Westchester View

How on earth does the consumer choose an agent? With so much hype, smoke and mirrors that the actually process can seem about as clear as mud.   Sadly, there is no foolproof way to do so, but there are pros and cons to any method. Here are some typical methods that sellers seem to use:

You have a friend who just got licensed.…and he/she acts as if she already owns your listing….so why not?

Watch out here…your friend may be very competent – but  competence and excellence are things that are often learned on-the-job in this field.   Does your friend know the market well?  Have they marketed a home for sale before?   If prices are depreciating and your friend doesn’t know how to market and price your home, you are losing money every week you have this person as your agent.   This should not be a decision based on friendship.  A lot of money is at stake.  But take heart – I do offer a possible solution to this dilemma later on.

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This is a great discussion of the history of staging your home.  Written by my Ninja Stager – Marie Graham.  It discusses with humor the stages that staging a home for sale has gone through.  Right now, I do not believe that staging is an option.  To move homes in times with high inventories and buyers nickeling and diming  like crazy, staging is necessary – though it does not have to cost an arm and a leg.  Enjoy the post, it is cleverly written and has a lot of wit and wisdom in it.

Ruthmarie Hicks.

The Genesis of Staging (OR – in the beginning, there were breakfast trays, and it was good)

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Debbie Gartner is “The Flooring Girl” and she has some excellent tips for home owners who are thinking of selling in the next 1-3 years.  Flooring is huge these days as Westchester NY buyers increasingly turn their noses up at wall-to-wall carpeting.  Adding hardwood to carpeted areas or refinishing floors that you have covered with carpet can add real dollar value to your home. 

Enjoy the reblogged article and check out Debbie’s blog The Flooring Girl

Ruthmarie Hicks

What types of flooring provide the best ROI? 

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Sadly, when I hear the word “trust” and “real estate” in the same question – my mind really turns to salad dressing.  They just don’t seem to mix at all.  We need look no further than YouTube to see evidence of the public mistrust of real estate “professionals”…and yes – that word is in quotations for a reason  – and here is why?

Almost anyone with a pulse and half a brain can get a real estate license:

This was something of a shock to me.   I came from a field that garnered a great deal of respect, but it took YEARS of post-graduate education to be  considered a professional.  Yet, in just 8 weeks – attending class twice a week – I was licensed to help the public purchase or sell what is generally their biggest financial asset. Does anyone see a disconnect here?

The result has been a cadre of agents  – some with significant business – that appear to have nearly nothing between the ears.  This is simply because the process is not selective.   Many agents  have indeed applied themselves to the process and have acquired a great deal of knowledge through their licensing classes, CE classes and designations – as well as on-the-job.   The trouble is, since almost everyone passes, how is the consumer able to  evaluate these agents.

Consumers are treated like shark chum:

If its easy to get started, why not try it? And thousands upon thousands of people do  just that every year.  If you can’t throw a rock without hitting an agent then there are simply waaaay too many agents for the amount of business available.  Since agents are only paid when a transaction closes, that creates fierce competition for every qualified buyer or seller.

Desperation is a powerful motivator and it will induce many agents to do or say literally anything to secure the buyer or the listing.   I always refer to the monthly list of expired listings as the “feeding frenzy.”   There are agents that are all over hundreds of  homeowners a month like a bad rash.

When buyers walk into open houses they often feel as though they are under assault by an army of agents all of them trying to convince buyers that they are the only buyers agent for them.

If agents have any doubts about how the buyers and sellers feel about the predatory behavior – the videos below pretty much sum up public sentiment:

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That question seems to haunt me these days.  Sometimes it seems that the price for leaving my home to buy  a quart of milk is to be asked that question at least once.  Unfortunately, I generally leave my crystal ball at home.

The answer to that question in part depends on how you define “recover”.  I’m not trying to be cute here.  A buyers definition of “recover” may be entirely different from a sellers perspective which is different still from a homeowner who simply wants to refinance  but can’t because of tighter lending standards.

To buyers who are turning up their noses at what I believe to be a once-in-a -lifetime opportunity – I often respond that the market will recover a year before they decide they have to buy.  Those who are determined to time  the bottom of a market are destined to miss it.

For sellers, the answer is more complex.  What sellers are looking for is a robust market with a substantial price hike from present values.  Although all bad things come to an end, if you are looking for the glory days of 2005-2006, you will probably have a long wait.

