Brian McCann Of Keller Williams Philadelphia On How To Get The Absolute Best Price When You Sell Your Home

An Interview With Jason Hartman

Get out of the way — This one is comical, but everyone in real estate has had a seller who wants to be there in showings and talk to potential buyers. You might be the nicest person in the world, but in my experience that never ends well. Buyers don’t need to know your motivations for selling. Also, they usually don’t want to think that another human lived in the house prior to them. The best advice is — to make yourself scarce during showings. Grab a coffee around the corner go food shopping. Just, give buyers a chance to be comfortable to share feedback with each other and their agent as they walk through the house. If buyers can’t talk freely with each other — the good, bad and ugly — while touring a home, they’re going to be more uncomfortable and make it less likely they’ll buy your home.

How can you get the best price possible when you are looking to sell your home? Sometimes it’s a matter of timing, the right upgrades, or simply the right negotiation. In this interview series called “How To Get The Best Price When You Sell Your Home” we are talking to successful real estate leaders, who can share stories, insights and lessons from their experience about how to get the best price when you want to sell your home.

As a particular part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Brian McCann.

Brian McCann is a realtor with Keller Williams Philadelphia. He received his BA from the University of Pennsylvania and attends law school at Rutgers University Camden in their evening program. He has practiced real estate since 2019 and works in real estate development as well.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us the “backstory” about what brought you to your career?

I’m relatively new to being a realtor as I got licensed in 2019. However, I’ve always been really drawn to buildings and development and how a person’s environment shapes their day-to-day happiness. Growing up in a mostly working-class part of Philadelphia that has been slower to re-development that other parts of the city, I would and do constantly find myself flooded with ideas for development and transforming industrial waterfront space into exciting spaces in the future. Obviously, the barrier to entry for large-scale real estate development is massive. But understanding the consumer and their needs is something that can be impacted at the realtor level and it’s a job I absolutely love doing.

Can you share with our readers the most interesting or amusing story that occurred to you in your career so far? Can you share the lesson or take away, you took out of that story?

Selling a home isn’t always linear. In a perfect world, the person or people who own the home are all in agreement on when to sell and for what price and it goes smoothly. But that’s not reality in every instance. Homeowners get divorced which can cause financial strain and a need to sell a home quickly, but at a high price. These situations can be stressful because often you’re dealing with opposing parties in a lawsuit (the divorce) having to work communally to sell a home. I respect my client’s discretion too much to divulge — but one can imagine the type of stress that can occur from these transactions. Another instance which can become problematic is estates. As the saying goes, the only thing certain in life are death and taxes. When a person dies, your property sometimes becomes an asset within the estate and the still can owe taxes. So, walking people through that process is a whole other set of challenges. Maybe one heir doesn’t want to sell, maybe they forgot to probate the estate. In general, the best approach is patience and directness in these situations.

Do you have a favorite “life lesson quote”? Can you share a story or example of how that was relevant to you in your life?

Early in my real estate career, my girlfriend who is not a realtor, saw me getting incredibly stressed over deals. I would add to the frustration and really live in the emotion that my buyers or sellers had whenever anything went wrong. She said to me “you can’t be a great realtor, much less a good realtor, if you’re counting your commission before the deal closes.” She was right. Becoming a realtor costs money, acquiring clients cost money and I wasn’t in a great financial situation, so every single deal felt like life and death. So, over time, I stopped thinking about commission entirely. It was liberating. The job of a realtor is to help his or her clients achieve their desired outcome. Full stop. It isn’t only to sell someone a home, or to sell their home. It’s to be the voice of reason, the expert, a calming force in a legal process that culminates in the conveyance of their largest asset. Being able to really be client focused, and to keep my mind off the commission has helped me grow as a realtor. So, that’d be the advice I’d give to others starting out — don’t worry about commissions, worry about your clients.

Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?

Realtors do a lot of different things. Some focus only on sales. Some dip their toe into development. Personally, I’ve started attending Law School at nights. I did so to expand my base of knowledge about property, contracts and estates. I want to be able to be a real resource for my clients and give them great confidence long-term about partnering with me on their investments and homes.

What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?

