The $4 Million Mistake That Taught Me to Stand Firm

By William “Bill” Boswell

Bill is widely known as one of New Jersey’s most sought after real estate agents and is a sales associate of Keller Williams Prosperity Realty.

Someone asked me last week how I came to learn everything I know about real estate. My answer was honest: there’s really only one way to learn this business, and that’s to mess up a bunch of times. To make mistakes. Specifically, mistakes that cost me something, never mistakes that cost the people I work for, because avoiding that has always been my focus.

Then he asked what my biggest standout moment was, and one came right to the top of my mind. It still sits funny with me, even going back more than ten years.

It wasn’t a great real estate market at the time. I was working in Franklin Lakes, a market I’ve spent a lot of time in and genuinely love, with a seller who was adamant about listing his home for a little over $4 million. The problem was that, at the time, anything over $4 million simply wasn’t moving. I was very confident in my numbers, which put the home right under that $4 million mark, and I knew that was the move. Then I gave in. I gave in early, and I gave in for one reason: I just wanted to get the listing.

It was a great listing, and I knew I was competing against some excellent agents to win it. I was actually the second agent to come in, the home had already been on the market and hadn’t sold, and my whole job was to get the seller down to the price I knew it would actually sell at. Instead, I took the listing right where he wanted it, a little over $4 million, at $4.2.

Month after month passed, and each of those months cost a tremendous amount of time, energy, and resources. Hitting five thousand lights (not literally), turning every light in the house on, then turning them all back off again. Every single showing was about two and a half hours of total effort. At the end of our listing agreement, the seller took a little time off the market. My hope was that I’d earn the next at-bat, the third shot at it, since two agents had already taken their swings.

I didn’t get it. And here’s the part that taught me everything. One of the agents I had beaten out to win that listing in the first place got it on the third try, and listed it at the exact price I had originally believed it should be. It sold in no time, with essentially no work required on that agent’s part. All the work, all the time, all the energy I had poured in had set up the perfect scenario, for someone else.

That taught me an incredible lesson, and it’s one I’ve carried ever since: be confident in your numbers, and stand firm in them. Because if I could go back in time and simply been crystal clear with that seller about where he needed to be, I believe he would have listened. I was always honest with him. The trouble was that wanting the listing so badly didn’t cloud my honesty, it clouded my decision-making, and it set me up for something that cost me a great deal.

So that was a mistake, and I learned from it, one of many where I’ve learned and then made sure never to repeat the same error twice. Here’s what it means for you. If we sit down together, rest assured that I’m going to be confident, I’m going to be clear about where I believe we need to be, and I’m going to own the results of that guidance, so that neither of us ever ends up in that spot.

That’s the value of working with someone who has already made the mistakes and learned from them. If you’d like that kind of straight, experienced guidance on your own home, reach out. Call or text me at 973-224-4605, email me at northjerseyluxury@gmail.com, or visit blog.theomegarealestategroup.com.

My name is Bill Boswell of the Omega Real Estate Group, and your search ends here.