---
title: "Four Things Selling Agents Say That Should Make You Walk Away"
description: "Selling agents use specific language patterns to manufacture urgency and inflate prices. A buyer's agent decodes the four most common phrases and explains exactly what they really mean."
author: Joey Don
date: 2023-11-09
category: Market Analysis
url: https://premiumrea.com.au/blog/four-selling-agent-phrases-decoded-save-thousands
tags: ["selling agents", "negotiation", "buyer protection", "market analysis", "real estate language", "auction strategy", "melbourne property"]
---

# Four Things Selling Agents Say That Should Make You Walk Away

*By Joey Don, Co-Founder & CEO at PremiumRea — 2023-11-09*

> Selling agents are professionally trained to extract the highest possible price from buyers. After 350-plus transactions on the buying side, I have catalogued the four phrases that consistently signal you are about to overpay.

With the first home buyer grant back in play and interest rate cuts gaining momentum, the Australian property market is heating up again. That means selling agents are dusting off their favourite scripts. The ones designed to make you act fast, think less, and pay more.

I have been a buyer's agent for years. I have sat across the table from hundreds of selling agents. I have heard every line, every variation, every carefully rehearsed delivery. And I can tell you with certainty: the language they use is not accidental. It is trained, tested, and engineered to extract maximum price.

Here are four phrases I hear constantly. If you understand what they actually mean, you will save yourself tens of thousands of dollars.

## Phrase One: 'This Property Has Great Potential'

When a selling agent says a property has 'great potential,' they are not describing the property. They are describing your wallet.

Let me give you a concrete comparison. Which of these statements would you trust more from an agent?

Option A: 'The kitchen was renovated five years ago with Miele appliances and carries a ten-year warranty.'

Option B: 'The kitchen has great potential for a makeover.'

The first is a verifiable fact with quantifiable value. The second is an invitation for you to spend $50,000 renovating someone else's neglected kitchen while paying full price for the property today.

When agents say 'potential,' they are using future tense to disguise present-tense deficiencies. The property does not have potential. It has problems. Potential is the word agents use when they cannot point to anything the property actually offers right now.

In our practice, when we identify a property with genuine development or renovation upside, we quantify it to the dollar. We know that a granny flat costs approximately $110,000 to build and delivers around 18 per cent return on investment through rental uplift. That is not 'potential.' That is a costed business case. The difference between the two is the difference between smart investing and wishful thinking.

I want to expand on the psychology behind why 'potential' works as a sales technique, because understanding the mechanism helps you resist it.

The word 'potential' activates what psychologists call optimism bias, our tendency to overestimate the probability and magnitude of positive outcomes. When an agent says a property has potential, your brain automatically starts constructing a best-case scenario. You imagine the dream kitchen, the pictured garden, the extended living area. You are doing the agent's marketing work for them, inside your own head.

The agent does not need to quantify the potential because your imagination will always outperform reality. If the agent said 'this kitchen needs $50,000 of work,' your enthusiasm would cool immediately. But 'potential' lets you imagine a $20,000 refresh when the actual cost is $65,000.

In our practice, we never use the word 'potential' without attaching a costed scope of works. When we assess a property for a client and identify genuine improvement upside, we present it as: 'The property supports a three-room partition conversion at a cost of $25,000, which would increase weekly rent from $500 to $850 based on comparable converted properties in the suburb.' That is not potential. That is a business case.

The next time an agent says 'potential,' ask them to quantify it. Ask for comparable renovated properties and their sale prices. Ask what specific works they are referring to and what they estimate the cost to be. Watch how quickly the conversation shifts.

## Phrase Two: 'We Have Had a Lot of Interest'

Translation: there is not a single serious offer on the table.

Notice the tense. 'We have had' is present perfect, which in English indicates an action that started in the past and may or may not be continuing. In real estate agent dialect, it means: some people came through the open inspection three months ago, two of them were other agents doing market research, and one was a neighbour being nosy.

The phrase is deliberately vague. It does not tell you how many people expressed interest. It does not tell you when. It does not tell you whether any of them made an offer. It does not even define what 'interest' means. Picking up a brochure counts as interest. Asking where the bathroom is counts as interest.

