The Seller’s Playbook
If I were in your shoes
The seller I’ve watched get taken more times than I can count hires the name on the bus bench, signs a six-month agreement because he says that’s how it’s done, rarely hears from him again, and sells two months after she wanted out for a price she doesn’t like to say out loud, with the full percentage taken off the top. Every rule below is something she could have done at her kitchen table, before she signed.
I hate to say this, but I will. Before you overpay to have your home undersold, you’d do better to sell it yourself and hire an agent on standby, paid for her time and skill, to negotiate with the buyers you find.
Take these to the kitchen table, show them to every agent you interview, and keep interviewing until one says yes. Here’s what I’d do in your shoes.
Before the first agent comes over
Decide what you want done.
Early in my career, at the start of an interview, a seller asked what I’d charge. Before I could say six percent, I heard myself ask a question she hadn’t thought to. For what? Do you want me to market your home for weeks as a coming-soon listing, before it goes in the MLS, if my MLS allows it? Do you want me at every showing, even when the buyer brings an agent, or is a call the same day enough? Every one of those is a different amount of work, and you decide what you want. Not the percentage.
Know what the work is.
On an ordinary home, pricing it is an hour of research. Photographs, an hour, choosing the best ten to fifteen and improving them with today’s software. The description, an hour. The MLS entry, less. The calls to answer questions and arrange showings, three or four hours over the life of the listing, and the call after every showing, five minutes apiece, which may be the most valuable minutes in the job. The offer, the counter, and the advice, two or three hours. Inspection, appraisal, and closing, four or five hours over a month. Ten to twenty hours, for a home that sells without drama. The listing side of the commission on a four-hundred-thousand-dollar home is typically ten to twelve thousand dollars. At twenty hours, that’s five to six hundred dollars an hour, in a business where the typical Realtor, by the trade association’s own count, makes about fifty-nine thousand dollars a year before expenses. Give her two weeks of vacation and a forty-hour week, and that’s about thirty dollars an hour. You don’t need to pay five or six hundred.
Know which band your home is in.
In a neighborhood of similar homes, prices fall in a narrow band, and the best marketing in the world can only move yours within it. Buyers know the band, and so does their appraiser. Pull up what’s sold within a few blocks in the last six months. If three or four homes like yours sold within a few percent of each other, you’re in the band, whatever anyone says about your kitchen. If there’s nothing like yours, or the sales are all over the map, buyers can’t value your home by looking next door, and skill can move the price by a lot.
Match what you pay to what your home can return.
Skill costs you little and helps on any home, so pay a little more for it, always. Extra time and extra marketing pay off only when they come back at closing as a lot more than they cost, and whether they will is a judgment I can’t make from here. The guideline is simple. The higher the price range and the more unusual the home, the more likely the answer is yes. The more ordinary the home, the more likely it’s no, and the smarter move is to pay for the list and keep the difference.
Make her put a figure on the extra.
If an agent says your home needs more than the list, and that she should be paid more to do it, ask how much more your home will sell for because of it, and have her say why. Set her answer beside her fee. Three thousand dollars more in fee for a realistic ten thousand more in price is a good trade. Three thousand more on a home whose band is a few thousand dollars wide is a gift, and it’s your money.
Know how you’ll pay before she asks.
Agree to owe the fee whether or not the home sells and you take the devil off her shoulder, because her pay doesn’t change with your decision, and you get the truth. Or pay only if you sell, and in fairness to her, pay fifty to a hundred percent more. Owing it regardless doesn’t mean paying it now. Owe it, pay it at closing, and it comes due early only if you change your mind or change agents. Decide before the interview, so the only thing that changes your mind is exceptional skill, proved by her last three sellers and the prices they got against the market.
The interview
Interview three. Hire the one who says yes.
There are far more agents than the business can feed, and that fact, a tragedy for agents, is your advantage. Nearly all of them will do the same things in the same order. You’re choosing the one who’ll do them your way.
Measure her skill.
Ask for the names and numbers of the last three sellers she sold homes for. Not references, the last three, and call two. Ask for the sellers whose homes she has on the market now. Ask whether any listing of hers in the last six months didn’t sell, and for that seller’s number. Then have her show you the recorded prices her sellers got, beside what similar homes sold for at the same time. She’ll hate it. Ask anyway.
Test four things, in fifteen minutes.
Is she willing to learn, and to follow a plan in writing with dates on it? Hand her this book and watch her face. Is she open-minded about how she’s paid, or does she say “the standard is”? Is she willing to report to you twice a week, with specifics? And is her company willing to let her charge you fairly? If the answer to the last one is no, that’s information about the company, and about her choice of one. Don’t let her company become your problem. It was her decision, not yours.
