The Hummingbird at the Other Feeder: A Story About Competition, Connection & Selling Your Home

Two hummingbird feeders. Plenty of sugar water. Plenty of space. And yet they still burn energy chasing each other away and guarding a feeder they are not even using. Watching that play out in my own yard sparked a question that matters in real estate and in life: are we competing to get better, or competing to keep someone else from having what we could share without losing a thing?

From there, I connect the hummingbird lesson to the way real estate agents and home sellers react to scarcity. Agents can get pulled into watching what others post, chasing the same listing, and measuring worth by someone else’s win, while neglecting the clients and opportunities right in front of them. Sellers do it too, obsessing over the house down the street, the timeline, the repairs someone else skipped, or the price they “should” get, instead of focusing on what they can control: preparation, presentation, and clarity.

We go deep on real estate storytelling and why listing specs alone rarely move a buyer. Bedrooms, bathrooms, square footage, and price help a home show up in search results, but the story is what helps buyers imagine living there, or even investing in it as an Airbnb or VRBO. I share simple examples of turning “facts” into meaning and explain how our Listing Storyboards and the All Star Spotlight help translate what sellers know into what buyers can actually feel in a fast scroll.

If you found this helpful, subscribe, share it with a seller or agent who needs a reset, and leave a review so more people can find the show. Then visit listingstoryboard.com and tell me: what’s the one detail about a home that always makes you pause?

Transcript

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Hummingbirds And Two Feeders

SPEAKER_00 0:17

Hi there, this is Rowena Patten on the Real Estate News Radio Show. The other day I found myself watching the hummingbirds outside my house. Here in the Southeast, we're approaching the end of hummingbird season. Soon they'll begin their migration. The males tend to leave first, while the females and younger hummingbirds follow later. Now, I have two hummingbird feeders, and I don't mean two that are side by side. They're about as far apart around my house as I could possibly put them. There's enough food, there's enough room. There are two separate places where two hummingbirds could sit, drink, prepare for the tremendous journey ahead of them as they're about to migrate. And yet they spend an astonishing amount of time fighting over those feeders. One hummingbird will chase another away from the first feeder. You've all seen this. Then he'll fly around the house to make sure nobody is using the second one. Sometimes he'll sit nearby without even drinking. He's using his energy simply to guard the food and make sure another hummingbird can't have it. And I'm standing there thinking, you could both be eating. One of you could drink from one feeder. The other could drink from the other. You could both leave here stronger and better prepared for what lies ahead. A very long flight. But that is a what happens. And Denise, if you're listening, they're on the way to you, I promise, but it's going to be a couple of weeks before they get down there in Florida. And of course, because I'm in real estate, I started thinking about houses. But before we get to the real estate part, think about what those hummingbirds are doing.

When Winning Wastes Your Strength

SPEAKER_00 1:58

We like to talk about survival of the fittest, competition, the idea that the strongest rise to the top because they work harder, fight harder, or simply want it more, or in this case, fly harder. There's some truth in that. Competition can make us sharper. It can encourage innovation. It can push us to do things we might never attempt if nobody were challenging us or maybe even watching us. But watching those little hummingbirds maybe wonder, is the strongest bird really the one that controls both feeders? Or is it the one that drinks what it needs and saves enough energy for the journey? Because sometimes we become so focused on keeping somebody else away from the feeder that we forget to feed ourselves. We can become so determined to win the immediate battle that we lose sight of the much longer journey ahead. Isn't that something we do as human beings? We compete for jobs, attention, influence, money, and status. We compare our lives with other people's lives. What do they say? Don't compare your outsides with other people's insides or your insides with other people's outsides. We guard our territory. We can become so invested in holding the top position that we unintentionally prevent other people from rising, even where their success wouldn't diminish our own. Sometimes we even try and control an opportunity we aren't using simply because we don't want somebody else to have it.

The Human Habit Of Comparison

SPEAKER_00 3:29

That's the hummingbird sitting beside the feeder without drinking. I see versions of this among real estate agents. Agents compete for the same listing, the same buyer, the same neighborhood, and the same position in the marketplace, the same certificate every month. Brokerages compete for agents. Teams compete with other teams. Some of that's healthy. It should make us better at what we do and maybe give a lot of other people more opportunities. But sometimes we spend more energy watching that other feeder than tending to our own. We become more concerned about who got the listing than how well we're serving the clients we already have. We've become so concerned about posting it all over social media. Another one sold. We worry about what another agent is posting, selling, or saying instead of improving the experience we provide. We've become so preoccupied with somebody else's success that we fail to notice our own feeder sitting right in front of us. But the analogy doesn't end with real estate agents. It applies to home sellers too. Because when your home goes on the market, it doesn't enter that market by itself. It's competing. Maybe not in the aggressive territorial way those hummingbirds compete, but it is competing for a buyer's attention, imagination, and most importantly, the emotional connection. You've probably heard emotion drives activity. Your home is one feeder among several. A buyer may look at your house, the house around the corner, a new construction home, and another home 10 minutes away. They may also consider

