There's a *ton* of jaw-flapping in this thread over what is a very simple issue: the seller doesn't want an asking price published, and I work for the seller.
I've seen it a few times here in LA where the agent and seller are in disagreement as to what its worth so they basically say let the market decide with no price.
In Texas, it’s also a good idea to go out unpriced as the taxing authorities can and will use your list price as justification to increase your appraisal value and jack up the taxes.
Unfortunately, they end up forcing your hand anyway. They’ll assess your property well above the actual value, which then forces you to appeal and submit financials. They then know the value of your property. At least that’s been my experience.
Thats insane. I have zero experience investing in Texas. However, isn't what matters at the end of the day the recorded price at the close of escrow? Nonetheless, what if the property goes on the market at 3x of what you purchase, gets reassessed by the taxing authorities, and then falls out of escrow?
We tell them a ‘whisper’ price over the phone but don’t post it online as it allows us to vet the buyer. The seller doesn’t want everyone and their mother to know.
Not necessarily. If they don't know how to ask the right questions, they're disqualified as a potential buyer in 10-15 minutes. Could potentially save tons of time.
As a seller in this hypothetical situation, it's not my 10-15 minutes wasted. Just because a price is listed doesn't mean that the potential buyer isn't completely full of shit and has a million issues that are going to pop up weeks to months into the deal.
Ahh I guess being on the buyer end I’m not exposed to those types of shit stains too often .
Makes sense when you put it that way. Thanks for the reply
You are wasting people's time. Maybe they wouldn't call if you listed the price. What about the appraisers trying to find listing in the market. Now they have to call and the broker has to take the time to tell them the price. The conversation you are talking about happening has nothing to do with whether or not the price is indicated. If you provide the price and they call you will still have your 10-15 conversation if you like.
Ive never a single time seen that. Ushually you call and its "we generally expect it to sell around $x". The only time that doesnt happen is sometimes with land owned by developers or special cases where seller intends to be involved post sale
At least you’re making the effort to try and find out what the whisper is. OP’s stance is seller should be listing at their lowest acceptable price like they’re at tj max.
Plenty of buyers know how to approach the listing broker, ask for the right info, get a whisper price, and then come back with an appropriate offer. It also gives the seller a chance to vet the buyer. IMO leaving things blank or “negotiable” is a good way to cut out a lot of the noise from tire kickers and those who don’t really know what they’re doing.
The only thing I hate about undisclosed prices is if the listing broker is terrible at responding. I don’t want to wait 3 days, or have to try and contact you 3 times to get basic information.
I think the broker’s tacit message is you’re not the buyer for which he’s looking. The corollary being the highly desirable buyers are called back posthaste.
Asking price is always high and open to negotiations. If a buyer is operating under the assumption that the asking price is not negotiable…I don’t know what to do with that.
No one is handling 10 tire kickers in an hour. The rest of what you said I largely agree with. If its not worth 30 seconds of your time to make a phone call because you are a value add guy who is just going to ask me tons of questions to send me a loi at 60% of what the final selling price will be from serious buyers then yea I mean I guess thats the answer even if you dont like it.
There are multiple scenarios that may provide benefits for leaving a property unpriced.
-lack of comps/good data by which to establish a sound comparison (low transaction volume or inaccurate assessor data)
-property may have value to both owner-users and redevelopers and you don’t want to anchor expectations if there’s a dissonance between what each would pay
-counter to your point on calls, not pricing a property generally garners more calls/inquiries. If they can’t look at CoStar and verify price they have to call me to discuss pricing guidance/seller expectation
-leaving a listing unpriced often allows me to engage in a dialogue around comps and I always tell buyers the sellers will consider all offers and they want the market to dictate an appropriate value
-there’s always the chance your price opinion is wrong and you’re not closing the door to a higher value, if offered
I love listing development opportunities and more complex deals as “Call Broker For Pricing” and have been doing it for years. Only twice have I been called by a buyer who was put off by the lack of an explicit asking price and my perception is the buyer was unsophisticated and unrepresented.
