The Blood Sport of Home Selling

Selling a home has always been a competitive event. It has now become a blood sport.

Too few buyers, mortgage requirements geared to glean only the most credit worthy of applicants and appraisers that examine a home's value with the precision of a jeweler require buyers and their agents to form a closer alliance and develop new strategies to get a property sold.

To this end my networking group here at Coldwell Banker is developing pre-listing packages for Sellers. Home Stagers will be giving the entire home a close look for its visual appeal and making suggestions for any needed enhancements/ facelifts. Handymen will take care of the small need-to-do items that plague most houses that can block a buyer's view of anything else. Licensed Inspectors will perform a whole-house check that will turn up any major problems that can be taken care of before the house hits the market. Housekeeping would also be offered. All of the services will be made available at special rates for our clients.

We'll still have quite a fight on our hands to successfully market a property. But, we won't be entering the ring tripping over our shoe laces.

Clients form plans that work

Despite this week’s up and down, round and around economic news from D.C and Wall Street, clients appear to be forming their own plans.

Keeping it simple, seems to be their way of finding a home and affording it: Just enough room, best neighborhood possible and conveniently located. Making long-term plans for any purchase, these folks are serious and savvy enough to know quick appreciation is not on their “must haves” list. They have friends whose short term views have led to misery and hopes of someday just getting back to “square one”. No, today’s clients seem to be looking for homes, not mere “financial instruments”.

Maybe my clients still recall the tortoise and hare from childhood bedtime stories; or, was it the Three Little Pigs? ( 3 Little Pigs)

Buying Multi-family properties...

These past few months I've been paying particular mind to the inventory of multi-family homes on the market. It's becoming a far different market for investors than it was during the 1999 -2006 years. In 2005 I advised all of my clients holding onto these properties, hoping to achieve further gains, to get out - sell them immediately. Keep in mind that most of these properties were speculative "investments": the monthly incomes were less than the carrying costs. The clients balked at first, feeling that the longer they held on the higher they could sell the properties for. They finally saw the wisdom of not living in a house of cards and sold to other speculators who were not so well advised. The market still went up…for a few months… and then the bottom fell out. My clients still thank me.

Now, we are entering different times. Speculative properties have been sitting vacant or only partly rented for some time and often have fallen into disrepair. But, a new wave of investors are now coming back. Not looking for quick turnarounds or "Flips", these are serious buyers looking for a return on their investment and making sure the cash flow is enough to also improve and maintain the properties.

With inventories high, interest rates lowering and more folks considering renting for various reasons, today's investment buyer is looking for it all: location, price and return. They also want to know where their money is - unlike putting it into some investment fund operated by "Uncle Bernie".

It's time, again, to call some of those old investors… Are you there?

Zombie Marketing

Usually, when we say someone has "expired", we mean dead. Done. Fortunately, for a great many folks hoping to sell their homes and properties, that is not the case. The trick, though, is bringing the dead back to life.

Let's face it, this is one tough market in which to sell a home. Buyers are not plentiful and the competition is strong. Tell me, then, why are some homes being marketed just as they were back in the bad old days. Back then, when Buyers would kill to buy an overpriced property, agents often would only have to stick a sign in the ground and both they and their Sellers would sit back waiting for offers. Hello, 2009.

Most agents are again practicing their craft and conducting business as it should: Determining the real market value of a home, getting it prepared for the market and then launching the marketing campaign. The market value of a property has nothing to do with how much was paid for it, how much a Seller wants to get for it or how much it means in sentimental value. Once a house is placed for sale… it is a commodity. The market determines the value just as it does with stocks, cars or bread. Agents are there to interpret and anticipate what the market is doing and act accordingly to sell the commodity they represent.

Yet, many homeowners - the Sellers - are still not getting it. They continue to place their properties for sale with an agent that will tell them what they want to hear. The agents then hope the Sellers adjust the price as time goes by and that the marketing takes care of itself. Thus, the "Expireds".

In approaching homeowners whose homes had been on the market but did not sell - Expired - as it were, there is one and only one question I initially ask: Do you really want your property sold. If the answer is, "Yes", we proceed further. For then only do we both know that whatever needs to be done, will be done. Then begins my "Zombie Marketing" - bringing the dead back to life.