6 Steps to Get Your Stagnant Listings Selling Again

If your listings are sitting and your sellers are calling to ask what’s going on, you already know that hope isn’t a strategy. The difference between the agents winning right now and the ones losing sleep is having an actual process. In this video, I break down the six steps I use to move a stale listing from active to under contract, starting with knowing your average days on market and earning the price reduction instead of begging for it. These are the same moves that let you walk into any seller conversation as the professional in the room. Watch the video to get the full playbook.

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If your listings are sitting and your sellers are lying awake wondering what’s going on with their home, you’re not alone in that, and you’re also not stuck. The agents who are moving inventory in a slower market aren’t lucky. They’re running a process that intentionally moves a listing from active to under contract, and we can all learn it. What follows are the six steps I teach for getting a stalled listing sold, and they work in any market.

It starts with your average days on market. Before anything else, you have to know the average days on market in your community. Depending on where you are, that could be ten to twenty days, twenty to fifty, or the fifty to seventy-five we’ve been seeing lately in some markets. This number lets you set the seller’s expectations in the very first conversation, telling them the average is 30 days plus another 30 to 45 for escrow, so a slow first week doesn’t send everyone into a panic. If you haven’t pulled it for a listing you already have, go back and pull it, because it sets up every conversation that follows. It’s also worth being honest when you’ve missed the mark, because framing it as a pricing signal from the buyers, rather than your personal opinion, keeps the seller focused on the market instead of on you.

Communication is how you earn the reduction. Price reductions are earned, not given, and communication is where you earn them. In a slower landscape, the once-every-two-weeks cadence doesn’t cut it, so I move to talking with sellers two to three times a week. Part of that is a furnished feedback report, typed out after every showing, logging who showed the property, when, and what they said, so that when a pattern emerges, you have a documented history to point back to. A seller hears a price-reduction ask completely differently from the agent who’s been communicating all along than from the one who vanished for two weeks and then asked them to drop their price.

Price is the one thing that always sells a home. Early in my career, a mentor asked me what sells a property, and the answer he gave me has held true in every market since: price. You can have the most beautiful home in the worst location, or the smallest studio in a premium area, and the price relative to comparable sales is still what determines whether it moves. When the price is right, and the finishes are there too, the home adjusts up, and the right buyer rises to meet it. We can’t get hung up on the redone floors or the new backyard if the price doesn’t match what’s actually selling.

You can watch the full video above, or feel free to skip to the topics that interest you most using the timestamps below:

Timestamps:

00:00 — Listings Not Selling

00:29 — Average Days on Market

03:17 — Communication And Cadence

06:02 — Furnished Feedback Report

08:05 — Price Sells Property

10:13 — Price Reduction Rule

13:49 — Set Your Standard

15:36 — Go Back Why

16:36 — Find The Buyer

Key Takeaways:

1. Know your average days on market. This is the foundation. Knowing the community average lets you frame expectations up front and reframe a slow start as market feedback rather than a crisis. If you haven’t pulled it for a current listing, go back and do it now.

2. Communicate on a real cadence. Move from every other week to two or three touches a week, and back it with a typed feedback report after every showing. This is how you build the track record that makes a seller say yes to a reduction when the data calls for one.

3. Remember that price sells the property. In any market, price relative to comparable sales is the deciding factor. Beautiful finishes don’t overcome a number that’s out of line, so keep the seller’s attention on where the price sits against the neighborhood.

4. Use the golden rule on reductions. No showings and no offers means you’re roughly 10% overpriced. Showings but no offers means about 5%. Matching the percentage to what the days on market are telling you keeps the conversation objective, and it creates an anchor so a too-small reduction becomes a starting point, not the finish line.

5. Set your standard and go back to the why. Decide in advance what you will and won’t do on price, because selling in a slower market means saying no to listings that won’t price to sell. When a seller talks about pulling the listing or renting instead, take them back to why they were selling in the first place and let that purpose put the decision back on track.

6. Do the work and find the buyer. Attack the market on every front. Post and tag the listing on social, door-knock the neighbors and ask who they know, and call the buyer’s agents on recently sold homes nearby to ask who else was looking. That’s the effort it takes right now, and every bit of it becomes proof of work you can hand back to your seller. If proactive lead work is where you want to sharpen up, my step-by-step guide to converting expired listings and my system for staying in front of your database both build on the same prospecting muscle.

Getting a stuck listing sold is a lot of work, but it’s the work that separates the professional, accountable agent from the one just hoping the market turns. If you’re a Realtor who wants to build the business of your dreams with a team that teaches this level of detail, I’d love to talk. Call or text me at 909-351-5105, email me at support@pakhomerealty.com, or visitblog.pakhomerealty.com. Let’s get your listings moving.