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Is Your Need to Win Keeping You Homeless?
It’s all over the national news: It’s a Buyer’s Market! It’s a great time to buy a home, because there’s so much distressed inventory and sellers — whether banks, investors, owner-occupants, etc. — need to just “get out of it” in some cases, meaning just get the house sold so they can move on.
This is true in SOME cases, yes. But not always.
The reason I bring it up, is because we see every day in the industry the buyers who are just insistent on “winning” the negotiation for the price. These buyers are dead set on their decision that they’re not going to pay more than 90% of list price for their house, darn-it!!! They want a DEAL!!!
But let me ask you this, stubborn buyer: What if the house you want is priced right, right where it’s priced, right now? Do you still need that 10% discount. Or let me put it another way: Would you rather pay 90% of list price for a house that’s over-priced anyway… or 100% of list price for a properly priced house? Do you know how to tell the difference?
Sometimes I wonder. Because so often the “need to win” blows all logic and comparative market analysis and good old common sense right out of the water. It keeps good buyers from getting good houses more often than it should, honestly.
Personally, I like being the listing agent when these “need to win” buyers come around. I’ll have a house that I KNOW is priced right and priced to sell, and a buyer with a chronic case of “need to win” sends an offer that is just ridiculous, with their agent doing their best to convince the seller and I that we’re lucky “in this market” to get any offers at all… while at the same time, internally, rolling their eyes because they know the sheer folly of their pitch.
Then, when they’ve walked, sometimes the same or next day, a legitimate offer comes in and the seller and I get to kind of say to that low-ball agent: “Told you so!”
Seriously, though. If you think Bellingham real estate is a commodities market and “a house is a house is a house….” I got two words for you: Wake up. Every house has a story. Every seller has story. Every price has a story. There are over-priced houses out there by the ship-load, no doubt. And there are unbelievably good deals that get multiple offers on day 1. And in the middle are just properly priced houses that sell with legitimate offers in the first month or two… sometimes longer, even.
Understand where the houses that you’re interested in fit into that equation, and offer accordingly. Don’t let a Freudian “need to win” complex stand in the way of realizing ownership of a great home.
(Debbie Downer… I can’t even wait for you to tear this post apart!!! Have at it, my arch nemesis / favorite fan!)
Comments: 1 Comment »Does Your Story Matter?
In a perfect world, the forms we use to make an offer on a home would have a section — somewhere between the financing and home inspection pages, where buyers would write a narrative featurette about why they are the right buyer for the home.
The buyer would share their story, include a portrait or two showing them standing dreamily on the subject home’s front porch — as if they already lived there — and, the seller would be just swept off her feet, tears streaming down her happy face as she cries out, “This buyer DESERVES my home!!! Where do I sign?”
This is how it could be, too, if…..
The seller actually CARED about the buyer’s story!
I’ve written before that including such a letter can indeed sway a seller into your corner. I’ve seen it happen. But more often than not…
What most sellers care about, and what they’ll ultimately choose an offer that meshes best with, is their OWN story. And their story is usually made better if, in the offer, they see:
- A high price tag.
- A strong financing contingency, preferably CASH!!! (This is HUGE for sellers. They love it, because it means no funky lender bylaws or appraisers or small print to throw a wrench in things at the last minute.)
- A closing date that either: A) gives them the time they need to make their move, or B) is out far enough to perhaps helps them avoid paying capital gains.
And so on. And buyer, as for who YOU are and your story… that’s USUALLY just trivia to a seller. Though, go ahead and include the letter — it can’t hurt, and like I said I HAVE seen sellers choose story over price.
But if you’re committed to getting the house, have your agent dig in and find out the SELLER’s story, and play to that. You can get back to your own story when you close the sale and take up life in your dream house!
Comments: 4 Comments »What’s Your Ritual?
Having spent the weekend showing houses, I had the pleasure of experiencing some truly classic seller rituals, in how they left their homes before we arrived.
