Hope is not a strategy for getting homes sold!

We all exercise blind faith and hope in some fashion or another and it has its place in a well rounded joyful life. In a strong buyers market hope is not enough. What works in this market is a powerful marketing strategy, daily lead generation, active lead follow up, mass marketing, mass internet exposure and an agent with a national reputation that causes other agents to refer business to him or her. I recently sold 3 of my own listings, one buyer came from my personal sphere of influence. One buyer came from my national referral network and one buyer came from my marketing system that caused a buyer to call the 1-800 number from one of the 50 website where the home was marketed.

Even with all of that, absent the right price, commission and terms we never would have sold those homes. I recently had another example of how important price is in our market. I listed a home that was going into foreclosure the owner had it on the market for 6 months before we met. When we first listed 4-5 months ago I told him under $225,000 was the right number even though his 2 loans added up to over $235,000! After starting at his price of $259,000 we inched our way down month after month chasing the market down. Finally in the middle of March we were down to $239,900 and had a $190,000 offer (remember the market lost about 5-6% in that time frame). What happened next was very telling....

The bank stepped in around April 25th, and offered to accept a short sale meaning they would take less than what was owed to them so they wouldn't have to take the home back into inventory. The bank sent out its own appraiser who set the current market value at $210,000. We lowered the price to that number and within 9 days we had 6 offers, yes 6 offers after sifting through them all the seller accepted a cash offer from a buyer I was able to secure myself on the property. If you think price is not an issue....Re-read this post a few more times.

I hope you and your family are doing well. Please let me know if you know of anyone anywhere in the USA who needs an agressive agent to help them get the job done.