One of the cornerstones of the Sperry Van Ness brand is the reliance on competition as our primary tool in representing sellers. I’ll spare you the SVN platitudes, but I will say that competition is something I believe in strongly.

Anybody that has ever bought or sold a commercial deal knows that the standard BS drill that brokers put you through is to promise a price to get the listing, offer the property to their best clients first, submit offers less than the listing price and try to talk you into taking the deal, and then if you don’t take it they leave the property out on the market collecting dust until somebody does come along.

It’s no wonder that most players in commercial real estate view brokers as necessary evils.

I’m a big believer in competition because I think it’s the best and easiest way to ingrain in your clients mind that their interests are your interests. I think there’s a school of thought in real estate that there is such a thing as overexposure, or that a quiet marketing is the way to go. I’ve even heard this from sellers. But I don’t think it withstands the test of logic.

When I take a listing I try to make sure that the price I give to the seller is one that will allow me to take a minimum of five offers within three weeks of getting the listing. If I can’t do that, then I’m either overpriced, or I’m dealing with a property where there isn’t likely to be a lot of action. Both are scenarios I try to avoid. But I won’t stop at five offers and I usually try to get as many as I can. The reason is simply. Offers number 6, 7 or 8 might not get the deal, but they might be successful in getting a higher price out of one of the other offers (or getting another buyer to close faster, or think twice about retrading the deal). Buyers are humans, and humans hate to miss out on something they think someone else wants.

I’ve been told that my approach to selling deals like this has created some frustration among some buyers. That’s not my goal, but it doesn’t upset me either. The kind of buyers that this strategy is bound to offend are the kind of buyers that only want an inside deal. Those aren’t the kind of buyers that sellers should want to deal with anyway. And to those buyers I simply have to point out that if I was representing them on the buy side, or if they come to me in a few years as sellers, I will work just as hard for them.

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