When a property genuinely has strong buyer demand, agents do not say 'we have had interest.' They say 'we have three written offers and are reviewing them this afternoon.' Specificity signals truth. Vagueness signals desperation dressed in confidence.

I have negotiated deals where the agent claimed 'enormous interest' and we were the only offer. I have negotiated deals where the agent said nothing about interest because they had four genuine competing buyers and did not need to manufacture urgency.

There is a second dimension to the 'lots of interest' phrase that is worth understanding. In Victoria, selling agents are legally required to provide a Statement of Information that includes comparable sales data. What they are not required to disclose is the number or nature of inquiries they have received.

This creates an information asymmetry that agents exploit systematically. They know exactly how much genuine interest exists. You know nothing. And they use that asymmetry to manufacture urgency.

The antidote is to remove yourself from the urgency game entirely. When an agent tells you there is a lot of interest, respond with: 'That is great. We will submit our offer by close of business Thursday. Please present it to the vendor along with any other offers you have received.'

This does three things. It demonstrates that you are serious. It establishes a timeline that you control. And it forces the agent to present your offer alongside whatever genuine competition exists, rather than using phantom competition to pressure you into bidding against yourself.

In our experience across hundreds of negotiations, the properties with genuine strong demand sell quickly with minimal agent commentary. The ones where agents talk the most about interest are the ones where interest is thinnest. The volume of the agent's pitch is inversely correlated with the volume of genuine demand.

## Phrase Three: 'You Need to Have Vision'

This is the real estate equivalent of being told to 'think outside the box' by someone who has never been outside the box.

When an agent tells you to 'have vision,' they are acknowledging that the property, as it stands, is not worth what they are asking. They need you to imagine a future version of the property, a version that will cost you $100,000 or more to create, and then pay today's price based on that imaginary future.

Vision is expensive. Every dollar of 'vision' is a dollar of renovation you will need to fund after settlement. And agents never factor renovation cost into their price guidance. They want you to pay the unrenovated price plus imagine the renovated value.

Here is what I tell my clients: if a property requires vision, it should be priced as a project, not as a home. The discount should reflect the full cost of the required work plus a risk margin. If the agent is asking full market price for a property that needs $80,000 of work, they are not selling you a house. They are selling you a fantasy.

Across our 350-plus transactions, the average negotiation saving we achieve for clients sits between $30,000 and $80,000. A significant portion of that saving comes from refusing to pay for 'vision' and instead pricing the property based on what it is today, not what it could become tomorrow.

## Phrase Four: 'The Vendor Is Firm on Price'

No vendor is firm on price. Every vendor has a number below which they will not sell, and that number is almost always lower than the price the agent is quoting you.

The phrase 'firm on price' is a negotiation tactic, not a statement of fact. Its purpose is to discourage you from making a lower offer. It frames the asking price as a floor when it is actually a ceiling.

I have personally negotiated dozens of properties where the agent told me the vendor was 'absolutely firm' at a certain price. In most cases, we secured the property for $20,000 to $50,000 below that supposedly immovable figure.

How? Because selling agents work for the vendor, but they are paid on commission. Their incentive is to close the deal, not to hold out for the last dollar. A property that sells for $700,000 earns the agent roughly $400 less commission than one that sells for $720,000. That is not enough to justify weeks of additional marketing, open inspections, and vendor management.

The agent's real fear is not that you will offer too low. It is that you will walk away entirely. Every serious buyer who leaves the process reduces the agent's chance of earning any commission at all. That advantage is yours. Use it.

I want to share a specific example of how we handled a 'firm on price' situation last quarter, because the mechanics of the negotiation illustrate the principle clearly.

We identified a property in Frankston that met all of our client's criteria: 600-plus square metres, brick veneer, three bedrooms with granny flat potential, quiet street location. The agent quoted $750,000 and said the vendor was 'absolutely firm.'

We submitted a written offer at $720,000 with a 30-day settlement and no conditions. The agent called to say the vendor had rejected our offer. We said thank you, we would move on to other opportunities.

Forty-eight hours later, the agent called back. The vendor would consider $740,000. We offered $730,000 with a 21-day settlement, which gave the vendor faster access to funds. The deal closed at $730,000.

