the other side? Those are good conversations. Selling a home is not only a financial decision, it is often the bridge between one season of life and the next, a progression to the next chapter of your story.

The harder conversation usually comes later, after the home has gone on the market, after the showings have happened, after an offer has been negotiated, and after everyone has signed around an agreement, that’s industry speak for ‘we have a deal’. That is when the transaction stops being a theoretical possibility. The numbers are no longer floating around on a market analysis or an estimated net sheet. They are attached to real decisions, real deadlines, and real people asking for real things.

Maybe the buyer has an inspection and asks for a repair. Maybe the buyer asks for help with closing costs. Maybe the appraisal creates pressure. Maybe an underwriter wants something addressed before the loan can close. Maybe some other issue shows up that nobody was trying to create, but now everybody has to deal with. The seller is already tired from preparing the house, keeping it clean, leaving for showings, reading offers, signing forms, and making plans for whatever comes next. Then one more request comes across the table, and I hear the same sentence I have heard so many times before…

“But, I am already paying their agent.”

I understand why sellers say it. I really do. By that point, they have seen a lot of numbers moving away from them. They have looked at their mortgage payoff. They have seen excise tax from the state and the local jurisdictions. They have seen escrow services and title insurance policy fees. They have seen real estate commission. They may have paid for cleaning, yard work, repairs, staging, moving, storage, or any number of things that come with getting a home sold. After a while, it can feel less like a sale and more like a line of people walking past with a spoon, each one taking a little more out of the bowl.

So when a buyer asks for something else, the seller’s reaction is not hard to understand. It feels like one more bite. One more request. One more person reaching toward the money the seller has been counting on. My clients are not wrong to care about that. They should care about it. I care about it too. My job is not to talk sellers into giving money away. My job is to help them make decisions that protect the best possible outcome and leave them with as much in the bowl as possible!

The trouble begins when the seller starts seeing things from the perspective of the wrong number.

A home’s market value is not the same thing as the seller’s guaranteed net proceeds. That sounds simple enough when you say it that way, yet it is one of the most common places sellers seem to get tangled up. A seller hears that a home may be worth $500,000, and little by little that number begins to feel like it belongs to them. It becomes the number they hold in their mind. It becomes the number they plan around. It becomes the number they feel they are losing from whenever another cost appears.

That is where the thinking goes wrong. Market value is not a promise that the seller will keep the entire gross price. Market value is an estimate of what a buyer may be willing to pay under a certain set of conditions. Let me say that one more time. What a buyer MAY BE WILLING to pay under a CERTAIN SET OF CONDITIONS. Those conditions include the home itself, of course, but they also include the way the home is exposed to the market, how it is presented, how easy it is to see, what kind of buyers loan programs can participate, what terms are available, what risks the buyer is being asked to accept, and how much confidence the buyer has that the transaction can actually close.

This is where my egg example helps, because most people already understand this in every other part of their life.

If I walk into a grocery store and buy a dozen eggs, I am not only paying for eggs. I am paying for eggs that have been washed, sorted, packaged, transported, refrigerated, stocked, and made convenient for me. I am paying for the carton. I am paying for the truck that brought them there. I am paying for the store employee who put them on the shelf. I am paying for the fact that I can stop by after work, grab them from a refrigerated case, take them to the register, and go home without knowing the farmer, calling ahead, bringing my own container, or driving down a gravel road to pick them up.

Now imagine I drive directly to the farm. The eggs may be wonderful. They may be fresher than anything I could buy at the store. They may be exactly what I want. Still, if they are not washed, not sorted, not in cartons, and I had to bring my own container and make the trip myself, I would not expect to pay grocery store retail. Not because I am cheating the farmer. Not because the eggs are bad. Not because the farmer is less deserving. I would expect to pay less because the offering is different. And honestly, the farmer probably would not expect full grocery store retail either, unless they were offering something meaningfully different that the store could not. Maybe the birds are specially fed or specially cared for. Maybe buyers value seeing exactly where the eggs came from or meeting the birds that laid them. Maybe there is some unique quality attached to the experience itself. But if we are talking about essentially the same eggs, then the difference in price reflects the difference in the system surrounding the product, not some moral judgment about who deserves what.

