Marketing

Why you shouldn’t care about average days on market

by John Rice

I met with a cool family a few weeks ago. They were going to interview a handful of realtors. I’m always a little freaked out at listing presentations. See, there are agents that come with power point presentations full of market wide data available to every realtor in town, and then blurt out something like “After looking at the statistics for this neighborhood, your house will sell at 5:46 P.M. next Tuesday.” That impresses some people I guess. I’m not one of those that throws out a bunch of statistics. I kind of like to look at the house, assess the positives and negatives that I think buyers will see, then do a market analysis to find what I think the house is worth. I usually do all this wearing a pair of shorts and sandals, often forgetting to give the people my business card. I ordered 5000 back in 2016 and still have about 4983.

Why don’t I worry much about DOM and other statistics? It is because I am only dealing with one house. Yep. That’s right. The only numbers I care about are the ones for your house. We never really know when your Buyer will arrive. All we can do is price it realistically, make it look as great as possible, and present it well online.  When I get such a seller, their house usually sells quickly.

So, back to the listing appointment. I’m on the tour of the house and the husband asked me the average DOM question. I told him that I didn’t even look at that because I don’t care how long it took other houses to sell in the recent past, I only care about how long it is going to take his house to sell right now. As soon as I said that, I knew I either had this listing or I had just totally blown it.

Fortunately this cool couple saw my point and went with me.

What to look for in your next Realtor

by John Rice

I had a friend contact me on Facebook about the possibility of finding a new agent to sell their house that is outside of my market. They were not asking me about listing it for them, just advice on what to do. Seems they have had a lot of showings, and obviously no offers yet. I though this would make a good blog post.  

“Sorry to take so long to get back to you. This isn’t an easy one to answer so I wanted to have time to give a thorough response.

I’ve got a few questions.

Question 1: Is your current agent presenting it well online? Go online and take a look at the listing. If the pictures and marketing remarks wouldn’t make you want to see it, odds are everybody else feels the same way. While you are there, double check that everything is accurate.

Question 2: Is it priced realistically? If you have had that many showings, it may be priced high. I don’t know the market where you live, but to have that many buyers look and not make an offer could mean that the price is too high or………Question #3!

Question 3: Is the feedback you are getting from showings that there is some fatal negative that buyers just can’t look past? If you keep hearing the same thing over and over again, you might have a big negative. Most big negatives can only be conquered with a price reduction.

So, if you do part ways with this agent, here is what I would look for next. Ideally, an agent that works with at least as many buyers as they do sellers. Most agents prefer to list. Agents that mostly only list houses don’t see as many houses. An agent that works with a lot of buyers has probably been in a lot of the houses that you will be competing against. That agent will be better able to tell you what your house offers to buyers that are out there right now! I’d also look for somebody that deals mostly in your price range. It always kills me when I see an affordable house listed by agents that deal almost exclusively in high end houses. What does an agent really know about a $250k house and $250k buyers when 98% of their work is over a million?

I’d also look for somebody that has a plan. Don’t go for the agent that spits out their average days on market unless they can specifically tell you what they did to acheive it. You want somebody that will do a market analysis and will show you how they came up with what they think your house is worth, even if you don’t like the number. Some agents will list a house for whatever price it takes to get the listing. Then they start hitting you up for price reductions. I kind of think it is better to deal with reality now, since you’ll have to at some point down the road.

I hope this helps. Let me know if you have any other questions…..I may turn this into a blog post. (No names of people, places, things though.)”

Minimize negatives >accentuate positives

by John Rice

I woke up at 3:44 this morning thinking about the differences between how a buyer and a seller view a house, and what a seller needs to know.

A buyer is going to come in a house, stay for 20-30 minutes if they like it, and wander around all the rooms.  They view the house as a whole at this point.  They are trying to decide if they like the whole thing since they can’t cut and paste features.  This is the main difference.  When a buyer goes from room to room and all colors are different, that just seems random to them.  A seller sits in each room for longer periods of time and tends to view the house as different individual spaces.  Same thing for finishes.  When a buyer sees nickel door knobs, a gold light fixture, and maybe black cabinet hardware, it throws them off.  It has a confusing vibe for them, just as it would for you if I spent the next few paragraphs talking about the Olympics and how much more I like coffee from South America than I do from Kenya.

