Never Say This To Your Agent When Selling Your Home

Real estate agents have a trust problem — and ironically, that lack of trust is exactly what causes sellers to lose money. In this episode, Tim breaks down what NOT to tell your agent (and what you must say instead) to avoid costly mistakes when selling your home.

You’ll learn:

•  Why saying “price it however you think is best” can backfire if you don’t share your true bottom line 
•  How hiding your timeline can kill urgency and slow down your sale 
•  Why you should never blindly agree to standard buyer agent commissions — and how to negotiate them 
•  The risk of accepting long listing agreements without an easy exit clause 
•  Why hiring the first agent you meet (without interviews) removes your biggest advantage: competition
•  How asking “is it a good time to sell?” without context leads to bad advice
•  The importance of being fully transparent about your financial constraints and goals

Bottom line: secrecy doesn’t protect you — it hurts you. The best outcomes happen when you give your agent the full picture so they can build a strategy that actually fits your goals.

Intro

Outro

Transcript

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Real estate agents like me have a reputation problem. People just don't trust us. Gallup ranks real estate agents lower in trustworthiness than congressmen. And well, congressmen, they rate lower in liability than chlamydia. So yay, I love that for us. So when people hire an agent to manage the sale of what very well may be their most valuable asset, but they don't trust them enough to give them the whole story, disaster is sure to follow. So today I'm going to talk to you about what not to tell your real estate agent when you're looking to sell your home. And more importantly, how to make sure the things you do say will get your home sold for more money and less time. So let's say your agent asks about pricing and you tell them, look, just price it wherever you think is best. I trust your judgment. I just don't want it sitting on the market forever. Well, that sounds reasonable, right? I mean, you're being flexible and easy to work with, but here's what you didn't say. You need to clear$450,000 just to cover your mortgage payoff and moving costs. And that's your absolute floor. Anything less, and you can't close. Well, why didn't you mention it? Because you heard a horror story about an agent who found out their seller was desperate. So then that agent rushed to accept the first lowball offer and left a ton of money on the table. So you figured, hey, by keeping your cards close to the vest, it would protect you. So here's what happens instead. Your agent runs the comps and sees your house is worth about$450,000. But because you said you were flexible and you didn't mention a price floor and you emphasize that you wanted it sold quickly, they made what in their mind seemed like a smart move. They strategically underpriced it at$430,000 to guarantee a fast sale and maybe trigger a bidding war. Well, day one, they were successful. There was multiple offers and you get an above asking offer at$440,000. So in the mind of your agent, they are thrilled. They call you up ready to celebrate. They have an offer for$10,000 over what you were even asking on the very first day you hit the market. Now that's success in anybody's book, but you are on the other end of the phone having a small panic attack because you're 10 grand short of what you actually needed just to break even. So well, now you're stuck. You either reject a solid offer and risk a commission dispute with an angry buyer's broker, or you're scrambling to figure out how do you come up with a$10,000 gap that you created just not being totally forthright up front. Or the other scenario could be the exact opposite. Maybe you've got plenty of equity in the home, but you're tight on a timeline. However, you've heard that agents will exploit desperation. So you just kind of play it cool with your listing appointment. You say, oh, we're in no big rush. Whenever the right buyer comes along, what your agent hears is this listing isn't urgent. I can price at or slightly above the market, I can skip the aggressive open house campaign, and I can just wait along for a rich fool, basically. So they list your home with great photos and a solid description, but there's no urgency. Meanwhile, you're secretly three months from a job transfer, and every week that passes brings you closer to panic mode. Here's the problem. Most of the country is at a buyer's market right now. As of November 2025, there were 37% more sellers than there were buyers, and cancellations and expireds were up 45%. So selling quickly is already pretty difficult, but doing it without your agent knowing that you're on a clock? Well, now we're in impossible land. So the fix for both scenarios is this. After your agent shows you comps and a pricing strategy, tell them your actual constraints. Be honest, all of them. Just tell them, look, here's what I mean to walk away with$450,000 minimum after all costs. And here's my timeline. I need to close by May because of a job transfer. Can we build a strategy that hits both targets? Or if your finances are tight, you might just say, I need to get as much as possible. But what's more important is that we stop the bleeding. How can we sell quickly, even if it means we leave a little bit of money on the table? A good agent is going to adjust the plan to all of the real things pricing, marketing, offer evaluation. They're going to do their best to match what you actually need. Now, the other thing to never tell your agent is just pay whatever standard on a buyer agent commission. Why would you want to do that? You're effectively just throwing money out of the window. Back in 2024, since that NAR ruling, sellers are no longer automatically paying the buyer's agent commission through the MLS. You know, prior to that ruling, sure, you were expected to pay for the buyer's agent, who was actually advocating against your interest. So I don't know, how weird is that, but it's not how it is anymore. Smart sellers are still often contributing to buyer commissions, sure, but they're negotiating those buyers' commissions based on the strength of the offer that's coming in. So when your agent says, we should offer 3% to attract buyers' agents, you just need to ask, well, why 3%? What happens if we offer 2%? What if their offer is horrible? Why would I pay a full commission for a really bad offer? What if we find an unrepresented buyer and we have the opportunity to pay zero? So on a$400,000 sale, let's just put that into real numbers. The difference between 0% and 3% is$12,000. And the last I checked, that's real money. The fix here is at the listing appointment, ask your agent to walk you through the commission structure, all of it, and understand what you're authorizing and why. Now the next item