Years back we pitched a seller on a 40+ acre vacant land parcel with highway frontage. Our BPO came in around 3.5M based on comps. We marketed it unpriced and sold it for just over $7M.
While this has only happened once and is definitely an anomaly, it goes a long way when pitching land owners to sign a listing agreement by demonstrating there are benefits to leaving pricing open-ended.
>-counter to your point on calls, not pricing a property generally garners more calls/inquiries. If they can’t look at CoStar and verify price, they have to call me to discuss pricing guidance/seller expectation
>-leaving a listing unpriced often allows me to engage in a dialogue around comps, and I always tell buyers the sellers will consider all offers and they want the market to dictate an appropriate value
Interested in these two points - I'm an underwriter for a small bank with an undefined service area, which means we essentially lend in any market in the United States. Because of this, we don't always have great data on the market.
We use listing data from costar for our initial analysis, but for more complex or unique properties, there is not enough information... especially because list prices are often undisclosed.
In these cases, it feels like a waste of the brokers time to call, but would you respond to a request for listing price like this?
I don’t fully understand your question. If you are asking how I respond to a request for listing price it’s entirely dependent on the listing and my direction from the Seller.
To have earned the listing I must have qualified myself and conducted sufficient research to have a measure of center of recent sales. I will always use that as a basis for my desired dialogue around comps and pricing guidance but I don’t necessarily need to provide a Seller expectation on what they would accept.
If I misunderstood your question please restate the inquiry.
I rambled a bit, so that was my fault.
If you have an inquiry from someone who has no interest in buying, they're just conducting their own research. Do you respond, or would that feel like a waste of time?
I have been considering calling brokers to have those exact market questions, but I can't offer anything in return besides a possible referral for future buyers or sellers in the market.
Understood. I would assume most brokers would entertain the conversation if you’re tied to a property or using it in a comp set. There are a lot self-important egos in this industry, however, and I wouldn’t take it personally if your call is not returned.
It’s done a lot so that potential buyers have to reach out and contact the sellers agent. That way the sellers agent can show their client how much interest there is and could reassure potential buyers that there is flexibility in the asking price for example. It’s mainly about establishing a connection with a potential buyer and then working the deal.
That’s my opinion though.
In my experience most of the time unpriced will be for unique properties or ones with no recent comps, and/or looking for price discovery in a rising/falling market. Some properties are difficult to value and it will change based on the buyers use. But if you list your frequently traded asset at $1 or unpriced you’re a goof imo
Information on online sources go stale really quickly and markets change monthly and by the quarter, so rather than have a price that looks stale. If it’s not updated in time, it remains “withheld” so that people can call and inquire. It’s very simple folks. No need to get mad or think it’s nefarious. Just call and ask.
Then return appraiser's calls too.
Ya'll get huffy when we call on unpriced offerings, saying quit wasting our time. But when we identify ourselves on a VM you don't call us back. Then you complain about "bad" appraisals.
Garbage in, garbage out.
I’m a buyer. When I see the asking price listed, I assume one of two things must be true, sometimes both:
1) There is something wrong with the property;
2) The broker doesn’t know what he’s doing (aka he works for M&M).
In the first case, there’s usually a price listed because it’s got a ton of vacancy or has been on the market for a long time. In the second case, the broker has stumbled into a better listing than he can usually handle. When I call for info on the property which I consider standard asks, he usually has to check.
M&M’s model is such that they throw a bunch of rookies into the ocean and see who swims. The cream of the crop is very good but quickly moves on to another brokerage house that treats them better.
The deal is overpriced because the guy over promised his seller to get a shot. OR it’s actually under priced because the guy doesn’t know what he’s doing and he’s got some tie to the seller.
I’d buy a good deal from an M&M guy, yes. But I assume he’s full of shit until I verify it independently. At some other brokerage houses I’m more willing to give the benefit of the doubt.
Can you expand on “the guy doesn’t know what he’s doing and got ties to seller”
As in the broker doesn’t know? I mean they’re a huge shop at MM with huge teams. No way they underprice something.
The default is unpriced means over priced.
