Real Estate Marketing

Why Do Homes Sell?

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Everyone in real estate claims to sell it faster and for more. Nice. Pick the right agent and magically your home will sell at the top of the market before you can even start packing.

Does that sound a bit like a late-night pitch for the latest miracle product? It should.  A home sells quickly because an able buyer finds a home in the condition, location, and price they are seeking.  That’s it. 

So the selling agent needs to help you select a price that is low enough to attract a buyer, but high enough to meet your expectations.  Then the agent needs to make certain that your home is found by as many potential buyers as possible.  On your side, you need to make certain the home is in top condition.

Now there are a few other factors that can impact this simple formula.  The buyer’s agent has to be motivated to show your home over the one down the street that is similar to yours. We do that by offering a fee. Last year when there were only 3500 homes for sale in the valley and 5 buyers for every home offered, that fee was as low as 1% of the selling price. 

We currently have about 30,000 homes for sale in the Phoenix area. Homes offered to the buyer’s agent at rates below 3% will not be shown very often. The average agent only has 12 or 15 clients each year. They are not going to make it up in volume. The higher the offer to the buyer’s agent, the more likely the buyer’s agent will be to recommend seeing your home.  Many New Home Builders offer over 4% to have their properties shown over a competitor’s development.

Pick Me, Pick Me

Sometimes real estate I feel like I am back on the basketball court trying to get on a team.  Read any real estate magazine and nicely dressed folks are all saying they can jump higher and shoot farther.

If you were interviewing potential employees for a position as Director of Sales and Marketing, how would you go about selecting the right person? 

Reading these ads you don’t see much reference to education or relevant experience.  If you were interviewing me you would find that I have earned a bachelors and masters degree from Northern Arizona University. That, I have been involved in real estate since 1998 and selling real estate full time since 2001.  

During our talk, you would discover that most of my past work experience involved sales and marketing of education.  I was one of the first folks in Arizona to manage Distance Learning. So I was responsible for finding the students to take our new form of education. Maybe not exactly the same task as selling homes, but in 1985 not many people saw the value of taking a college course on video or over the telephone. It was my job to make certain the classrooms were full. Something I was very good at doing.