I just got back from the mailbox. Gwinnett County, in all of its wisdom, has determined that my house is worth about 12% more than last year…
Keep in mind that nearby homes have recently sold for under the price my wife and I paid for our home seven years ago. also keep in mind that the county in general has had a decrease in valuations as reflected in sale prices and median home prices.
Active Rain, a real estate agent centered community that I blog on, is having a contest for agent promotional videos. The contest has pushed me to do something that I have been resisting… make a video.
Here it is.
I certainly intend to make more. I’ve been wanting to alter my Gwinnett County Market Reports to a friendlier format… perhaps I can utilize video to make them faster and more interesting.Anyway… Enjoy. Feel free to comment.
Also, I’d like to thank the people that helped out with this video. I won’t embarrass you by naming you… they did great, any failings are mine.
It isn’t that hard. In fact it is downright easy. Selling a home in a week or less is pretty simple. It only takes a few simple steps.
Saturate the market with marketing. If nobody knows it is for sale, it won’t get sold.These are all well known techniques… although about 75% of the listings on the market right now do NOT have all of these going for them. Every day as I go through listings in the local MLS, I see homes that look terrible, or worse… don’t have enough or even any pictures. I go to visit homes and I see them messy and unkempt. I run across flyer boxes that are empty. I see agents and sellers that have their heads in the sand trying to maintain “plausible deniability” about property defects.
I can list a few hooks, but most of them are really just gimmicks. Giving away cars and plasma screen TVs with the house aren’t that exceptional anymore. And they don’t make a better buying experience… and most of these lead to the biggest problem…
Not good. Amazing. That is where things get interesting. ANY house will sell immediately at some price. But, that price might very well not be a price at which the seller wants to sell. But here is the surprise…
If the house is going to sell, it will likely sell early in the listing.
That’s right. The single most critical time for the marketing of the house is the first week. When it is a “new listing” it gets the most attention. The waning attention later in the listing period can be improved with price reductions or other “fresheners.” But, it still won’t get the eyes like it will during the first week.
So, what does all of this mean? It means that if the house is priced aggressively, it will get offers and likely sell in the first couple of weeks of the listing.
So, Lane… why are the average days on market usually several months? There are a couple of reasons. To start with, it is an average… a lot of homes sell faster, and a lot sell slower. If you look really hard through the listings, you will see that the homes that sell late in the listing period, you will see price reductions. Had they been priced that way to start with… they would have sold faster.
Another reason goes back to the first few points I made. Many properties are rushed on to the market. “Get the listing, get the sign in the ground, get it on the MLS and then do the collateral work.” That is the way most agents operate. The first week (the most critical time) the listing doesn’t have flyers, doesn’t have a web site… doesn’t even have pictures on the MLS, much less a virtual tour. We know that this is the most important time, and yet… 3 out of 4 listings WASTE this important time.
Ok, you’ve convinced me… I’ll give you a week to sell my house. If you let me price it like it is on fire… I’ll take it. However, if you want to preserve equity, we might need more time. I think a year is outrageously long (except for some VERY high end homes with a limited market), but even two months is a pretty short time frame to risk spending much money on while marketing a home. Six months is a good medium… but we’ll know if we are getting good results much quicker than that.
If you are ready to sell your home, let me know.
Everyone in the real estate industry is zigging… ok, not everyone, but enough. Most real estate agents (and unrepresented sellers) think that tossing a couple ads on Craigslist and claiming the house on Zillow is an Internet Marketing Strategy. Most real estate agents are actually cutting back on their marketing efforts… money is tight, slow the spending is the mantra. Everyone is clamoring for buyers… afterall, it is a buyer’s market, and sellers are having a hard time competing… so abandon them and concentrate on buyers, they are bringing the money.
I’m going through the MLS looking for something in particular. And what do I see? I see properties in the MLS with no pictures. We are allowed a dozen. About 10% of listings have that many. Only about 20% have a virtual tour of any type. Property specific website? Almost immeasurably small percentage.
In order to sell, sellers need to have their property WELL represented and marketed.
When I started in real estate, I came in as a buyer’s agent. That still represents most of my business. At that time, agents wanted listings. Buyers were a dime a dozen, and listings were hard to come by. I saw a need for good buyer representatives. I was amazed at what I saw… and as the market reality shifted, I became more and more amazed.
When we were in a seller’s market, it was normal to see properties listed with two or three pictures (eight was the limit then). Descriptions were sparse. Online marketing was almost non-existent. Sales were easy, why spend money and time? But as the market shifted, sales weren’t so easy, and a new excuse was needed to not really market a property. Back to Money is tight, slow the spending.
I am transitioning to listing more properties. Sellers need someone that understands buyers. Being an agent for 100 years isn’t enough. I have dealt with too many “listing specialists” that have totally forgotten what sells houses, and have only managed to focus in on what sells themselves. Imagine having an agent that is supposed to be representing the best interests of the seller tell you… “It’s a numbers game. I know that only 20% of the listings will sell, so I just take more. If the seller isn’t realistic about price, that’s ok. I get business from having my sign in their yard.” And yes, that is a quote.
I can proudly say that my selling/listing percentage is 4x the market average… and climbing. I have built a portal that offers buyers a unique perspective on property, and is tailored to unique buyers. Instead of just an ad on Craigslist (which I have regularly), I am building a an internet marketing presence that works for properties with better than average garages. I am building single property websites with some killer options that are just not used in this market.
Google cool garages Atlanta or garage home Atlanta or house cool garage or 4+ car garage gwinnett. Did you notice that there were a lot of top spots held by Active Rain (for one of my blogs), LaneBailey.com (this blog), Blogspot.LaneBailey.com (my old blog, points to this blog) and GarageHomesUSA.com (my website)? I have page 1 rankings for ALL of those terms and many more. Everyday I get better in the Search Rankings for those and similar terms.
If you are selling a home in Gwinnett or the surrounding areas, I am ready to put this to work for you.
I know, it is April Fool’s Day. I have left a few little jokes here and there around the web. I put my Jeep project up for sale on my 4wd club’s forum. I posted about how I wanted to be average on Active Rain.
But, this is different… I came across a few videos (honestly, there is a video thread here, but I’m only going to post a couple of them) about something I had never thought about. And this is sick on about 6 different levels… Seriously.
Let that soak in for a moment. I mean really… that is just wrong. And fun. I want one now. I laugh every time i see one, and now I’m thinking… hhmmm.
And if you like things a little dirtier…
Finally, since I had to have one video that was completely different…
Just because the car is called a “Smart” doesn’t mean the driver has to be…
