Intro: Welcome to Ready, Set, Sold, with your host Bryan Vogt. Are you wanting or even thinking about selling your house, but don’t know where to start? Good thing you’ve found Ready, Set, Sold. And now, real estate broker Bryan Vogt. (singing)
Bryan Vogt: Welcome to Ready, Set, Sold, with your host Bryan Vogt. Thanks so much for joining us and happy, happy Saturday. Hope you had a fantastic thanksgiving. I know I did and I know that my family did, and actually, the people I have with me today did too. I always say that a little tongue-in-cheek. If you don’t know, this is prerecorded, so Thanksgiving hasn’t happened yet, but I feel very confident that I’m going to have a very fantastic Thanksgiving. And also, I have a tournament; I play a Texas Hold’em tournament on Friday. This being Saturday, I’m sure I won that hands down.
So, all good there. Of course, we don’t play for money. We just play for the friendship of it. So, I just want to make sure there’s no legal issues there. With that said, I want to introduce two guests. Actually, two team members that I’m really happy could make it today. And that is Kelly Etheridge. She is a buyer, selling machine on our team that does a fantastic job with our clients. Kelly, thanks for being here.
Kelly Etheridge: Oh thanks for having me.
Bryan Vogt: Then we have our, I guess, basically, our mind. What do you call it, Kelly? What would you call it? The brain. That’s it. The brain. Not the mind. The brain, Kathy Popovich. She is with us today. She does a little bit of everything and helps us stay organized. So, Kathy, how you doing?
Kathy Popovich: I am very well. Thanks.
Bryan Vogt: What I want to talk about today, and one of the reasons why I brought them here is to kind of talk about one thing and one thing only, and that’s why it’s such a great idea, if you choose to, is putting your house in the market in the holiday season. When I mean the holiday season, I mean this week. Tomorrow, being Monday. Whatever it may be, that the goal of this program today is to give you all the reasons why you should, and that the only reason why you don’t put your house in the market that you’re considering is because you don’t want to, and that’s okay. But there are so many good things that are going on. Not in just this year but every year during the holiday season that I think people should know.
Before we get into that though, I kind of want to give a recap. I know that we’re getting new listeners every week and that’s been fantastic. But one of the reasons why I started the radio program, I was actually asked by the radio station. They answered to do a program, because I had written a book called Ready, Set, Sold!: 12 Proven Steps, get your home sold for top dollar and fast sale in the St. Louis Metro East, and became a number one bestseller. I was very happy with that. So, when they approached me, they talked about doing a weekly program.
What this program is designed for is the same thing as I point out in the book, and that is to give people information so they can have confidence in selling their house. That becomes usually important because there is so much information out there today. So much information. Whether it’d be on the internet. Whether it’d be the for-sale shows on cable TV, and they’re usually based on the East Coast, West Coast, and that’s not our market. It simply isn’t.
So, this book is actually designated for the Metro East in particular but also St. Louis, in O’Fallon, in Shiloh, [inaudible 00:03:43], Mascoutah, Waterloo. All those areas that can get value from this book, so they know what to expect and to move forward and having a great sale.
We’d love you to contact us, but you know what? There’s no strings to this book. I wrote this book with the idea of getting to as many people’s hands as I possibly could. Whether you use us or not, that’s irrelevant. Just giving information out is what I feel is really important. I’m very passionate about real estate. So, let me tell you how you can get the book. It’s absolutely free if you listen to this program. Go to readysetsold.org. Not .com. Readysetsold.org. Not .com. Get the book. And yes, if you are deciding that you want to move in the spring, then that’s a perfect time to get that too.
So, I want to make sure that it’s available and that people can log in. It gives a little bit of information and we will mail it directly to you. As I said, no strings attached. We want you to have the information. And so many people that are listening to the program have taken advantage of that and that’s worked out fantastic.
So, let’s talk about the market, which is also going to be talking about the season itself. Then as the market is going strong … In fact, Kelly, one of the things that I’ve noticed, I know that you have situations going on, that other agents too, is that the market is such that we’re in November. We’re past Thanksgiving. It becomes soon December and there’s probably almost a shortage of houses.
Kelly Etheridge: Absolutely, yeah.
Bryan Vogt: And then there’s just the situation of … I mean, you’ve got numerous buyers that you’re working with. I guess tell me a little bit more. I mean, the pickings are a little bit slimmer than what they like to be.
