The pain of over pricing and poor photos… and how not to get bit by them, 9+ questions to ask your listing agent. July 3, 2008
I’ve noticed a trend in my business lately. Several consumers are contacting our team for help in re-listing their home after having a poor experience with a prior agent. While it is true that selling activity in Puget Sound is lower this year than last, there is still some positive selling activity occuring with some areas of Puget Sound continuing to grow in housing values.
So, with there still being some sales activity why is it that these folks are contacting us?
What I’ve seen as key factors in the lagging sales of these homes is poor pricing and presentation of the properties. In one case the price had been overinflated by hundreds of thousands of dollars, plus it had poor presentation in photos and staging, so the home languished sitting on market for over a year.
In the majority of these situations things could have been handled differently with the past agent. And, while I believe that me and my team provide a higher level of service than many others, we know we aren’t the only game in town that can figure out the right mix of marketing, presentation, and pricing for a property. However, in these instances, I do believe the former listing agents could have done a better job - for certain - but, as a seller, it is also up to you to do a good job of interviewing a prospective agent. A few good questions by the seller might have led to a different decision about how the house was marketed and led to a better discussion about what impacts the value of a home. This, in turn, could have led to a more informed decision about where to place pricing.
So, to try and help those of you out there who are considering putting your home on the market, here is a list of 9+ questions you can use to qualify and interview your prospective listing agent.
1. What methods of advertising do you use, and why? Can you tell me which will likely be the most effective? How comfortable are you using Internet advertising methods?
2. Do you think my home will need prep work or staging to get it ready for market? What types of things do you suggest for sellers and why?
3. What is the typical timeline for selling a home that you have represented and how does that compare to the local marketplace? What percentage of selling price do you typically get compared to list price?
4. Do you offer any particular programs or services for each home that you sell such as a home warranty, professional photos, etc? Does your fee determine whether additional services are included or not?
5. If you don’t provide these additional services yourself - do you at least have companies you can refer me to that if I choose to use them directly to prepare my home more effectively, I can do so?
6. Are there any special considerations I should have while selling my home such as security, prep for showings, etc?
7. How often will you communicate with me about the sale of my home? What kinds of reports can I expect?
8. Will I get a chance to review and approve any of your advertising or marketing materials such as the flyer, MLS ad, or otherwise? If not, why? If I am not satisfied with a piece, will you work with me till I am?
9. How will you determine the price that should be advertised for my home? Will you include me in those pricing decisions and explain to me any reasoning for a price above or below my own estimate?
This list isn’t meant to be exhaustive but it will definitely open up a lot of good (or what should be good) conversation between you and the agent you are interviewing. If the agent is unable to respond to any of these questions then you should seriously reconsider whether or not you will use him/her regardless of if it is a “family friend” or otherwise. In today’s marketplace it is important that you make the right choice the first time, if you can. The buying public is much more sophisticated today than even 10 years ago because of the Internet and because of the onslaught of home focused television shows and channels like HGTV.
Hands-free law starts July 1st - That means Realtors too! June 30, 2008
Look Ma, No Hands!
Washington State will go ‘hands free’ for cell phone use in the car on July 1st, so agents (and everyone else) shouldn’t be driving around with one hand up to their ear anymore. Well…that’s the intent anyway. The Washington State Patrol says you could face up to a $125 fine, although it is suppose to be a secondary offense. Real Estate agents are notorious for this, myself included. Fortunately, for several years I have had an integrated hands-free system in my car (Acura RL) which has given me a head start on being compliant.
I thought I would mention some options for agents, or for that matter anyone who spends a lot of time on the phone in their car, who are just taking the plunge into the deep blue-tooth ocean of products to help them figure out which device might be better suited for them. But don’t just go out and buy one of these devices. Do your research and check with your provider about what they offer and recommend. These days many products and services are specific to wireless vendors, like Verizon, Sprint, and AT&T.
First of all, you’ll need a bluetooth capable cell phone. Many, if not most, of the newer cell phones have this capability. But if yours doesn’t, you’ll need to upgrade. These days people change out their cell phones pretty frequently anyway. But if you have been waiting, now is probably a good time. Just be sure you understand how your cell phone plan will be affected and hopefully your carrier won’t force you into signing a new extended service contract.
