Nigel's Prince William County Real Estate Blog

How does a Home Seller choose a Real Estate Agent?

Nigel Clarke, GRI - Homes in Northern VA (Keller Williams Realty) — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 16:20:23 -0600

According to Virginia Association of Realtors 2006 statistics 25% of home sellers interview more than one agent before selecting one to list their home. Now if you are in competition you want to make sure you come out on top. There are as many suggestions on how to win the listing as their are agents so I'm going to look at some here.

Be the first agent to meet with them.
Be the last agent to meet with the sellers.
Show them how your web site can drive buyers to look at their home.
Provide a 14 point marketing plan on how you'll bring buyers to see their house.
Show your testimonial file to them.
Be the local expert in the area.

If you are the first agent through the door is your presentation likely to wow them into letting you tell the other agents that you have the listing and they needn't bother to come to the appointment? It can be that your personality and listing presentation are so impressive that this will work but honestly people who want to have multiple agents make their presentation often need to hear what each of them has to say. They may want validation of their own ideas of the price of the home or just a range to give them an idea. The homeowners may have their own thoughts on how they expect the home to be marketed and pick the agent who has a plan that matches their own. Some owners want to ask for a discount on compensation as they perceive agents to be overpaid.

Being the last agent in has it's benefits. The homeowners heard your presentation last and it is fresh in their mind when they choose an agent. They can also compare practices and you get to rebut the otehr agents without them being able to refute your own claims/practices.

Having a great web site and exposure on the Internet is something that younger or tech-savvy homeowners want to see. I recently had a couple ask if they would get exposure on Realtor.com and that was the only thing that they really seemed to want.

The multi-point marketing plan presentation is reassuring to some sellers. They want to see what they will get in the way of marketing and exposure. It's something I have in my own presentaion but I only bring it to the homeowners attention if they ask about the marketing plan. For some people that will be what they are most interested in and others want to establish a rapport with you and feel good about you as a person.

A file of testimonials may help you out if the client wants references but a smart agent will have paved teh way by referring to other sales in the area that they previously made. In fact 48% of sellers received a recommendation from friends, neighbours or relatives for an agent so you may not have as much competition as you think.

Being the local expert; having your Sold and For Sale signs throughout the area and sending postcards detailing your business, helps to position you as the local expert. If your web site has a lot of local content covering schools, neighbourhoods and local activities then you certainly appear to be the local expert to the homeseller.

January 15-21 2007; A week in real estate

Nigel Clarke, GRI - Homes in Northern VA (Keller Williams Realty) — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 15:37:06 -0600

While we've had a dramatic change in the weather here in Northern Virginia in the last week home buyer traffic continues hold steady. Now Sunday (21st) wasn't exactly the best time to hold an Open House the advent of a couple of inches of snow didn't improve the chances of finding a buyer. Saturday was fine enough that buyers did stop by some of the homes we have listed.

Most of this week was spent dealing with pre-foreclosure and foreclosed property. I do a lot of market analyses for companies setting the price for the foreclosure sale at the courthouse steps. Most of these involve a "drive-by" evaluation plus the use of comparative sales and actively listed properties to set a price. If the price set by the holder of the mortgage isn't met by a buyer on the steps then the financing company buys back the property. The property is then placed with a real estate agent who handles evicting the occupants (if necessary) changes the locks, cleans up the property and places it for sale at a fair market value or such a price as will recover the outstanding money.

This week I had a property in Manassas that seemed to be occupied and where I posted the usual notice about the foreclosure. I got phone call from an English speaking friend of the occupants who were totally blind sided by the foreclosure notice. They had been paying the owner their rent and had no idea he wasn't paying the mortgage. It seems that the owner had left town (or the country) and hadn't been making payments on his mortgage. Now usually I can offer a "cash for keys" program to the occupants to get them out and not have to deal with rekeying the locks and cleaning the home up. In this case the occupants are undocumented so the "cash for keys" program can't be used (the IRS requires anyone getting money in this situation provide a W-9 with a taxpayer ID number to report the income). So I have to ask these people to leave and find somewhere else to live. I can't get them in to a normal rental through another real estate agent as most owners want to have a credit check done on potential renters. We'll see what happens when they are supposed to leave (27th).

I've been sending out end-of-year market reports to my database of people. For 2005 the initial single family home numbers show that in Prince William County we had 3121 active listing at the end of December 2006 compared with 2370 actives at the end of 2005, an increase of just over 30%. Single family home sales show much the same trend with 6442 sales in all of 2006 compared to 10485 for all of 2005, about 38% down over 2005. Closer in to Washington DC, in Fairfax County, the single family home numbers show 3681 listings active compared to 2756 in December 2005, just over 33% higher. Single family home sales are similar to those in Prince William County, 12175 for 2006 compared to 17527, around 30% down over 2005.

The end of year numbers give us a county wide absorption rate of about 8 months which is between a buyers market and a sellers market with a slight tilt towards buyers. Six months supply of housing is usually determined to be a balanced market.

The good thing I do see in these statistics is that the average and median single family home prices haven't dropped in Prince William County. The average increasing from $438,006 to $441,923 during 2006 and teh median moving from $398,950 to $399,000 in the same period. However compared to 2004 to 2005 where the average went from $344,331 to $438,006 the price change has been a shock to most homeowners.

