Category: 
Sellers, Is Your Home a Prize Fighter or a Bench Warmer?
Today I will be out with a lovely couple from Wisconsin looking for their Florida home. I try to stay upbeat and not hyper critical of what other agents consider “marketing” but it’s a nightmare, plain and simple. It is literally a struggle for me to show your Bonita Springs home. Should it be? My buyers are searching for a home or attached villa in the $200-250,000 price point. I will be showing them eight homes that best meet their criteria of size, style, one level, two bedroom minimum & value.
Here’s what the market has to offer:
- 144 active listings meet the price criteria (not value criteria)
- 90 active listings have a two car garage
- Just from this point your home has only a .09% chance of being shown to my buyers before your agent even screws everything up.
What else would sell the other 88 homes to me? Yes, me. Your house has to be sold three times, by the way. To the agents, to the buyers and to the appraiser. First, what would make me show any of the other 88 homes to my buyers?
- Price - Price your home right or you’re in the dust. PERIOD. Buyers and their agents aren’t stupid and are just looking for a way to weed out the rest (in this case 82 other homes)
- Photos. Make sure you have them or keep writing mortgage payments. Press hard if you have those carbon copy type checks so that the writing goes through.
- Description of the home. Psst. Most of our buyers aren’t around here, throw them a bloody clue.
- Visual tour (have you heard buyers like photos?)
- Directions to the home (especially if it’s in a new, unmapped community).
- A lock box so I can actually get my buyers inside the home to see it.
- Oh, a return phone call from the agent giving permission to show the home.
Sounds simple enough, right? Believe it or not on nearly every listing I attempted to set an appointment to show and sell I was met with the obstacles above.
- Sellers, you need to take control of your homes and verify that your home is being SHOWN to the public in photos. BUYERS LOVE PICTURES. You can have 8 photos in Sunshine MLS, even more in Rapattoni MLS (yes, we have two MLS services), plus a visual tour. No extra charge. FREE. Your competition is doing it, by the way.
- Make sure the remarks of the MLS tell a story about the home and where it is located and the benefit of living there.
- Not every agent lives in Bonita Springs. They NEED directions to your home. If your home is new, it is not in google maps or on their GPS.
- Even if you have a tenant the agent can put a key in the lock box and give the lock box to the tenant. The tenant can put the lock box out on the porch on the day a showing is approved. Usually tenants are worried about people barging in - they’re in control this way.
- Make sure appointment phone calls get returned or there is a call center to handle them.
Well, I’m off to sell a house today in Bonita Springs, Florida. There are 90 candidates available, 8 homes being shown to my buyers and, for the record, currently only 4 pending sale in this criteria bracket - less than .05%.
Looks like a very competitive market, huh? Is your home a prize fighter or a bench warmer?
Want Bonita Springs updates? Subscribe to the RSS feed or
Comments
This entry was posted
on Monday, February 18th, 2008 at 7:56 am
and is filed under Seller Tips.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
11 Comments so far
Outstanding! Can’t add a thing. You say it all. I could probably just substitute Eastern CT for Bonita Springs.
I am just going to change the Bonita Springs to Frederick MD and repost…wait, people from Wisconsin don’t move here.
You have summed up the states…
You two have blanket permission, but I think you knew that.
You always tell it just like it is — and sellers everywhere really needed to hear this. A+!
I just added your post to my Tumblr with this comment:
This could have been written about most any market. Agents this should be a required read.
Thank you, Candy Lynn!
Chris ~ So well stated. Many sellers aren’t aware of how difficult it is to stand out in the crowd and to get a showing. Then when the phone rings the show begins! Trying to interfere with a showing time is a BIG mistake. There is just too much inventory out there.
The best thing a seller can do is accommodate the showing and leave some hot yummy chocolate cookies out, with a bottle of water for the buyers.
You will be remembered.
You are “right on” with your analysis. Great job as always. You are the Bright Shining Star in our office.
Brown noser.
i’m a realtor in vancouver, bc with 26 years of marketing vancouver homes and i think i’ve seen every kind of market possible. at present our market is strong but i totally relate to your comments…i remember those buyers markets…work a listing for 6 months and it would expire. human nature being what it is, most sellers dont like to hear the hard facts but i believe its our job to give it to them.