I work as a realtor through Keller Williams Philadelphia, and my day-to-day is as a part of a small team within that brokerage called the Locale Philly Team. As a personal brand, so far, it’s been a slow and steady approach. I was doing right by my clients, giving them value, not charging hidden fees, and doing a lot of the work myself. Some people charge “conveyancing fees” or a la carte for photos or 3d tours. More power to them. But I think charging a reasonable, agreed-upon percentage for my services, all included, is the future, and ultimately people will appreciate that.

Ok. Thank you for all that. Let’s now jump to the main core of our interview. For the benefit of our readers, can you please tell us why you are an authority about the topic of getting the best price when selling a home?

Every realtor will claim to be an expert. To some degree, they’re all right. But real estate in general is such a large field with so many moving parts, no person can be an expert in everything. Some of the realtors who close the most deals do the least client focused work and farm it out to people underneath them while focusing on management or marketing. They’re experts, but as someone new who is going through my growth curve, I’ve controlled every facet of every deal I’ve done.

So, within a very distilled part of the world — namely, the greater Philadelphia area — I’m an expert because I study the market, am actively involved in deals and spend my days talking with professionals who do the same. I’m a realtor licensed in Pennsylvania, I work for a real estate developer on development, and I attend law school where I learn advanced skills to use in my practice as a realtor.

Can you share 3 things that most excite you about the Real Estate industry, as it is today? If you can, please share a story or example.

The most exciting thing about being a realtor today is that every conversation you have with another human can turn into a thoughtful discussion about the space they live in now, the area they want to live in tomorrow, and how they plan to get there. If the past two-plus years of restrictions and lockdowns have done anything, it’s that it has made people who were otherwise complacent or too busy to consider where they are at in life and how their living environment impacts their happiness.

Secondly, outside of the micro conversation around “spaces” and what makes people happy, there’s a “macro” conversation that inevitably follows. Are they even happy living in a city anymore? Do they want to be in a suburb of a city, or do they want to live at the beach? The list goes on and is only fueled further by the prevalence of remote work. So, today, conversations about whether you want to live on a mountain, or on a beach or in a center city condo aren’t just daydreaming. They’re very real conversations and actions people are taking and that’s exciting.

Finally, I’ve been finding people have re-evaluated their spending and are willing to spend more on housing they own than they would have in the past. The price of everything has risen from a meal to a gallon of gasoline. In my experience, some people don’t want to go back to eating out multiple times a week and going to bars. They’d instead invest it in their forever home.

Can you share 3 things that most concern you about the industry as it is today? If you had the ability to implement 3 ways to reform or improve the industry, what would you suggest? Please share stories or examples if possible.

Whether realtors want to believe it or not, there’s a chance that we could all wake up one day and find a very fulfilling and at times lucrative profession has gone the way of the travel agent. Technology is getting better every day. The public perception of our value to them is decreasing every day, and in a lot of cases, we aren’t positioning well to combat those forces.

On a personal level, I think entry into the industry needs to become more formalized and less focused on the sales and marketing approach. Every person should have the opportunity to practice real estate, but we need more relevant training. Most people don’t realize the complexity of the profession, and there are some bad actors, like in every profession. But, overall, I believe that the barrier to entry is too low, and there are too many realtors in general. That’s not an indictment of the industry, it’s just reality. And the low barrier to entry which benefits realtor associations and brokerages to increase numbers may end up being the thing that causes big tech to swallow us up.

Secondly, I think the brokerage model needs to change. The future can go a few different ways. One possible way is companies like Zillow, Redfin, etc., who commoditize the work of realtors so much to where we become effectively uber-fied and get paid per task. A phone app pops and says “$30 to show X address,” and that’s just how it will be. Big tech and big brokerages will make the lion’s share. Where I think it needs to go is brokerages with less of a profit incentive that enable realtors to compete on cost. Maybe this is groups of realtors forming co-ops or self-owned companies. But, in order to compete in a world against vertically integrated tech companies encroaching on the realtors’ commissions, realtors have to find ways to cut costs and the biggest place to do that is by paying your brokerage less. Every brokerage will promise and claim the world to realtors, but you’re seeing emerging companies like Real, and Fathom start to dip their toe into these models.

