It’s eleven weeks in. The owner is a good one. The villa is decent, the photos are fine, you’ve had two viewings in the last month and no offers.
And now the owner has started sending you messages on Sunday evenings asking what’s happening.
You tell him the market is slow. You half believe it yourself.
It isn’t the market
“The market’s slow” feels like an answer, but it isn’t one. Something about the listing is wrong, and it’s almost always one of three things: price, presentation or promotion. Usually only one of them.
That’s useful, because it means there’s a fix. You just need to know which one.
Price is where the asking sits against sold prices
Not against other asking prices. Against what actually sold, in the same building or community, recently.
Buyers in Dubai are sophisticated. They’ve seen the comparables before you have. If the asking is fifteen percent above the last three sales, they don’t enquire. They wait for it to drop.
Which is why the way you deliver the number matters as much as the number. “I think it’s maybe around” tells the owner the figure is soft, so everything above it becomes an opening position. Say it flat. Based on what has sold in this building in the last six months, it’s this. Then stop talking. Whoever speaks first concedes.
Presentation is everything between the portal photo and the front door
The photos. The tenant still living there. A kitchen nobody has touched since 2011. A viewing at the wrong time of day. A service charge question you couldn’t answer.
Price gets a buyer through the door. Presentation decides whether they walk back out wanting it.
This is the one agents overlook, because it feels rude to tell an owner. But a note that says “after six viewings, the one thing buyers keep mentioning is the kitchen, and here’s what I’d change” is the most useful message an owner will get all month.
Promotion is whether the right buyer has seen it
Portals alone won’t find them. The questions that do: is it on every portal and ranking rather than buried? Have you sent it to your own buyer list individually, not in a bulk email? Has your office pitched it on calls this week? Which agents in your network have buyers registered for exactly this?
Promotion is also the one you control completely, which is why it’s the first thing to check.
Two questions tell you which one
Viewings, and offers.
No viewings, it’s price or promotion. Check promotion first. If everything on the promotion list is genuinely covered and the phone is still quiet, it’s price.
Viewings but no offers, it’s presentation. The price got them through the door. Something in the house sent them back out. Ask every viewer one question and write the answer down.
Priced right, shows well, still sitting, it’s back to promotion. The right buyer hasn’t seen it yet.
Run it at day fourteen, not day seventy seven
A listing is most visible in its first two weeks. By week eleven it looks stale to buyers, the owner is wondering what he’s paying you for, and every price conversation sounds like an excuse.
So run the three P’s at day fourteen on every listing, as a rule. Write down which one it is and what you’re doing about it. Tell the owner the same day.
Not “the market’s slow.” The diagnosis. “It’s presentation, here’s what buyers keep saying, here’s what I’d change.”
That’s the message that keeps an owner. It’s also the one most agents never send.
There’s a harder truth underneath it. You will sometimes have to say the price is wrong to an owner who doesn’t want to hear it, and you’ll lose a few of those. The ones you win, sell. The ones you lose tend to come back a few months later, when the high number hasn’t moved and you were the one who told them the truth.
An agent with six correctly priced listings out-earns an agent with twenty that aren’t, and sleeps better. Take fewer listings. Sell more of them.
What to do this week
Take your oldest live listing. Count the viewings and the offers. Circle the P. Write the fix. Message the owner today.
That’s the exercise behind this week of the 30 Day Listings Challenge I’m running on Instagram, one task a day, under twenty minutes. If you want the daily templates, comment CHALLENGE on any post @yourrealestatecoo and the tracker lands in your DMs.
If you’d rather get the numbers behind your own listings looked at, book a free 30 minute call, no pitch, just a plan: https://calendly.com/yourrealestatecoo/30min
Or start with the daily scorecard, one page, four numbers, free: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UQPZag0bQiJc5jFN9lyxD4Liy5JrnPSt/view
Mind. Method. Market.