Retail price includes more than the item. It includes the system around the item.

That is the part home sellers often miss. They look at a retail market value on the listing or on the agreement with the buyer and assume the whole number is theirs, while at the same time resenting the systems and services that help create that kind of market value in the first place. They want the benefit of full exposure, strong presentation, buyer confidence, professional guidance, clear paperwork, financing access, showing systems, title, escrow, negotiation, and a buyer pool large enough to create demand. Then, when the cost of creating and completing that sale becomes visible to them on the net sheet, it feels like a loss.

It is not always a loss. Often, it is the cost of getting to the desired result.

Don’t get me wrong here. I am not trying to be a shill for the real estate industry complex, and I am certainly not going to pretend that every cost attached to a transaction is automatically justified. In fact, I will say the uncomfortable part out loud, even though many agents avoid it: not every agent is worth what they charge. Not every fee structure makes sense in every situation. The highest cost path is not always the best path, and sellers should not blindly agree to compensation, concessions, repairs, or fees simply because someone tells them, “that’s just how it works.” That kind of thinking deserves to be questioned, not protected.

Let’s tackle the big one first, some agents are not worth what they charge. Some fee structures deserve scrutiny. Some sellers have options that cost less and work well for their situation. Some homes will sell with limited effort because demand is strong, the price is right, the condition is excellent, or the seller already has a buyer. A seller who wants to compare service models, question compensation, or choose a different approach is not being unreasonable. That is part of being a thoughtful seller.

The problem is not questioning the cost. The problem is expecting the full retail result while refusing to acknowledge the cost of creating a retail market experience.

A home sold with full market exposure is not the same economic offering as a home sold with limited exposure or unnecessary barriers that narrow the buyer pool. That narrowing can happen in different ways. Sometimes it comes from how the property is marketed, how accessible it is for showings, how information is shared, how financing terms are handled, or how the home is presented to buyers. Washington’s recent law restricting private listing networks was, in my view, a very good step for both sellers and buyers because broad market exposure generally creates a healthier and more competitive marketplace. Sellers benefit when more qualified buyers have a fair opportunity to see and compete for a property, and buyers benefit from greater transparency and access.

What is important to understand is that reduced exposure is not always driven by some large institutional strategy. Quite often, it happens in smaller ways at the seller’s request. A seller may want fewer showings, limited marketing, delayed access, selective exposure, minimal photography, or restrictions that make the home harder to evaluate or harder to purchase. Sometimes those requests come from understandable concerns about privacy, convenience, pets, schedules, or the stress of preparing a home for the market. Still, every layer of friction can reduce participation. Too often, agents allow sellers to drive the bus on these decisions simply because they want to keep the seller happy, even when the agent knows the choices are likely to weaken the seller’s position in the market.

A home professionally presented, photographed, marketed, shown, negotiated, and made accessible to financed buyers is not the same offering as a home sold with less exposure, less structure, more friction, and fewer buyer options. The physical house may be exactly the same, but the market experience around it is not the same. That difference can affect price, demand, risk, timing, and the seller’s final net.

This is why I do not like the idea that market value is what a seller “deserves.” Ownership gives the seller the right to decide whether to sell, when to sell, and what terms they are willing to accept. It does not guarantee that the market will deliver a particular net amount. A seller may deserve respect. A seller may deserve honest advice. A seller may deserve competent representation. A seller may deserve clear options. Still, the market does not pay people according to what they feel they deserve. The market responds to price, condition, exposure, timing, terms, risk, and available alternatives.

That may sound harsh, but it is actually useful advice. Once a seller stops treating market value as a personal entitlement, the conversation becomes more practical. Instead of asking, “Why is this being taken from me?” the seller can begin asking, “Does this decision help me reach the strongest realistic net result? Does this help me reach my goal?”

