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Better money sooner for Sun City sellers

Category: Selling Your Home (page 3 of 5)

May 9, 2024

So many shades of white: Making homes look like offices robs them of their ultimate value – their hominess.

by

Sun City Real Estate Broker

Author website
May be an image of kitchen island, lighting, range hood and indoors

At last! Relief from your lifelong yearning to live full-time at the dentist’s office…

May be an image of range hood, kitchen island and indoors

That’s funny. Here’s what isn’t: This icy, monochromatic style of interior decor is everywhere. The rule of the MLS is this: If the homeowners spent money on their home on the way out, they made it grayer and less homey – by a lot. Flippers? So much the worse.

No photo description available.

Women’s magazines don’t give advice on exterior decor, so from the outside homes are done in creams and browns, meat and potatoes. Iceberg interiors are a fad driven by people who abhor human beings and their actual emotional needs. Literally no one wants to live at the dentist’s office, they just can’t stop heeding bad advice.

May be an image of range hood, kitchen island and indoors

Workplace decor is sterile so that you never get too comfortable. This style of interior design is inflicted upon home-buyers by people who hate homey colors – creams and browns – and the warmth and comfort they induce.

May be an image of range hood, kitchen island and indoors

It’s worth noting that this home design fad took root just about the same time the government outlawed warm, homey incandescent light bulbs. Our light is cold and blue, and so are the surfaces reflecting it.

I’m showing you the kitchen, the homiest room in a home. It’s not there to make a design statement, but rather to make stew – ideally in the colors of stew. Plus which, a homey kitchen cannot seem to abhor drips and splashes – which is what medical countertops are meant to reveal.

I’m mocking cheesy flippers mimicking cheesy women’s magazines, but more deeply I’m objecting to this whole design esthetic for homes: Home is literally meat and potatoes. Almost always looks like that from the outside. Only lately have we fled from that look for interiors, opting for this sterile monochromatic office look.

Clearly, I’m against it, but I’ll add a couple of caveats: First, I’m only interested in marketing to the middle of the bell curve – the Buick Regal buyer. Second, the stoutest heart of that market is here, in Sun City. I don’t think anyone feels at ease in an iceberg interior, not without overlaying everything in browns and creams, but I’m pretty sure my demographic – 55+, very middle class – wants nothing like what they get from flipper after flipper.

April 29, 2024

A Sun City dog’s take on the sale of his home: “Things is changin’…”

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Sun City Real Estate Broker

Author website

Dogs sell homes, which is good, since they’re going to photobomb the pix, anyway. But that dog is keeping an eye on the photographer because “things is changin’.”

There is a perfect order to everything and no one knows that like your dog. If you move a familiar vase from one countertop to another, your dog will be sure to let you know that you have offended the cosmos.

Listing your home for sale, showing it, selling it, moving on – these are all traumatic events for your pets. They may or may not show it overtly, but when “things is changin'” – they’re not right.

We’ll talk about all of this, when we sit down for a listing appointment – balancing all of your family’s interests, each in its own currency.

April 26, 2024

Counter-marketing Cartman: How buyers can put the squeeze on sleazy and stupid pricing strategies.

by

Sun City Real Estate Broker

Author website

The list price is the most important field in an MLS listing. Everything counts, but if the price is wrong, every other effort will have been wasted. If the price overshoots the market, you risk losing potential buyers to better-priced homes. But, just as important, if the format of your price is wrong, you will at a minimum introduce confusion – and delay – that you cannot afford.

Ignoring the comps and just looking at numbers, home prices can be wise, stupid or sleazy. Listings are almost always stupidly or sleazily priced, but closed prices are typically wise.

A wise number ends like this: x0,000 – where x is an even number. In other words, wise numbers are round numbers in $20k increments. Higher prices move the ‘x0’ leftward – and I won’t quarrel with x being odd there, nor at $250k and under. But: Wise numbers look right to buyers – offered and closed – and they close fine with sellers. The last sentence is the entire argument against ever using stupid prices.

