The Iron Yuppie

Top 10 mistakes of home sellers

Yeah yeah. These are good pieces of advice, no question. But I'm a big fan of the following article:

Market Distortions when Agents are Better Informed

The number one thing you can do is leave your house on the market longer. It's one more proof that there's almost nothing that can't be made better with patience.

The beauty part of this research is that it proves that the experts who know more about the situation are optimizing for themselves rather than their clients in the most clear way possible: when THEY are the clients, they do a better job. Further, it's a particularly interesting information disparity, in that it's not like the agent is hiding potential leads; instead, the agent is likely just SAYING that the potential leads will not be as good or very difficult to find. But that is proveably not the case, since the agents are able to get those leads and do it without difficulty when they're selling their own home. Just fantastic research. Remember, when you're selling, if your agent owned and was selling your house, they'd sell it for $7k more than you're likely to get.