So you understand what my clients and I were looking at, we were in Lynden, looking at both century-old restored homes and super-sized, extremely well-kept 70’s homes, priced between $400K and $500K. When I say these 70’s homes were well kept, I mean to tell you they look like they were built yesterday. Truly impeccable.
In one home, the entire inside AND outdoor spaces were wired with recessed speakers, and the seller had put on — and cranked up — some classical CD that was the sound-track to our entire visit.
Even as we put on our shoes on the front porch the music rolled on and crescendo’d as if an orchestra watched our every move and played to it.
In another house – perhaps the most magnificently restored 100-year-old Queen Anne I’ve ever been in — the sellers had baked fresh peanut-butter/chocolate chip cookies, and left them out with a note to help ourselves. We were LOVIN’ IT!!! We pounded cookies and tried to keep them in our mouths as we gaped, amazed, at perfect room after room and exquisite antique after antique. Fabulous experience, all around.
Compare either of these experiences to a showing from last week, where we found every interior door throughout the entire house closed upon our arrival. It made it downright eerie, knocking on each and calling out “Hello!” and expecting again and again to have the owner leap out at us, not knowing we were even there. Such a trivial thing, but it makes such a huge difference to the buyer and buyer’s agent experience.
Some sellers put out fresh cut flowers, kick on all the lights, put on soft music or turn on a water feature. Do these tricks — above and beyond having the place spotless clean and picked up — do they actually work? I believe they very well can. My clients, for example, decided to write an offer on the music house. Aside from the tunes, the place was spotless and warm, the doors were open, the sellers were nowhere to be found so we could take our time and enjoy the visit.
Remember, the overwhelming emotion you want prospective buyers to feel as they walk through your home is, “I want to live this way!”
Plan your pre-showing rituals accordingly.
Comments: 1 Comment »Horror Flic: The Pushy Real Estate Agent!
When I was in Baja two winters ago, I dropped into a couple boutique-style real estate offices and chatted up the agents. Understand, I LOVE Baja, and I LOVE the Mexican culture in general.
But the agents I talked to were straight out of the School of Ultra-Pushy Sales and Intimidation. I mean, the sort of sales tactics that involve backing you into a corner and blowing drag after drag of a cheap cigarette smoke right in your face until you either puke or sign something.
It was classic, and I still laugh (sort of) when I think back to it.
When I saw this video for the first time, I was in hysterics. If you’ve been putting off looking for a house because you think this will be your experience, come and talk to me. I guarantee you’ll be pleasantly surprised.
But first, check this out:
Home Feedback
When it comes to product sales, the best companies querry their customers constantly about their satisfaction with a product. What do they love or hate about it? What features do they use and what could be eliminated? Is it difficult or easy to use? How could it be better?
When, among the answers, patterns develop, that information is run through R&D, marketing, accounting and any other department that might have a say in its implementation, and the product usefulness (and hopefully future sales numbers) evolve and grow.
We do something very similar with homes for sale. As a Realtor, I want to drive traffic to and through the home, as many other agents and buyers, neighbors, real estate hobbyists, and any other reasonably interested or reasonably intelligent people as I can bring to the front door.
These people have opinions, ideas and feedback, and I want that feedback! I want to know what they noticed that turned them on or off, what delights them and what disappointed them. I’m not so interested in the outlier who says the leaded glass windows remind him too much of the crazy aunt in Tulsa who’d make him wash each pane of her leaded glass window with a Q-tip, and therefore he hated the house.
I’m interested in hearing a recurring pattern, like that 80% of the people were turned off by the bright orange paint color in the kitchen. When that happens, I can talk to the seller and arrange for some painting!!! If we can identify and change something mid-listing, and eliminate a choke-point in the positive emotional flow of a potential buyer’s visit, then isn’t it worth doing to get the house sold?
It sure is. Feedback on a home for sale is as important as any other aspect, including price, marketing, condition and location. It’s one of the aspects we can use and respond to with sometimes very easy changes.
