Market insights from seller property disclosures?

As a Real Estate Agent, how do you gauge the level of interest on your listing? If there are a few interested buyer parties how do you know if they’ll write an offer? How do you know if a buyer who submits an offer is likely to close the deal?

Today, many agents rely on soft metrics like headcount at open houses, questions that buyers asked during a showing or hits on their property website to understand the reception of the property on the market. We can do much better!

Distributing thorough disclosure packages (seller disclosure statement + pre-sale inspections) to buyers before they submit an offer is the best way to get a clear understanding of the market’s interest in your listing. Which buyer parties are reading the disclosures is extremely valuable knowledge to have as a listing agent. This intel helps you navigate the market to get the best outcome for your seller. Being able to share this data on the interest level of the listing, from agent-to-client and agent-to-agent makes for the best possible transactions.

Savvy agents understand the power of disclosure packages. Disclosure packages help:

  1. buyers get a clear understanding of the property

  2. decide if they want to write an offer

  3. signal the market’s response to a property

Open houses or private showings can give you some intel but it’s not meaningful and/or can be misleading. How do you distinguish between “lookie-loos” and people who are real buyers? Buyers and their agents are not going to read a disclosure package for fun so distributing disclosure packages to interested buyer parties before they make an offer is the best way to gauge their interest.

Relaying an accurate interest level to buyer agents is crucial as well. It helps them know if this property and offer situation is right for their clients. Too much interest and their clients may walk away to avoid a bidding war. As a buyer agent, now you can get a clear picture from the listing agent about the number of offers you’re likely to be competing against (remember, real estate is a relationship business and agent-to-agent relationships are extremely important).

There is a lot of time wasted in real estate sales because people are not transparent and/or have not done the work to provide transparency to others. Do the work. Save the time. Make clients happier. Make more money