first time buyer

What Realtors need to hear

by John Rice

So much of my industry is about growing your business.  How to get more leads.  All the places you should go online to try to hook up with buyers or sellers.  How to use Zillow to get more work.  More work is what it is all about.  More more more.

It is never about being a great realtor.  Nobody sees the old school benefit of making your first priority taking care of your clients.

Since I have always wanted to be one of those motivational guru real estate dudes who tells large audiences of realtors what to do, I think I’ll share my story/POV/Logic behind how I do things.

From the beginning, I never wanted to be the agent that sat in the office and licked the back of stamps, sending post cards to everybody I knew.  I wanted to “Do” real estate.  That was the business.  The business was not about promoting my business.  People thought I was crazy.  I probably am a little bit, but that has nothing to do with the model of real estate I was incubating in my brain.

What did I do instead?  I studied the market.  I already knew the neighborhoods having lived here for so long.  Also, when I got a client, I wanted to keep them for the rest of their life.  I wanted them to be so excited about me that they told friends/family members about me.  What I had to do to earn that was put their interests above mine, protect them, fight for them, etc. It is all about trust, wisdom and experience.

Did any of this happen over night?  No.  It took about 4 years in a terrible market,  But it did happen.  Last year about 75% of my work was repeat clients and referrals from past clients and LEXpert fans.  This year so far, I have 24 deals pending/closed.  Only 5 of those came to me without somebody recommending them to me.

So, my advice to new agents that might be reading this:  Wake up every day and do whatever work you need to do to push your deals one day closer to a closing.  Care about your people.  Don’t worry about trying to get the next deal.  I know in this business you wake up everyday unemployed and have to always look out for new work, but focus on what you have in your hand right now.  Advertising and social media are okay to use, but if you are not going to be the best agent you can be, I sure hope you always have a stream of new people…..because you will never get repeat business and referrals.

Be the best agent you can be and watch what happens in a short period of time.  It’s a simple old school model of putting others first and giving them the attention they deserve.  And it works!

LEXpert first time buyer advice

by John Rice

The most important house you buy will be your first one.

It will be the one that sets you up for the next house and the next one and so on.  You want to carry as much equity into your next house as possible.

Buy a good one and it should be easy to sell when you want to move up or take that dream job out of town.

Buy the wrong one and it can be like having an iron ball shacked around your leg.

The hardest thing for most buyers, especially first time buyers, is to think about the exit plan.  One day, you will want to sell your house as much as you wanted to buy it.

Here are some unchangeable features that are often deal killers:

1.  Steep driveways.  Kids can’t play.  Nobody wants to slide down it in the winter.

2.  A bunch of small rooms.

3.  A busy road, either in front or back.

4.  A sloping backyard.  Slopping downhill from the house is a little better than sloping uphill.

5.  Noise.  Could be a bus stop, traffic, a train.

6.  Lack of privacy.  People do not want to be in their backyard and feel like they can’t scratch their butt without a neighbor seeing them.

Keep in mind that in a fast market, ANY house will sell.  We are in a market like we were in 2005 where there are not a lot of choices.  Buyers are feeling happy to get any house.   Many people who bought 2nd tier houses back then realized their mistake in the bad market of 2007-2012.  Just because the market is hot now does not mean it always will be.

If you are a home owner who has a 2nd tier house, then now is your time to sell it!

Reading the tea leaves when your house isn’t selling

by John Rice

House not selling? Wondering how to interpret what is going on? Here are a few of my thoughts on some common situations. The following assumes your house is being presented well online with plenty of good pictures and marketing remarks that describe it with more than trendy generic AI generated verbiage.

The house that gets lots of showings but no offers

Assuming that you don’t have some negative that wasn’t obvious like backing to a highway, apartments, or having an Eiffel Tower looking electrical thing in your yard, this situation simply means that the house doesn’t live up to what buyers expected. The good news with this one is that buyers think the price for what they thought the house would be is okay or else they wouldn’t come at all. The solution here is to either lower the price or improve the house so that it meets the expectations buyers have. Whichever is easiest.

I once had a condo that got tons of showings. I kept encouraging the seller to paint. Once we did, it sold. I recently had another listing that was getting tons of showings. It was a nice place, but just felt like a 15 year old house that needed a fresh vibe. The seller did some painting and replaced the flooring in all the bathrooms. As soon as it was done, it sold. Both of these places looked great online, and just needed to match what buyers thought they were getting. Both were improved for far less than the price reduction we would have needed, so both sellers actually came out better by going that route.

The house that gets no showings

This one is easy, but hard for sellers to accept. The price is too high. If a house is presented well on the MLS, and still nobody comes to see it, all you can do is lower the price. Real estate is all about price, location, and condition. You can’t change the location, but the other two you have some control over.

Also something to think about is this: If you have a $400k house and you’re asking $475k for it, buyers are comparing it to other houses that are really worth the asking price. The buyers who are going to spend what your house is really worth aren’t even going to see it since the list price is over their budget.

The house that gets the same bad feedback over and over

This is the least fun thing that can happen to a seller. I mean, they get kicked out of their house for showing after showing with no offers AND get to hear what people hate about their house.

Several years ago I had this really cool older house that had been mostly remodeled. It had the smallest living room I have ever seen……must have been the smallest anybody had ever seen since that is all I kept hearing after the showings. I’d ask for feedback and the buyer’s realtor would go on and on about how beautiful the place was, how unexpected it was to have walk-in closets in such an old house….then they would say their client wasn’t going to buy it since the living room was so small.

We tried putting in smaller scale furniture, but that didn’t help. After that, all we could do was drop the price. A price reduction opens the house up to a larger pool of buyers as well as enticing them to overlook a shortcoming if they are getting a better deal. We got that one sold too.

If you have a situation that doesn’t fit into these scenarios, give me a shout and I’ll let you know what to do.