How Much Do you Charge?

As many of you know, REALTORS eat what we kill. Meaning, if we don't go out and get the business we won't be eating that day, or actually in about a month. So we are a very motivated breed that rely on listing appointments and making connections to get business.
When we get a listing appointment, we prepare to make sure we get the house. We have a "fancy dancy" power point, examples of this and of that. But really the only thing "most" sellers want to know is how much are you going to cost me? See, that's the wrong question to ask. You should ask your agent how they are going to save you money. Now I don't know what Jane Smith with ABC Realty charges, but I'm sure we are with in the same range. Sure you can get some real estate agents to charge less or more depending on the services they offer. But can they save you money?
Take this home for example... We had the listing on "Main St". The buyer did their inspections and found about $7,500 worth of repairs. I.e. termite damage, rotten wood, broken windows and a "bad" HVAC. Now in the buyers mind these were legitimate repairs that he wanted addressed or taken off the price.
Well, by the end of the day, I had that same repair list down to $1,800 in repairs. The HVAC was not bad, it had some rust on the outside, but that doesn't mean the inside parts were bad. (This is a case of a bad inspector). The termite damage was actually under bond with a different company, so we had them to fix it. The termite company that inspected the home said a bathroom floor had to be torn out, for $3,600. When in reality, I had our (licensed and bonded) termite company come out and do it for $1,200. See when you do the volume of business our team does, you get to see the work and product of many vendors. We don't use the expensive or crappy vendors and we are very loyal to the good ones. Since we give them so much business, they treat us and our clients right.
So, the moral to the story is, you can save money on the front end when listing your home. You can hire a "discount" agent, or you can hire a team that is professional and knowledgeable and not only gets your home sold but saves you money in the process.