There was an article over on Active Rain today that had me shaking my head. The basic implication was pricing a property competitively to sell is important but outstanding marketing could help bring in some extra dollars.

Realizing that all real estate local, that’s simply not true in the Phoenix real estate market these days. In fact, one could debate whether it’s ever been true.

I have a buyer looking for properties in two subdivisions in Goodyear. We’ve been in the midst of the multiple offer mosh pit on a couple of places and after coming away bruised but unsuccessful I thought I’d check specifically among non-bank owned, non-short sale homes.

Guess what? There’s nothing to be had at a competitive price. Maybe this is because any home that was competitively priced already has gone under contract. But there wasn’t a single home I could point to that was within shouting distance of market value based on the rest of the comps.

But the bank owned homes are beat to hell …

No, they aren’t. At least not all of them. The homes we recently have bid on have been in good condition … not pristine, but truth be told, almost no homes really are pristine.

Marketing can help a home sell more quickly and can possibly raise the value slightly but at the end of the day prevailing market values are going to tell the tale. No one is going to pay $25,000 above list because of the customized yard sign or color flyers. Those may help sell your house versus another, but only if the price is right.

When in doubt, KISS continues to apply.

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A couple from across the county calls because they’re planning to move to the Valley, they’re searching online for a home and they stumble across this site. (Not hard to do, since I do my level best to throw this site out there like stop sticks with the expectation either the search or Tobey will keep them here.)

Soon they discover a problem … only one photograph is available for many of the listings. So they call asking me if there are any other photos available, which there aren’t because the listing agent has opted for the path of least resistance.

“But how they can they expect to sell a home without any photographs?”

They do because they can, at least when it’s a bank owned home in a market where there are buyers jockeying for position on the few homes available like Tobey and his beagle brethren thrusting their snouts into each other food dishes looking for the last piece of Beneful when the bowl’s almost empty.

That doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s right. In my office, where we have a contract with Freddie Mac and a handful of other lenders, woe be the agent who doesn’t take 20 photos of every listing - the maximum that can be entered on REMAX.com (there is no upper limit for the local MLS, not that many test the system that much.)

It’s sometimes challenging. On a basic 1,600 square foot house you tend to need to get to be a bit creative in trying to get to 20 photographs. But it’s what we do because we have a standard of practice that we’re trying to uphold. That’s not always the case, and the lack of effort is rewarded right now just as often as those trying to provide the most possible information for a buyer.

And though it’s less noticable, the lack of effort extends to the basic listing data as well. Is there anyone out there who doesn’t know what a vaulted ceiling looks like? Apparently there are more than a few agents who don’t … a buyer and I recently toured homes where that was his main requirement and half the homes had 9-foot flat ceilings, not vaulted.

There once was a panel discussion where one of the agents said he wants fields for everything - granite countertops, outdoor grills, water features on pools, plantation shutters, you name it. That way, he said, we’d be able to sort by whatever we choose.

Except you’re likely to miss more qualifying homes than you find, for the simple reason that there’s a segment of the local agent population who feels they’re too busy to enter information and photographs in the MLS beyond the bare minimum.

And the current sellers’ market we’re seeing on the bank owned side is affirming their laziness.

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One of the topics at last week’s REBarCamp Phoenix was the use of Facebook to further facilitate the conversation in the effort to create a more robust online community. Or something equally impressive sounding.

So this weekend, just before I fried my desktop computer (don’t ask) I created a specific Facebook page for All Phoenix Real Estate.com. There are a couple of slide shows already there with more to follow once my desktop computer and the photos sitting there come back home (don’t even THINK about asking about backup - ask my wife how well I took that one).

Most intriguing are the discussion pages - essentially a community bulletin board. I’ve posted a couple of general topics to get things going and am looking forward to seeing where things go from there.

Of course, purely for the sheer ego of it all, there’s a running count of how many “fans” the page and by extension the blog has. So if you’re one of my four loyal readers here and also have a Facebook account, it would be really, really great if you’d put yourself down as a fan of the page. This also works if you’re only a friend of Tobey.

And how can you not be a fan of the beagle that rocked BarCamp Phoenix?

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We’ve had a pretty significant jump in readership over the past several weeks, so I thought I’d dig into Google Analytics to try and see what the deal was.

Um … okay. Not what I expected but I guess it’s harder than I imagined to resist the lure of a dancing banana.

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Since there were a backlog of questions along these lines, I thought it might be worth revisiting the listings you see on the website.

The listings search here, on my bank owned site and all my sites is fueled via something called IDX. In short, if it’s in the Arizona Regional MLS and the agent has agreed to have the listing populated through the web, you’re seeing it.

Not all of the listings are mine, which means I’m at the mercy of the listing agent for such things as photographs. If it’s my listing, I absolutely guarantee you there’s more than one or two photographs. In some cases I can photograph a property for a client, but only after we’ve signed a buyer broker agreement and I’ve officially been hired as their agent.

I’ve already had situations this year where I’ve photographed and/or taken video of a property for someone who promptly stabbed me in the back and had another agent write the contract. It’s sad to say, but a handshake doesn’t mean much to some folks.

Speaking of such things, if you’re working with an agent that’s cool. I always wonder why you’re not searching their sites for homes (and, by extension, if they don’t have a search on their site I wonder why you’re using them) but I don’t mind you browsing here.

Having said that, if you’ve got specific questions about a property you need to ask your own agent. So please, please, please don’t get offended when I tell you as much. You’ve hired them, use them. I need to focus on my own clients. If they can’t get you the answers you want, then you have a decision to make.

Happy browsing!

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