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Archives for September 2008
The Five Stages of Real Estate Grief
There are three factors that determine the sale of a home.
- Location
- Condition
- Price
What good news! Why? You have nearly complete control over 66% of what sells a home. Granted, you cannot change the condition of the surrounding properties or the type of construction of your property. I mean, you could raze your house and rebuild a completely different style home, provided your HOA didn’t prevent it, but then you’d be throwing good money after bad as you created a home that didn’t fit the surroundings. The condition of the surrounding homes has mostly to do with location anyway, so you really do have control over most of the consumer response to your home.
There are five stages of grief that, if you are not in touch with reality, you will traverse throughout your experience selling a house. Why is this? Well, selling a home isn’t like selling off your possessions at a garage sale. Garage sales are usually designed to eliminate junk. Your home is a very personal space, and you’ve grown very attached to it, most likely.
My job is to provide you with the right information to help you make an informed decision about how you should price your home, and what you can do to improve its chances of selling.
In todays market, of the determining factors that you can control, price carries the most weight, and many sellers have fallen victim to “rear view mirror” thinking. Newsflash! The gig is up. We have to price our homes in line with what buyers are willing to pay. Remember that the value of a home is determined upon close of escrow. Asking more than it will sell for does not declare the new value on the block. The actual sale price of a neighboring like property combined with an appraisal is what is going to help you price your home properly.
Stage 1: Denial. Nobody is exempt from feeling this if their expectations are out of line. Not even real estate agents these days are pricing their properties realistically. If you enter the transaction with a realistic outlook on what your home can actually get in the marketplace, you’ll be able to avoid the denial that accompanies the let down after your property has chased the market.
Stage 2: Anger. Obviously if you’ve felt the loss of thousands of dollars (albeit on paper only, which makes the situation even crazier because you never had the money in the first place) then you’re going to experience all five phases. To what degree is determined by how quickly you can bounce back from fantasy land. You will be angry about waiting too long to sell. You’ll be angry when you realize that your Realtor was right when he/she recommended a much lower price bracket than you insisted upon. Get over it. It’s time to sell your home. Make the adjustments now and minimize your losses (remember, that didn’t even exist in the first place.) And, if you are actually experiencing more than just losses on paper, that’s all the more reason why you should price your home right, the first time.
Stage 3: Bargaining. Through your anger you’ll find yourself justifying why things are the way they are. You’ll begin to think things like, “If only I had.” “Maybe if we try this we can still salvage our…” Nope. You’re where you are now, just get it sold. Listen to your Realtor. He or she does this every day and sees people go through this process all the time. Trust us, we are here to help you move on with your lives.
Stage 4: Depression. This is where you’ll want to give up. Perhaps you might even consider taking your home off the market because you’ll find no point in selling. Most people can’t afford to hold two or more properties. Lots of people can’t even afford one property these days, especially after getting into the financial trouble that lenders allowed. You may even want to let your Realtor off the hook and find someone else to sell the home. Trust the Realtor you have. If he’s done his homework and is working hard for you, stick with it. We dread working our tails off to be a victim of the fourth stage of grief, which usually ends in you finding another Realtor who advises you to drop your price only to sell where your first Realtor had already suggested you price your home.
Stage 5: Acceptance. If you’re a healthy person, you’ll probably make it here quickly. In fact, if you’re a healthy person, you will probably avoid this entire process of grief through the idea of losing your yet unrealized equity gains in your home.
I can’t stress enough how important it is to price your home to sell. If you’re serious about selling your house, think about the cost in your lives of the process of selling. You may own two homes, you may have added utility bills through the process…you name it. The cost of pricing your home too high can last far longer than it’s worth. Your time is important. If you’re not actually serious about selling your house, then you probably shouldn’t list it at all.
Are you happy with your real estate situation? If not, please give me a call and I’ll help you move from point A to point B in as few steps as possible so you can go about the business of living and enjoying your life.
Dipped in Chrome: Impressed As Usual
Firstly, let me express to you that I am not a developer. I don’t intend to design any applications for the web, nor do I intend to contribute to the open source movement which has just received a shot in the arm by Google’s new browser: Chrome. Today is the first day that I’ve had the pleasure, yes the pleasure of using it. In fact, I’m writing this post inside of Chrome now.
History of the Browser
The reason you may not know anything about the history of the browser is because you entered the internet arena too late. Netscape, Internet Exploder, Mozilla Firefox, Safari, and now Chrome are a part of my browsing experience, pretty much in that order. And that represents my evolution through time over the past 13 years. (Excuse me while I zone out for two seconds listening to “Between Us and Them” by Ulrich Schnauss.)
I’m back.