Kelly Etheridge: Yeah. There’s not too many houses out there. So, if they find the house that they’re looking for, they’re more likely to make an offer on it quickly, because they know there’s not much to choose from out there. So, it’s a great time to get your house on the market.
Bryan Vogt: And you’ve been listing some houses. One’s coming up in December. Another one, I believe, that you’ve listed, I don’t know, two or three houses in the last couple weeks, right?
Kelly Etheridge: Yeah. Last couple weeks ago, we got one on the market, and we’ve got one coming up in December. Oh and I have another one that recently came on the market as well in Swansea.
Bryan Vogt: Right, right. So, again, what I want to kind of stress here is the market is such that there’s actually a shortage and that’s exactly what you want to hear. That’s not unusual in November, but this particular November and December, it’s even more unusual because there’s really a shortage. There are agents that I see on Facebook that I talk with. They’re just starving to get inventory out there. They’re starving to get houses out there. So, again, that’s one of the reasons why is there’s plenty of demand. If you’re thinking about doing it, please do. Putting it on market.
With that said, I want to go into usually the four reasons that we hear that I believe are … I won’t say, “Miss,” but I will say that they are mistaken. They exist only because of the realtors pushing it out there. Usually those are realtors … not all realtors, of course, but many times realtors don’t have the experience or they maybe even haven’t been through a winter market before. They’re just too new to the business. One of the things we hear is, number one, there’s no buyers out there. We just talked about and Kelly talked about. There are buyers out there.
And one of the things, and I think, Kelly, you would agree with this is … you mentioned it. They’re looking for houses and they need to buy a house.
Kelly Etheridge: Right. There are serious buyer.
Bryan Vogt: There are serious buyers and we tend to see a little bit more of that coming out during this type of season. And that’s really important for sellers to know that there isn’t as many buyers even though this year we don’t know. So, if you don’t have the inventory. But that the buyers who come out tend to be much, much more serious that when they look at houses, they know their timeframe is very limited and that they’ll make offers. I know just recently you were talking about that you had some deals within two days. They sold a house. Maybe you can talk more about that. I know there was in one Bell. There was one in Swansea. I think in Bellwood or something like that where people sell the house and they acted upon it.
I believe just to kind of refresh it, because I know you’re busy and all that, but to refresh it more is that, I think it was what? A couple of days, you looked at a couple houses and they made their decision?
Kelly Etheridge: Right. They came out and looked at house. It wasn’t the house … that particular house wasn’t the one for them, but they were pre-approved. They were ready to go. They said, “Let’s go look at two or three more homes.” They found the home that they wanted. They made the offer quickly and we closed on it 30 days later. It was great.
Bryan Vogt: Right. That’s not unusual. And again, this business is the number one supply and demand business. It just is. I mean, the best way I can explain it to you, and I think sellers understand that, and maybe buyers do too. But if you have 100 houses on the market and you have 10 buyers, when you’re pricing the length of time it’s going to take, it’s going to be quite excessive, and that’s kind of an extreme example. Naturally, if you have 10 homes and 100 buyers, well, now you’re looking for higher prices. You’re looking for faster sales in that.
Now, I don’t want to give the wrong impression that that’s what the quota is right now, but it’s just kind of a point of reference. And that’s kind of what we’re in right now, and people need to be aware of that. With that, I’m going to go into one more thing. Actually, I don’t know if I have time to do this segment, but we’ll move into the second segment, and then is what we hear is, is the house, they won’t get as much money for the house. We’re going to really hit that hard in the next segment. In the meantime, I want to let everyone know though that we are on Facebook meetings you can go to. Like us on Facebook.
Go to Ready, Set, Sold, with Bryan Vogt. We also have podcast that you can go to Google Play. You can go to iTunes and catch the show. What’s great about that, we understand that not everybody can be listening on a Saturday. Or maybe there’s something that you missed, you caught the show a little bit later. This gives you the ability to go back and look for something specifically so that you can go back and you can listen to it and make sure you have the information. Also, on YouTube. And there’s just various ways that you can get ahold of the program.
With that said, the main thing that we always want to talk about is getting that book. It’s absolutely free. Go to readysetsold.org. Not .com. Readysetsold.org. Not .com.
Ready Set sold with Bryan Vogt #26-01: Kelly Etheridge and Kathleen Popovich of the Bryan Vogt Team: Houses priced for their location sell any time during the year
November 25, 2017