My wife and I put our San Francisco condo on the market in February of this year and closed on the sale in March. We did well (which is to say we did OK and I'll take it). And now we are in the midst of shopping for a new home for our family in the suburbs. More to come on that later...
With that fresh in my mind, I thought I'd share a few insights from the mind of a seller in this turbulent market.
#1) In today's world, we didn't want any added risk from working with the wrong REALTOR
We found highly recommended Realtors from friends and colleagues, interviewed 3 of them in person and went with the one who we felt was on another level for three reasons. a) He told us the straight dope on pricing...not what we wanted to hear. b) He was just coming off the best year of his career in 2008. Not due to short sales - he had just killed it on normal business which told me the cream rose to the top. c) He was able to effectively communicate a real vision for marketing our home in the competitive San Francisco market.
#2) Like everyone else, I think my home is worth more than it is - you need to hold firm
The one area where we came closest to butting heads was over how to assess comps in our area. This is tricky in SF (as in many places) because there is so much variance in the value of specific pockets of neighborhoods. Being a data guy, I kept falling back on price per square foot (which naturally favored a higher list price than our Realtor was comfortable with). He listened, agreed but explained to me that that data was oversimplifying the issue. In the end we agreed on a price that was on the high end of the range he was comfortable with, but in the range. For me it was the lowest I was ready to go. And I'm glad he held firm there - we sold our home at 98% of the list. Any higher and it would have sat.
#3) I'm pretty savvy - and still intimidated by the paperwork
There is just no substitute for the experience of having to go through and fill out all the disclosures on the sale of your home. Scary. Great Realtors help you do this smartly, and sleep at night
#4) I appreciate proactive communication, and lots of it
Let's face it. This is a tough time to sell a home in even the best of areas. I get that, and I get that you don't have new information every hour. But if you do a great job of ensuring I feel like I have all the information available at any given time (our Realtor was great at this), that's all I need. I can't imagine how frustrated I would have been if things had seemed like a black box.
#5) Low interest rates are a two edged sword
One of my friends (I'm jealous) had been thinking about selling his home for similar reasons to mine. They'd been looking around, talking to Realtors, visiting open homes, etc when one day he got a surprising notice about his current mortgage rate resetting. His ARM had just reset to 2.7%. Let's just say that he's not sure anymore that now is the time to sell.
#6) Intent & effort matter a lot - results matter more
If you are lazy, uncommunicative, deceptive, inexperienced or otherwise incompetent - than I failed in my job of finding a great Realtor to work with (again why I'm all about referral). Let's assume that you are the opposite of these things, and I love working with you in every sense. The results still matter. If we do well (which in this market I'll rephrase as "if we do ok") you are a rockstar who I'm going to glow about to my friends. If you do everything right and we still come out of it hurting - sadly you're not going to get the rockstar review. Thankfully that didn't happen in our case...but I have seen it several times this year.
Next up...Inside the mind of today's Buyer.
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