on the list is you never tell your agent, I don't care how long the listing agreement is. Because most agents will then say, Well, good, because our standard contract is six months. And you, being a nice, reasonable person who doesn't want to cause trouble, says, Okay, fine, whatever you need. Here's the thing: if you're dealing with the wrong kind of agent, what you just did is you handed them a permission slip to plant a billboard in your front yard and disappear. And that is the most common complaint that I heard when I was actively selling homes. I would rescue a listing that had been languishing on the market untouched, and the owner would tell me, hey, my last agent met me once, threw in their sign, and vanished into the witness protection program unless we asked for an update. Now, what's worse is when I tried to cancel after three months of radio silence, their broker said I owed them some sort of a cancellation fee plus all of their marketing expenses, which I guess included some Starbucks runs and a few tanks of gas. So here's what I did differently, and here's what I recommend you explore. It's a huge hat tip, by the way, to my old mentor, Brendan Mulrennan, who called it his easy exit listing agreement. And here's how it worked. The seller and I sign an addendum that said every morning they wake up happy with my work, we keep marching forward together. But if there ever came a day where they felt I wasn't living up to my end of the deal, they could terminate the relationship right then, right there. No six-month hostage situation, no cancellation fee beyond covering hard costs, like maybe the listing photography. There was no arguing with my broker about holding the listing hostage. And you wouldn't believe how many people signed with me specifically because of that safety net. Why? Well, because an agent who is afraid of committing to re-earn your confidence every single day, well, they're probably telling you something about the quality of their work. So during your agent interviews, just ask, hey, what happens if it turns out that we're not a great fit working together? If they hem and they haw about needing six months to guarantee enough market exposure, I would definitely hold off on working with them. Here's another one. Never tell an agent, hey, you're hired without interviewing multiple agents. I've seen this before. Uh let's say your friend refers you to their agent. You meet for coffee, they seem nice, you're all hopped up on your fancy espresso, so you say, you know what, you're hired, let's do this. And with that, you just eliminated the single best quality control mechanism in the entire process. Competition. You have no idea if they're any good at selling homes because you never got anybody else in there to compare them to. For all you know, this agent is an incredible buyer's agent, but they've never listed a home in their life and they have no idea what they're doing. Just because they have the license to sell real estate doesn't mean they're capable. So, in the absence of another option, you have no idea if their marketing plan is cutting edge or if it involves just dumping a for sale side in the yard and praying. Essentially, you just hired someone for the biggest financial transaction of your life using the same decision-making process you use to pick a Netflix show. Hey, this one looks good, play. The fix here is to interview at least three agents and ask each one the same question so you can compare and let them know you're interviewing multiple agents because when you compare their pricing strategy, their marketing plans, their track record, and even listing terms, it makes them sweat a little, sure when they know that they're competing for the job, but it ultimately enables you to get a great opinion and trust your gut. And here's another one never tell your agent, hey, I need you to tell me, is this a good time to sell? without explaining all of your circumstances. Because in order for your agent to do a great job for you, it's important that when you ask questions, they have the context behind them. So instead of just asking, is it a good time to sell? Because, well, let's face it, anytime there's a good time to sell to an agent who's ready, you need to instead give them the background of what you're doing with the life. So instead, the real question is, is it a good time for somebody to sell who is in my circumstances? It's sort of like asking the doctor, hey, is my 40 pounds of weight gain normal without also mentioning the fact that you're pregnant. You have to give background here. And maybe the problems are temporary. Maybe you're going through a rough patch at work or at home, but you're going to see the light at the end of the tunnel because things will smooth out when they hire the new VP of finance and they could take some weight off your shoulders, or maybe you had a surgery and you're still healing up from that. And here's why your agent needs to know they can't tell you whether to wait or whether to act now unless they know what you're actually dealing with. If the market's about to shift really hard in the wrong direction, well, your temporary problems might be nothing compared to what's coming. But if the market's stable and your situation is going to improve in 60 days, well, maybe waiting makes sense. Either way, you only get good advice through openness, not secrecy. So give your agent the full picture, your timeline, your constraints, your concerns. Then let them advise you honestly whether now is the right time for you to sell. Look, the uncomfortable truth here is that there are people out there who will try to take advantage of you if you let them. But these aren't just real estate agents. These are colleagues at work, these are family members who keep borrowing money and somehow they never have their wallet when the dinner check comes. The list goes on and on. But here's the thing: finding a great agent, it's not actually that hard. Interview multiple agents. Ask those tough questions that I gave you because when you're selling a huge asset in your portfolio, you don't want somebody who got the job just because your neighbor's cousin said they did a kind of a good job, I guess. Here's where it gets tricky, though. Even the best agent in the world can't save you from yourself. I mean, you could hire the Michael Jordan of real estate agents, but if you bumble around and you tell a buyer's agent, hey, I'm desperate to close because our new job starts in three weeks, or you casually mention you'll take any offer because you're three months behind on your mortgage to the buyer, well, congratulations. You just played yourself. But those mistakes are completely avoidable if you know the right steps. And that's exactly why I break down in this video right here, where I help you walk confidently down the path toward negotiation mastery. So click that, watch it, and I will see you there.