If you have a newer model car that has integrated bluetooth capabilities you’ll want to check which phones work with it (not all do) and use the products they recommend, if possible. This information should be in your manual. When my car was introduced integrated blue-tooth was still new and it did not specifically support my phone and service (a Palm Treo w/Verizon), but fortunately I was able to trick it (read “hack”). It would be a real drag to decide to buy a $50,000 car because of it’s bluetooth capability only to find out it won’t work with your phone or service.
If you don’t have integrated bluetooth in your car, then you should consider getting either a headset or component speaker system. Most headsets these days just fit in or around your ear and are pretty small. They often use a microphone technology that relies on the vibration of your jawbone, much like your inner ear, which keeps it very small and helps with noise cancellation - cool huh?
Here are some hands-free bluetooth earbud and speakerphone options from $65 to $125:
The New Jawbone - Jawbone is the hot bling-bling of the bluetooth world right now. Their marketing is aimed at the fashion-conscious among us. This is perfect for the agent who is most worried how it will fit in with their wardrobe. The have good noise canceling technology too.
Jabra’s SP5050 - This unit is made to be clipped to your visor and has a speaker system built in. Jabra is well known and were the first to come out with hands-free bluetooth headsets and use digital signal processing (DSP) technology.
BlueAnt’s Supertooth 3 - Another visor clip-on speakerphone, the Supertooth 3 announces the name or ID of the caller when the phone rings - just say ‘OK’ to 
accept the call. This device is suppose to be very easy to install and it uses ‘Text-to Speech’ software. The voice prompts provide guidance and assistance install and to help pair the device and upload your cell phone’s address book. When a call is received, the Supertooth 3 announces the incoming caller’s name or number. Just say ‘OK’ to accept the call. You also have a choice of 6 languages.
Venturi Mini - The Venturi Mini directs incoming calls to the cars speakers and includes a FM A2DP audio player and no headset or wires are needed. With phonebook download the incoming caller appears on the Venturi Mini and your car radio simultaneously. This unit plugs into your lighter plug in and offers USB support too, which means you can charge other devices.
You’re going to need to configure your bluetooth cell phone with your hands-free integrated car system or your bluetooth hands-free device. (wireless headset or speakerphone). Once you pair the device and phone you’ll need to do some set up and preferences. Carefully read the manuals regarding hands-free dialing with your Address book and configuring everything to match your network (Verizon, Sprint, AT&T). Most likely you’ll need to “train” the system to recognize your voice and / or connect phrases with numbers. You may need to tell it when you say “Call Jim” to dial the appropriate number.
Take the time to do this and it will be worth your while. This is what the “hands-free” is all about. Now you can impress youir clients with your tech-savvy skills and stay out of jail at the same time!
Any RCG Readers want to jump in and share their favorite hands-free bluetooth goodies?
NWMLS to Allow Brokerages to share more Data June 2, 2008
The Northwest Multiple Listing Service has announced policy changes that will allow brokerages to display more information on their websites. This means that if brokerages choose to, people will be able to see the length of time a property has been on the market, referred to as days-on-market (DOM), as well as cumulative-days-on-market (CDOM), along with the listing price adjustment history. The NWMLS will only allow the DOM to be shown if the CDOM is also displayed in order to insure that consumers are not mislead.
Another change for brokerages is that they now have access to three download feeds instead of just two. This could be significant for brokerages that want more options and vendors to choose from to manage their data feeds for property searches, which they make available to agents and the public.
I Dig Dueling Digs April 1, 2008
Zillow, which seems to produce new features almost daily, has birthed something totally unique. As a member of Zillow’s board of directors, I usually get previews into what’s coming through the pipeline, but with this release, I hadn’t seen too many of the details.
Dueling Digs is like nothing I’ve ever seen on a real estate site. It’s pretty simple, really: You are presented with two photos, and click on the picture that you like better. After ten “duels,” Zillow tells you how many pictures your final photo has vanquished. It also provides you with a link back to the Home Details Page for the home from which the photo was taken, so you can see more of what that property looks like.
For example, I’d like the pool in my backyard:
rather than the picnic table:
Not surprisingly, 72% of voters agreed with me (the other 28% are either gaming the game, or they’ve actually had to maintain a pool!).
