A homeowner sends the same message to a handful of agents. Four words. “What is your commission?”
One agent writes back that commission is not something he discusses over text. The homeowner pushes. The agent holds his ground, politely and professionally, and by the fourth message the whole exchange has gone sideways. The homeowner feels handled. The agent feels disrespected. Nobody is going on a listing appointment.
I saw an exchange play out exactly like that, and what makes it worth writing about is that the agent was not wrong. He was working off two principles that are absolutely correct, and he still managed to lose.
The two principles he had right
The first one is that you never discuss commission by text. Text is built for logistics. It is where you confirm a time and share an address. It is not where you explain a fee structure, because a number without context is just a number, and the homeowner reading it has nothing to weigh it against. Trying to have that conversation by text is like trying to give somebody driving directions by honking your horn.
The second principle is that you never discuss your fee until you have established value, and you cannot establish value until you sit down for the formal listing conversation. Quote a number before that, and you are asking someone to judge the price of something they have not seen yet.
Both of those are true. Here is where he went wrong. He treated those principles as reasons to refuse the question, and refusing a question a homeowner sincerely asked is how you turn a lead into an argument.
Powerfact: A homeowner asking what you charge is not attacking you. They are asking the only question they know how to ask.
Why silence backfires
Put yourself in that homeowner’s chair. You are about to hand a stranger the largest asset you own. You do not yet know how to tell one agent from another, so you reach for the one variable you understand, which is price. You send a simple question to a few people. One of them will not answer it.
What conclusion does anyone draw from that? Not “this agent has a disciplined process.” They draw the obvious one. He is hiding something. Once a homeowner believes you are hiding something, every good thing you do afterward gets read through that lens.
So, the answer is not to dodge the question. The answer is to move it into a room where you can actually answer it well.
Step one: Change the medium, not the subject
Reply to that first text with a question of your own. Something like, “Great question, and I want to give you a real answer instead of a number with no context. Are you free to jump on a quick call right now?”
If they are available, you are on the phone in ninety seconds. If they are not, you schedule a time. Either way, notice what you did. You did not refuse. You did not lecture them about texting. You honored the question and moved it somewhere it can be answered properly. That single reply is the whole difference between the agent who gets the appointment and the agent who gets left on read.
Step two: Give them the frame before you give them the number
Once you are on the phone, you do have to give them a number. Say nothing and you are back to looking evasive. But before the number comes the frame, and the frame is about the relationship between what people pay and what they get.
I would say something close to this: “Before I answer, can I share a thought? In almost every area of life, price and quality travel together. Think about health care. When people pay very little for care, they usually get care that is rushed, thin or not particularly effective. The people who get the best care are usually the ones paying for it. That is not a comment on fairness. It is just how service works. Real estate is no different. An agent who charges you a little is very likely going to give you a little, and a little service plus a little marketing tends to produce a little price.”
You have not quoted anything yet, and you have already changed the question in their mind. They came in asking who is cheapest. Now they are wondering what cheap actually buys.
Step three: Answer honestly, with a range
Then give the number, and give it as a range, because a range tells the truth about how the work actually gets priced.
“Here is how I am different from most agents. Most quote one flat percentage no matter what. I work in a range, and the range is tied directly to your situation, specifically how quickly you need to be sold and how much you need to net when this is over. My starting fee can go as low as 2%. It moves from there based on the marketing plan we build, because the percentage is tied to the overhead involved in selling your property. More marketing means more exposure, and exposure is what drives your final sales price. But I think we are getting ahead of ourselves. Which fee makes sense for you is going to come out of our conversation when we sit down in a few days.”
That is a real answer. It has a number in it, it has a reason behind the number, and it points forward to the appointment instead of trying to close anything on the phone.
Step four: Give them better advice than they asked for
Then do the thing almost no agent does. Coach them.
“One more thing, and I say this as someone who wants you to make a good decision whether you hire me or not. I would stop asking agents what they charge. It is the wrong first question, and it will lead you straight to the cheapest person on your list. The better question is, what are you going to do to get me sold at the highest possible price? And that is not a question anybody can answer well by text. Whoever is on your list, meet them face to face.”
You just told a homeowner to interview your competition properly. That is a strange feeling the first time you say it. It also happens to be the most persuasive thing in the entire conversation, because it is the only moment in their whole process where somebody put their interests ahead of the sale.
Powerfact: The agent who teaches a seller how to hire an agent is almost always the one they hire.
Serve, don’t sell. Coach, don’t close. That is not a slogan about being nice. It is a description of who wins the listing.
Darryl Davis, CSP, is a national speaker, coach, and the bestselling McGraw-Hill author of How to Become a Power Agent® in Real Estate. Over four decades he has trained hundreds of thousands of real estate professionals, and he is the founder of the POWER AGENT® Coaching Program. His independent research on private listings and market transparency was cited by the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Administrative State, Regulatory Reform, and Antitrust in July 2026. The full body of that work is open to the public at PrivateListingsDebate.com. For more information, go to DarrylSpeaks.com.
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of HousingWire’s editorial department and its owners.
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