Real Estate Rivalries That Distract

SPEAKER_00 5:12

staying where they are, renting for another year or not moving at all. So your competition isn't just the other house with the same number of bedrooms. Your home is competing with every other choice that buyer could make. And often remember they're not here wherever here is. They're moving in from another state, a different market. And what do we often do when we market a house? We reduce it to Colfax. Three bedrooms, two bathrooms, single level, ten windows, a roof, a door, a certain number of square feet. Maybe there's a garage. Maybe somebody writes won't last long. You've always got to love those, especially when they've been on for 90 days, and adds an exclamation point and considers the marketing complete. Those are the facts. They aren't a story. Facts may help a buyer determine whether a home belongs in the search results. Search results are very key, I agree. The story is what helps the buyer imagine belonging in the home. Or having that home, for example, for a VRBO or an Airbnb. How is it performing? How does it actually live? Because human beings don't experience their homes as a list of specifications. You don't wake up in the morning and think, what a wonderful day to live in my 21, 47 square foot three-bedroom structure.

Your Listing Competes With Everything

SPEAKER_00 6:35

It's a box. You think about the morning light coming in through the kitchen window. You think about sitting on the porch with your coffee before the rest of the house wakes up. And that may just be your furry friends, who knows? You remember the dining room where everybody somehow squeezed around the table for Thanksgiving. Or maybe you're thinking, my gosh, they all used to come home for Thanksgiving and now they don't. You know which window gives you the first glimpse of the hummingbirds. You know where the dog waits in the afternoon because that's where the patch of sunlight falls. Mine's at my sliders at the back of my house, where that sun comes in. You know that the mud room isn't merely a mud room. That's where the backpacks landed. Maybe they still do, where the muddy shoes piled up and where the family came in through the door at the end of every day. Those are the things that make a house a home. And those are the things that can help the next buyer see more than walls, windows, and square footage. Now, maybe you've got a short-term rental, and I'm saying a house a home. Maybe it's a house a rental or that wonderful guest book where all of those amazing things are written. Now, storytelling doesn't mean inventing a fantasy. It doesn't mean exaggerating the property or pretending it's something it isn't. Good storytelling reveals what is already there. It gives context to the fact. Large backyard is a fact. The back room has room for Saturday soccer games, summer

Facts Get Clicks Story Gets Offers

SPEAKER_00 8:12

cookouts, and a garden that can finally get enough sunlight begins to create a picture. Covered front porch is a fact. A covered front porch where you can hear the rain without getting wet creates a feeling. I remember that when I first moved to the States decades ago, back when I was minus 10, haha. Where I used to sit on my porch in Washington, DC and watch those amazing storms come through, where it was right by the zoo in Washington, DC, where I could see the monkeys running around. That's a whole other story. Single-level home is a fact. A home where daily life can happen comfortably on one level without carrying grosses, laundry, or tired knees up another flight of stairs explains why that fact matters. A buyer still needs the facts. Bedrooms, bathrooms, acreage, condition, location, and price all matter. Price more than anything at the end of the day. But the facts tell us what the house has. The story helps us understand what life there could feel like. That matters because buyers aren't just comparing properties. They're trying to recognize their future. They may forget the exact dimensions of the breakfast room, but they'll remember imagining Sunday morning pancakes there. You always know the buyers' agents listening or people that are doing their own for sale by owners, remember the people that came in for an hour and a half imagining their life there. That's what we do when we go to look at the house, when we actually get in the house. They may forget how many feet of road frontage the property has, but they'll remember the feeling of turning into the driveway and leaving the noise of the day behind. They may forget which box they checked on the search portal, but they'll or even what search portal they were on, but they'll remember the home that made them pause.

Turning Seller Knowledge Into Meaning

SPEAKER_00 10:07

That's why we created our listing storyboards. Actually, we created them in back in 2007. However, now they've got a wonderful glow-up as the All-Star Spotlight. And you can see these at listingstoryboard.com. Go and look at listingstoryboard.com, especially if you're a for sale by owner, and see what telling your own story could do for you. Go copy it. If you're an agent, go look at listingstoryboard.com. See how you can put together what we call a single property website, but with all the story on from the home sellers themselves. The All-Star Spotlight is designed to tell the full story of the house, not just announce that it has a roof, ten windows, and a door and happens to be single level, multi-level, or whatever it is we're talking about. It brings together the details, the photographs, the features, and the experience of the property so a buyer can understand why those things matter. Because the goal isn't merely to place a house in front of more eyes. The goal is to give people a reason to stop and see it. A home seller may hear that and ask, shouldn't the house speak for itself? Sometimes it does, but more often a house needs someone to help translate. That's what we are, we the translators when we tell the story. The seller knows why the screen porch is special, because they've enjoyed hundreds of evenings there. The buyer scrolling through listings sees hundreds of photographs and the words screen porch. The seller knows the kitchen becomes the center of everything, the centre of every gathering. The buyer sees cabinets and countertops. The seller knows the little room upstairs became the perfect art studio because of the afternoon light. The buyer sees an oddly shaped spare room. The story bridges that gap. It takes what the seller knows and helps the buyer recognize it. And don't worry, home sellers, we translate. You can just gabble it in. And I'm not saying you will. You may have written books, you may be a great writer, which is wonderful, but you can gabble in any old notes and we'll translate it for you and turn it into seller says. And that brings me back to the hummingbirds. Those birds aren't merely fighting over sugar water, they're fighting over what that resource means: energy, survival, and the ability to continue their journey. Not sure why they leave the ladies and the kids behind, but we'll find out that. Maybe someone can comment. In the same way, a home isn't merely competing over bedrooms and bathrooms. It's competing for attention long enough for a buyer to understand what the property

