[photopress:fsbo_article1.jpg,thumb,alignright]Over the holiday, we were talking to a man in Shoreline getting his house ready for sale in the Spring of 2007.  I promised to give my thoughts on his “selling it himself”.  Clearly agents aren’t experts on how to sell your house all by yourself, in fact, we are quite the opposite.  But I have helped people do this from time to time over the years, and am genuinely happy when they can achieve their stated goal, whatever that may be.

I found this article at the same place that I found the photo.  It’s as good as any out there, I’d say.  If anyone has others to recommend, please post them in the comments section.

I know some companies, like Microsoft, have internal online forums where they can post their For Sale By Owner Properties.  If anyone can post results of that method, we’d like to hear from you.

Craig’s List, of course, is a good place to put an ad, but you pretty much have to stay on top of re-doing it when it expires.

I think any method is worth trying for 30-45 days IF you try it early in the year.  The downside of For Sale By Owner, is if it doesn’t work, and you get on market late, you can lose the best months of the selling season.

If you are planning to “honor agents”, in other words allow for a Buyer Agent Fee as a FSBO, then you might as well pay the extra to be a “For Sale By Owner” in the mls.  There are several companies that offer this service, and while it is true that some agents may boycott you and not show your house, if you have one of those houses that will “sell itself”, then that should not affect you much.

The main advantage of being in the mls, is that buyers who look on the internet at homes will not miss you, even if their agent does.  They will see your house and ask their agent to see it.  Agent’s might not show your home if the buyer doesn’t notice, but I doubt they will refuse to show it, if their buyer client asks to see it.  “Bidding up” is one of the advantages of being in the mls.  Getting a single buyer to pay what you ask is OK, but getting a couple who bid each other up is more likely to happen, IF it is going to happen, based on the higher exposure afforded you by being in the mls.

That said, my main advice is to be LISTED, really LISTED, by April 15 or May 1.  So if you are going to try to sell it yourself, try not to miss the main selling season by doing it too late, or for too long.  If it is going to work, you will probably know that within the first 10 days to two weeks.

If it were me, I’d try no fee at all for two weeks with a sign and Craig’s list.  Then I’d tier up to a “FSBO in the mls”, and then full list, if needed, after 30 days.  That gives you 45 days of trying without full fees.  If it is going to work, I’d say 45 days to 60 at most oughta do it.

Try having some relative strangers look at it before any real buyers.  I often ask people outside, neighbors mostly, to walk through and tell me anything negative that they see.  After looking at the house while staging it for hours or days, I sometimes get blinded to small details.  Every single time, they notice some obscure little thing that I can fix before real buyers see it.  It’s very helpful and people are more than willing to help.  Don’t ask them, what they think.  They may feel obligated to say it looks great.  Specifically ask them to find negatives.

Just my thoughts.  As I said, we in the business are clearly not the experts on how to do it without us 🙂

You’ve got to get MAD! You have to say, “I’m a human being, God Dammit, my life has value!

I realized when Noah of Urban Digs commented this morning, that when I said I don’t read NYC blogs, his and Curbed and Christine’s, it’s not because they are about NYC.  I read many other blogs that are about their local environs.  It’s because “I’m as mad as hell” at NYC for not having Buyer Agency.

Truth is I’ve been mad since August 20th, 2006, when Christine commented to this post, comment #28 “A month a go or so, there was a debate that went from this blog to just about every blog from here to kingdom come, regarding “Buyer Agency

We hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving Day!  We thank you for your support this year.  Those who read us, those who take the time to comment here, those who link to us, those who have nominated us and awarded us, and everyone who has helped us to grow, more this year than ever. [photopress:th.jpg,full,alignright]

I’ve often thought realtors were the first to feel trend changes and now I’m going to step out of my comfort zone and say that I feel a change in the air. I tried to make a low offer today for a client on an Edmonds condo for $599,000 and it sold on Monday for full price. Another, a home in NewCastle with several showings today that looks like it will also go for full price with multiple offers for $550,000. I’m thinking the bottom feeders are full and that we’re soon going to get back to our normally uptrending market. I’ve heard that most homeowners decide to sell during the Holiday season when they are disatisfied with their homes while entertaining, and then they start looking to upgrade in January. Anyone know any facts to support this?

I also got a cold call from a Baltimore developer this week looking for hot projects in the Puget Sound area since it’s supposed to be the hottest in the nation over the next 10 years. We may work together on 3 projects we have ready to build. I have another appointment with an investor that buys first phase new construction, a plat at a time and we’re meeting in December.