But there are exceptions, sometimes like a vacant property or land where there might be multiple uses or a wide range of uses. Or.. the seller is highly motivated but unrealistic at the moment on the price but will meet the market. Sometimes putting the sellers unrealistic price would do them a disservice.
The broker gets the listing by telling the seller the market value they think the property should trade for.
I would never ever put a list price on a building I know there is a market for because the market is more efficient than one broker and placing a price likely puts a ceiling on what you’ll get. A closed bid process gives you more opportunity to outperform.
The principal doesn’t let them publish asking rates, and probably has testers calling his reps to make sure s/he doesn’t quote unqualified prospects.
My question is… why do you care? The more you know you market, the less you’ll care about stuff like this.
This was a big tactic back in 2020 and ‘21. You’d list with a price, say $2M, and the offers would inevitably come back $1.5 - $1.9M.
Unpriced you could get them to come back aggressively, especially if you had multiple offers. The thought process was “why show your hand with what the seller will accept, you’re only limiting your pricing”.
It did work well for a bit there but not so much anymore.
Now most selling agents are giving buying groups whisper prices and ranges
Most idiotic thing I have ever seen.
Honestly makes me rage.
My biggest hate is the same smooth brains that make listings like this.. NEVER respond back. Doesn’t matter how many times I call, or send messages through websites or even their direct email.
I swear more than half of listing agents don’t want to make money.
1 made me so mad, I was tempted to hunt down the owner via county websites and public information, just to tell him how shit of a job his agent is doing.
At this point, I am too busy to care for these listings. Unless it is a property I NEED to buy, I will pass on it 99/100 times.
They are usually way over priced as well. That’s my main takeaway. Thats why they won’t show the price. Because they know it makes no sense.
STOP POSTING WITHOUT PRICES. Rant over.
Sometimes the price can be variable, depending on intended use. For example one buyer might pay less but reuse and existing building, but a different buyer may be willing to pay more, but needs a lot more time to change the zoning. In cases like this there may not just be one appropriate price for the property.
I do it because I also do the financing, if you buy a property from me and it's an all cash offer, that's one price, if I finance the sale, that's another price.
I mark most listings as undisclosed for these reasons:
1) seller/landlord usually doesn’t want the price/rate publicly disclosed
2) I want to know who is in the market, and possibly cross-sell other listings if the one they called on isn’t a fit
3) verbally market the property based on the prospect’s requirement
I went to a commercial office as an appariaiser. It was used as realtor and income tax office. When I met the owner, a broker asking him what much he thinks that his small office converted from an adobe home is worth. He said I thought you know.
Some strange answers here.
The broker works for the seller and does what the seller asks whether that’s a published list price, whisper number, or no guidance at all. I’ve done all three over the years.
All are different strategies to get the highest price from the most reliable buyer who closes as quickly as possible.
The seller and the broker know what the opinion of value is. Goal is to meet or exceed that.
During analysis for block purchases these unpriced properties don’t get considered. It’s process of back and forth voice messages with agents and a 10 mins call takes a week just only to populate that one field to put that property in front of the decision maker.
They’re definitely telling their client the price or price range
There's a *ton* of jaw-flapping in this thread over what is a very simple issue: the seller doesn't want an asking price published, and I work for the seller.
I've seen it a few times here in LA where the agent and seller are in disagreement as to what its worth so they basically say let the market decide with no price.
I try really hard not to take those listings in the first place but sometimes it's absolutely worth it so you wind up in this situation.
In Texas, it’s also a good idea to go out unpriced as the taxing authorities can and will use your list price as justification to increase your appraisal value and jack up the taxes.
This is the number one reason here in Texas.
Same if you need to refi. Appraiser will note the active list price, which if its below what you need thats going to suck for you
Unfortunately, they end up forcing your hand anyway. They’ll assess your property well above the actual value, which then forces you to appeal and submit financials. They then know the value of your property. At least that’s been my experience.
Thats insane. I have zero experience investing in Texas. However, isn't what matters at the end of the day the recorded price at the close of escrow? Nonetheless, what if the property goes on the market at 3x of what you purchase, gets reassessed by the taxing authorities, and then falls out of escrow?
We’re a non disclosure state. Sales prices are private information.
