When your agent tells you to kick out your tenants, do needless, seemingly endless reparis and updating, soaks you with a staging bill for several thousand a month and promises you multiples offers.

This is not saying that in some instances you need to kick the tenants out and  get the property marketable - my problem is the assurance that doing so will guarantee multiple offers. 

Humm...I go from money coming in to money going out and I am paying who?... Not only that, I am in a holding position that I may or maynot be able to hold for a very long period of time based on your assurance that the high high high price is obtainable in today's market?

What was I thinking?!!?

Don't beat yourself up - you were just being human.  Thinking that your house is better than everyone else's, that because you have fond memories of your children growing up in such a home that it would mean something tangible to someone else, didn't they count the 22,000 bricks in the patio and felt my aching back when it was all over?

Well..the sad truth is that the buyer's don't care.  Well, they might care - but not that much!  Not when they are thinking about their own children and their college accounts and the new furniture that the wife will make them buy, etc. etc. etc.  Which family will they care about more - yours or theirs?

No one can guarantee any market.  Sure there are pockets that are getting multiple offer - but many are happy just to sell their home to the first person who feels strongly enough about it to put pen to paper.  A great house in a great location will always be desireable.  When it is priced right many times more than one person will want to live there.   But... No one can predict what will happen, so when anyone implies, insinuates, or guarantees that you will be in a multiple offer situation - RUN AWAY - they more often than not will tell you what you want to hear rather than what you need to hear.

In that lies the soul of a great agent, someone who would rather tell you what you need to hear, knowing that it will be hard to accept and knowing that everyone always kills the messenager - who could not be, would never think of being someon who will tell you what you want to hear at the risk of your own well being, in essence someone who can put your needs above their own. 

Don't be hood winked into thinking that every Real Estate Agent is the same.  Do your homework.  If location, location, location, is the three major factors in Real Estate, than Interview, Interview, Interview is the three major factors in picking the person to best represent you in the transaction.