Sleazy prices are even worse: $449,999. Can you hear South Park’s Eric Cartman parroting that number? Sleazy prices are transparent and facile attempts to fool people – which are predictably met with contempt by buyers:

Cheaters never prosper? Then why won’t they stop trying?

Caveat venditor: Wise prices sell fast and close cleanly. The other two, not so much.

But buyers take heart: You see a price like $279,900 and you think: “They’re not sure it’s worth $280k.” In fact, they are certain it’s worth $260k – or less – so you should lowball ruthlessly as Days-on-Market hits double digits.

I use the term ‘Last Call’ to refer to sellers who cave catastrophically at the end of a listing because they started too high at the outset – literally dancing The Desperation Waltz with the only remaining partner. But buyers can be that Last Call opportunist.

I like Tuesday mornings at 10:30 am for Last Call offers. The seller’s last hopes for the weekend will have evaporated; they are at their weakest. Declined or no response? Come back next Tuesday morning – but lower.

Whether sleazy or stupid, inept numbers denote inept agents and misled sellers. Take account of those facts and discount for deceit. Cheaters never do prosper, but you can profit from their delusions.

April 25, 2024

A Sun City cautionary tale: Open high, close low – very slowly.

by

Sun City Real Estate Broker

Author website

Two more quick-hit post-mortems from Bloodhound’s Facebook page, to which you are commended. A full post-mortem exhumes every buried secret, but those two little boxes are the box-score for every Closed (or Cancelled or Expired) MLS listing.

Keep an eye on Facebook for more of these – and on this weblog for full-on autopsies of listings sent in to me. Meanwhile, I’m going to build a slide show of these tiny cautionary tales to show to sellers when they get stars in their eyes.

The value of a thing is what that thing will bring – and not a penny more. You would not overpay for a production home. Why would anyone else? You cannot ‘beat the market’ – but, as witness, the market can beat you out of all of your equity in your home.

April 23, 2024

How do you sell a Sun City historic mid-century-modern renovation? “Barbie and Ken slept here!”

by

Sun City Real Estate Broker

Author website

I’ve been watching this house for months. There is after-market stuff in there, but the kitchen and baths are original insouciant MCM – Rob and Laura Petrie in a 1963 state of optimism. It would be wonderful if someone adopted this as a project home, an historic renovation as it were, to put Rob and Laura where they belong by now – in Sun City.

Sun City’s youngest were born in 1969 – spawned at Woodstock? – which has amazing demographic implications. Like this: There is a market for MCM historic renovations here – houses like this built in the early ’60s. The sign rider? “Barbie and Ken slept here!”

April 19, 2024

A new Sun City-only real estate game: Post-Mortem My Listing.

by

Sun City Real Estate Broker

Author website

If you follow me on Facebook, you will see me briefly post-mortem Closed listings, as in the image above. Everything matters – on Day Zero – but those two little boxes tell the final tale on everything: As a house is marketed, so does it sell, which is from Proverbs, sort of.

But I can do so much more. Working from the full listing, I can show people what helped, what hurt and why those strategies and tactics produced the ultimate result.

So let’s play a game. You send me the MLS number or street address of your Closed, Expired or Cancelled residential listing in Sun City, and I will post-mortem the entire marketing strategy in detail here.

All secrets kept, yours and the agents’. We’re talking about ideas, not individual people or specific homes.

But I know a lot about why houses do and do not sell quickly, for top-dollar, so when you play Post-Mortem My Listing with me, everybody wins.

April 16, 2024

Fannie, Freddie blink: For now, at least, real estate sales will proceed as before – but with less transparency and more paperwork.

by

Sun City Real Estate Broker

Author website

Yesterday, FannieMae and FreddieMac did what I had sworn they wouldn’t: They relented to accounting for the buyer’s-agent’s commission as a seller-paid concession:

This is almost no change from the bad-old-days that have been subject to so much litigation. Instead of splitting commissions by way of the listing agent’s commission instructions, the split will now be declared to be among the seller’s concessions to the buyer.

