"Priced right, presented well" or "sell! sell! sell!"?

I had a listing come on the market this week that I ended up finessing to the point where even I knew I was straying over the poorly-marked Demilitarized Zone between rational behavior and obsession.  Here's a partial list of things I did that I've never done for any other seller and will never do again:

• Paint interior walls and outside light fixtures
• Clean all interior doors
• Strip and wax tile floors and countertops
• Clean and polish kitchen cabinets
• Remove existing dining room light fixture and replace with pendant fixture, by moonlight and flashlight

So far it sounds like a slightly deranged contractor's bid.

• Plus spend hours in the back yard weeding, raking and cutting down dead plants (and pulling dead leaves out of junipers without wearing gloves, which is like scrubbing your hands with broken glass).
• Plus wheedle the homeowner's association (with lots of help from sympathetic landscape committee members) into replacing the large patch of rocks that had been the home's front landscaping for the past fifteen years—rocks that were "only temporary", rocks that made the front yard look like a guest parking space—with real plants like all the other 89 units in the development have.  And it cost me only $200 and an afternoon shoveling and carrying rocks and using muscles I'd forgotten I had.
• Plus persuading the sellers to stage the house. 
• Plus persuading the sellers to go with a conservative list price.  Thank goodness I'm working with a great seller.  Priced right, presented well doesn't happen without a great seller.

Plus all the other stuff on the six-page checklist I use for every listing to make sure that everything gets done and on time.

Now, I'm a great agent to sell your home and all that, but I won't be stripping, waxing, polishing, painting, lifting and toting for you anytime soon.  Not unless I've known you for twenty-five years, you're 86 years old and in poor health, you're on a fixed income and you live in my neighborhood so all my neighbors can comment on my lack of professionalism if your house comes on the market looking slightly less than spectacular.

Not that I was feeling any pressure.

So after a month of this the home's finally buffed to a high luster.  There's nothing more we can do, short of throwing in a $50k kitchen.  So the night before broker's tour my wife, who always hosts my broker's tours for me while I go look at the competition, turns to me and says, "This time you'll have to be there to sell the house". 

My response was spontaneous and heartfelt:  The house is going to have to sell itself.  That's what all the blood, sweat and tears was about.  I'm not going to stand there like Agent X or Agent Y hyping the house and hoping no one notices the carpet stains.  

Because, friends, when the rubber hits the road—when the agents drive up, when the buyers walk through the door—sell! sell! sell! is a really crappy substitute for a really good product.  Given the choice, which would you prefer?  Priced right and presented well?  Or five minutes of Salesmanship 101 pasted over a dog smell so thick you could cut it up in large chunks and use it to shore up a crumbling delta levee?  Let's see a show of hands.  Thought so.

Not that I couldn't hype something if I wanted to—those years in the San Jose State advertising program taught me a thing or two—and not that I'm too proud to.  And not that hype never serves a useful purpose:  it can educate, as long as its sticks close to the truth, and the sellers usually appreciate it.  But it's not what the customers come to buy. 

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