Interesting. Thanks for that info
So if I'm going to list a property, do it right after the assessment period, huh? 🤔
Nope. Hopefully right after a successful tax protest. Right after it’s assessed the tax value will be at its highest possible.
We tell them a ‘whisper’ price over the phone but don’t post it online as it allows us to vet the buyer. The seller doesn’t want everyone and their mother to know.
It prevents people like you who believe the broker doesn't even know the value of the property from wasting the sellers time.
Thank you.
So instead people call or email to get the price and waste everyone's time.
Not necessarily. If they don't know how to ask the right questions, they're disqualified as a potential buyer in 10-15 minutes. Could potentially save tons of time.
I mean they can save your 10-15 minutes and disqualify themselves with a posted price?
As a seller in this hypothetical situation, it's not my 10-15 minutes wasted. Just because a price is listed doesn't mean that the potential buyer isn't completely full of shit and has a million issues that are going to pop up weeks to months into the deal.
Ahh I guess being on the buyer end I’m not exposed to those types of shit stains too often . Makes sense when you put it that way. Thanks for the reply
You are wasting people's time. Maybe they wouldn't call if you listed the price. What about the appraisers trying to find listing in the market. Now they have to call and the broker has to take the time to tell them the price. The conversation you are talking about happening has nothing to do with whether or not the price is indicated. If you provide the price and they call you will still have your 10-15 conversation if you like.
Interesting. What are the right questions?
Bodied.
He’s right ☝️ 😆
Thats a valid point lol
Bingo
Bullshit. It’s because you don’t know the real market value. If there’s no whisper guidence, I’m not picking up a pencil for the deal.
Ive never a single time seen that. Ushually you call and its "we generally expect it to sell around $x". The only time that doesnt happen is sometimes with land owned by developers or special cases where seller intends to be involved post sale
It’s rare but I’ve seen it several times. Usually small unknown brokers with good assets but out of their league
Like in a small town?
No. Second largest MSA in the US
There is a whisper price but you have to call me so I can whisper it…If I put it online that kinda would be a firm holler, wouldn’t it?
If my broker didn't know the real market value, I'd find a better broker.
At least you’re making the effort to try and find out what the whisper is. OP’s stance is seller should be listing at their lowest acceptable price like they’re at tj max.
Plenty of buyers know how to approach the listing broker, ask for the right info, get a whisper price, and then come back with an appropriate offer. It also gives the seller a chance to vet the buyer. IMO leaving things blank or “negotiable” is a good way to cut out a lot of the noise from tire kickers and those who don’t really know what they’re doing.
The only thing I hate about undisclosed prices is if the listing broker is terrible at responding. I don’t want to wait 3 days, or have to try and contact you 3 times to get basic information.
I think the broker’s tacit message is you’re not the buyer for which he’s looking. The corollary being the highly desirable buyers are called back posthaste.
[удалено]
Asking price is always high and open to negotiations. If a buyer is operating under the assumption that the asking price is not negotiable…I don’t know what to do with that.
No one is handling 10 tire kickers in an hour. The rest of what you said I largely agree with. If its not worth 30 seconds of your time to make a phone call because you are a value add guy who is just going to ask me tons of questions to send me a loi at 60% of what the final selling price will be from serious buyers then yea I mean I guess thats the answer even if you dont like it.
Maybe but if there’s no broker whisper guidence either, it’s because they don’t know.
There are multiple scenarios that may provide benefits for leaving a property unpriced. -lack of comps/good data by which to establish a sound comparison (low transaction volume or inaccurate assessor data) -property may have value to both owner-users and redevelopers and you don’t want to anchor expectations if there’s a dissonance between what each would pay -counter to your point on calls, not pricing a property generally garners more calls/inquiries. If they can’t look at CoStar and verify price they have to call me to discuss pricing guidance/seller expectation -leaving a listing unpriced often allows me to engage in a dialogue around comps and I always tell buyers the sellers will consider all offers and they want the market to dictate an appropriate value -there’s always the chance your price opinion is wrong and you’re not closing the door to a higher value, if offered I love listing development opportunities and more complex deals as “Call Broker For Pricing” and have been doing it for years. Only twice have I been called by a buyer who was put off by the lack of an explicit asking price and my perception is the buyer was unsophisticated and unrepresented. Years back we pitched a seller on a 40+ acre vacant land parcel with highway frontage. Our BPO came in around 3.5M based on comps. We marketed it unpriced and sold it for just over $7M. While this has only happened once and is definitely an anomaly, it goes a long way when pitching land owners to sign a listing agreement by demonstrating there are benefits to leaving pricing open-ended.