That’s good, even if comically pointless, and, very probably, of temporary duration. The jackals feeding on the National Association of Realtors seem unlikely to be sated by old wine in new bottles.

But: My advice to sellers remains the same. The buyer is getting advice at the seller’s expense, but the seller is getting the buyer – without whom nothing would be happening. You’re not paying for the advice – even though it is a liability shield for you. You’re paying for the introduction, for the contract, for the opportunity to successfully close the sale.

The seller’s motivation is the same for both agents, the lister and the buyer’s agent: You’re paying the people who are getting you paid. It’s just that simple.


Meanwhile, my plan to broadcast our buyer’s agent’s commission seems to be holding up. Because sellers can be pound-foolish, and because the ‘co-broke’ will be undisclosed in the MLS, Bloodhound being known for paying the whole pizza will work to my sellers’ advantage. Buyer’s agents are not supposed to care how much they are getting paid – in much the same way that paramecia are not supposed to move toward the food and away from the poison…

We’ll have to wait for FHA and VA to catch up to the brand-new same-old way of doing business, but this is the upshot: Status quo ante with less disclosure and more paperwork.

April 13, 2024

The Bloodhound Way, listing Sun City homes with three simple words: Better money sooner.

by

Sun City Real Estate Broker

Author website

There are two ways to list a house for sale. Typically, a seller will elect to ‘start high’ – price the home above the value justified by the recent sales. Often a lot higher, usually at a creepily deceptive price like $349,900. It won’t sell early, it may not even show early in the listing. What will happen is that it will languish on the market through successive price reductions. Eventually the seller will relent for a price far lower than the listing started with, possibly lower than the home’s fair-market-value on the day of listing, often with seller-paid cash concessions to the buyer.

In other words, the listing strategy from the outset was to sell low and slow to the least qualified buyer out there.

Yes, that’s funny, but that is literally how most Sun City homes are marketed on the MLS.

We work very differently. The elements of a real estate listing that matter most are: 1. Price, 2. Photos, 3. Copy, 4. Directions. Our goal is to make everything perfect – irresistible! – on Day Zero. That way, we can be under contract and on our way to close-of-escrow in just a few days – instead of languishing for months and months.

The value proposition is in the headline: Better money sooner. We will get the best net return that can be had for your home – with the fewest hassles and in the shortest time.

We should talk. No cost. No obligation. No BS. Just better money sooner.

April 2, 2024

The Beverly Hillbillies live in every neighborhood. If you can’t figure out who they are…

by

Sun City Real Estate Broker

Author website

As you should expect, the property is better than its main photo. And yet: We are all Tinderellas now. Rejected on a quibble is still rejected.

Other than the tree, everything you might object to in this photo is personal property and will have been removed prior to Close of Escrow.

ACCORDINGLY, it is the listing agent’s job to make sure every potentially-off-putting thing has been put away for the duration PRIOR to photography.

Call that stuff in front ‘flair’ – as in the movie “Office Space.” The steps to staging would be deflair, declutter, deep clean, stage – and I don’t hate vacant if my alternative is too-much-lived-in.

The buyers have to find themselves in the home, and they can’t do that if the seller won’t get out of their way.

You live or die on the listing itself, by agent emails or Zillow or whatever. If buyers reject the house on the smartphone, they will never see it in person and therefore will not make an offer on it. Everything counts, and victory for the lister – and hence the seller – is the ease of getting across the finish line with every penny expected. Or more. 😉

March 22, 2024

Memo to the National Association of Realtors: When you don’t have a leg to stand on, try not to shoot yourself in the foot.

by

Sun City Real Estate Broker

Author website

Here’s the news: To get out from under the many lawsuits plaguing it, the NAR has elected to do away with its entire reason for existence – the cooperating broker’s compensation.