Comps Matter But Your Home Differs

SPEAKER_00 12:45

could mean in their life. There's also a warning in the hummingbird story for sellers. Sometimes sellers become so focused on what another home is doing that they lose sight of how to present their own, or so focused on their price that they're not telling their own story. That house sold for this much. The seller didn't have to make repairs. That home went under contract in two days. The house down the street has one fewer bedrooms, so mine must be worth more. Those comparisons matter. Comparable sales are part of understanding the market. But the house down the street isn't your house. Its condition may be different. Its location within the neighborhood may be different. Its marketing may have been different. The buyer's circumstances may have been different. The timing may have been different. Maybe the agent had a glow-up on their listing storyboard that helps sell that house. If you spend all of your energy circling the other feeder, you may neglect the one thing right in front of you. Your job isn't to chase every other seller away from the market. You can't. Your job is to make your home's value understandable, to translate it in this world of AI into things that human beings can actually understand. Price it thoughtfully, prepare it properly, present it honestly, look at certified pre-owned to show you how you can put it on the market so that everybody goes in eyes wide open. Tell its story well. Make it easier for the right buyer to see why it deserves consideration. That is much better use of energy than simply shouting louder

Scarcity Mindset Versus Long Journey

SPEAKER_00 14:26

than the house next door. And maybe that's the larger lesson. Competition exists, scarcity exists. There are times when really we're pursuing that same opportunity, the same buyer or the same feeder, especially in the marketplace out there right now. But not every situation has to produce only one winner. There can be two successful agents, two valuable homes, two good ideas. There can be an experienced person at the top of their profession, and a younger person learning how to make the journey. Another hummingbird getting fed doesn't mean to say there'll be less sky for the rest of them, although you'd think so with the fighting that's going on outside. Of course, I'm not suggesting that hummingbirds are quietly debating the economic systems in my backyard. They're acting on instinct. But perhaps that's why watching them is so revealing. Human beings have instincts too. We guard our territory, we compare, we fear scarcity, we chase. That's why we have an open house and there's 40 people that we want what others can't have. That's why on Black Friday we stand in line, or some of us do, I've never quite understood that, to save $10 off one item that's what's called a loss leader in most of the stores. We sometimes fight automatically without stopping to ask whether the fight is necessary or what it's costing us. The hummingbird may not be able to step back and question that instinct. That's what's so great about us as human beings. Some of us can. We can. We can ask whether we're competing to become better or simply competing to keep somebody else from advancing. And what we want at the end of the day is peace. We want to move on to our next chapter. Maybe that is renting a place in the south of France. Maybe that's about buying our second home somewhere warmer for the wheat winter. Maybe that's buying a second home somewhere cooler for the summer. We can ask whether we're using our position or merely guarding it. We can ask whether we're telling the story of what we have to offer. Or maybe sometimes we just need to let go. Or simply listing the same cold facts as everybody else. That thing that's stopping us letting go so often is the thing, the story that we're often not telling without something like the listing storyboard that's going to engage that next family to live that wonderful life, sad life, or a life you no longer want in that house that you own. And as for me, I'm going to keep putting out the hummingbird food. And yes, I use the right kind. I've maybe got two weeks left, that's all, at this point. Of course, I'll wash them out and get them ready for next May. Maybe that's selfish because I enjoy watching them. Maybe it's generous because they need the energy. Two of them, six of them, however many there are right now. There's about 12 running around fighting each other. Like many things human beings do, it's probably a little bit of both. But I'll keep watching them and wondering what might happen if just once each hummingbird chose a feeder, took what it needed, and allowed the other one to do the same. Would one become weaker, or would they both be better prepared for the long flight ahead? I I can't tell them. I apparently it's like telling your teenagers, right? We don't listen to the generations ahead of us. And when it comes to selling a home, maybe the question isn't whether you can keep every other house away from the feeder. Maybe the question is whether you've told your home story well enough for the right buyer to recognize where they want to land. Yes, we can give all your wonderful details about your home. You can say things and bring it alive, and it costs you nothing but time in a listing storyboard. That's why we created our listing storyboards back in 2007. And now

All Star Spotlight And Contact Info

SPEAKER_00 18:25

they've got a real glow up as the All-Star Spotlight at listingstoryboard.com. That's listingstoryboard.com. We're standing by to create yours anywhere in the USA. Reach out at 828 333 4483 or go to listingstoryboard.com and click on contact on the website. See you next week when, who knows, maybe we'll talk about bears. This is Rowena Patton on the Real Estate News Radio Show.