I recently posted a blog on my company website called House On Fire. It speaks about how sellers must make trade-offs between price, the condition of their home and how quickly they need to sell. Everyone wants top dollar, but can't afford to wait.
Even if you choose to lower your price there is not guarantee that it will sell quickly.
Are sellers better-off trying For Sale by Owner or choosing a Realtor to help them price their home, stage their home and market their home.
The economy is tough and the winter is a slower time for home sales anyway.
When dealing with sellers, be a consultant and help them make those trade-offs.
It seems that Realtors and consumers and The Feds are so eager to boost the economy that they believe a variety of stimulus packages will make everything right.
I am not so sure. The Wall Street Journal had an article a few days ago discussing the benefits and drawbacks. As I read it I was wondering if The First Time Home-Buyer Tax Credit program is actually beneficial. Is it just sticking a finger in one part of the dike, only to have water squirting elsewhere.
The Cash for Clunkers Program was a big hit for a while, but it sucked-up demand in the short-run and now very few cars are selling because all the "pregnant" buyers took advantage of the cash-back and there aren't any more.
Wouldn't the free market actually take care of demand?
Read my blog post Buyers on Fire in our new BestHomePro.com blog which discusses contemporary issues in real estate. We would love to have you read and voice your opinions.
Let's say that the first time home buyer's tax credit gets 1,000 homes in Durham and Chapel Hill sell before the end of November. Hurray! But let's then say that because of this, only 50 homes sell to first time buyers per month over the next six months or a year, and that is 50 below the monthly average. Are we really any better off?
At some point in time there has to be real demand, not contrived demand. I am not saying that stimulus is not necessary, but someone has to pay for stimulus or we allow the natural order of supply and demand to rule.
The News & Obersers' free Saturday newspaper rag called, The Durham News had as its major headline: Home Break-Ins Spike Across City. Wow! I thought. Our city continues to fall into the great abyss of crime and degradation!
If you listen to the news and read the papers you would think that Durham is like living in Bagdad. It is NOT. There is crime in Durham, but I contend no more than Raleigh, Cary, Chapel Hill or other local areas. I remember seeing an ABC special a few years ago with the title: "Are We Scaring Ourselves to Death?" It was great. It talked about how crime statistics often mispresent the facts. Stakeholders who want more money (local police, FBI, Homeland Security) have an incentive to report things in the worst light. Let's add media companies to that.
Who would read an article entitled: "Crime remains about the same in Durham," or "Crime is actually down in Durham." You have to sell papers, so why not print a headline that has nothing to do with the facts.
The numbers in their article actually show that crime was down in 2008 compared to 2007and, according to my calculations will only slightly higher in 2009 than in 2008. This is hardly a huge "spike across the city."
Durham continues to have two great universities. Great employment. A wonderufully diverse population. Incredible one-of-a-kind restaurants and safety. Bad economies result in more petty crime in every city -- there are more desparate people. But I have seen and felt that reporting crime in Durham is an over-reaction and an easy story for people to write.
Back-off Durham News. If you want people reading your paper in Durham, please be balanced and resonable.
I am all about truthfulness. I am not perfectly honest -- no one is, but when I see businesses processes that are not in good faith, it really ticks me off.
Recently (and against my better judgement) I responded to a banner ad for a teeth whitening product. After much hesitation I clicked on the "Special Offer" icon and put in my credit card for a $4.95 shipping charge for a tooth whitening product. 14 days later I was charged $89 and one week later $93.92. (Read my wwww.JeffPref.com blog to hear the whole story.) I think I will get my money back, but it has taken a lot of time. Even my credit card company indicated they have lots of complaints against Pure Essentials.
Today I read a posting about an IDX vendor with "fine print." Wolfnet is a national company which offers IDX and other web services. For the most part I have heard good things about them, but this is crazy.
Writes Eric Bramlet in his post: "I signed up with wolfnet/mlsfinder in 2005, and upgraded to maptracks in 2006. I was a pretty heavily trafficked user so was spending ~$250-$300/month b/c of their "overage" fees. A few months ago, I finally made the switch to another system, and notified wolfnet that I was terminating service - sent them an email & a fax. I get a call from one of their sales agents asking why I left, "you have so many users, why would you go somewhere else?" I tell him that I liked their product, but found something better. He then tells me: Quote: You're in an automatically renewing annual contract. We're going to continue billing you through March 2010, which is when this agreement expires."
Blogs, Tweets and other social media don't let companies get away with this anymore. If you are a consumer, you are likely much more savvy than you were a few years ago.
If you a business person (except for my failing to follow my gut in an attempt to try a cheap teeth whitening product) you likely ALMOST never fall for these things.
But you as Realtors and I as a businessman must always keep in mind that the communities we serve will eventually find out the real truth about our practices; and when they do the world will know.
One of my favorite gurus is Seth Godin. He is a bit quirky and off-beat, but in my opinion we all need to be that a little bit more.
He posted a question on his blog yesterday: "Who Gets to Decide What You Want" with some of the following comments: http://tinyurl.com/mdr59f
"In order to want something, you probably need to know it exists. One definition of happiness is wanting the things you're likely to get (or, conversely, not wanting the unattainable). One definition of marketing is persuading the world it wants what you have...