January 8-14 2007; A week in real estate

Nigel Clarke, GRI - Homes in Northern VA (Keller Williams Realty) — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 14:51:37 -0600

Since my first week's blog entry of 2007 I've seen the traffic on my homes listed for sale rise considerably. This is very good news for agents in Prince William County as the traffic has been a lot slower than normal throughout the past twelve months on most homes listed for sale..

This three bedroom, 2 and a half bath, town house that I have listed in Virginia Oaks in Gainesville has had 8 showings plus I showed it myself once and also took the same client to another property in the same area. This buyer is looking to move before the Summer and believes that this time of year will get him a real bargain as there aren't many buyers out there. He could well be correct as sellers are certainly more motivated as far as pricing is concerned.

My condo foreclosure listing in Chantilly in Fairfax County, has also had a lot of interest and I've seen two offers come in.Unfortunately the buyers agents haven't been familiar with the process by which banks review offers on these types of sales. As it has been probaly twenty years since we've seen a similar market for foreclosures that perhaps isn't surprising.

Basically the pricing is set by the Bank or foreclosure management company using the amount owed and at least a couple of Broker Price Opinions from experienced real estate agents. The market price is set and the agent listing the property has to wait until an offer comes while undertaking their normal marketing for a home for sale. Each week the agent has to inspect the property for any problems and every 30 days has to submit a marketing report on activity on the home.

When an offer is received the agent passes it to the bank or management company who apply their criteria to the offer and accept or counter the offer. Most of the time they counter the offer. They seem to generally counter offers which are low or which ask for closing costs. Some won't counter with an offer that includes closing costs and most want around 2.5 or 3% as an earnest money deposit. I suspect that the manager who deals with offers regards a low offer or one that asks for closing costs as an opportunity to prove their negotiating skills.

So if you are considering making an offer on a foreclosed property then you should bear in mind that it's a very different proposition from making an offer on a resale property where there may be more room for creativity in teh contract price and conditions.

January 1-7 2007; A week in real estate

Nigel Clarke, GRI - Homes in Northern VA (Keller Williams Realty) — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 19:50:37 -0600

Here we are a week into the New Year and looking forward to what will be our lot in 2007.

2006 was slow with sellers in Prince William County and Fairfax County being unrealistic about how much their home was worth and not taking advantage of the tremendous equity they had gained but wanting more. One of my hardest jobs was telling home owners that they had passed the peak of the market and their home was not worth as much as their neighbour had sold their home for in the late Spring of 2005.

Buyers were starting to be more aggressive and looking for real bargains. Many of them held out until they were sure that the market had bottomed out. No-one wanted to buy and immediately see the value of their new home drop giving them negative equity. They also didn't like the idea of paying taxes assessed on a base much higher than the home was purchased for.

I noticed that there was a change starting in about late November when people began to realise thet the market had just about bottomed out and if they waited much longer then they'd be on that upswing. Starting first with the new homes where builders were offering such incentives that it was hard to sell resale homes in newer communities like New Bristow Village, Victory Lakes and Morris Farms, the market has slowly begun to change again. Buyers of new construction homes got some tremendous deals with anything up to $70,000 in incentives (upgrades and closing cost assistance) on homes around $500,000 in price just so that the builder could have them off his books by year end.

The great weather we've experienced here in Northern Virginia this first week of January has helped us tremendously. I relisted a townhouse in Virginia Oaks near Gainesville and dropped the price about 3.5% and saw 5 showings between Friday and Monday with another showing tonight about 7pm. Now the market has to be picking up if I'm seeing showings at 7PM on a January evening.

Now if the weather continues to be unseasonably warm I can see that housing market is going to be moving along very nicely.

Begining in early August of 2006 I started to see a lot of increase in the number of homeowners in financial difficulties. All through the fall I was doing a lot of work on evaluating these homes and determining what the likely selling price would be should the bank foreclose on these folks. At one point in late October I was doing about 10-12 of these every week.

Part of the problem has been the 100% mortgages many of the homeowners took out to buy in a market that had or was close to topping out. Adding in some of the creative financing like Interest only or ARM loans that have started rising in cost due to changes in interest rates and the fact that some people who had a lot of equity started using their house as a credit card with home equity lines and there was a recipe for disaster.

As soon as these folks had payments that were more than they could manage due to job loss or changes in their mortgage rates, or they had to move the drop in prices hit them hard. I've recently seen people who have lost $100,000 on the price of their home and needing to sell owing that much over the possible price to the banks.

I can see a lot of Short Sales, foreclosures and the like happening in early 2007 before tghe market picks up and prices level out.

Where are those buyers?

Nigel Clarke, GRI - Homes in Northern VA (Keller Williams Realty) — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 16:59:07 -0600

I've found that the number of buyers this year in the Metro DC area are way below the norm. Even adjusting for the slow market (sellers becoming buyers when their house sells) they haven't been doing much here.

Is it the mid-term election or the press reports of a slow down. Are there still too many real estate agents in the area - we've lost a lot this year already? Can we expect the NAR ad's to have any impact on the DC area market?

If you have any good answers I'd love to hear about them.