Where do these photos come from? Well, from you of course. These are photos that have been uploaded by users to Zillow. So you might see YOUR kitchen there. But with thousands (zillions?) of photos, you likely won’t see how your kitchen does in head to head combat quite yet – wait for the next upgrade.
And here’s what I think is really neat: If you like a particular kitchen, you can right-click, save the photo, and print it out for your own personal house planning. For several years before we built our home I subscribed to Architectural Digest and Fine Homebuilding magazines, among others, for the main purpose of clipping the things we liked and putting them in our scrapbook of features we’d like to incorporate into our new home. Of course not all of what we saw was feasible (read: affordable), but it all helped us to clarify what we did want in the finished product.
So if you’re thinking about remodeling, or just are one of those that loves to flip through “Better Homes and Gardens” to see different home designs, this is for you. If you haven’t already checked out Dueling Digs, it’s worth a minute. Or an hour. It’s a little addictive.
Are you going to Vegas? November 10, 2007
or more interestingly, are you going to my presentation on Tuesday morning?
If so, I’d love to know. I’m just finishing up the presentation now and would love to include a few screenshots of people’s blogs who will be in the audience.
By the way, the impetus for this blog post is that I like to localize my presentation. But considering most of the people in the audience will not be from Vegas, I’m looking for another way to personalize the show… Maybe it will work, maybe it won’t… but it won’t do much harm to try.
And there are lots of clues for what the talk filed under the seminar tag…
What will a market slow down do to discount brokers? November 1, 2007
One of the reasons I became a real estate broker and started a RE company was because I felt 3% across the board was not right. Using capitalism, over the past 100 years as a guide, real estate will move away from the % model to a more competitive flat fee for service model. Speaking of Seattle in general, a 750k house is not worth $7,500 more in commission than a 500k house. Of course there are special circumstances, but on average.
The mood is changing in real estate. Greg Swann talks about some changes in the industry as a whole in his post here. The real change will come as full service agents become more and more aggressive for business. The slow down in the housing market will surely result in a long over due change in the traditional real estate commission structure. Following the typical paradigm shift, prices decrease, while customer services increase. This means ‘No Touch’ discount brokers will have it rough down the road. As more agents offer their services at competitive prices, discount brokers will loose their appeal.
I do not want to pin point any specific discount brokerages, but in the past week I have noticed two well known discount brokers signs taken down and replaced by reputable full service firms. Discount brokers are stuck at a flat fee with zero customer support (AGAIN… on AVERAGE).
The big question is, “Would the average buyer/seller rather pay a bit extra for a live body than an 800 number to call? “ Time will only tell, but in a service industry, price is never the deciding factor!
| UPDATE: I have received an unusual amount of personal emails about this post. I would like to reiterate my reason behind this post was to show the real estate paradigm is shifting. My purpose WAS NOT to challenge the value of an agent or was I trying to make agents defend their side of the story (I am a broker so I guess mine too). My purpose was sharing my view of the future and what will happen. |
Inman is Lead Investor in Curbed… October 30, 2007
Congrats to Lockhart Steele for getting an infusion of cash ($1.5M to be exact) to expand Curbed to new cities.
In reading the NYT’s coverage, nothing really surprised me much until the last two paragraphs where Brad explains why he is one of the investors:
If the downturn lasts long enough, “everyone suffers,” said Brad Inman, founder and publisher of the real estate news service Inman News. During bad times, “there’s always an uptick first” in real estate advertising, he said. “Nobody’s free of the dark shadow of a down market.”
Still, Mr. Inman was one of the lead investors of Curbed.com, in part because Curbed “is not a direct real estate play,” he said. “I didn’t even think of it in context of the market.”
I can’t figure out if I should be more surprised that Brad invested in Curbed (I’m not) or that he doesn’t see it as a real estate play… Either way, online real estate can be a small world, so it is especially nice to see Lockhart do so well.
By the way, last week word got around to me (and not from Brad) that a “real estate blog platform” was going to announce a large investment very soon. Needless to say, Curbed was not the blog platform that came to mind. 
Closing the Translation Loop October 23, 2007
A long, long, it-feels-like-forever, time ago, Anna covered the story that there were a lack of good translations tools available on the internet, and especially in languages like Russian. In that article, she linked to an article that showed Google had developed a much better translations service, but hadn’t released it to the general public. Well, I’m always interested in closing loops, and so I’m happy to report that Google just announced that their, much improved, translation service is now live at Google Translates.