Finally, fraud is a real concern that increases as the industry becomes more digitized. Fraudsters list vacant homes for sale as rentals on sites or Facebook to collect money via apps like cash app. Fraudsters also commit title fraud. One thing we will do long-term is incorporate blockchain into title transferrig. The challenge is getting municipalities to adopt a unified system nationally of putting title and liens onto a blockchain solution once a solution is viable.

Based on your experience, what are a few of the biggest mistakes you have seen people make when they sell their homes? What must be done to avoid them?

Selling a home has a few components. Seems simple in the abstract but can be difficult in the tangible. In great boom markets, maybe you get lucky. In bad, recessionary markets, maybe you get unlucky. But overall, there are some absolutely critical things you can do to increase your odds at getting top dollar. The key parts are timing, pricing and presentation. But overall the key is really putting yourself in the shoes of the person who will be buying your home.

What do I mean by timing? Timing means thinking like a buyer. So, here in the greater Philadelphia area we have seasons that can vary drastically in weather. Extremely cold and sometimes snowy winters and generally pleasant springs and falls with sometimes very hot summers. People in this climate are generally less active in all things, but especially in buyer activities, between Thanksgiving and New Year. In addition to being cold and experiencing shorter daylight, people have family and holiday obligations they must attend to. This shrinks your buyer pool significantly. So, trying to list at top dollar anywhere after late October is not the optimal approach. The best approach is to realize people get more ambitious as it gets warmer. Use the winter to get your home ready, bring in a realtor or another expert to get advice on how to make your home have more appeal and be ready to hit the market strong. Do you live in a place where the school district is one of the most appealing aspects of your offering to a buyer? Maybe think about listing it at a time period where, if the buyers have school-aged children, they can buy it and seamlessly move in before the school year starts so as not to cause disruptions. It really boils down to thinking like a buyer.

Secondly, pricing is the most important factor to consider. You aren’t selling your house in a vacuum. You’re selling your house against the immediate comparable competition on the market. If the house next door, with similar square footage and finishes is up for sale for five hundred thousand then maybe now isn’t a good time to list your house for sale for six hundred thousand. On the other hand, don’t make the mistake of listing your home for whatever other people are. You must look at what sold and not what something that’s been on the market a while is asking for. Ultimately, it comes down to this core question — if you had to buy your exact home today, how much would you personally be willing to pay for it? Often, this is nowhere near the amount of money they want to ask for their house. It doesn’t have to be as the point of the exercise is to make them think like a buyer and price it at a rational amount that will get the best price while not languishing on the market and going through a death spiral of price decreases because of starting at an unwise initial number.

Finally, the most obvious factor is presentation. Some realtors expound the value of staging, others wax poetically about their tips, tricks or fixes. Ultimately, first impressions are about cleanliness and smell of a property. Take care of those, get it uncluttered, hire a realtor who will take ample, high-quality photos and some type of 3D tour and think like a buyer. Taking 20 pictures that hide critical components, or omit assets is not the best strategy. Take pictures of the closets, the basements, the mechanicals. Take pictures and give as accurate a description as possible of everything you can to the buyer so when they tour your home, they aren’t surprised. The right buyer armed with the correct information is in the right home ready to make a real offer. It’s that simple. Think like a buyer.

I know this question has passionate opinions on both sides, but we would love to hear your opinion. Engaging a realtor is costly. Should people use a realtor when they sell their home? Please explain why you feel the way you do.

Realtors can be costly, there’s no getting around that. But that’s relative to the property. If your home is worth $100,000, a realtor may only end up costing you $2,500 for your listing agent. With brokerage fees, taxes, gasoline/car expenses and time — this can be a near money-losing exercise for most realtors. But, on a million-dollar home a listing agent may gross $25,000 before expenses and take home over ten thousand dollars in net proceeds as compensation.

I can go on and on and give statistics and reasons why to work with a realtor. I get annoyed when I other realtors say, “You wouldn’t represent yourself and forgo an attorney, so why would you take it upon yourself to sell your own home and not use a realtor?”. The reality is this. Some people change their oil in their cars. They’d rather spend fifteen dollars and 60 minutes of their own time and do it. Others would rather spend fifty dollars and have it done for them. Some people are mortified at the idea of spending two hundred dollars on a night on the town eating at a nice steakhouse with a loved one. They’d prefer to buy two for one steak at the supermarket and make it at home.