There are so many users on the internet today who rely on Internet Explorer as their primary browsing tool. When asked, “what are you using to browse the internet,” it’s expected that a majority of the users out there will say something like, “my computer,” or “microsoft,” or “XP.” In all cases, they are correct, usually. The problem is that the question wasn’t specific enough…and even when it is, the specific question of “what browser are you using on your computer which is running Microsoft XP?”
Blank stare.
Right. You know why? Because Microsoft embedded the browser inside of the operating system. When you boot your computer, it’s one of the free applications that you already have. That is why it dominates most markets. It has taken over so vastly that corporations whose applications cost millions to develop are stuck using older versions of Internet Explorer until they spend additional millions developing for a better browser, which has been, arguably, until today, Firefox by Mozilla.
Now we have something new. We have something by Google, and we all know that Google is taking over the world…and most of us don’t really care, because they are so good at what they do. Google released today the newest in the browser arena called Chrome. Do we need it? Probably not. Will it cause development issues? Probably. Will it seed the internet for expansive growth beyond our wildest imaginations? Absolutely. Introducing open source technologies (that’s where the community at large contributes to the design and programming of applications) is what fuels this massive machine of exploding growth.
Is it overwhelming? You bet. But, the coolest tools we’ve seen emerge over the past 5 years have been a result of open source projects. Mind you, it’s also a source of great frustrations at times due to the fact that some programmers are good, and some are not, and sometimes their work is supported, and other times abandoned. But, since it is open source, others can run with it and make it better. It’s essentially the least expensive way to hire brilliant talent without spending a cent.
So here’s the problem. The median age of licensed realtors today is around 51 years. This places them in a unique position, which is atop a technology fence. Most kick and scream until they fall off the wrong side, but some of the leap with glee to towards the future, embracing change and understanding the nevver ending innovations that come about. Since Microsoft embedded Internet Exploder in its operating system years ago, the majority of these people use it so much they don’t even know they use it.
Why do I like Chrome?
Well, I have used it to open less than 20 web pages so far, but in doing so, my keyboard habits seem to be understood inherently in the features offered. CTRL-T opens a new tab, just as expected, to the far right of all of the other open tabs.
If I CTRL click a link, a new tab is opened, but the great feature in Chrome that I haven’t experienced before is that it inserts the tab to the right of the tab from which you CTRL clicked, keeping them right next to each other. This is very important for someone who utilizes CTRL-TAB while browsing. CTRL-TAB switches from one tab to the next in succession across the top. Shift-CTRL-TAB reverses the direction. Another cool feature is the visual effects and accessibility of downloaded files. Try it. Right click an image and watch where it goes and how easy it is to access the file without leaving the browser. Brilliant. Setup was simple and took less than 2 minutes, importing not only all of my bookmarks (shortcuts for you old timers in IE), but also all of my saved passwords. Until I have a bit more experience with it, I’ll keep my mouth shut about it, but so far I expect it’s going to handle everything that I need it to do, much better than its competition.
Thank you Google!
Movies Will Never Be The Same, “In a world…”
I wondered if this day would ever come, and it has. I love the movies. I especially love watching the previews so I can see the next movie that’ I’m going to see. Of course, the trailers paint a much different picture than the final product, but they’re almost their own little short film. The sound of those trailers will live on forever in my mind, but we won’t be hearing trailers the same way we used to. That mysterious deep voice rumbling beneath the action, mystery and horror of the movie preview has been extinguished with the death of Don Lafontaine. Ironically, he died when his lung collapsed. Who’s going to sell Hollywood now?
Oh, and thanks a lot Channel 12 for stealing the Geico advertisement campaign during the Olympic games with that really lame voice-over parody…or was that supposed to be serious? Nice try.
“In a world where Don LaFontaine no longer chills us to the bone comes the hilarious comedy by the people who brought you…”
August Market Wrap Up
August 2008, a mere 3 years since the height of our most recent over-inflated boom, has come to a close.
In August, we saw 5833 properties sell at an average sales price of $254,920. The average asking price on properties that sold in August was $245,818 and it took an average of 113 days for those to sell. Homes currently on the market have been so for approximately 94 days on average.
In the Rental market, we currently see a total of 8,905 properties available for lease. In August, 2030 properties were leased at an average rental asking price of roughly $1300/month.
We currently have 51,807 active listings on the MLS with 42,479 of those being Single Family Detached. Last Monday, this number was at 43,705, representing a 2.8% decrease in the number of homes on the market.
The average sales price for the week ending 8/31/08 was up 14.79% to $280,430 and the number of homes sold in this same period almost doubled to 2110. Keep in mind that statistics and business that we see recorded today is a result of market conditions and activity in the past. That is what makes forecasting so difficult. We never know what the future results of our current actions will be.
It’s taking about 109 days to sell a home across the MLS. The average asking price fell slightly from the previous week to $408,001.