For our lead story this month, our reporters at Realtor/Builder Connection asked some of Northeast Florida’s leading Realtors what they think is needed to sell a house. This article reminded me of a friend who put his own house on the market in Jacksonville in late summer of 2006, right at the infancy of what has become a long housing slump.
My friend fully expected that his home would probably move quickly. After all, it was about 3,400 square feet, sitting on the 13th fairway of a very nice golf course, and the recent activity in his area seemed to have been active. At the time it appeared to him that we were still in a good market.
But, it didn’t turn out that way, and he and his wife spent almost four years, watching the months fall away and monthly mortgage payments and other costs shatter his cash flow.
Because they had already bought a new property, the burden of the old house remaining on the market became huge. Fortunately, the house sold this spring, but only after my friend had dropped his asking price by almost $300,000.
So, I thought that in addition to hearing from Realtors about what it takes to sell a house, I’d ask him what he thought helped him finally sell his house in this market. Was it just hitting bottom on the price?
Absolutely not, he said. Sure, it was important to find a price that was both marketable and competitive while not going upside down and losing everything.
But, he said, it was a good Realtor who made the difference.
The Realtor who sold his house was not his first, but his third. Not wanting to criticize anybody, he said he thought it more important to talk about what the third and final Realtor did right that made a difference.
First, he said, she communicated with him, telling him from the very first day what she wanted to do to get the house sold. “One thing she did that was important was sell herself,” he said. “She seemed to have the attitude that if she shows she can market herself and her own assets, I’d get the idea she could sell my house.” When checking out the Realtor, he discovered she had been reasonably successful in some very difficult economic times.
The Realtor, he said, explained why she wanted to do things differently, like the way the house was staged, and especially the way it was marketed. In the past, my friend felt his previous Realtors had not been very aggressive, but instead had used an approach of waiting until someone came to them. The new Realtor, he said, grabbed the bull by the horns.
“She said up front that she believed in being aggressive and proactive. Sitting back and waiting on something to happen was not her style,” he said. And, he said, the Realtor projected that she could move the house within three months, something he did not really believe, especially since this was just before Thanksgiving.
His new Realtor didn’t just have him move his furniture around or move some of it out. She brought in some of her own pieces, plants and art to give the house a different feel, making it seem larger than before. She opened up things, increased lighting and even had him paint a couple of rooms.
He said that he was about at the point of doing anything. The Realtor stayed in constant contact, letting him know everything going on. And, she suggested a new pricing for him, given current market conditions and how houses were selling in his area of Jacksonville.
“I’ll never forget the say she called to say a family she’d been courting was very interested in buying, and they wanted to close within 30 days,” he recalled. “From that minute until the deal was actually done, I started feeling like a huge weight had been lifted, one that I’d begun to think would never go away unless it was for a negative reason.”
What’s most interesting about this story is the value he attributed to the Realtor: the personal hands-on relationship with the seller, the aggressive marketing and especially the constant communication.
Sound familiar? It’s like most everything else in life. Hard work, being creative and communicating do make a difference.
On a little different note, we do have people in our industries who work very hard and make a big difference, both in the lives of their clients and often in their communities. The first is often about the paycheck. The latter is more about the human spirit.
That’s why I want to encourage more of you to participate in our efforts to recognize and reward Realtors and builders who step up to change the environment around them and improve the lives of their neighbors. They don’t do it for recognition, but in recognizing those who go above and beyond, we have a real opportunity not only to salute the best among us, but to learn something valuable about ourselves.
– Jim Bailey is president of Bailey Publishing & Communications and is the publisher of Realty/Builder Connection.