Say what you want, in one breath.
“I’d like a plan in writing, with dates, attached to the listing agreement. I’d like a report twice a week with specifics in it. I’d like a thirty-day term, renewable every month I’m still happy. I’d like a sentence that says if you change companies, my listing goes with you. And I’d like to decide the fee after we’ve decided the plan, and to pay you for the work.” Some agents will say yes with relief, because nobody has ever offered to pay them for their work before. If she says no, thank her and call the next one.
The agreement
Thirty days, renewable.
Not six months. If she’s doing the job, you’ll renew every month, and if you’ve been realistic about the price, it won’t take many. If she isn’t doing the job, you’ll know within the first week, from the reports, and you won’t need a fight to get out.
The listing goes with her.
In most states your listing belongs to the brokerage, not to the agent you hired, so if she moves to another firm the company can keep your home and hand it to someone you’ve never met. Have the agreement say that if she leaves, the listing goes with her, and if her broker won’t agree, the listing cancels the day she goes. You hired her. You didn’t hire whoever’s left.
A plan with dates, attached.
What she’ll do before any buyer sees the home, the first week it’s on the market, and every week after. If the plan isn’t in writing, it isn’t a plan. It’s a presentation.
The fee
Pay for the work and the skill with a fixed fee.
On a typical home, and to be generous, call it twenty-five hundred dollars for a twenty-hour package of marketing, negotiation, and representation through closing, plus her costs, which are usually a hundred or two. More for an agent who’ll be at every showing and do a coming-soon campaign before your home goes in the window, if her MLS allows it and your home is the kind where that returns the cost. Get exactly what she’ll do in writing.
If her company only speaks percentage, put a ceiling on it.
One percent, never more than four thousand dollars, for the work, the skill, and the costs on the list. One and a half percent, never more than six thousand, for a lot more than the list. In writing.
Ask, “Does anyone get a piece of this fee for sending me to you?”
If a website sent you to her, ask what the website gets. If another agent referred you, a quarter of the fee or more may be going out the door for a phone call. Make sure it comes out of their end, not yours. It was never your problem.
Pay her in referrals too, and mean it.
An agent who does this job the way you asked deserves more than the fee, and the rest costs you nothing. Send her the neighbor who’s thinking about selling. Buy your next home through her. Write the recommendation, and tell her to put you on her list of the last three. Her best clients come from her last ones, and a client who actually sends them is worth more to her than a bigger check from one who never calls again.
The other half of the commission
When he calls about his fee, have your agent say you’re open to a fair one if the offer warrants it.
No number. Your agent answers every call the same way. “I’ve discussed it with the sellers. They’re open to paying a fair buyer’s agent fee as long as the offer warrants it. Put whatever your agreement with your buyer says into the offer, and we’ll go from there.” You’ve said yes to the only question he was afraid to ask, and you’ve given away nothing. And don’t let the fee get settled on that call. A fee negotiated by phone between two agents is a fee the buyer never sees, and the buyer is the one person who can bring it down.
Counter the fee in writing, in dollars, where the buyer can see it.
Whatever the offer price, counter at your best price, the most attractive one you can give the buyer, and pay for that attractiveness with her agent’s fee. The offer asks you to pay him three percent, or two and a half. Cut it by a third to a half, to one and a half, and don’t write the percentage. Write the dollars. On a four-hundred-thousand-dollar home, three percent is twelve thousand dollars and one and a half percent is six thousand, and six thousand dollars on a line of its own is real money in a way one and a half percent never is. The buyer is now looking at exactly what goes into her agent’s pocket, on paper, in a counter that gives her a better price than she’d have seen if it didn’t.
Then say, in the counter, that you’ll pay her agent more if she wants, and add every dollar to the price.
One sentence, in plain words, right under the fee, and have your agent write it so nobody can miss it. “If the buyer wishes her agent to be paid more than six thousand dollars, the sellers will pay the additional amount, and the purchase price will increase by the same amount.” That sentence is the entire strategy, because it puts the choice where it belongs. Her agreement with her agent says what he’s owed, and if you pay less, the difference is hers unless he waives it. So she’s looking at a house that costs six thousand dollars less if her agent takes less, and six thousand more if he won’t, and she’s the only person in the deal he can’t say no to. For the first time, the buyer sees what her free agent costs, and you’ve moved the argument to the only table where it can be won. Hers.