Nothing I can quantify, just the feelings of a trend change.

Here are MLS statistics for October. 

* Existing home transactions sold increased 3% in October 2006 from September 2006. 

* 49.8 acreage parcels sold monthly, up 13%; average price: $297,031, up 50% from last year. 

* New single family homes units sold in October 2006 off 18% from September 2006. 

* Condominium unit sales off 8% in September 2006 from August 2006. 

Projection: 

䀃 Relative inventory decreased to 2.8 months. Prices will increase. 

䀃 Expect some seasonal slowing through the start of 2007. 

[photopress:tall.jpg,thumb,alignright]Sometimes when we call for an appointment to preview a property, a homeowner doesn’t like to accommodate us, if we are not bringing the buyer with us.  Sometimes they even get mad when we decide, based on our evaluation, to NOT bring the buyer to see their home.  As in, “Who the #*&# are YOU to decide that the buyer shouldn’t even SEE my house?!”  With all of the photos in the mls, I have to say that we do not have to preview as much as we did in the past.  Thank you for THAT technological advance!! But we cannot totally irradicate the need to preview property.

The best example is the tall client who likes old houses. Many years ago, I had a client named Bruce who was 6’4″ and his wife LOVED older houses.  I remember yelling down the stairs, “Bruce!  Get up here and stand in this shower, please!”  He and his wife both came upstairs with very puzzled looks on their faces.  This was “the” house…the one they wanted to make an offer on.  I said, “I don’t think Bruce fits in the shower”.  So Bruce took off his shoes and stood in the tub and the shower head was at his nose.  They did buy the house, but with “informed consent”, meaning Bruce acknowledged his willingness to duck every day for the rest of his life to wash his hair 🙂

As usual, history repeats itself and I have a tall, soon-to-be husband, looking for a remodeled bungalow in Seattle.  House says 1,300 sf.  Sounds good.  I look at the tax record and find that half of that square footage is up, where the ceilings have funny angles, or down in the basement.  I have to preview the property to see if my client “fits” in the house, before calling him to come and see it.  Last week she loved, loved, loved the house!  He only fit into a two foot square, up in the bedroom. LOL

So far, all of those pictures in the internet do not totally irradicate our need to preview property.  So homeowners, we apologize, but sometimes we come alone, and then come back another time with our buyer clients IF after previewing, we determine your house is a “good fit” for our client.

[photopress:ei.jpg,thumb,alignright]I keep thinking about Dustin’s question regarding being able to go back into previous years, to determine if there were more or less active listings than today.  Haven’t come up with the right answer yet, but came up with this random observation.

On 11/20/06 at 3:55:13 p.m., NWMLS was up to 191,000 listings taken.  Last year at about the same time, 11/20/05 at 4:14:29 p.m., only 172,054 listings had been entered by NWMLS members. 

Of course, that doesn’t tell us what we want to know, as NWMLS took on more territory over that time, so the increased number of listings could simply be new territory covered.  But at the same time they cracked down harder on the same house having more than one listing number, so it could balance out.  But they have not eradicated the ability to have a new listing number.

Seems to me this mls system of numbering in sequence could be useful, if somehow the mls would assign numbers by county, in sequence.  If they would not permit different numbers for one address ever.  If you couldn’t list in two areas at the same time, causing one listing to look like two.  Some tweaking would be needed, but it could be done.

Another would be for someone much more geeky than I to reassign listing numbers, through some auto function, like the way Asset Realty Group seems to have a system to capture all “new listings”.  They could capture only King County, and have their separate program assign new numbers in sequence, or simply count them.

Seems like the mls system of starting over every year, so that 24xxxxxx swithces to 25xxxxxx to 26xxxxxx as we say “Happy New Year!” is a little “old hat”, since it’s been around for as long as I can remember.  Perhaps a different numbering system would provide agents with an analytical tool worth having.

Just a random thought, before I go bake 8 pumpkin pies, while reviewing the two offers on my desk.  Sometimes having two offers at once is not as good as having one at a time.  At least they have two different response times.  I think I can “leap frog” them…

[photopress:images_1_2_3.jpg,thumb,alignright]My clients ask me all kinds of questions. Like, “How do I cook my very first Thanksgiving dinner in my little apartment, with my boyfriend’s Mom coming into town!?”

I overdo it myself, cooking two turkeys instead of just one, for example. I promised the real estate forum that I would brine one of them first, and do a brined vs. not brined taste test. Yeah, agent forums do go “off topic” from time to time.

