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I am working with a fledgeling tech startup (organized at startupweekend two weeks ago) to research an app for homesellers and would like to ask if there is anything about the process you feel could be improved upon or think should be changed.
Not so much the use of an agent, but more along the lines of things that you would like to see to reduce stress or be better informed. For instance - did you receive feedback after every showing? Was it helpful? Could you keep close track of your competition (others selling similar homes) to see how they were doing?
Anything you can think of is helpful. Feel free to contact me privately if needed. Tks.
1. It was a buyers' market when we sold. Buyers were looking at 50+ houses.
2. 26 open houses and 63 showings.
3. We had it professionally staged. The staging cost was $300+ per month.
4. It was in a prestigious neighborhood in Denver (Bonnie Brae).
5. It took 7 months.
6. It was stressful. For 7 months, we only one chair we could sit in. We cleaned every day. We agreed to every showing. Our record time for straightening up and gathering the 2 cats and exiting was 12 minutes. We spent way too many hours sitting in our car waiting for the non-buyers to show up, view and leave.
A. We wanted feedback, but did not always get it. Buyers' agents at that time were jerks.
It turns out, in hindsight, that feedback is useless.
a. "it does not have a 4th bedroom". No kidding. The listing says: 3.
b. "the backyard is too small". Well, my neighbor is not selling me any of his land and what part of 5000 sqft lot did you miss?
c. "the master bedroom is on the upper floor". It is, but we will flip the house upside down just for you.
d. "no dog run". We own cats. Who builds a cat run?
e. "no grass in the back yard". True. We had a patio and desk. And we will rip it out just for you.
f. "no 3rd bath". Did you read the listing, you idiot?
I believe that all feedback is just an excuse for: "I don't want to buy it".
We never got feedback about aspects that could be changed. For example, paint colors. Not one.
B. Comps. I build a spreadsheet for the neighborhood sales and tracked them using data from my agent.
Address Price Date House - SQFT Lot - SQFT $/SQFT House $/SQFT House ONLY Comments
117 rows.
As a nerd, I found it fun, but useless. All it told me was: our house was priced correctly and it was not selling.
Thank you for responding. Stepping back from that experience - what would have made it better ? (except for it selling faster). Sounds like you could have used an app to kill time while your house was being shown.
B. Comps. I build a spreadsheet for the neighborhood sales and tracked them using data from my agent.
Address Price Date House - SQFT Lot - SQFT $/SQFT House $/SQFT House ONLY Comments
117 rows.
As a nerd, I found it fun, but useless. All it told me was: our house was priced correctly and it was not selling.[/QUOTE]
Stepping back from that experience - what would have made it better?.
Nothing.
1. We had plenty of data.
2. We had lots of feedback.
3. We did not have to sell. We were selling because we had lived in our "dream house" for 24 years and had ants in our pants.
4. We had plenty of wine.
We were selling into a very unbalanced market. Buyers were obnoxious ṡhitheads.
Feedback is great, but only if the seller can change what's wrong. Clutter, paint color, smell, etc. I have a fabulous listing that backs to a busy road. Anyone looking at a map before showing can see that. Feeback is - the house is wonderful but the back yard is too noisy. Really? But I know there are people out there that really don't care and would rather have a super nice house for the money, the sellers just have to wait for that buyer...or drop price which seems to cover all problems.
Here is a question then since two people brought up the issue that buyers are shown houses that they don't want because of things they should have known: why do brokers show them these houses then ?
Is that a function of the listing not spelling it out (or conveniently leaving it out) or the buyers agent not doing their homework? Are these buyers that have requested to see the house or is it a broker just showing them around in hopes that something will click ?
26 open houses and 36 showings has got to be stressful. can't imagine there isn't something that you thought could have gone better. either that or you had a merlot IV...
I think what would help that if real estate agents asked what the seller's goal is.
1. Make money?
2. Sell quickly?
3. What else?
Our agent didn't ask any of these questions. It wasn't until a week AFTER we were on the market that I said to her, what price do we need to be to sell the house quickly? (She did know our timeline for moving). She said $80,000 less than you are listed. Um...then why did you price us so high?!?
Communicate, communicate, communicate!
Our agent communicated in several different ways, email, text and phone. IMO, NEVER text or email. There were so many typos and emails that we almost lost a sale. She used email to negotiate.
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My experience
