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Let’s Give Them Information and Get Your House Sold December 5, 2006

Posted by Geri in Buying a Home, Home, Long Island, Marketing, Real Estate, Real Estate Market, Selling Your Home, Uncategorized.
2 comments

I suppose the holiday season plays some part in my reflections on the past year, professionally and personally, and the industry in which I function.  As a Realtor, you might think I’m in the business of selling homes, but bricks and mortar are not at all what it’s about.  In reality, I’m in the people business.  An excited smile on the face of a buyer when I finally get to say “you got the house,” is my reward, as is the relief erasing deep lines of tension on the forehead of a seller left behind to mop up the final details of a home sale.

I’m lucky enough to be there at times of transition, when my support is a rock they can lean on, so it disturbs me more than I can say when I hear stories about agents who care far more about themselves than the people they represent.  It is not unusual for a listing agent to suggest to an unwary seller that his/her buyer is the best choice because . . . you fill in the blank.  Unfortunately, it may or may not be true.  With a much higher commission at stake, it’s easy for some to convince you and themselves that they’re acting in your best interest.   You need information presented to you in a dispassionate way.

Then there’s the question about how much information should be shared about your property.  A days old post in the blogosphere brought the topic front and center for me . . . again.  Believing that the ultimate goal is to get your home sold at the best price the current market will bear, in a timely fashion, we want it to be found — by a lot of potential buyers.  Understanding that people in search of real estate are likely to want to know where it is, I always (with my sellers’ permission) include the address.  Sometimes purchasers are interested in a particular school, or proximity to highways or shopping.  If they have no defining data, they very well might pass on your home, depriving you of what might be the perfect match.

You Get What You Pay For — Or Do You? November 29, 2006

Posted by Geri in Buying a Home, Long Island, Marketing, New York, Real Estate, Real Estate Market, Selling Your Home.
4 comments

There is more and more discussion in the real estate community of late about discount brokers damaging our reputation as an industry, while offering consumers what appears on the surface to be a real bargain.  In order to understand just exactly what you’re getting when you hire anyone to represent you in the sale or purchase of a home you have to ask questions.

I will start by saying there is no such thing as a free lunch.  Therefore, if someone tells you they’ll market your home as extensively for a bargain price as the full service broker, generally speaking it simply isn’t so.  We all face certain fixed costs and we allocate dollars from every sale to keep our businesses running.  To be successful for ourselves and for you, we’re constantly looking for new and more effective ways to attract buyers for our homeowners. 

Recognizing that most of us in the business have no trust funds and have families to feed, when commissions are discounted, something has to give.  Unfortunately when there is not enough money in the coffer, the clients suffer.  Nobody can run a business successfully without making a profit.  Given a choice of diluting those profits or reducing costly marketing, the loser is more often than not the seller.

There is nothing wrong with opting for a lesser service for a lower dollar amount . . . as long as you understand the rules of the game.  I just sold a home in which the owners knowingly chose a flat fee listing broker.  They paid simply to have their home in the MLS (multiple listing service).  They understood that all the showings, ads, open houses and negotiations were their responsibility.  After four weeks they were tiring of giving up their weekends to wait and hope someone would show up at their open houses.  They got to experience, as we do, the tire kickers, the pseudo buyers who express great interest only to disappear into the ether, and the nosy neighbors.

Fortunately for them, I had the perfect buyer for their home so their discomfort was short lived.  Had they continued with the process as most people do in the current buyers’ market, I’m not sure they would have been happy campers.  I must say though, unlike the experience most people have had in their circumstances here, their limited service broker stepped up to the plate more than once when they had concerns about the progress of the transaction.

Even though I’m tempted to say the obvious, “you get what you pay for,” I’m stymied by the occasional maverick like Greg Swann, a staunch proponent of a discount pricing model who refuses to lower his outstanding level of service and who manages to make it all work.   I’ve yet to meet his counterpart on Long Island however.

It’s Time To Buy — Just Ask NAR November 3, 2006

Posted by Geri in Buying a Home, Changing Market, Home, In The News, Marketing, NAR, National Association of Realtors, Real Estate, Real Estate Market, Selling Your Home.
3 comments

There is so much discussion in the press and the blogosphere about NAR’s decision to start an ad campaign in order to counteract some of the doomsayers’ predictions of a precipitous fall in real estate prices.  Short on memory or steeped in drama, the media at first having denied the existence of a bubble, then backtracking and announcing it and their subsequent take on the “burst,” blasted the airwaves with a defeatist scenario.   The last time I checked, none of us had a working crystal ball.  If we did, I suspect we’d pick the winning lottery numbers or the next Microsoft and not waste our time in the business of selling or reporting on real estate. 

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan announced in mid-2005 that “at a minimum, there’s a little ‘froth’ (in the U.S. housing market) … it’s hard not to see that there are a lot of local bubbles.” President Bush said of the U.S. housing boom in early 2006 “If houses get too expensive, people will stop buying them … Economies should cycle,” and cycle they do.  The problem with all the prognosticating about a crash or hard landing for the real estate market is the probability of it becoming a self fulfilling prophesy.  Say anything often enough and people start to believe it, especially if it comes from a “credible” source.

It’s understandable then that the National Association of Realtors would take a stand on behalf of its constituency and attempt to counteract the negative press and stampeding mentality of those paid to publish bad news.

I Couldn’t Have Said It Better Myself October 28, 2006

Posted by Geri in blog, Bloggers, Blogging, General, Marketing, Real Estate, Real Estate Market, Selling Your Home, Uncategorized.
3 comments

Under the category “I couldn’t have said it better myself . . .” is this post from  Seth Godin.  I sat down to share it two days ago but sheer exhaustion forced me to temporarily put it on the back burner.  I’ve been spending weeks unexpectedly acting as a general contractor, getting a home ready to market, and shopping for the necessary accoutrements to stage it for sale.  The house was stuck in a time warp, with flocked wallpaper heralding your arrival into it’s archaic past.  This project is in addition to a full load of other business in various stages of development.  However, in our stagnant market in order to really serve our clients, we have to be very creative in our approach to selling their property.

But I digress . . . Seth’s very straightforward comments about how we interact with our clients and the impact it has on both them and our business reminds me of a technique we used many years ago when I was vice president of a sales and marketing company.  We ran seminars all over the country and Canada, showing CEOs how to maximize their marketing dollars.  Before these meetings we would phone their companies incognito and record the conversations to demonstrate how important the person answering the phone was to the financial well being of that company.

Grown men sat, head in hands, listening to the most appalling dialogues between their employees and us, or worse . . . they sat shifting in their chairs as time ticked slowly away while we were put on hold.   Astoundingly these pregnant pauses sometimes lasted for four or five minutes.  Bill, my boss, would then take out a crisp one hundred dollar bill and dramatically set it on fire as they reached out in horror trying to put out the blaze.  When the room was once again still he would quietly tell them, “this is what you’re doing to your advertising dollars if you don’t train your people. 

That challenge was made at least twenty-five years ago and nothing’s changed.  If we’re trying to generate business but haven’t figured out how to nurture it once we have it, we defeat everyone in the process.  The old adage “do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” certainly applies.