So tell me, what do you think? I’d love your feedback!
Comments: Please leave a comment.Search Multiple Areas At Once on Craigslist
Craigslist is one of the most visited websites on the web. And for good reason: You can post and browse ads for free, pick up great deals on everything from high end Bellingham real estate to almost-full bottles of anti-freeze. (My buddy Tyler actually sold such a bottle!)
But Craigslist is limited. Severely limited, in my opinion, because you can only search one area at a time. No problem if you’re looking for that bottle of anti-freeze in Bellingham. But what if you can’t find what you’re looking for locally, and you’re willing to pay for shipping or drive to pick it up, and you want a fast, simple way to search other Craigslist areas far and wide?
Well, good buddy, you’re in luck! A couple friends of mine just launched www.Craigz.com and you have GOT to start using it. It’s simple… you just set the search’s epicenter and radius of choice, input the item or service you’re after, and click ‘Search!’
Not only does it pull ads from far and wide, but it throws up a thumbnail of the items with photos — further speeding and simplifying your search for the anti-freeze. They’re also working on auto e-mail alerts so when your item hits the market, you’re the first to know.
Check it out. Next time you’re itchin’ to shop on Craigslist… log on instead to Craigz.com!
Comments: Please leave a comment.Tools of the Trade
Ask any Joe on the street what tools a Realtor carries with him into the “workplace” each day, and the answer will probably sound something like:
“Cell phone, bluetooth, and laptop.”
Yeah, those are heavy-use items in the sales trade, for sure. But having come from a home inspection backround and wanting to waste as little of my or my clients’ time as possible, I carry a few other simple things with me in the trunk of my car. I don’t pull them out with every home, but if something really ignites our curiosity…. why then it’s tool time!
Here are my top three most prized and oft-used secret weapons:
1) A moisture meter. Even if I had X-ray vision, I might not be able to tell you if a stain on a ceiling was still wet, or if the flooring along a tub or around a toilet was hiding some un-welcome H2O. But with my handy-dandy, bright yellow gizmo, I can just scan and know. And sure, these moisture issues can be fixed, and they’ll get checked out during the home inspection. But during the “shopping” phase it’s often helpful to know this level of detail of a house. It helps establish the overall care or lack of it the owners have shown. 
2) A 20-million-candle-power spot light. I freekin’ LOVE this Big-A__ light. Two of the most telling areas of a house are the crawl space and the attic, and call me “a little off” if you will, but I like popping that hatch, sticking my head in there and pulling the trigger on the ol’, rechargeable “daylight cannon!” A lot can be learned by having a good look at these relatively exposed, un-conditioned spaces in a home, and the spotlight makes it easy.
3) A telescoping 13.5′ ladder. Now this thing is just COOl. Everybody digs it when I pull out the telescoper, extend that baby up onto a roof eave or into an attic hatch, and climb away. A single layer of dead roofing over solid sheathing might be X-thousand dollars to replace. A top layer over 2 other layers in need of a full tear-off, then installation of solid sheathing before new roofing, is X-thousand plus materially more. And sometimes the only way to tell that is to climb up to the eave.
The cell phone and laptop have their place in the Realtor’s toolkit, but so do these tried-and-true carry-over tools from my home inspection days. And if you’re really lucky, I might pull out my ultraphonic leak detector!!!
Comments: Please leave a comment.NW Words of Life
Me, to my Buyer client: “Bad news. The listing agent said his client was quite offended by your offer.”
My Buyer client: “Well… tell him I was quite offended by his LIST PRICE!!!”
–Dean Taylor, Legend of Stimpson
Comments: Please leave a comment.What Can Be For Sale, and Have a Buyer, But Can’t Be Bought?
Everything’s for sale. Every home you pass on your way to work can be bought, for a price, whether it’s listed or not.
But that doesn’t mean every seller will actually work with you to achieve a sale… even when the seller’s home is LISTED FOR SALE!!!
