The interview most sellers never get to conduct.
For most families, this sale is the largest financial event of the decade — the equity in it funds whatever comes next. And when a good home underperforms, the cause is rarely effort. It is structure: how the representation was built, who the work actually fell to, and whose interests the strategy quietly served. Structure never shows in a listing presentation. It shows in the answers to ten questions.
Everyone will show you inputs. You are selling for an outcome.
Interview three agents and you will hear three versions of the same presentation: the brand, the team size, the sign count, the guarantees, the technology. All of it real. None of it the thing you are actually buying — which is a result, produced by a specific person, under a specific set of incentives. The inputs are easy to present. The structure underneath them decides how your home is handled, and it almost never comes up unless you raise it.
Home selling has a uniform at every level — the same promises of full service, aggressive marketing, and top dollar, delivered in nearly the same words. When every presentation sounds this similar, the similarity itself is information: the difference was never going to come from the pitch. It comes from structure and from evidence — and those, you have to ask for.
I audit marketing constantly — including at the very top of the market, where the budgets are unlimited. Reviewing the campaigns behind expired listings, many of them well into seven figures and several carrying the most recognizable names in their markets, I keep finding the same thing: a genuinely world-class property film, cinematic and clearly expensive, that has been viewed a few dozen times in as many weeks on the channel where it lives.
If that happens on an unlimited budget, imagine how often it happens quietly at every price below it. This is the difference between production and distribution — and almost nobody checks the difference.
Beautiful marketing no one sees is not marketing. It is decoration.
There is a second piece of structure, and it is nobody’s fault. Familiarity is a law of attention, not a choice: to a team moving a few hundred homes a year, your sale is a line in a spreadsheet. To you, it is the whole event — and the down payment on the next one. The questions below exist to surface, before you sign, which of those two ways your home will be held.
A high-volume team can absorb an unsold listing.
A family’s plans cannot.
Ask these of anyone you interview.
I have printed my own answers beside each — partly because you deserve them in advance, and partly because an agent who publishes his answers has to live by them.
Who, precisely, will do the work?
Not “the team.” Which human being prices the home, directs the marketing, and negotiates when the offer comes in? In much of the industry, a familiar name wins the listing — and a queue does the rest.
You deal with me. Diane keeps the operation running behind the scenes, but the pricing, the strategy, and the hard calls are mine — start to close.
How many listings will that person carry alongside mine?
Attention is arithmetic. The biggest teams in Texas close hundreds of homes a year — genuinely impressive businesses, and structurally incapable of principal attention on any single one of them, whatever the presentation promises. You are entitled to know where you will sit in someone’s week.
Few enough that I can give you what I just described. Volume built my judgment — more than five hundred closings will do that — but your sale is not run like an assembly line, because it isn’t one.
What happens if we disagree about price?
Some agents win listings by agreeing with the owner’s number, then conditioning the seller downward with reductions once the sign is up. In your range, a mispriced launch routinely costs more than the entire fee. Ask how the gap between a hopeful price and a defensible one gets handled — before you sign, not after.
The evidence goes on the table first — the same Pricing Architecture published on this site. The market’s verdict and my recommendation are two different things; I keep them separate and say both out loud. And if the data and your goals can’t yet be brought together with conviction, I will say so candidly — and rather than take a listing on hope, I’d sooner help you understand what would need to change first.
Show me the last analysis you gave a seller.
Not a brochure — the actual work product: the pricing rationale, the market read, the showing feedback. If the work is good, showing it costs nothing — and most sellers have never actually seen work at this level, which is exactly why it should be shown, not described. If the request gets deflected, that is also an answer.
Three of them are published on this site’s Homes of Distinction page — the Pricing Architecture, the Market Intelligence, and the Showing Intelligence. Read them before you ever meet me. What you see is what you receive.
What is your personal outcome rate — not the brand’s?
Brands publish house statistics. You are hiring a person. The honest version of this number is scoped, dated, and auditable — and most agents you interview will never have been asked for it.
Of the luxury properties I have personally listed since 2005, 89% have sold — audited against MLS data as of July 1, 2026, and framed as “personally listed” precisely so team and co-listings can’t flatter it. Ask everyone for theirs, framed the same way.
Where will my buyer come from — and what makes my listing win there?