Total saving from the 'absolutely firm' price: $20,000. That is roughly four times our negotiation effort in terms of time spent. The vendor was never firm. The agent was doing their job, which is to maximise the sale price. Our job was to minimise the purchase price. Both sides were doing exactly what they were supposed to do.

The critical element was our willingness to walk away. If you are not prepared to lose the deal, you cannot negotiate effectively. Every strong negotiating position is built on a genuine alternative. We always maintain a pipeline of three to five properties at various stages of evaluation so that no single property becomes a must-have.

## How to Respond When You Hear These Phrases

Do not argue with agents. Do not try to out-negotiate them in conversation. They do this every day. You do this once or twice in a lifetime.

Instead, respond with data. When they say 'great potential,' ask for the building inspection report and a renovation cost estimate. When they say 'lots of interest,' ask how many written offers they have received in the past 14 days. When they say 'have vision,' request the Statement of Information showing comparable sales. When they say 'firm on price,' submit your offer in writing at the price the data supports and give them 48 hours to respond.

Selling agents are not your enemy. They are doing their job. But their job is to maximise the vendor's outcome, not yours. Recognising that asymmetry is the first step to protecting your capital.

Or, and I say this with obvious bias, hire someone whose job it is to sit on your side of the table. We have done this more than 350 times. We know every script, every tactic, every bluff. And we negotiate with the same agents repeatedly, which means we know their patterns, their tells, and exactly how much room sits between their quoted price and their vendor's genuine floor.

I want to add one more dimension to this discussion: the ethical agents. Because they do exist, and they deserve recognition.

Not every selling agent is manipulative. Some are genuinely transparent, provide accurate market information, and advocate for a fair deal rather than the highest possible price. These agents tend to have long careers built on repeat business and referrals rather than short-term commission maximisation.

You can identify ethical agents by three signals. First, they provide specific, verifiable information rather than vague superlatives. 'This house was re-stumped in 2018 and the kitchen was installed by XYZ builders in 2019' is the language of an ethical agent. Second, they are transparent about the vendor's situation. An agent who says 'the vendor needs to settle by March because they have already purchased their next home' is giving you genuine information that helps you structure a competitive offer. Third, they welcome buyer's agents rather than resisting them. Ethical agents know that a professional buyer on the other side makes the transaction smoother, faster, and more likely to proceed to settlement.

Our best off-market deals come from relationships with ethical agents who know that we will bring qualified, decisive buyers who settle on time. These agents actively call us when they have listings that match our criteria because they know we will not waste their time.

The irony is that understanding manipulative agent language actually helps you identify and reward the good ones. When you can distinguish between empty phrases and genuine information, you can direct your purchasing power towards agents who respect the process. That benefits everyone: the buyer, the vendor, and the industry.

## References

1. [Consumer Affairs Victoria, estate agent obligations and prohibited conduct under the Estate Agents Act 1980.](https://www.consumer.vic.gov.au/housing/buying-and-selling-property)
2. [REIV Code of Conduct for estate agents, disclosure requirements and fair dealing obligations.](https://reiv.com.au/)
3. [ACCC guidance on misleading representations in property advertising, including underquoting provisions.](https://www.accc.gov.au/)
4. [Domain research: average days on market by Melbourne suburb, quarterly analysis.](https://www.domain.com.au/research/)
5. [CoreLogic auction clearance rates, weekly Melbourne metropolitan data.](https://www.corelogic.com.au/research/auction-results)
6. [Victorian Government Statement of Information requirements for residential property sales.](https://www.consumer.vic.gov.au/housing/buying-and-selling-property/selling-property/statement-of-information)
7. [REBAA (Real Estate Buyers Agents Association) research on buyer's agent negotiation outcomes.](https://rebaa.com.au/)
8. [PropTrack Property Market Outlook, quarterly supply and demand metrics for Melbourne.](https://www.proptrack.com.au/)
9. [PremiumRea transaction data: average negotiation savings of $30K-$80K across 350+ purchases.](#)
10. [Grattan Institute research on information asymmetry in Australian residential property markets.](https://grattan.edu.au/)

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Source: https://premiumrea.com.au/blog/four-selling-agent-phrases-decoded-save-thousands
Publisher: PremiumRea (Optima Real Estate) — Melbourne buyers agent