That is a much better question.

Buyer broker compensation is one of the places where this conversation gets especially emotional. In our local market, sellers are not required to offer buyer broker compensation. Sellers have choices. They can offer it. They can choose not to offer it. They can negotiate it. They can decide whether it supports their strategy or not. That is exactly how it should be discussed.

When a seller offers buyer broker compensation, it should not be framed as charity. It should not be framed as a gift. It should not be framed as the buyer’s agent having some personal claim on the seller’s money. It is a term of the sale, and like every other term, it should be evaluated based on whether it helps or hurts the seller’s outcome.

A seller does not offer compensation because the buyer deserves help. That is the wrong way to think about it. The seller considers offering compensation because it may reduce friction for buyers, increase the number of buyers who can participate, strengthen competition, protect price, and improve the chance of closing. Those are seller centered reasons. If those reasons are not present, or if the likely benefit does not justify the cost, then the seller should think carefully before offering it.

This is where one common objection deserves a fair hearing. Some people say, “If the buyer cannot afford their own agent, maybe they cannot afford to buy the house.” There is a real point buried in that argument. Buyers should be financially prepared. Buying a home is serious. A buyer’s limited cash is not automatically the seller’s problem.

At the same time, real estate is rarely that clean and simple. Buyers do not purchase with cash alone. They purchase with a mix of savings, financing, underwriting, monthly payment ability, reserves, timing, confidence in the future, and negotiated terms. A buyer may be qualified for the home and still not have several additional thousand dollars available beyond down payment, closing costs, inspections, appraisal, moving, and reserves. That does not automatically make them irresponsible. It does mean the structure of the transaction can affect whether that buyer can compete or not.

The seller does not have to care about that buyer’s difficulty out of kindness. The seller does need to care about whether fewer buyers means weaker demand. If requiring every buyer to bring more cash reduces the buyer pool, that may affect the seller. If offering compensation keeps more buyers in play and produces a better net result, that will affect the seller. The question is not whether the buyer deserves help, it’s whether the seller benefits from reducing a point of friction in the market.

That is the part that gets missed when sellers start to say, “I am already paying their agent.”

Even if compensation has been authorized from the transaction proceeds, that does not answer every later question. It does not tell us whether an inspection request is reasonable. It does not tell us whether a closing cost request is worth considering. It does not tell us whether an appraisal issue should be solved or fought. It does not tell us whether walking away from the buyer would leave the seller better or worse off.

If the buyer asks for closing cost help, the seller should look at the full offer. How strong is the price? How strong is the buyer? What is the seller likely to net? How long has the home been on the market? Are there other buyers waiting, or is this the best opportunity in front of us? What would it cost to go back on the market? What happens if the next offer comes in lower?

If the buyer asks for a repair, the seller should not begin with the fact that compensation exists elsewhere in the transaction. They shouldn’t talk about the closing cost concession they offered. The seller should begin by asking whether the repair is legitimate, whether the next buyer is likely to notice the same issue, whether the request is inflated or reasonable, and whether saying no protects the seller or puts the whole transaction at risk.

Those are business questions. They may still lead to no. That is fine. Sometimes no is exactly the right answer. Some buyers ask for too much. Some requests are not justified. Some offers are not worth saving. A seller should not confuse being strategic with being soft.

The issue is not whether a seller is allowed to say no. Of course they are. The issue is whether the seller is saying no because the request fails the business test, or because the seller is emotionally stuck on a different line item.

I have seen sellers get so focused on not giving up another small piece that they lose sight of the larger result. They save a little in one place and lose much more somewhere else. They reject a repair and lose the buyer. They refuse a concession and go back on the market. They hold firm on the principle of the thing, then accept a weaker offer later because time, stigma of a failed sale, and predictable carrying costs caught up with them.

You can pinch pennies so hard that they slip out of your hands and leave you with nothing. This is not a call to give buyers everything they ask for. It is a warning against squeezing the wrong penny at the wrong moment.

