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Category Archives: business of real estate

I’m entering a new age… Video

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.

I can sell ANY home in a week

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.
  • Make it look perfect.  It has to beat out ALL of the other homes on the market.
  • Have a stunning presentation, perfect pictures and excellent virtual tour.

  • Get in front of any surprises.  Get a pre-listing inspection so that there aren’t surprises from the buyer’s inspector.
  • Find a hook… something different… like a virtual interactive floor plan.

Creative Commons License photo credit: rileyroxx

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…

Creative Commons License photo credit: fazen

  • The price has to be amazing.

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.

Ready to actually sell your property? ZAG!

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.

Buy a house, get a car…

I see these pretty regularly, but this one was surprising because of the price.

Traditionally, these deals have involved $1m homes and leases on cars like a Mercedes or BMW. This is a house priced at $260k, and the car is an outright purchase. The house is either brand new, or pretty recently built.

This is NOT the car.They are paying a premium to the buyer’s agent as well.

Why am I mentioning this? I bet your first thought was that I wanted to help someone buy the house… but that wouldn’t be right. I want to warn buyers about these types of deals. They can be great, but there are some pitfalls.

The ad says that the house is priced “below Market Value.” Well… market value hasn’t been determined yet. Market value is defined as the price at which a buyer and seller can agree to the purchase. It may be below appraised value, but that is the opinion of one appraiser.

So, what is the danger, Lane? The danger is that if the new owner needed to sell the property in the near future, it is likely that there would not have been enough appreciation to cover the cost of the car. That means that the buyers could find themselves upside down in the home for a few years. It is likely that the home would have to appreciate for 5 years or more to allow the new owner to sell without involving their checkbook.

Perhaps it is a great marketing move… but it could be a move that doesn’t provide a positive financial impact on the buyer in the future.

A real estate deal is made up of a lot of components, and there are a lot of opportunities for exposing both buyers and sellers to legal or financial pitfalls.

Creative Commons License photo credit: Coed

Car is NOT the included vehicle.

Survey Announcement

Lane will sell your homeYesterday I posted up that I was kicking around the idea of a Seller Seminar.  The focus of this seminar would be to help sellers get ready to enter the market.

Of course all sellers have been through the purchase process, but it might have only been from the other side.  Even for those that have previously sold homes, the market is always changing, and technologies have changed dramatically in the last few years.

Education and preparation are the keys to having a smooth and successful transaction.  To that end, we will be putting on a seller seminar to address issues that are unique to sellers and are directed towards selling in the current real estate climate.

Don’t worry, thumb screws will not be applied to get you to list your home for sale right now, nor to use any of the specific vendors that will share their expertise.  

We have put up a survey to gather more information about what sellers want to know and when it would be convenient.  Visit the survey here.  There is also a link that will be on the tool bar at the top of the blog until the survey results are compiled.

Creative Commons License photo credit: Iman

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