Expect him to take it.
When researchers for the Consumer Policy Center called 281 buyers’ agents in 2025, two-thirds said they’d accept less from a seller than they’d asked for, and nearly a third of those would take a full percentage point less. He’d rather earn six thousand dollars than explain to his client why she should pay him six thousand more.
Judge every offer net of the fee.
A seven-hundred-thousand-dollar offer that asks you to pay fourteen thousand is a six-hundred-eighty-six-thousand-dollar offer. If a different buyer’s agent asks for less, that offer is worth more, and you’re free to say so. And if a buyer’s agent asks you for more than his buyer owes him and credits the difference to his buyer at closing, that’s between the two of them. You judge the offer net.
The sale
Ask what her MLS allows before your home goes in the window.
The One-Day Rule puts your home in the system within a day of marketing it, with the counter beside it. Some listing services allow a coming-soon period first, some don’t, and the rules keep changing, so ask to see the current written rule. If yours allows it, use it. A little of it costs almost nothing, even on an ordinary home. A real campaign before the window, with showings concentrated and a day you intend to decide, is the extra you read about at the start of this playbook, and you pay for it by what your home can return, and nothing else.
A report every Monday and Thursday, with five things in it.
Fifteen minutes, twice a week, and the five things are at the end of this playbook.
A week of nothing means something changes.
A home in the right range, marketed properly, should produce new inquiries every week, from buyers and from agents with buyers, and showings should follow. If they don’t, something gets changed after a week of nothing, by you and your agent, instead of on day sixty, by the counter, when you’ll sell for less than your home is worth. Don’t let the counter and the markdown record take money out of your pocket.
Answer the repair list by the formula.
Broken, cosmetic, worn. Fix what’s broken, unless the contract says the buyer took it that way. Decline the cosmetic, unless it was under a rug or behind a picture when he walked through. And settle worn on the inspector’s facts, a credit for a roof or an air conditioner that’s worn beyond its age, not for a wish list. On an upper-range home, where the list after inspection can fill pages, the formula keeps thousands of dollars in your proceeds in the last week before closing.
It’s your home and your money. You decide.
Every rule on this list was decided for you, for a hundred years, by people paid by the head and by the percentage. Decide them yourself, before the first agent comes over, and if she says “that’s not how it’s done here,” thank her and call the next one.
Fifteen minutes, twice a week
Years ago I sold a home in Paradise Valley for less than the seller and I had hoped. I’d worked that listing as hard as I’ve ever worked one, and the market simply moved under us. At the closing I apologized. She said, “Greg, you could not have done any more. The market is your workplace. It is not your fault.” She could say that because twice a week, for as long as her home was on the market, she’d known exactly what I was doing and what the market was doing. She’d watched both. That’s what a report is for.
Your agent should report to you, in writing or by voice message, twice a week, on two days you set in advance. I’ve found Monday and Thursday are best. Monday’s report covers the weekend, which is when most of the inquiries and showings happen. Thursday’s covers the week and lays out the plan for the weekend ahead. What doesn’t work is “I’ll keep you posted,” which means you’ll hear from her when there’s an offer and otherwise never. The report should include at least five things, every time.
- What she did since the last report to find buyers, and what it produced. If the number is zero, the report says zero, because zero is the number that calls for a conversation.
- Where every buyer and every buyer’s agent stands. Who’s seen the home, who called about it, how interested they were, and whether she thinks they’re a candidate.
- What she intends to do to sell your home, specifically, before the next report.
- What the market did. The homes a buyer would compare yours to, which came on, which sold, which cut their price.
- Her opinion. Is the price still right, given the response? Could the photographs or the copy be better? If she thinks something needs to change, she says so on Thursday, instead of on day sixty, when the counter has told the world your home is in the rejected pile.
Without the report, you can’t know whether your agent is calling and texting agents about your home, marketing it with any creativity at all, or waiting for the phone to ring, and it pains me to say that waiting and hoping is what far too many agents do. Most sellers find out something is wrong on day sixty, after every possible buyer has watched the counter tick, and every tick told them to offer less or not at all. With a report every few days, you fix it before the public ever sees a problem.
The report is the difference between a seller who knows and a seller in the dark. Whatever level of service you buy, don’t be in the dark about whether you’re getting it.
Don’t pay for a level of marketing, skill, and effort that isn’t likely to bring a higher price than it costs. And don’t pay for a lot and get a little because your agent never told you what she was doing. Fifteen minutes, twice a week, is how you know the difference. Nobody should pay for silence.