Why Your Listing Agent Doesn't Bring You the Offer

By Rebecca Durfey

Rebecca Durfey brings over 20 years of experience in real estate transactions within Maricopa County. Despite managing multiple clients simultaneously, her primary focus is to provide a personalized experience that makes you feel like her sole priority. Rebecca and her team are dedicated to efficiently achieving the desired outcomes for each client they serve.

One of the most common frustrations I hear from sellers who meet with me after a listing with another agent didn’t work out is that they were disappointed that the agent didn’t bring them any offers. I understand why sellers are frustrated and why they look to the listing agent to bring them offers. An agent’s first role is to ensure you have significant exposure not only in the multiple listing service, which is more local to the county, but on all the platforms possible. The hope is that the exposure will bring buyers through the doors and, in turn, a possible contract. I do see how that misunderstanding came about, though. In a seller’s market, where contracts are easy to come by, sellers probably assumed the agent “brought” them the buyer. We are also seeing the clear signs of how much this market has changed from when owners last sold a home. I will break down for you how well-intentioned family and friends might add to the frustration our sellers are feeling and, of course, how we can secure offers for our sellers in this difficult 2026 buyer’s market.

1. The advice offered is coming from a good place. Selling a home is one of the few major financial decisions where nearly everyone in your life feels qualified to weigh in. Friends, neighbors, relatives, coworkers who sold a house a decade ago, or even social media followers seem to offer feedback or share experiences they have had when they were selling a home. Much of the time, what they are offering tends to be emotional support for what you are going through rather than strategy. I appreciate the desire to offer support to my clients more than I can say.

The difficulty for the advice portion (not the support portion) is that so much of the advice is not applicable to this current market. In fact, I have been selling homes for nearly 25 years and have not seen a market like the one we are working with today. Markets change continually. Someone who has not sold a home in the last few years, or who has sold a home in a market like this one in 2026, could describe conditions that do not exist anymore. Sometimes the advice validates that whatever a buyer or seller is feeling must be correct, and discounts the housing inventory, interest rates, demand, or information that a real estate advisor considers. It’s a bit tricky right now, for sure. I offer support to my clients (and, as we all know, I have THE BEST clients any Realtor could ever hope for), but more support than the real estate agent is not a bad thing. It’s not easy out there.

I encourage all the best support for every buyer and seller. I also hope that with me being in the data daily, using my experience, as well as what I am hearing on the street every day across the valley, I can earn every client’s trust that I will provide the best advice and advocacy possible.

2. Listing agents don’t bring offers. I’ve had the opportunity to come in second or third in line for those sellers where a previous listing agent didn’t work out, and one sentence surfaces more than any other: My agent didn’t bring a single offer.

In a market where homes moved quickly, that expectation made sense and I can understand where it became a misconception, because offers arrived fast enough that it was easy to assume the listing agent and the buyer’s agent met somewhere in the middle and produced an offer within days. Even in those swift and easy seller’s markets, that is not quite how things happen. It’s definitely not the case in a buyer’s market.

My first role as your listing agent is exposure. I make sure your home in front of everybody, in every corner of the market, on every real estate site, so that it gets the attention it deserves. My team and I are continually finding ways to create more exposure, whether print or digital, to get a buyer and their agent to walk through the doors. If a buyer likes the price, the location, the features, and the home, they will consider an offer. If they don’t think it’s the right price or there are hurdles they feel they would have to overcome before writing an offer, I encourage them to put pen to paper and see if we can make something work. Unfortunately, as much as I will encourage an offer to be written, I am not able to force it. I think buyers are wise to buy in a buyer’s market - no matter what the interest rate - and I will keep beating that drum, but not everyone agrees with me. Ultimately, it is up to the buyer.

Buyers have more homes to compare. I tell my sellers to try to be the “prettiest girl at the dance.” The complication in a high-inventory market is that there are a lot of “pretty girls at the dance.” Your home can check three of four boxes and a buyer could still walk away, because a house down the street checks all four, or because their criteria shifted a little between one weekend and the next. It feels personal, like the buyer didn’t like your home, and yet it’s just that they found something that fit their needs better, but I suspect the listing agent for your home tried to see if there was a way they could make your home fit all the boxes.

Negotiation begins when an offer arrives. Once an offer comes in, that’s where a listing agent will need to work the way most sellers would hope. It’s where I get to use my sharpened expertise, and one of my strengths. I negotiate the terms, I push for the timeline that fits what my seller needs, and I do what I can to ensure an outcome that we are looking for. So, while I can’t produce a buyer who has decided my seller’s home is not the “one,” I can certainly advocate for my seller when we do have the ready, willing, and able buyer submit an offer.

This is a tough market. I know from the buyer’s side that affordability is a struggle. I know from the seller’s side that it is very difficult to have buyers walk the home, and even harder to secure an offer. What I can tell you is that I’ll be here to help shoulder that stress wherever I can, to talk through whatever is most concerning, and to build the strategy that fits your situation instead and the market today - and not one that worked when homes sold in a weekend. That’s my CANE Client Care: I communicate, I advocate, I navigate, and I educate, in whatever market we happen to be in, because you deserve uncompromised service.

If you’re considering a move in the Phoenix area, or the Northwest Valley specifically, and you’d like a read on your situation based on what’s happening now rather than what worked a few years ago, I’d be glad to talk it through. Call or text me at 623-297-4536, email me at rebeccadurfey@kw.com, or visit rebeccadurfey.com. Bring your questions, and bring the advice you’ve collected too, because separating the useful from the outdated could be a valuable place to start.