I have a question for you out there. Do I come up with a vegetarian entre for those guests? Or do I leave them to eat everything except the turkey? We have salmon for those who can eat fish but not turkey. We have plenty of other stuff. But is it insulting not to have a main entre that is not fish or meat? My soup has little meatballs. My gravy is made from turkey stock…so that rules out mashed potatoes and gravy. What is an appropriate “meal” to serve a vegetarian coming to Thanksgiving dinner so that they feel like you paid some adequate attention?

Your thoughts appreciated.

[photopress:wa.gif,thumb,alignright]In keeping with my theme of Brainstorming and implementing changes to get ready for 2007, I’m focusing on #5 and Blogthoughts.

There’s that whole Google vs. MSN Search thing Dustin and I toss about from time to time.  Basically it’s about should an agent be more worried about searching well locally, than being “nationally” famous.  At least from my perspective that’s what it’s about. Seems to me it’s kind of a Catch 22.  You have to be “nationally” famous in the search engines, to be locally searchable by those you want to find you.

I’m going to pretty much have to go with Dustin on that one.  Mainly because MSN is just too fickle to count on.  When I get to number 2 or 3 on Google, I pretty much stay there.  Maybe I’ll drop down to #4 and then back up to #3 once in a while.  But MSN Search…what’s up with THAT!  You can be NUMBER 2, and go back a week later and you’re on PAGE 4!  Freaks me out.  So I’ll have to agree with Dustin.  Struggling to figure out what the heck MSN likes on any given day is too much effort for such a short lived and volatile result.

Then you have Grow-A-Brain, the Super Duper Search engine giant, but what good does the content there do a for real estate agent?  Seems like Hanan puts a lot of time and effort in that, but literally no real estate related content.  Are “fans” worth the effort?  Have to ask him.

Urban Digs won the Inman Award and I think they do the perfect job of balancing local with national with real estate, etc…  I don’t read them much or link to them, because they are so NYC, which is miles apart from Pacific Northwest on most things, including buyer agency issues, which they don’t appear to have in NYC.  Makes their advices regarding how to negotiate, etc… not appropriate here.  But, yes, I think they are a great one to try to emulate, for sure.

Of course nothing searches better than RainCityGuide.com, and it’s one that others should emulate. Looks like Greg Swann over at Bloodhound Blog is already getting there by inviting a couple of extra writers for his Dual Agency Smackdown.  We can all learn from that one.  Inviting two opposing view heavy weights into the ring?  Guy’s got guts.

Curbed? Same issue as Urban Digs.  I sometimes wonder if they have a team of journalists out there getting the local info.  Great site, but very, very NYC.  Great for them, don’t get me wrong, but not much there I need to read.   I don’t think I’d like a site that is TOO local…but maybe I’ve got that wrong.

I wonder sometimes how the trafic on the highly searchable newspaper type blogs compare to RainCityGuide.com  And I really, really wonder how this blog  with no entries since July of 2005 beats the pants off of most when you google “real estate blog Seattle”.  Seriously, how can that blog place higer than Marlow’s Blog?

Would appreciate it if the people who read real estate blogs would chime in here with which real estate blogs they read and why.  Regardless of where you are in the Country, it would be nice to have the consumer perspective regarding what real estate sites and blogs they like to read.  Sometimes we are just to “IN’ it to evaluate properly.  Your telling us what you like to read, and DO read, on a regular basis, can help us fine tune our blog strategy for 2007.  “Our” being “bloggers” generally, and not RCG…Dustin seems to have that one “down”.

On behalf of RCG, I would like to express our sincere condolences to the family and friends of the young man who was killed yesterday.  I apologize for not having his name, it is now released and I heard it on the news, but it is not in the paper from this morning nor can I find it in the internet at the moment.  But I didn’t want to delay our message of sympathy and sincere condolences.

He was a young 31 year old man who relocated here from my home State, Pennsylvania, to work at Microsoft.  A freak accident.  An upper portion of a crane fell across 108th Avenue in Downtown Bellevue, crashed into his apartment building, smashing his apartment and killing him.

My prayers go out to his family and also to his friends and co-workers here in our town.  I will add his name below so others can add his family to their prayers, when it appears in tomorrow’s paper.

The young man’s name is Matthew Ammon. 

Correcton: He was born in Pittsburgh and did work there at one time, but relocated here from a job in Kansas City.