What makes Google’s service interesting is that it doesn’t use the standard “rule-based” translation methods, but rather, it is much more statistical in nature:
We feed the computer with billions of words of text, both monolingual text in the target language, and aligned text consisting of examples of human translations between the languages. We then apply statistical learning techniques to build a translation model.
Anna and I couldn’t help but to try the service out, so we choose a Russian news site: pravda.ru and the results were pretty impressive (pravda.ru in English) as I could definitely pick up almost every story.
My take is that the translation of websites is only the beginning for Google… Not only will they improve the translations (especially if enough users adopt their feature to “recommend” a better translation directly through the tool), but I can easily see a day in the not-too-distant future when this tool is built right into gmail or google chat. This could make it extremely easy to have an online conversation with someone who doesn’t even speak your language.
In my family this could be very useful as my wife’s parents do not speak much English (and I don’t speak much of their native Russian). At this point that means that my wife has to translate everything that is said between us. What if instead, I could simple email them (in English), but it would arrive with an accurate translation in Russian? The result is that it would actually be easier for us to share stories over email or chat then in person!
From a business perspective, the possibilities are fascinating… Why not translate an entire website (Welcome to “Дождь город Недвижимость руководства”) into another language (Will Google start to penalize “duplicate content” if it is in another language??? :)). This would work especially well if you could feel comfortable also having a “conversation” using these tools with clients who don’t speak your language. Considering all of this technology will be ported to mobile devices, I’m sure I’m just hitting the tip of the iceberg…
I have no intention of turning this into…
a blog about southern California real estate, but I do have a non-fire related update from Southern California.
Brad Inman and I are going to be speaking at Beverly Hills REALTOR Association’s Head of High Office Tea this Thursday afternoon. From everything I can gather, it is going to be a pretty posh set-up at the Peninsula Hotel. The plan is for Brad to speak about the status of the industry for about an hour, myself to speak for about an hour and tea and conversation making up the last hour.
Tickets are $40 and just about sold out.
Also, I shouldn’t admit this, but I honestly have not given much thought about what I’m going to say just yet… Conveniently, back in August I did a presentation on using blogs to build up an online brand for the KW Mega Technology Camp that came off well (and took about 45 minutes including questions from others who were on stage). I think I’ll adjust that presentation a bit but go with that general outline. If anyone who was at that presentation wants to give me feedback, I’d love to hear it!
Social networking around geography October 8, 2007
Last week I was asked to speak on “Public Engagement Through Web2.0” at the annual conference of the California Chapter of the American Planning Association (APA).
It started with a request from Eric Fredericks, the guy behind the Walkable Neighborhoods blog, who I’ve known (and liked!) for quite a while now. I’ll happily admit I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect out of the crowd of planners, but I was someone excited since I spent seven years employed as a transportation planner and only asked to speak AFTER I left the industry! LOL!
The theme of the talk that I gave was on trying to understand how social networks can be built up around the concept of geography because I see it being a unique item that links both city/transportation planners and the real estate community. While most social networks are organized around friends (think myspace) or a shared experience (think facebook), the idea behind the communities that are most relevant to planners and real estate agents are rooted in geography…
What surprised me the most was that the questions I was asked during the Q&A were almost exactly the same as I get asked during the seminars I give for agents. Questions like How do you moderate comments?, How do you attract an audience? and How much time does it take?
However, there was one question I’ve never heard from a real estate audience, but I think it is an interesting because it forced me to think a bit differently about access to the real estate website. Essentially, a planner from a local government agency asked: If we set up a blog to communicate to our constituents, how do we reach the 30% or so that do not have access to the internet? I didn’t have a good answer for her (and I still don’t), so I’m glad that I kept quiet and let Eric give an answer. Nonetheless, the idea of being concerned with “full access” is not something I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about since my initial angle with this site was much more geared toward hitting the tech-savvy few!
I ended the talk with the concept that we’re not far from a day when our online social networks could have a very useful geographic element to them that could be of use to both real estate professionals and city planners. And while I can’t claim to know what that social network will look like, I look to Google Earth effort to bring avatars akin to Second Life and companies who are bringing in real-world experiences in Second Life for clues… Maybe we’ll hit the sweat spot of “web3.0″ when Google replaces our mobile network with gPhones…