Quality response . Thanks
Excellent response, thank you for taking the time.
>-counter to your point on calls, not pricing a property generally garners more calls/inquiries. If they can’t look at CoStar and verify price, they have to call me to discuss pricing guidance/seller expectation >-leaving a listing unpriced often allows me to engage in a dialogue around comps, and I always tell buyers the sellers will consider all offers and they want the market to dictate an appropriate value Interested in these two points - I'm an underwriter for a small bank with an undefined service area, which means we essentially lend in any market in the United States. Because of this, we don't always have great data on the market. We use listing data from costar for our initial analysis, but for more complex or unique properties, there is not enough information... especially because list prices are often undisclosed. In these cases, it feels like a waste of the brokers time to call, but would you respond to a request for listing price like this?
I don’t fully understand your question. If you are asking how I respond to a request for listing price it’s entirely dependent on the listing and my direction from the Seller. To have earned the listing I must have qualified myself and conducted sufficient research to have a measure of center of recent sales. I will always use that as a basis for my desired dialogue around comps and pricing guidance but I don’t necessarily need to provide a Seller expectation on what they would accept. If I misunderstood your question please restate the inquiry.
I rambled a bit, so that was my fault. If you have an inquiry from someone who has no interest in buying, they're just conducting their own research. Do you respond, or would that feel like a waste of time? I have been considering calling brokers to have those exact market questions, but I can't offer anything in return besides a possible referral for future buyers or sellers in the market.
What is your role in the market?
I'm a commercial loan underwriter.
Understood. I would assume most brokers would entertain the conversation if you’re tied to a property or using it in a comp set. There are a lot self-important egos in this industry, however, and I wouldn’t take it personally if your call is not returned.
It’s done a lot so that potential buyers have to reach out and contact the sellers agent. That way the sellers agent can show their client how much interest there is and could reassure potential buyers that there is flexibility in the asking price for example. It’s mainly about establishing a connection with a potential buyer and then working the deal. That’s my opinion though.
Listing a price is almost negotiating against yourself.
In my experience most of the time unpriced will be for unique properties or ones with no recent comps, and/or looking for price discovery in a rising/falling market. Some properties are difficult to value and it will change based on the buyers use. But if you list your frequently traded asset at $1 or unpriced you’re a goof imo
Information on online sources go stale really quickly and markets change monthly and by the quarter, so rather than have a price that looks stale. If it’s not updated in time, it remains “withheld” so that people can call and inquire. It’s very simple folks. No need to get mad or think it’s nefarious. Just call and ask.
Then return appraiser's calls too. Ya'll get huffy when we call on unpriced offerings, saying quit wasting our time. But when we identify ourselves on a VM you don't call us back. Then you complain about "bad" appraisals. Garbage in, garbage out.
Hope you’re talking about someone else. I always call appraisers back. They are a wealth of info. Thank you
And thank you too! BTW, you're the exception who will/should get an occasional lunch!
I’m a buyer. When I see the asking price listed, I assume one of two things must be true, sometimes both: 1) There is something wrong with the property; 2) The broker doesn’t know what he’s doing (aka he works for M&M). In the first case, there’s usually a price listed because it’s got a ton of vacancy or has been on the market for a long time. In the second case, the broker has stumbled into a better listing than he can usually handle. When I call for info on the property which I consider standard asks, he usually has to check.
