The Difficult Seller
The quiet, patient power of staying calm while someone insists their overpriced house is simply misunderstood.
Gentle Hands, Stubborn Lion
The seller across the table has a number in their head that the market disagreed with three weeks ago, and your job today isn't to wrestle them into agreement — it's to sit with that stubbornness the way Strength sits with her lion, hand resting easy on its mane, not pulling, not forcing, just present until the animal settles on its own. You've done this dance before. You know the number will come down eventually. You just have to survive the eyebrow-raise first.
Lead with patience, not pressure. Every price-reduction conversation that lands well starts the same way this card does — calm hands, steady voice, no sudden moves — and ends with the seller believing the new number was a little bit their idea.
what may cross your path
- A seller repeats 'but the app said' after you've already shown them three better comps.
- You wait a full beat before responding to a price objection instead of jumping in.
- A stubborn listing finally gets a price reduction the seller frames as 'my decision.'
- Someone tells you, afterward, that you're so calm about all this — and you take it as the compliment it is.
I don't need to win the argument. I need to outlast the panic behind it.
Not Moving Until Spring
The collar reads NOT MOVING UNTIL SPRING, THE MARKET IS WRONG, and it's been sixty-one days on market and counting, and every gentle attempt at the price conversation gets met with the same folded arms, the same 'other agents would've sold it by now,' the same conviction that the entire market — not the price — is the thing that's broken. Strength reversed isn't weakness. It's force spent fighting the wrong animal, patience curdled into stalemate because nobody, seller included, will move first.
Notice when patience has quietly become avoidance. At some point the kind thing isn't one more calm conversation — it's an honest one, even if it costs you the listing. A lion that won't be gentled sometimes just needs you to stop reaching for its mane.
what may cross your path
- A price-reduction conversation gets postponed for the third time this month.
- A seller mentions, unprompted, an agent friend who 'would never let this happen.'
- You rehearse the same price talk in the car before a listing appointment and still don't say it.
- A listing crosses ninety days and the seller's social media post about 'the market' gets more engagement than your last four showings.
Kindness that avoids the truth isn't kindness. It's just delay with better manners.