This is also why criticism of real estate compensation should be handled honestly, not defensively. There are people who believe agent fees are too high. Some believe the percentage model has not adjusted well as home prices have risen. Some believe agents have benefited from a system consumers did not fully understand. Some believe real estate compensation has added cost to housing. Those concerns should not be waved away. If the industry wants trust, it should be willing to answer hard questions without acting offended that the questions were asked.

Still, those criticisms do not prove that every dollar paid from a transaction is money the seller has lost unfairly. Housing prices are shaped by many forces, including supply, demand, inventory, land availability, lending standards, construction costs, wages, migration, local desirability, interest rates, buyer competition and on and on and on. Agent compensation is part of the transaction economy, but it is not the sole engine of home values, it isn’t even a main driver. A seller can believe fees should be scrutinized and still understand that selling costs exist. Both things can be true.

That is the balance I want home sellers to find.

Do not accept a cost blindly. Do not reject a cost emotionally. Understand what the cost is supposed to do, compare it with the alternatives, and judge it by the likely effect on the final result.

If the compensation does not make sense, negotiate it. If the service does not justify the fee, choose a different model. If offering buyer broker compensation does not appear likely to improve the outcome, do not offer it. If a buyer request is unreasonable, counter it or reject it. Those are all valid choices.

What is not valid is agreeing to one part of the transaction, then using resentment over that part as a reason to stop thinking clearly about everything else.

The money in a real estate transaction comes from the transaction. The buyer funds the purchase. The seller agrees to the terms. The closing statement distributes the money according to the contract, the seller’s obligations, and the decisions everyone made along the way. Arguing endlessly about whose dollar it was in some philosophical or moral sense rarely helps the seller. What helps the seller is understanding whether the structure of the deal produces the best realistic net outcome.

That is where the conversation needs to return, again and again.

What is the likely net? What risk remains? What are the alternatives? What will happen if this buyer walks? What would the next buyer likely ask for? Are we protecting the seller’s money, or are we protecting the seller’s frustration? Is this a cost that helps create the result, or a cost that should be challenged? Is saying no likely to improve the seller’s position, or only make the seller feel better for a moment?

Those questions do not remove the seller’s right to negotiate. They strengthen it. They move the seller away from reaction and toward judgment.

Selling a home has costs. Some are negotiable. Some are unavoidable. Some are worth paying. Some are not. The presence of a cost does not automatically mean the seller is being harmed. The absence of a cost does not automatically mean the seller is better off. A lower cost path may produce a better result in some situations. A fuller service path may produce a better result in others. The right answer depends on the home, the market, the seller’s goals, and the realistic alternatives.

That is why “I am already paying their agent” cannot be the end of the conversation. It is an understandable feeling. It may reflect a real cost shown on the seller’s side of the transaction. It may deserve to be discussed. It simply does not settle the next negotiation.

The seller’s job is not to defend the gross market value as though it were already sitting in their bank account. The seller’s job is to make disciplined decisions that turn the property into the strongest net result the market will support.

That requires questioning costs without becoming consumed by them. It requires negotiating firmly without confusing every buyer request with an insult. It requires understanding that market value is not what a seller deserves to keep, but what the market may be willing to pay under the structure the seller chooses.

 

So what is the moral of my story?

The common way of thinking from many sellers treats every cost as a loss to the seller and makes for an emotionally challenging experience.

The other understands that some costs are part of the business of getting to sold and in turn, closer to the final goal of the next chapter.

~Bob

The Contreras Team with Windermere Professional Partners
Jessica Contreras 23005400 | Bob Contreras 26586
(951) 537-7460 | (360) 979-0529

_{About the Author}

_{Bob Contreras is a real estate professional and Branch Manager at Windermere Professional Partners in Port Orchard, Washington. Known for his relational, education-first approach, Bob has built a business grounded in trust, collaboration, and lifelong client relationships. As a mentor and local industry leader, Bob believes that strong businesses are built through shared growth, and that real estate, at its best, is about people helping people find home.}