It’s not the same old Real Estate Market anymore!

Don’t be a captive of old ideas. To insure that your home is successfully listed, marketed and closed let’s start with a basic premise:

No Surprises at Closing!

My clients do not have surprises at closing because “we” anticipate problems and solve them before we sit down at the closing table. To insure there are no surprises, I recommend the following actions to be taken by my homeowner clients before we list your home:

Homeowner List

1. Have an appraisal performed by one of the best firms for your area and use the appraisal as a tool to accurately and fairly price your home.
2. Have a Home Inspection done and remedy all of the items found before we list.
3. Have a copy of the home inspection along with the repairs done ready for any qualified buyer so they can see just how “move in ready” our listing is TODAY.
4. Study and consider the tips found in the book “450 Proven Ideas to Help Your Home Sell Faster”. I provide a copy of this on CD to every client.
5. Have a Survey performed to insure there are no surprises with easements or unusual situations.
6. Place an American Home Shield Warranty on your home to cover it during the listing period and provide the buyer with one year of coverage after closing.

Realtor List

1. Hire professional photographers to create a virtual tour and photos of your property.
2. Create professional brochures and flyers telling “the story” of your home. A Story make the property seem very “Buyer Friendly” and sells the concept, not the bricks.
3. Assemble a “Buyer Packet” containing the virtual tour on CD and a special house brochure so buyers leave with more than a memory of your home after a showing.
4. Arrange to be present with each buyer’s agent (if they agree) to help “tell the story” of your home to a prospective buyer.
5. Insure that all of the photos and virtual tour are placed on multiple web pages to insure maximum exposure to prospective buyers searching for a home in your area.
6. Create a custom marketing program using a combination of Media and Internet Marketing to insure your home is seen by the broadest possible spectrum of qualified buyers.

Please remember that Marketing is a Process and not an event. I may not be the person who sells your home but I will be the reason that it sells! We are forming a partnership with our listing agreement. By treating this process as a business transaction, we both will realize our goals at a Successful Closing!

Recently, I had an interesting challenge preparing a good value for a listing. The home is situated on a Salt Water Lake and has a tremendous view. Very few other homes in this exclusive subdivision have a comparable lot or upgrades similar to my subject home. Finding a value was, at first, extremely difficult. So I called a friend of mine who had been in the appraisal business for many years and explained my dilemma. He explained that when Appraisers cannot find just the right comparable, they go back in time and work forward. The following evaluation is the result of his suggestions and makes great sense.

Let’s start with a historical evaluation:

My sample house first sold for 319,900.00 at about the same time as my subject house. According to MLS it had a size of 2900 Square Feet with little or no upgrades and was not on the lake but on a corner lot. That translates into a selling price per square foot of $110.31 per square foot.

If I multiply that times the size of my subject house (as recorded in the MLS) as 2750 Square Feet I get a selling price of approximately 303,353.00 if the house had been built on a non lake front lot and did not have many upgrades. By subtracting that value from the actual selling price of my subject house, (337,661.00) I arrive at a selling premium for the land and upgrades of 34,308.00. For the sake of this example we will add only half of the appreciation value (11.2%/2 = 5.6% per year) to this lot premium plus original upgrades. Since the original sale took place 4.5 years ago, that translates into a compounded lot premium value of 43,858.00

Using the averages found in today’s MLS for homes “sold” and “for sale” in the subdivision (none of which were on a lake), the average is 204.00 per square foot. Multiplying that times the actual size of subject property (2770 Square Feet) I arrive at 565,080.0o. Now I need to add back the appreciated lot premium of 43,858.00 and I get an approximate value of 608,938.00 for the home without any additional upgrades.

In talking with my sellers, I discovered that since the original selling price, over 40,000.00 worth of documented upgrades were added to this home by the owners. Using a conservative value of 50% of the upgrades, I now have a realistic value of my subject property of 628,938.00. So you can easily see how we arrived at a listing price of 617,000.00.

History really is our friend. Knowing how to translate it into a useful tool is invaluable.