For Sellers

PRICING

Here’s the traditional (lazy) method of establishing a list price*:

1. Look at recent sales in the neighborhood.  
2. Price your home at or near the most recent sale.
3. Call it good.

*Sometimes, agents won’t even go through that little effort. I’ve had clients tell me their previous agent asked them “So what price are you thinking about?” or “How much do you want to net from the sale?” Run from these agents. That’s kind of like a doctor asking you what you think you’ve got, then prescribing medicine based on your opinion.

As you might guess, that's not the way I work.

First of all, I’m a freak for accuracy in facts. So I go to great lengths to make sure I’m comparing apples to apples and pomegranates to pomegranates.

Secondly, I parse all the data from at least two (often more) different angles to get you the most accurate picture of what you’ll truly get in today’s market for your home. You may complain about getting too much data from me, but never about too little. Maybe you’ll be pleasantly surprised to find how much your home will sell for. Or maybe you’ll get mad at me because I tell you that you won’t get as much as you think. There’s an old Slavic proverb that says, “Tell the truth and run.” You’ll always get the truth.

Finally, pricing isn’t complete the day you list your home. It’s a fluid process that reacts to the market. The market isn’t static, so market information has to be updated and reviewed. It’s like the carton of milk in your refrigerator. If it’s more than a week old, don’t touch it.

STAGING

Once the pricing is nailed down, your home better be, too. In this current market, with so much inventory to choose from, your home has to be shown in its best possible light. There are so many homes to choose from, yours can't look anything other than perfect.

I can give you some helpful tips and secret tricks, but I know my limitations. So I hire an interior design professional to stage your home to show it in the best light. It’s astonishing to see a home before and after she does her thing.  

MARKETING

MLS, Realtor.com, Zillow, Craigslist, Trulia. These and (at the present) four other web sites are where I’ve got listings placed. But it isn’t just the Where, but also the How a home is marketed that will determine whether a potential buyer or that buyer’s agent decides to pursue that particular listing. This, frankly, is what I do best. It’s what I’ve done my entire adult life, first as an advertising copywriter and creative director, and, since 2000 as a home marketeer. You’re in good, skilled hands when it comes to advertising and positioning your home.

TALKING

For something this important to the transaction, it’s amazing how little of it goes on.

Talking to Agents Who Show Your Home

This isn’t anything unique to me. There are other agents who have this as part of their listing services. Feedback by email has gotten popular. What I do is a little different. I personally contact every single agent who shows my listings. I won’t leave it to an assistant. That vital conversation is a dynamic one, questions>answers>reactions to answers>etc. It’s a dialogue in which you can get infinitely more information than you can from a simple list of questions (“How’d your buyers like the property?” “Was it priced okay?” etc.) This kind information gathering plays into what I was talking about in the PRICING section where we have to be able to react to the market’s perception.

Talking to Agents Who  Haven’t Shown Your Home

I picked up this little trick about 18 months ago. Each Tuesday, I look to see if any homes similar to my listings went into contract the previous week. If there are any, I call the buyers’ agent to probe what it was about that listing that caused them to look at that home as opposed to yours (remember, if they had looked at yours, I would have already called them). In this way, I can find out if someone else’s listing looks more appealing. Was it the listing, or the description of that listing? If someone out there is doing a better job of marketing their listing, I want to know about it. My ego can take it. It’s like that Emerson line about that says something like “Every man is my superior in that I may learn from him.” And what I can learn from a better written listing benefits my sellers.

Talking to You

The #1 most common complaint I hear from people about their real estate agent is, “I never hear from them!” The easiest thing in the world to do seems to evade a lot of people in my profession. I’ll make you two promises. 1) When I know something, you’ll know something. 2) When I don’t know something, you’ll know that I don’t know something. Whether I have good, news, bad news or no news, you’ll never go more than a week without hearing from me.

NEGOTIATING

In residential real estate, having an agent who knows the market is more valuable than the slickest negotiator in the world. If I, as your listing agent, know what options the buyer has because I know what’s out there and know what other homes they’re probably looking at, that’s a huge advantage for you. I can advise you what price you can demand and what price you better settle for. The great poker players can usually guess pretty accurately what cards the other guy is holding. Same story here.

So there it is. I’ve told the world my listing secrets.

Like I said, it’s simple.