Sophie V., seller
She'd warned me on the phone: "I'm selling on my own. I just want a price opinion."
Sophie is a lawyer. She likes well-kept files. She had already prepared all her documents, a viewing schedule, a price. She needed no one — in theory.
We toured her apartment. She had thought of everything, except one thing: herself. She couldn't simultaneously be the seller and the voice that negotiates, unemotional, with the buyer.
I offered that she keep the parts she owned, and let us filter, show, negotiate. A narrow mandate.
Three weeks later, signature. At asking price. "I didn't want an agency," she wrote to me. "I changed my mind in forty minutes because you didn't try to sell me anything."
It was, probably, the best thing anyone said to me that year.
« I didn't try to sell her anything. Probably the best decision of the year. »