Take a HUD-owned home some buyers are trying to buy right now. HUD, or the Department of Housing and Urban Development, has homes for sale in all 50 states. You can log onto their website and see the homes — many of them very good deals — and then have a Realtor “bid” for a home on your behalf.
It’s not the same as making an offer with a stack of paperwork, like we do with regular MLS-listed homes. Yes, the HUD homes for sale in Bellingham are listed on the MLS… but HUD has its own set of rules.
A pre-approved buyer wishes to buy a HUD home, right now. So we’ve input all the information the HUD website asks for, including the terms of our very strong offer, and topped it off with a call to the HUD-hired listing agent. This all took place last Sunday.
Today is Friday, and you know what we’ve heard?
Nothing. La Nada. Zilch.
The HUD-hired listing agent told me up front that, if we don’t get the house, we’ll never even hear back from HUD.
Let me comment on that before moving on with the story. So… my clients and I go through the process of offering the largest sum of money 99% of the population will ever spend on anything, to take this liability of a house off HUD’s books, and if we’re not the winning bid, we don’t even get a “Thanks for playing!”?
It’s an automated system, I understand. And I’m no computer programmer, but how hard would it be to write a couple lines of code that tell the automated system: “If a bid is not chosen, e-mail that bidder to say, “Thanks for playing! But you lost.”" Seems pretty simple to me. But hey, I’m not a programmer. Or the US Government.
Yes, on with the story. We made a very strong offer on Sunday, waited patiently ’til Wednesday, and heard nothing. The listing agent hadn’t heard anything either, I was told when I called her. The ”listing” is still live on the MLS and live on HUD’s website.
So we offered again, on Wednesday afternoon.
Now it’s Friday. And we’ve heard… Nothing.
Meanwhile, HUD (read: taxpayers), are keeping the power, water, sewer, and taxes paid on this abandoned house as its condition slips further into disrepair, day after day.
The moral of this tale is this:
Everything is for sale. But not everything can be bought. Sometimes, not even things a seller NEEDS to sell, has listed for sale, has marketed to sell, and has a reduced price.
And yet all you hear is how the market is soft.
Comments: Please leave a comment.Should Your First House Be a Fixer?
Heather and I bought our first house in 2003, in Sudden Valley. We paid $127,500 for it — a 1200 square foot split level with 4 small bedrooms, a bath and a half. The seller had lived there for 17 years and, bless her heart, had never done 1 minute of maintenance or deep cleaning. Oh, and she smoked cigarettes like there was no tomorrow.
The house needed EVERYTHING. And Heather and I had the vision, the skills, and the energy to do it. In fact, we were (read: “I was”) giddy at what a castle it was, even though you couldn’t see the paint through the yellow cigarette film plastering the walls and ceiling. I’d spend my nights and weekends fixing it up, and make it into the home of our dreams. We’d start a family there, by golly, and all would be joyous.
A full five years later, as we were moving out, into our 2nd home, we put the finishing touches on the full-gut, inside and out remodel. Five years. The work I’d “envisioned” multiplied easily five times over as we tore into the project. Nights and weekends, cold wintery months, rainy season after rainy season the work rolled on.
Meanwhile, I watched others nearby buy brand new houses with 30% more space for a couple hundred more in their monthly payments, and I second guessed my decision to go for a fixer.
Ahh… but the experience. It’s a rite of passage to either build or fully re-build one’s home, isn’t it? For me, it was. I have the tools and skills of a journeyman carpenter, and enough understanding of the other trades, to just pull it off. And rewarding it was, to see that neglected split level turn into a thing of true beauty. We still own it, as a rental now, and I take tremendous pride in seeing it brighten up the street with its new EVERYTHING.
Take on a fixer for your first house if you wish, but understand three things:
- A fixer is not just a house, it’s a way of life. It will consume you long after you’re willing to be consumed. And…
- It will take 2 to 5 times longer and cost 2 to 5 times more than you ever dreamed of.
- And therefore will likely be 2 to 5 times as rewarding.