Some areas are recovering while others decline:

Some parts of Westchester NY  are already recovering. In areas such as Scarsdale and Larchmont, we saw our fair share of competitive bidding this year.  This breath of fresh air was restricted to single-family homes in specific municipalities.  Prices in these areas are well off their lows in spite of continuing declines elsewhere.  But   some markets that had been remarkably resistant to correction took a  sickening nosedive in prices.  If you live in a high-end cooperative or a townhouse, you probably know what I am talking about.

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The real estate industry is something of a black box to consumers. Agents hype their marketing in order to win listings. Consumers often buy into the hype because on the surface, it makes sense.   However, if you dig a little deeper, you might be surprised to see what actually rocks and what flops.

The MLS  Rocks:

The multiple listing service or MLS really, really rocks.  Our MLS has over 6000 agents.  So when you list your property on the MLS – you automatically put  6000 agents to work trying to find a buyer for your home.  You simply can’t beat that!

Anyone can load a so-so listing on the MLS – but it takes a good marketer to make it pop. Great photos are an absolute must!   Buyers expect them and will eliminate homes that don’t have them.  Think of the MLS photo display as your “first showing”. For the same reasons a high-quality video or slideshow is no longer optional.

Signage  Rocks:

Having a sign in front of the home with a sign rider guiding the buyer to a web page about the home always rocks. I buy a domain name for each listing and add QR codes for those with smart phones.  Fliers help too – if they don’t end up scattered all over the place.  The key here is to get the interested party to as much viable information as possible as quickly as possible.

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These days no listing appointment is complete without a discussion about “staging”.  Real estate mogul Barbara Corcoran concurs that staging is no longer an option, but a necessity.  For selling your home in Westchester,  I couldn’t agree more.  You are no longer dealing with an option – buyers expect to see a furnished, peaceful space.   In this market buyers have nothing BUT choices.  Selling your home is going to be  a challenge no matter HOW LONG it takes.  Your home does need to stand out.  but that doesn’t mean that you need to break the bank.

Ninja Stager -Marie Graham shoes what can be done  with a little paint and strategic furniture placement – she transformed a condo from ho-hum to wow!  The unit had languished on the market for a year – but after staging sold in a month. 

Hope you enjoy this post – and that it helps you understand that staging doesn’t have to be a money pit – and the money you do send could be money in the bank. 

All the best!

Ruthmarie

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A few days ago, I wrote a post “Meet the new real estate agent… same as the old agent.”  The article was posted on here in The Westchester View and on  Active Rain which caters to the real estate industry.  Based on the lively comment thread on Active Rain,  some agents misunderstood what I was trying to say.   The article was not meant to imply that all listing agents were the same and that it didn’t matter at all who the homeowner picked.   That is most certainly not true.

What I was emphasizing in that first post was that an agent can not defy market forces.  If prices are down and the market is a bear  which is the case for most of Westchester homes for sale, then  even the most stellar agent will NOT be able to get you a 2006 price in 2011.  The notion that the “right agent” will get the seller “their price” is a fallacy which dies a slow hard death for many sellers.

The Expired Listing Gold Rush:

The real estate industry created this urban legend in many ways.   Let’s take expired listings as an example.  If you are a home owner who had a listing expire – you know what I mean.  The minute your listing expired, seemingly  thousands of agents came out of the woodwork trying to convince you that they could do a better job.   They descend upon sellers like sharks in a feeding frenzy.  Sellers don’t like to think about their homes a chum – but sadly, that’s the reality.

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Of course this is a play on “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.”  But what I am trying to address here is that many people think changing real estate agents will help a listing that is not selling.  One agent is as good as another, so if one doesn’t “perform” then we just move on to the next.  Commoditization of the work force seems to be the order of the day – so it is somewhat natural that buyers and sellers would treat real estate agents the same way.

Sometimes change can be a good thing.  If your agent isn’t doing a good job marketing your home, bringing in a new agent may be the answer.  But in other cases, and perhaps more often than not in this crazy market – it  will make little or no difference in the final outcome. In fact, it could actually work against a seller to do this.

Agents have limited control over the final sales price…

One dirty little secret of real estate is that an agent  has a very limited ability to influence the final sales price.   We can help you get the most that the market will allow….but beyond that we too are at the mercy of market forces.  The notion that we can beat the bushes through saturation bombing marketing  and pull out the ONE buyer willing to pay a premium for your home  because of its special features is the stuff of urban legend.
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