And so, once again it seems to come down to a personal decision. If you decide what you want (instead of letting someone else decide for you) perhaps you could choose the things that would actually bring you and your loved ones the satisfaction you can live with."
In real estate, it seems that we need to give our clients the benefit of our best advice and access to the best tools to help THEM find what THEY want in a home. My suggestion is to market your high quality service to them. Don't market that you will find them the perfect home, but that you will give them all the tools and all the advice they seek to find a home that fits them perfectly, whether it be in Durham, NC; Chapel Hill, Morrisville, Raleigh, Cary or Wilmington, NC.
Think like a teacher. Act like a thoughtful consultant. Offer the best tools.
Consumers may not know what they want to begin-with, but when they find it, they will know. We need to help them find it.
Bull City Rising, a Durham mainstay blog, wrote about the new Herald-Sun website in a post entitled "Herald-Sun Launches New Website - Fear Not, You can Contribute." http://tinyurl.com/mooomn .
Like most newspapers, The Herald-Sun is working hard to remain a vibrant part of the communities it serves. Newspapers are struggling to find new avenues to provide compelling content and communication. www.Herald-Sun.net just launched today. It offers a wide range of ways for citizens to read about their communities and contribute content -- original content.
People can read AP stories almost anywhere, but uber-local content is hard to match. Perhaps the new Herald-Sun website will greatly boost the volume of community information, interaction and communication.
My firm, BestHomePro, is offering home search services on the real estate tab on Herald-Sun.net and .com. In a matter of days we will be offering The BestHomePro Marketplace. This represents an entirely new model for the way consumers search for homes and the way agents and consumers hook-up. It is what is called "Opt-In" on both sides. Consumers can search all they want with our pledge never to share their contact information until they indicate they wish to find an agent or see a home. Then, without identifying the contact by name, agents will be allowed to see what the consumer is searching for and make offers to the consumer. The consumer then chooses an agent from among those shown.
Congratulations to The Herald-Sun for moving forward WITH technology,rather than fighting the tidal wave.
Contribute meaningful content and enjoy reading the thoughts and stories of your neighbors.
Our company has been offering the most advanced home search solution in real estate for the last two years. BestHomePro IDX offers a search solution for brokers and agents that creates a preference profile, then matches that profile to the MLS database of homes. The result is search results that are displayed in priority order.
How many of you have talked with new or prospective cllients who say, "I have printed 33 profiles of homes that my wife and I like. Could you help me sort them? Ugh!
BestHomePro sorts results for you, and keeps them in-touch with you and with the market with "Top-Ten Alerts," which are emails, texts or Tweets that are sent only when their top-ten best fit homes change.
This cements your relationship and keeps you in touch in a very meaningful way.
Subscriptions to BestHomePro were $29.95 per month. We are now offering BestHomePro to agents and brokers for FREE. Our contract is you have use full-featured BestHomePro for FREE until you get 10 active clients on your Dashboard. That represents the perfect free trial. Then it is $24.95 per month.
We would love to have you give it a try. Go to our website: www.BestHomePro.com or call us as 919-794-3350.
Steve Murray, Publisher of RealTrends writes, ""This is clearly the best month of results that we have seen since we first started publishing the REAL Trends Housing Market Report two years ago. While we know that there are substantial challenges ahead, with a predicted rise in foreclosures and continued downward pressure on prices as a result, it would appear that we are closer to the floor of this recession in housing than we have been at any time in the last four years."
Are we seeing the same turnaround in Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill and surrounding communities. Downward pressure on pricing remains a major concern, but volume of sales seem pretty good.
Are you seeing those upwardly mobile home-owners listing their $250,000 to $350,000 homes, selling them and purchasing homes at the next level. It seems that this is where the market is hurting.
Your thoughts? What about your specific communities?
Our grown children gave my wife and me a cruise to Alaska for our mutual birthdays. What a great present to parents. All children should be instructed to do something so nice!!!
Alaska is 4 time zones away and it felt like we were on another planet. Not much population density up there. Sarah Palin certainly has room to spread-out. Being so far away from North Carolina, Research Triangle and Durham was a breath of fresh air (literally). Wide-open spaces; glaciers that knocked our socks off; enormous expanses of open territory; waterfalls galour; orka and hump-backed whales gliding by our boat and playfully jumping out of the water.
The trip was glorious, but even more glorious was our return to our home turf. Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill is a little too crowded, but that is a sign of progress. There weren't many restaurants in Skagway or Juneau to compare to Nana's, The Lantern, Bullocks, Sishi Sushi and many others. The price of gas was not even much less up there.
Alaska was a vacation of a life-time, but coming home is always a great treat as well.
The decision by our children to give us this treat involved few trade-offs: perhaps sun and warm versus cool and dramatic.
We are trully blessed to have such a treat (and such wonderful children/adults) and we are many-times blessed to live in North Carolina.
BestHomePro might eventually help people find homes in Alaska, but it will be a while until we have features such as "Caribou view" or "glacier view."
Disclaimer: ActiveRain Corp. does not necessarily endorse the real estate agents, loan officers and brokers listed on this site. These real estate profiles, blogs and blog entries are provided here as a courtesy to our visitors to help them make an informed decision when buying or selling a house. ActiveRain Corp. takes no responsibility for the content in these profiles, that are written by the members of this community.
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