It can’t just be me, can it?
Read this post … and then read this post … both on the same topic, the impact the wildfires in Southern California will have on the market in San Diego.
Am I the only one who sees/hears/feels the difference?
Technorati Tags: real estate blogging
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… have posted at the Bloodhound Blog.
Technorati Tags: Odysseus Medal, real estate blogging
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… has posted at Real Estate Convergence.
Technorati Tags: Carnival of Real Estate, real estate blogging
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Remember the Gilbert home with a list price in the MLS of $199,000 that actually was the subject of a weekend-long auction? My clients received a call yesterday notifying them that the high bid was $275,000.
Considering the list price was $349,000 before the auction it remains to be seen whether the sellers really will accept $75,000 less than they wanted only a week ago. Since there is no apparent financial distress I’d tend to lean toward “no, they won’t.”
There are two interesting sidelights to this one …
1) My clients mentioned they had an agent and asked what I presume were the sellers if that would pose a problem. The sellers said paying a second agent could cut into their margin. The house is listed with a variable commission - one commission rate if there are two agents, the other if there’s only one. But this puts the lie to the myth that buyers will save money by going directly through the listing agent; the difference in commission goes back to the seller, not the buyer.
2) On one of the bubble blogs a few months back there was a soon-to-be-licensee lecturing that the best possible selling strategy for a home on the market for an extended period was an auction. The tone was that those of us in the profession clearly either weren’t smart enough to come up with the concept or were so worried about the money we’d “lose” at a lower selling price that we’d never broach the topic.
What the wanna-be/newbie failed to recognize is auction strategies rarely work, at least if the goal of the seller is to receive close to what they perceive as full value. Buyers see the list price of $199,000 and that’s their new baseline. On this house, two full days of open houses and advertising the bogus price resulted in a bid $75,000 below the last legitimate list price - that’s nearly 20% low.
Great strategy, my friends.
Technorati Tags: real estate marketing, real estate auctions, Phoenix real estate
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Over the past few weeks I’ve noticed an influx of new readers to the blog. This has come as quite a surprise to me as I currently have only one mother and she already is a reader. So apparently there’s something of interest here to those who were not responsible for my birth.
Much of the new readership has come from Canada, which means that my efforts to reach out to the Canadian market through the rather clever use of phrases such as “Canada”, “Canadian”, “Calgary” and “Jarome Iginla” are paying dividends … at a reduced rate as compared to the loonie (another helpful phrase) … but I digress.
And it’s that digression which is the point of this post, a re-introduction of sorts to a blog which by any measure ignores many of the so-called rules of real estate blogging. Perhaps it’s my background as a writer, which I claim as often as I can just in case someone can find use for a B.A. in Journalism - nearly as useful as Avenue Q’s lamented B.A. in English - that leads me to care less about word count and pretty pictures than the writing itself.
The rules say I ought to focus on hyper-local issues because there’s nothing that attracts the attention of would-be buyers like the latest McDonald’s opening in your neighborhood. Personally, I think that’s bunk. Who I am as an agent isn’t based on being able to tell you where the closest Pei Wei is (67th Avenue and Loop 101 for those keeping score) but in the knowledge and experience I bring to the table. And that knowledge and experience often is based on looking at the larger world of real estate.
Many make the mistake of believing only other agents have interest in broader topics such as Redfin, or the silliness that is NAR’s public proclamations or Trulia Voices. What these folks are missing often is what their own writing lacks - a voice. People read and connect based on your voice far more than the particulars of what you right. Yes, they want to see some agreement but they’ll be more amenable to a point of view if it’s presented in a voice they find pleasing.
Vin Scully is my favorite baseball announcer. He can read the phone book and I’ll listen intently because there would be more to what he would be saying than addresses and names and numbers. At all times there would be a tone that says “let’s sit down and read this together, shall we?”
Here you’ll sometimes find sarcasm, irony and the more-than-occasional rant. That is largely because I’m not automaton churning out keyword-rich drivel in a quest for the perfect level of SEO. It’s because I’m passionate about what I do … the clients with whom I have connected best tend to recognize the passion because they’re equally passionate about their own lives.
Phoenix offers a wide variety of real estate blogs from which you can select. I could point you to those who stay primarily local. I could point you to those who stay national. I could point you to those whose use of latin and large words requires a dictionary. Whatever you want to find, it’s here.
This blog isn’t like any of the others if only because I’m not like any of the others. If you’re here for the first time, check out the Blog Surfer icon - you’ll get tossed randomly into the mix of the Dalton’s Arizona Homes Blog.
Like what you see? Keep coming back … my mom gets lonely reading by herself. Don’t like what you see? Objection duly noted. But I’m probably not changing.
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Popularity: 7% [?]
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