At this price, your buyer is almost certainly searching the portals — which makes the real questions sharper. What makes a listing win the portal: preparation, photography, pricing psychology, launch timing? Is every high-traffic site actually showing your home correctly — errors are common and usually unnoticed? And who answers within minutes when a buyer inquires about your home: the person accountable for the outcome, or whichever agent is up next? Know, too, what you are actually competing with — at this price, that often includes new construction whose builder is buying the buyer’s interest rate down, and a listing strategy has to answer that, not ignore it.
Photography I personally audit, a launch built around the first two weeks, syndication through as many as seven MLS databases where it serves the property, full portal audits so every site shows your home correctly, showing-feedback summaries approximately every 15 to 20 days (with the line open in between), a market read approximately every 30 days, and targeted traffic beyond the standard listing — with the numbers behind every channel checked, because distribution is engineered, then verified. And when a buyer inquires, they reach the person whose name is on the outcome.
If a convenience option is offered — an instant offer, “I already have a buyer” — whom does it serve?
Sometimes convenience is exactly right, and there are honest versions of every one of these. But convenience always has a price, and at this tier it is rarely small — and when the buyer comes from inside the same practice, it is fair to ask who, at that moment, is negotiating with whom. The same goes for money fronted for improvements and repaid at closing: real help, but with terms — sometimes contractors you didn’t choose — and a tie to the listing either way.
You will see the math first, in writing: what the open market says your home is worth against what the convenient path pays. If convenience genuinely serves you, I’ll say so. Either way, you choose with the numbers in front of you — never on someone’s word.
What will you tell me that I don’t want to hear?
The most expensive words in a home sale are “whatever you prefer.” That includes preparation: an honest advisor will tell you which projects return their cost — and which ones just spend your money.
The market’s verdict and my recommendation are two different things, and you will always hear both — plainly, with the evidence attached, whether or not it’s what either of us hoped the data would say.
What does the fee actually buy — and would a cheaper option net me more?
A fair question in every direction, including toward me. In your range, one percent is roughly $6,000 — real money. It is still not the biggest number in the sale: the spread between a well-executed launch and a mishandled one at this tier is routinely several times that, in price, concessions, and carrying costs. Judge every option — full service, discount, flat-fee software — by projected net proceeds, not by fee — and remember carry: every extra month on market has a tax, insurance, and upkeep price of its own. Ask for every fee in writing before you sign, including any that tend to appear later in the paperwork.
The strategy, the preparation, the audited marketing, the negotiation, and one name accountable for your net. If a leaner option would truly net you more on your particular home, I will tell you so. Some homes are simple enough that it’s true. A home of distinction rarely is.
And where conditions warrant, the fee itself can be built around it. When I believe there is real room above the price you — or other agents — expected, I’ll sometimes propose a Seller Guarantee that pays me more only if I deliver the higher result, with the math built so your net is always higher than the extra fee — usually by a multiple. If we clear the agreed threshold, you keep more and I earn more. If we don’t — even after I’ve spent more on presentation and exposure to make the run — my fee simply goes back to normal, and the cost of the attempt is mine. You cannot come out behind: your worst case is a normal result at a normal fee.
Why do you want this listing?
Listen closely to the answer. Volume practices need inventory. A conviction practice needs to believe.
I only take listings I’m convinced I can deliver — at or near the price and timeline we set together at the outset. If I can’t get to conviction, I’ll tell you, and I’ll tell you exactly why — before you sign anything. That is what the number in question five is made of.
Don’t take the answers on faith. The documents are on this site — and so are the outcomes.
These questions are fair to everyone.
San Antonio has excellent agents, and several will answer a number of these well. If your answers point you elsewhere, you will still have made a better decision than most sellers are ever given the tools to make. More than five hundred of my closings began as expired or canceled listings. And if they point you here — the valuation is where we begin: a real number backed by data, and a straight read on how your home should be positioned. No pressure, no obligation. Prefer to start on your own schedule? Through the Seller Guarantee page you can also request a custom-recorded video — my read on your specific property, on your schedule, before you decide anything.
The record, in days — two groups, eleven years apart.
Grey is the time each home spent on the market under the prior listing (MLS cumulative days, less my own); blue is the time under my listing, on the same scale. This is MLS data and a representative selection from my record, not every sale. The earlier periods aren’t a knock on anyone — markets, circumstances, and sellers’ own decisions all play a part. The homes themselves are in a private account I share one-to-one.