Response from Brian Wignall on 9/10/2024

Stephanie and Burl were initially referred to me through a real estate website. When I initially met with them, they had already interviewed a couple of agents and had an idea of the listing price they wanted to start at. I gave them my opinion on the most aggressive price I would list at ($1237,000), but I also let them know that any realtor's (or homeowners) "opinion" of the top market value of any property is simply an educated guess. When selling a home, the ONLY important opinion on value is the opinion of a qualified, interested buyer. We started the listing at 1,237,000. This was a pretty aggressive listing price and almost double what they paid Fisher homes for their production built home less than 2 years prior. I listed their property at that price initially and had activity but no offers. During the first 30 days listed I received feedback from multiple buyer's agents that buyers felt the home was significantly overpriced. This higher listing price was compounded by the fact that the builder still had lots available in the neighborhood and the price to build a new home by their builder (Fisher homes) was substantially less than what they were trying to sell their home for. At the time we initially discussed listing their house we discussed the fact that my job as an agent is to “market the property”—but ultimately interested buyers will determine the market value of the home. After the first 30 days on the market the sellers did agree to a series of price adjustments totaling $100,000 - but the final price from feedback received still placed the house above the current market value at that time and we were still priced at $542,000 more than what they paid to have the house built less than two years prior. Offering buyers incentives would NOT have sold the house at the price they were asking because it was obviously still priced above the market “at that time”. During the 58 days that we had the house on the market, we marketed the listing to our corporate relocation department which works with the 30+ major corporate relocation companies in the U.S. and that info was distributed to ALL incoming relocation buyers, we held 2 open houses, we had 1163 people that viewed our listing online, we sent the listing information to 43 people that saved the listing, 14 people scheduled a showing, 2 people scheduled a 2nd showing and we even received one "solid" offer (although it was for less than the sellers would accept). Even after they had me remove the house from the market, I still coordinated with them to have a coworker bring a new member of the Indianapolis Colts over (a relocation buyer) to check out the house as he was looking at homes at that price point. Unfortunately, upon touring the home he also felt it was overpriced. As a real estate agent, it’s my job to market a property and bring people to the house, but if buyers are being brought to look at a house and feel like it’s overpriced—I’m limited on what I can do to try to broker that sale. Regarding marketing their home—my team and I did an exceptional job as shown by the statistics. Unfortunately, if a seller is adamant about staying at a price that is not supported by the market, as a Realtor with fiduciary duty to them, I abide by the seller's wishes even if they choose not to heed my advice.