Similarly, some people can and do sell their own homes rather effectively. My job isn’t to question the life choices of industrious folks who want to do it themselves. My job is to talk to the overwhelming majority of people who want to pay an expert to perform a seemingly easy, but highly nuanced task of selling a home and who value the experience and judgment of that expert in handling their considerable investment.

Find someone who is upfront, honest and direct about their pricing. If you feel like they’re trying to pull a fast one on you, then find another realtor. I always say — I have customers, not prisoners. The minute someone feels I’m not owning up to my end of the bargain, they’re free to find someone else. I’m that confident in the value I can impart, and I let that be known when I don’t feel I can impart value.

Ok, here is the main question of our interview. You are a “Real Estate Insider.” Can you please share five things you need to know in order to get the absolute best price when you sell your home? If you can, please give a story or an example for each.

I went in to this a little bit above, but for the sake of lists, here we go:

1. Timing — Just like it’s a lot easier to sell ice cream on a 90 degree day, it’s a lot easier to sell your home for top dollar when buyer activity is the greatest.
2. Pricing Tier — I’m of the opinion that people think in terms of $25,000 increments when it comes to real estate. People usually get pre-approved for mortgages in $25,000 increments. When they search on websites, for instance, they search “Up to 250” or “between 250 and 300”. In my opinion, you’re better off listing at 400 or 425 then you are at 409. But there’s no hard and fast rule.
3. Presentation — Don’t just take nice pictures, take copious amounts of pictures and caption those pictures to accurately represent the property. It’s great to get buyers in the property, ideally you want as many as possible. But it’s better to distill the amount of people looking at the house down to those people most likely to buy. Things like bedrooms without closets, or not having a tub as opposed to a walk-in shower will deter some buyers. Recognize that, and instead focus on attracting the buyers who are looking at exactly what you’re selling.
4. Availability — This one I absolutely can share a story with. I had a client, great home, priced very well. The problem? They only wanted showings on weekday afternoons. I explained, I begged, and I relented. Eventually the home sold, but it should have sold for more and quicker. The bottom line is — think like a buyer. Do most buyers work 9 to 5? The answer is yes. Do most buyers need to see homes on nights and weekends? The answer is also yes. So, just like it’d be a bad idea for a convenience store to only be open 3 hours a day, it’s also a suboptimal idea to not at least have a few hours a week at night and on weekends to do showings.
5. Get out of the way — This one is comical, but everyone in real estate has had a seller who wants to be there in showings and talk to potential buyers. You might be the nicest person in the world, but in my experience that never ends well. Buyers don’t need to know your motivations for selling. Also, they usually don’t want to think that another human lived in the house prior to them. The best advice is — to make yourself scarce during showings. Grab a coffee around the corner go food shopping. Just, give buyers a chance to be comfortable to share feedback with each other and their agent as they walk through the house. If buyers can’t talk freely with each other — the good, bad and ugly — while touring a home, they’re going to be more uncomfortable and make it less likely they’ll buy your home.

Because of your position, you are a person of enormous influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the greatest amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

Full disclosure, I am not a person of enormous influence yet. So, as tempted as I was to write “N/A” on this question, I’m also a dreamer.

With people being forced to stay home for a protracted period due to COVID restrictions, in some cases that’s led to sedentary lifestyles and people connecting less face to face. The outcomes of that are worse physical, mental and emotional health. It’s also had a negative impact on businesses that rely on domestic travel. That being the case, I really do believe that if I could propose some type of plan or strategy that would help alleviate multiple problems at once, I would probably consider a public/private partnership on a National Vacation Policy geared toward our National Parks. Obviously, the mechanics of this would be incredibly hard — but some type of mandated weeks off staggered where a percent of the population would get travel vouchers to visit any number of national parks to be used for airfare and accommodations. I don’t know who’d pay for it. But I do think that the negative consequences of the past few years are going to have lasting impact if we don’t think about how we can rebuild the American community. I imagine this could be a way to have families from all over the United States, most of whom wouldn’t have had the means or the idea to visit a national park, to all come together and get to fall in love with the country again, while helping the travel sector recover and boosting the mental, physical and emotional health of those who partake.

How can our readers further follow your work online?

McCannPhilly on Facebook and Instagram.

mccann.realestate on the web.

Thank you for your time, and your excellent insights! We wish you continued success.