Pricing a listing-presentation deal for an agent offering $250 per deck and first look at her expireds

Dumb question first: what is actually in a listing presentation? I've only ever seen the seller side of one and it was a printed booklet the agent left on the counter.

Second thing, and I think it matters more than your hourly. The expired list isn't a thing you can hold her to. If she gets busy, or her broker tells her the pipeline stays in-house, that half of the deal evaporates and you're left at $62.50 an hour doing decks for someone who now expects same-day turnaround. Price the cash side as if the data is worth zero, because it might be.

That four hours reflects someone who already built the template and knows exactly where the comps live. The first time a pricing page needs revision because a seller pushed back, that number climbs to six hours, and the effective hourly rate drops fast. This pattern shows up anywhere reporting or client deliverables get built to spec: the first version is cheap, the second version is where the time goes. Cap it. One revision round included, additional rounds billed at a stated hourly rate, agreed in writing before the first deck gets built.

How did you end up in a position where a listing agent asks you for this? I've been trying to get any agent to answer a second email. Was it just that you kept asking her for data until you became useful to her?

A recurring pattern in this kind of arrangement is that per-deck pricing trains the client to think of the work as an errand, while a monthly number trains them to think of it as their marketing function, and the marketing function gets asked for the email campaign, the open house sheet, the annual review letters. That's where the money is. Going monthly, capped at 6 decks with one revision each, and stating a turnaround of 2 business days with a rush fee for same-day, tends to work well. The rush fee isn't really about the money, it's how to find out whether a fast listing appointment happens twice a year or twice a week. Worth remembering: one agent is one agent. If she moves to a team with in-house marketing, that whole line of income can disappear within a month.

The math you posted is the easy part. $1,500 a month at 24 build hours is $62.50, and every reply above is right that revisions are what determine the real number. Assume 25% revision overhead on presentation work sold to a single agent with no defined scope and you're at 30 hours and $50 an hour. That's your realistic floor, not your ceiling, and it goes up only if you cut build time with reusable components.

The answer depends on one assumption: whether you are selling deck production or selling win rate. Deck production is the part generative AI compresses fastest. An agent with a decent prompt habit can produce a passable pricing narrative in twenty minutes, and some already do. What she cannot produce quickly is the comp selection judgment that makes the pricing page survive a seller who has three other agents' numbers in front of her. If your differentiation is the comps, price the comps and treat layout as included. If your differentiation is layout, expect the rate to fall.

On the expired pipeline, sequence without exclusivity is worth something only if the timing gap beats the dialers in your market. You said it doesn't reliably. So value it near zero in the price and treat any deal that comes from it as upside.

One more number to run before you sign anything. Concentration. One agent at $1,500 is your whole line, and the agent population is consolidating into teams that bring marketing in-house. Two more clients at $700 each is a less profitable and more durable book. Decide which of those you're building before you set the price, because the price you quote her becomes the anchor for everyone she refers.

Worth pushing back a bit on the framing here. Someone already building comp lists for their own buying is doing deck work at close to free marginal effort on top of research they'd do anyway. That makes the data access the whole reason to say yes, even unexclusive. But structure it. Ask for a standing weekly file of expireds and withdrawns, on a set day, in a set format. "I'll send you stuff" tends to die by week three. A recurring calendar item survives.

What happens when she changes brokerages is worth asking up front. Whose templates and whose brand files do those decks live in, because building everything in one brokerage's approved format can mean half the work becomes unusable at the next place, with an expectation of redoing it for free. Also worth asking what her broker's rules are on non-licensed people producing client-facing marketing, since advertising and licensing rules differ by state and her compliance person may have opinions worth hearing now rather than later.

One question worth asking: how does she pay? Commission-timed cash flow is real for agents, flush the week a deal closes and slow the six weeks before. Card on file, charged on the first, no exceptions, or the $250 invoices end up getting chased in month four while decks are still going out same day.