This started out at a response to Jeff Brown in John Rowles’ “dinosaur” post, but it grew to take on a life of its own.
Jeff Brown:
Sellers, at least in my experience, have been excellent at discerning one thing — who produces results.
Oh, would this were so! I can take you through Phoenix, neighborhood by neighborhood, and show you in which neighborhoods the sellers are paying attention and in which they aren’t. We compete very aggressively in the neighborhoods where sellers are wide awake, but there are places we are called upon to go where the neighbors could not care less who sells what for how much in how long a time. It’s just not on their radar — nor is any tactic or technique for optimizing results. We only work with sellers who care, so it makes a huge difference to us.
The brokerage — not agent — we are most likely to lose business to has done an excellent job of promoting its long-standing reputation. For the most part the agents do nothing that we would consider exceptional, and their time on market and LP/SP ratios are horrible right now, but we can only penetrate that marketing veil if the seller is paying first-hand attention.
I had a surprise yesterday. The Arizona Republic column brings me a small number of deals, but they tend to be very interesting. We’re working one now, two listings and a purchase. One of the listings is in Sun City, a Del Webb original, unmolested, on the golf course. We listed it our way last Friday, because that’s what we do. Yesterday I was out there to deal with the sign and almost all of the flyers were gone. When our flyers seem to evaporate, it almost always means that the neighbors are interested — not in the house, but in us as listers. I’ll be interested to see if the sellers out there really are paying attention. The houses don’t sell for huge amounts, but if the sellers are willing to work our way, it might be worthwhile to pioneer a second niche out there.
Our timing in developing this elaborate listing praxis could have been better — although I can argue that the crucible of this market has burned away weak ideas faster than we might have done otherwise — but we haven’t missed in 2008, none cancelled, none expired, and the home runs are turning into appointments like they should.
Interestingly, another place where the newspaper column helps is on our weblog. I post all of my past columns there, and potential sellers read them all. At 350 words, they’re not as comprehensive as I might like, but they might be just the right dosage of real estate theorizing. In any case, people will quote them back to us chapter and verse on listing appointments, so I know they’re paying attention. That also implies that they understand and are buying into a lot of our ideas on strategy, since I conceal nothing in those columns.
What all of this says to me is that, while sellers in general don’t seem to me to be paying enough attention right now, in the long run they will. There is always room in the marketplace for a better value, if you can convey to consumers that it is a better value. When we first hit hard in early 2006, a few listers tried to copy us, lamely and on the cheap. The market turned on everyone, and made our value proposition harder to discern — and we made mistakes, which clouds our message. Now that it is turning back our way, our “Sold” signs — along with everything else we do — are having the expected impact. It won’t be very long before every pricey house in Central and North Central Phoenix is listed using Bloodhound techniques, and it won’t be long after that before our kinds of ideas — albeit possibly effected lamely and on the cheap — take the nation.
How do I know this? Because as a secondary consequence of selling our listings, we are teaching sellers how to pay attention to results.
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Bawldguy Talking says:
Point taken. Silly me, I assume those wanting to sell, actually care enough to…..Oh, never mind. 🙂
July 17, 2008 — 2:14 pm