Most sellers do not know what to look for in an agent track record. They look at the price and the suburb and form an impression. What they should be looking for is a set of ratios, patterns, and gaps that the agent did not include.
The Problem with Taking Agent Sales Records at Face Value
Omitting failed campaigns is the third distortion. An agent track record shows sales. It does not show listings that expired without selling, properties that were withdrawn after prolonged market exposure, or campaigns where the final price came in significantly below the original asking price. Those outcomes exist. They are just not presented.
Track records are not lies. They are selections. And the selection is always made in the interest of the agent presenting them, not the seller evaluating them. Understanding that does not require distrust. It requires the right questions.
What an agent includes in a track record is information. What they leave out is also information.
What DOM and Vendor Discount Rate Tell Sellers About Agent Performance
Days on market measures how long a property was listed before going under contract. A low DOM suggests the campaign generated prompt buyer interest and the offer stage was reached quickly. A high DOM may indicate overpricing, insufficient buyer activity, or a campaign that lost momentum and never recovered. Neither number is meaningful in isolation - context determines what it actually signals. DOM must be read alongside the gap between list price and sale price to have meaning.
In the local market, where comparable sales are available and verifiable, sellers can cross-reference agent-presented results against publicly available sold data. That cross-referencing is the most reliable way to verify that the track record being presented reflects the full picture rather than a curated selection.
DOM tells you speed. Vendor discount tells you price. Clearance rate tells you consistency. None of them tells the full story alone.
How to Verify What an Agent Track Record Is Claiming
Ask specifically about results in the seller suburb and price bracket. Not comparable suburbs. Not similar price points. The specific suburb and the specific price range. An agent who cannot produce local, relevant, recent results is an agent whose track record - however impressive overall - does not directly address the seller situation.
Sellers who ask these questions find that most agents answer them reasonably well. The ones who do not answer them well are the ones worth knowing about before signing, not after week four when the consequences of the selection are already accumulating.
The cumulative effect of asking specific questions is a track record picture considerably more useful than the one the agent presented unprompted. Clearance rate, vendor discount average, suburb-specific recency, and transparency about failed campaigns together give a seller a working model of performance grounded in verifiable data rather than curated highlights. That model does not guarantee the right choice. It significantly reduces the probability of the wrong one.
The one who deflects them is showing you the same behaviour they will show buyers when holding price gets difficult.
What Good Track Record Research Leads to
Sellers who do the research before the listing presentation rather than relying on the agent to frame it for them what agent records show consistently make better selections and achieve outcomes that reflect genuine market performance rather than the luck of an uninformed choice.
The research takes an hour. The agent relationship lasts six to eight weeks.