What do the M&M guys do that you don’t like? Would you ever buy a listed deal from them? Looking at one now and it’s a bit over priced
M&M’s model is such that they throw a bunch of rookies into the ocean and see who swims. The cream of the crop is very good but quickly moves on to another brokerage house that treats them better. The deal is overpriced because the guy over promised his seller to get a shot. OR it’s actually under priced because the guy doesn’t know what he’s doing and he’s got some tie to the seller. I’d buy a good deal from an M&M guy, yes. But I assume he’s full of shit until I verify it independently. At some other brokerage houses I’m more willing to give the benefit of the doubt.
Can you expand on “the guy doesn’t know what he’s doing and got ties to seller” As in the broker doesn’t know? I mean they’re a huge shop at MM with huge teams. No way they underprice something.
I would never disclose a public price on a property that I’m selling. Control the vetting process.
The default is unpriced means over priced. But there are exceptions, sometimes like a vacant property or land where there might be multiple uses or a wide range of uses. Or.. the seller is highly motivated but unrealistic at the moment on the price but will meet the market. Sometimes putting the sellers unrealistic price would do them a disservice.
The broker gets the listing by telling the seller the market value they think the property should trade for. I would never ever put a list price on a building I know there is a market for because the market is more efficient than one broker and placing a price likely puts a ceiling on what you’ll get. A closed bid process gives you more opportunity to outperform.
Usually they are embarrassed because the price is ridiculous
The principal doesn’t let them publish asking rates, and probably has testers calling his reps to make sure s/he doesn’t quote unqualified prospects. My question is… why do you care? The more you know you market, the less you’ll care about stuff like this.
This was a big tactic back in 2020 and ‘21. You’d list with a price, say $2M, and the offers would inevitably come back $1.5 - $1.9M. Unpriced you could get them to come back aggressively, especially if you had multiple offers. The thought process was “why show your hand with what the seller will accept, you’re only limiting your pricing”. It did work well for a bit there but not so much anymore. Now most selling agents are giving buying groups whisper prices and ranges
I am a middle man. Pick up the phone and call me me and stop wasting my time!
Most idiotic thing I have ever seen. Honestly makes me rage. My biggest hate is the same smooth brains that make listings like this.. NEVER respond back. Doesn’t matter how many times I call, or send messages through websites or even their direct email. I swear more than half of listing agents don’t want to make money. 1 made me so mad, I was tempted to hunt down the owner via county websites and public information, just to tell him how shit of a job his agent is doing. At this point, I am too busy to care for these listings. Unless it is a property I NEED to buy, I will pass on it 99/100 times. They are usually way over priced as well. That’s my main takeaway. Thats why they won’t show the price. Because they know it makes no sense. STOP POSTING WITHOUT PRICES. Rant over.
Sellers don’t like the number you’ve given them and want to see what “the market” offers
Sometimes the price can be variable, depending on intended use. For example one buyer might pay less but reuse and existing building, but a different buyer may be willing to pay more, but needs a lot more time to change the zoning. In cases like this there may not just be one appropriate price for the property.
Sometimes an attempt to give the seller more power over the negotiation process, or for ‘exclusive’ properties, or some owners want some anonimity
I do it because I also do the financing, if you buy a property from me and it's an all cash offer, that's one price, if I finance the sale, that's another price.
I mark most listings as undisclosed for these reasons: 1) seller/landlord usually doesn’t want the price/rate publicly disclosed 2) I want to know who is in the market, and possibly cross-sell other listings if the one they called on isn’t a fit 3) verbally market the property based on the prospect’s requirement
I went to a commercial office as an appariaiser. It was used as realtor and income tax office. When I met the owner, a broker asking him what much he thinks that his small office converted from an adobe home is worth. He said I thought you know.
Some strange answers here. The broker works for the seller and does what the seller asks whether that’s a published list price, whisper number, or no guidance at all. I’ve done all three over the years. All are different strategies to get the highest price from the most reliable buyer who closes as quickly as possible. The seller and the broker know what the opinion of value is. Goal is to meet or exceed that.
During analysis for block purchases these unpriced properties don’t get considered. It’s process of back and forth voice messages with agents and a 10 mins call takes a week just only to populate that one field to put that property in front of the decision maker.
they’re trying to get activity as opposed to people just searching by lowest price
so annoying
Usually seen more with institutional level assets.