Author: John Rice

They need us now more than ever

by John Rice

A buddy of mine is a realtor in Oklahoma. He posted something on facebook about the market there. Somebody made a comment. He replied to their comment basically saying that a lot of sellers think it is easy to sell their house right now without a realtor, but they need realtors now more than ever to sort through the chaos of getting so many offers.

It got me thinking.

Back when the market was bad and houses were taking forever to sell, I would sometimes have a seller joke that I am making too much money when their house sold immediately.

The public thinks being a realtor is easy money. When it’s a sellers market like it is now, they think they can do the same tasks we do and save the money. But here is the thing, you are really paying a realtor for what they know and to use their knowledge. You are not paying them to just perform tasks. That is why most for sale by owner houses take longer to sell, usually don’t get as many offers, and tend to fall apart more often than those listed by a good realtor……and I will not even get into the quality of pictures that for sale by owner people take, lol.

Even in this market when selling a house is so easy, you need somebody who can tell you which offers are most likely to get to the closing table. There are many variables within an offer besides just the price. Most sellers just think “This buyer is willing to pay the most so let’s go with that one!“

When it seems like it was meant to be

by John Rice

I sold a house this week that I wanted to tell you about.

The buyer is a first time buyer who was sent to me from two separate past clients. She works with a client who has become a friend of mine…..Thanks David! Her mother works with another friend who has used me before too……Thanks Doug! I don’t have this happen often when somebody is asking for realtor references and I get mentioned twice. It always makes me feel twice as good that somebody would take their time to connect two people they care about. Close to 100% of my work is getting referred to new people or people coming back to use me again. That is why I don’t ask for reviews and don’t advertise. I just don’t need to do either to attract new work!

The buyer was going to be in the super tight $150ish market. There is almost nothing ever for sale and when something hits the market, you are competing with cash buying investors who sometimes don’t even look at the house before making an offer. This was going to be a tough one.

Right after I started working with this buyer, I get a text from another client who was wanting to sell their house.

The sellers are past clients who I have thoroughly enjoyed working with several times. They bought a house to rent many years ago and it was time to part with it. The sellers did a lot of work to it themselves and it looked really good. The price point was going to be around $150k, which is very hard to find in the current market.

I just knew this was the house for my buyer. I mean, I had recommended it to the sellers when they bought it so I could certainly recommend it again to my buyer!

I told the sellers what I thought it was worth. I told them that I had somebody that was interested in it. I also told them that they could put the house on the market and possibly get a little more than the price range I thought it would sell within since you never know what a desperate buyer will do in this market. They liked the idea of me managing the entire transaction and keeping it simple, so I showed it to my buyer. Of course she wanted it. It was a gorgeous home in one of the most desirable neighborhoods in her price range.

The buyer is happy she didn’t have to frantically make an immediate decision and that she got a great house. The sellers are happy because they know I am managing the whole transaction and made it so easy for them. A win for everybody.

I seem to be having this happen several times a year now. A seller will tell me they are wanting to sell soon and then shortly afterwards I have a buyer tell me what they want and they describe exactly the house my seller has. Happens the other way too. I will have a buyer tell me what they want and then I will have somebody tell me they are ready to sell the exact house the buyer described. It’s sort of cool when this happens. It makes me feel like I am a small part of a bigger story.

The hardest house to sell is….

by John Rice

I showed a house to a family last night. It was in a desirable neighborhood. Had a nice lot. Had lots of square footage and a nice floor plan.

What was the problem?

There wasn’t any one feature of the house that was amazing and there wasn’t anything to hate either. It was all just okay.

Most houses have a combination of things you love and things you dislike but you can live with. The normal thought process for deciding if you want the house is weighing back and forth between what you like and dislike. When the house has nothing you like and nothing you dislike, it is hard. People want to fall in love with their house. Often it is easier to sell a house with an amazing kitchen and a bad lot. Or an outdated house with an incredible lot.

You would think such an inoffensive house would be ideal, but it is not. Showings for these type of houses usually take a little longer. Buyers typically walk through the house several times hoping they have missed that one feature that they can get excited about. But it isn’t there. And there isn’t anything to walk away from the house hating. So most of them just walk away.

How you do a price reduction in a Seller’s Market

by John Rice

Okay, so you have made a mistake and overpriced your house. No worries. The market is strong enough that you haven’t shot yourself in the foot, you’ve just wasted a little time.

Back when the market was bad, it was even more critical to get the price right from the get go. The reason was because there were so few buyers entering the market. If they came to see your house and didn’t like it, a small price reduction wasn’t much motivation to come back and see it. About all you could do was made a big price reduction or wait for new buyers to emerge into the market.

Today, there are new buyers out every day. I don’t think in this environment that you need a huge price reduction to get your house sold. While it is true a lot of the same buyers who saw your house probably haven’t bought anything because there is literally nothing else to buy, your best bet is to catch a buyer who just started looking.

I think right now, I would suggest a small price reduction. That could serve two purposes. The first is that it might just cause a buyer who is tired of losing out in multiple offers to come back to you. It also makes it attractive to those brand new buyers. Every buyer loves a price reduction.

If your house makes it past the first day on the market and you didn’t get an offer, something is wrong. Whatever the issue is, a lower price always helps. If you reduce the price a bit and it still doesn’t sell, keep reducing the price a little until it does.

Of course, the best way to prevent needing to drop your price is to start out with the right list price from the beginning. Pricing it correctly usually means a faster sale and a far greater likelihood of getting multiples offers.

Never thought I would see this

by John Rice

I woke up Monday morning with not really much to do. That is how a lot of days go in real estate with so little on the market for buyers to view.

Also like a lot of days, things can suddenly change. As I was standing in an isle at Lowe’s, two new listing had hit the market and I was suddenly trying to schedule showings from my phone.

One was a $620k house near Albany Road/Shady Lane. The lot was fantastic. That area was outside the city limits when new and probably felt like a semi-rural area when built. The house had a bonus garage which would have been great for my car loving client. The house was, how can I say this…..STRANGE! It was sort of like somebody decided to throw every trendy 1980s design at the house and see what stuck. Well, ALL of it stuck. It was an old house that had been added on to on 3 sides. The kid I was in the 80s would have loved this place.

The other one was a $900k house off of Chinoe. Really nicely done. Fabulous patio and backyard. Nothing really odd about it other than it only had 3 bedrooms and there were cabinets above the kitchen island that made the kitchen feel small.

It wasn’t too long ago that a seller at these price points expected to wait an average of several months before selling. Like that famous video of a news clip where a lady was being interviewed about a fire in her apartment and said “NOT TODAAAAAAAAAY”, the same can be said about the current market.

The $620k house sold that evening. The $900k house that hit the market about 3:PM got an offer by 9:PM that the seller accepted the next morning. Neither were a good fit for my clients so we are anxiously awaiting the next batch of new listings.