You know of it as the buyer’s agent’s commission, and, unbeknownst to practically everyone, it is the “why” of the MLS idea as such.

Ideally, my office has enough buyers to match up with my sellers, so I don’t need to leave the walled garden of my own brokerage to clear my inventory.

But nothing is ever ideal, so when I need a buyer that I can’t find on my own, I turn to the MLS to appeal to other brokers to bring me that buyer, offering them a split of my sales commission as incentive.

Note well: It is the listing broker, not the seller, who is paying the buyer’s broker’s commission – even though he might rather have kept everything in-house.

Under the new rules announced Friday, an MLS listing will continue to elicit cooperation, but it can no longer promise compensation.

Buyer’s agents can show houses, but they may not know how – or even if – they will be compensated.

Accordingly, they will either appeal to their typically cash-strapped buyers for their pay, or, more likely, buyers will either go unrepresented or their agent will also be the seller’s agent – just like the bad old days.

Worse for the NAR, there is no longer any reason to prefer the MLS to Zillow. That’s where the buyers are seeing my listings, and not only can I promise compensation there, I am free from every other arbitrary MLS rule.

The NAR uses the golden handcuffs of the MLS to keep its membership ensnared. But with free-market forms and third-party lockboxes, and with no particular advantage to listing by MLS, there is no reason for agents to stay in the NAR – paying for its legal blunders.

Meanwhile, sellers: Be wise. The commission is a marketing fee. You pay it because you net more at Close of Escrow for having had professional marketing. Stiffing the half of the marketing team who is bringing the money to the table is penny wise, pound foolish.

March 17, 2024

My take on the NAR settlement? Buyers lose, sellers lose – but I think it will be pretty good for me and my sellers.

by

Sun City Real Estate Broker

Author website

That is my take on the NAR settlement: Losing buyer’s agent’s compensation from the MLS is a terrible thing for buyers, which in turn will hurt sellers.

But: Even so: Because the buyer’s agent’s commission is now a marketing differentiator, placing the ad you see above in a flyer frame in each of my listed homes will give my sellers a leg up on their competition.

It’s against the rules for buyer’s agents to shop by commission, but it is my perfect right to let them know that Bloodhound Realty, at least, has them covered.

I wrote about the NAR settlement in greater depth in an article I sent to the Independent. If they don’t care for it, I’ll post it here.

Meanwhile: A good listing agent is the best bargain in real estate, surfacing for the seller the highest attainable net return from the buyer least likely to fail to perform, all in the least amount of time – the highest/safest/soonest offer.

And the second-best bargain in residential real estate is an experienced buyer’s agent: Literally paid just for the introduction to their buyers, yet shepherding them through every step of the process, startling long before we sign a contract, and then making sure every hurdle in the escrow process is overleapt on time.

The bottom line is the bottom line: If you got less than you wanted – of anything! – you overpaid. If your results were better than you expected – tell your friends and family! 😉

March 6, 2024

The Sun City Business: Read your own home’s real estate listing carefully.

by

Sun City Real Estate Broker

Author website

The Sun City Business is a topic I want to return to: How Sun City’s citizens get taken. Of immediate moment is the advice in the headline.

Here is why you should carefully read the super-secret real estate agent’s print-out of the listing for your home: There are six Active listings in Sun City right now that are not denoted as being Age-Restricted, even though they are, of course.

Why does that matter? Anyone who is searching for homes by Age-Restricted status is not seeing those listings at all.

There are Gemini/Twin homes marketed as Single-Family Detached houses and an enormous number of Town/Patio homes listed as Apartment Style condos.

Agents will typically search within a subdivision or by using a map-based search, so they are likely to see everything. But people making their choices about which homes to see from Zillow or another portal can filter badly-listed homes right out of their visibility.

Everything counts, and any mistakes will be paid for by you, not your listing agent – in money but most especially in time. Take the time to read your home’s listing carefully.

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