If you are a seller, the best thing you can do is to give your house that cohesive vibe.  Paint all the walls the same color.  Makes things match.  It sounds silly, but those things have a calming effect on people.  People want to feel calm/relaxed in their home and this is one way to make  a buyer feel that way.  If two houses are side by side and identical, the one with the cohesive vibe is going to sell before the one with every room a different color.

Now I don’t want to make this about updates.  I think HGTV and Tik Tok have us convinced that   white shaker cabinets and shiplap are all it takes to make ANY house sell.  I’ve been in  houses that are totally random, but have these upgrades.  You know what happens if the house has the random vibe?  All a buyer does is want to cut and paste those features to another house.  They say they really like this or that feature, but they don’t buy it. 

Often, real estate is more about minimizing negatives than accentuating positives.

When is the best time to sell your house?

by John Rice

I’m seeing a lot of buzz lately saying right around now is the best time of year to sell your house. Many realtors post these articles. I can’t blame them. We are always saying “Now” is a good time to do anything, lol.

I am in now way doubting the statistics. Numbers don’t like. The problem though is knowing what they mean.

Fact: There are more buyers out in the market in the spring. It’s always been this way so I don’t see the newsworthiness of it.

Fact: The likelihood of your house selling for top dollar is less dependent on when you list than it is on the condition of your house and how it fits in the market…..meaning, how do buyers rank your house compared to what is currently available to them in terms of condition, price, floor plan, lot and location.

I have sold plenty of houses in multiple offers the very first day on the market back in 2008-2010. That was when it was an extreme Buyer’s Market.

It is a simple formula really.

You do some prep work. Fix anything that is going to keep a buyer from saying yes to your house. You want them to leave their showing with a positive emotional response. If there is work to be done on your house, they leave with a logical response. They are thinking about what they need to do to your house and how much it is going to cost. If they even make an offer, it will be less since they are deducting the cost of those repairs. So, leave them with nothing to do but fall in love.

Price it right. I don’t mean use what zillow, a recent appraisal or an AVM says the house is worth. Do some real research. See what has recently sold in your neighborhood. See what is pending in your neighborhood. Pending sales, while you don’t know the actually sale price until it closes, can tell you what buyers are doing in real time.

The last step is the most important one. You see what other choices a buyer has maybe 15% below and 15% higher than the value of your house. Then you price your house so it is clearly one of their top choices. Why? Because after 19 years in this business, the one biggest thing I have learned is that every buyer wants the best house they can get for their budget. As long as you have one of those houses, it will sell quickly for top dollar in any market and in any time of the year.

You won’t believe what happened with their Zestimate

by John Rice

I put on a new listing last week. Like what happens a lot of the time, Zillow’s zestimate was way off of what a thoroughly detailed, comprehensive, professional opinion of the market value was. Usually once Zillow gets the listing from the local MLS, their Zestimate suddenly changes to something more in line with the list price.

Not with this house however.

My seller reached out to Zillow after unsuccessfully trying to claim their home on the site. Zillow was nice enough to send them an email that basically said Zillow has never been in the house, knows nothing about the house or its condition, but somehow is still happy to publish a value. More of a Guestimate than a Zestimate in this realtor’s opinion.

Knowing artificial intelligence is running Zillow, I told my seller that I would play around with the marketing remarks and see if somehow certain keywords might change anything. It was a long shot but it was all we had.

I put words like “Recently” in front of the word “Remodeled” when describing their primary suite bathroom. I removed the word “Original” when describing some of the cool character of the house. I removed the word “Traditional” in a sentence describing the homes in the entire neighborhood. I tried to used words like New, updated and fresh every place I could make it work without looking stupid.

And guess what?

The next morning the Zestimate was up nearly $90,000 and right in line with the list price.

I outsmarted Artifical Intelligence. What’s next for me? I am going to try to outsmart my dog, who seems to have trained me to do what she wants, when she wants.