Staging Homes for Sellers - What NOT to Do
April 17, 2008
Selling your home in a slower real estate market is competitive. Many real estate agents recommend "staging" houses.
Today, I heard this story.
Three years ago a real estate agent attended a seminar on staging homes to sell.
She decided being a "staging expert" would be the value proposition setting her apart from the competition.
The agent worked with investors who bought "fixer uppers" in older parts of the city, so most of her listings were vacant.
To stage the houses for marketing, the real estate agent purchased items for staging vacant properties.
The agent started with small stuff- vases and pictures in the living area, towels in the bathroom, lots of light fixtures in dark rooms. Over time, purchases included a sofa here, a table there. One or two carefully placed pieces to define a space.
The "staging expert" agent and her real estate assistant moved stuff from listing to listing themselves as properties sold.
Investor clients began to demand more and more furniture in all of their listings.
Now the competitive staging agent rents a storage facility for $250/month, and pays movers to transfer the big items - sofas, chairs, beds - to the investment property listed for sale. All at no expense to the sellers.
When the market shifted, low quality rehabs in the city were hit the hardest. No amount of staging is helping them sell in a reasonable time frame.
Want to know her answer to surviving in a slower market? Take more vacant investment listings.
This week, one of the vacant investment properties was broken into; the staging props stolen.
Long story short, this agent is selling furniture in a down market.
If you want more information on staging your home to sell in a down market, just ask us using the contact form on the left.
Living Through Today’s Real Estate Market
April 16, 2008
How are you handling the real estate market slowdown?
Are you hanging on by a thread? Eating rice and beans or finding new opportunities?
I believe the answer lies within each of us - real estate agents, Atlanta sellers, buyers, mortgage lenders - at the core of our being. How we handle adversity is shaped by our culture, our family, our life experiences, and our faith. Our response to changes in the Atlanta real estate market echoes our response to other challenges.
Do you:
- Pretend circumstances aren’t as bad as they are?
- Stay busy so you don’t have to think about the market?
- Get depressed or sick?
- Feel controlled by events and people?
- Blame, threaten, coerce, beg, or bribe?
- Feel terribly anxious about finding buyers and sellers?
- Feel angry, victimized, unappreciated, and used?
Are you confident and assertive? Or compliant and dependent?
I’ve seen many North Atlanta houses for sale listed by agents too frightened to be honest with sellers. Real estate agents working out of fear and desperation can not serve the best interests of their clients.
Putting a for sale sign in the yard of an over-priced listing is wrong on many levels.
- It gives false hope to a seller.
- It wastes the time of buyer agents and their clients.
- It is misleading advertising.
- It enables an inexperienced real estate agent to look busy.
- It fosters the belief that real estate agents can not be trusted.
Saying ‘yes’ to overpriced listings in saying ‘no’ to new opportunities.
294 Granville Court, Marietta GA Listed for Sale
April 5, 2008
Nestled away in the heart of West Cobb (zip 30064) is a 4-bedroom 3-bath house listed for sale at $237,500 $229,900 $224,900.
Located in the West Carrington subdivision, this feature home is conveniently located near shopping, restaurants, Kennesaw Mountain, Marietta Square, Town Center Mall, and so much more.
Leave the hustle and bustle behind as you relax on the custom built deck overlooking your private Field of Dreams.
Click here for more information, photos, and visual tour.
REtech South in Atlanta, One Day, Endless Value
March 29, 2008
REtech South delivered on their promise, one day, endless value. A huge “atta boy” to Brad Nix and Matt Fagioli for their initiative in launching this event!
On March 11, at the Atlanta Real Estate Bloggers networking group, Brad and Matt met for the first time, came up with an idea, and launched one of the most productive real estate technology events I’ve attended in a over a year.
It was exciting to be in a room full of young, energetic real estate professionals who are second generation web users. They understand the power of social networking. They know how to connect with real estate buyers and sellers online. They are developers of new real estate systems designed to enhance the home search process. They blog, they twitter, they connect. In short, they get it.
They remind me of another group of real estate professionals I met in 1996. As you scroll through the pictures of these first generation web users, you’ll quickly see we’re about 25 years older than the folks at REtech South. But, our online real estate experiences are the same.
Our static websites were designed to enhance the real estate experience of buyers and sellers. Email was our method of starting conversations. We took lots of pictures of houses, and put them on single property web pages to market our listings. We were early adopters of tech toys and software (like visual tours, egg lenses, and handheld scanners).
We met the people that lived in our computer. We helped them buy and sell real estate. And, because we’re older than the Web 2.0 folks, we’ve helped a lot of these buyers and sellers move more than once.
Our peers said (and continue to say) the same things you hear:
- You’ll never make any money sitting in front of a computer.
- How much does it cost to build a website / blog?
- Where do you get your content?
- Real estate is an eyeball-to-eyeball business.
- When times are tough, you need to get back to the basics.
We laughed all the way to the bank!
Now, just because I use the past tense in the above paragraphs, don’t think this original group has lost their passion for technology in the practice of real estate.
We blog, we twit, we video. We still meet nice people who live in our computer. Some of them are buyers and sellers. Some of them are real estate professionals. And, when we meet eyeball-to-eyeball, we are old friends.
I’m glad REtech South gave me the chance to meet some of the folks I’ve been following online: Mary McKnight, Rudy Bachraty, Jason Benesch, Dustin Luther, Kevin Boer, Pat Kitano, Christian Sterner
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