In Austin, we work with lots of engineers, entrepreneurs and CEO's who run their own companies. Our clients ask lots of questions about the real estate market, whether we run into them at an event or we're out showing them homes. They want to know about the market in detail--- What's the current inventory? How many homes have recently sold? What did they sell for? How many days were they on the market? Price per square foot? It seems everyone is always interested in real estate. While agents generally know what is going on at any given time, specific data or the lack thereof can make or break an agent's credibility.
So several years ago, we decided to put together our own company Real Estate Market Report. We wanted something with our brand and flavor that was a simple tool for the team to use to explain the current market. We looked at a lot of the professionally produced ones that sucked the data out of the MLS into a fancy report, but they were often complicated to understand and sometimes drew wrong conclusions from the mined data. Our goal was to keep it really simple, but with data that would impress our engineer entrepreneur crowd, and was easy enough for even a first time home buyer to understand.
So, we put together a template report of easy to read charts and graphs that has become the number one tool in our business. We pull the data by hand each month from the MLS. We do it on about the 4th of the month to give agents who close at the end of the month time to put in their closed data. It takes about an hour each month to pull the data we want to populate into the report. When the report is finished, it gives the sales and inventory statistics by price band and zip code for all of the areas that we work. The current market stats are important in writing good contracts, negotiating offers and price changes, getting our listings priced correctly and being able to position ourselves as the market experts. While you can get much of the same information in reports printed from the MLS, the value of pulling the data ourselves is invaluable. It gets us intimately in touch with the numbers and plays a big role in our success.
Our real estate market reports are posted on our website, dripped out to our subscribers, used to keep in touch with prospective clients that are quite ready to buy or sell and, most importantly, the centerpiece for all of our buyer and seller consultations.
Visit LauraDuggan.com to watch my webinar on creating and using Market Reports or visit me at my company website at WestAustin.com
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