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. 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.
Bryan Vogt: Welcome everyone and thanks for joining us. I am Bryan Vogt. I’m a local realtor in the metro east market, and I am joined today by the mayor of Shiloh, Mayor Jim Vernier. Welcome, Mayor.
Jim Vernier: Thank you, Bryan.
Bryan Vogt: This is our debut show. This is the first time that we’ve aired. A little background to that that I’d like to tell you about. I wrote a book this year called “Ready, Set, Sold!” “Ready, Set, Sold!” became a number one Amazon best seller. I was very happy with that, and that launched me into the ability of radio. I was approached by 1260 The Answer to do a weekly radio program about how to get your home sold for top dollar and a quick sale. So that in a small nutshell is how I’m here is doing this show. So it’s going to be a weekly situation of talking about real estate, what you need to get done, the information that you need to get your house sold for top dollar and to have a quick sale.
So one of the things that came in a lot when I wrote the book, people asked me why I wrote the book. There was a lot of different reasons, but the three top reasons I would say, number one, there is so much confusion … Jim, maybe you know this too, but when people are looking to sell their home, they get onto the TV programs. There’s a zillion of them out there. But they’re all based on the east coast and on the west coast. They just don’t have anything really relevant to say about the St. Louis and metro east market. And many times after talking with sellers, they’re just completely confused, and they’ve made decisions that maybe weren’t the right decisions that cost them money. Sometimes they’re just kind of lucky if they got it right. That was really concerning to me.
The second reason is kind of a tie into that is, we’ve had people that literally spent 10s and even 20 and 30 thousand dollars with making updates, making changes to their house that not only didn’t give them any value back, but they had to turn around and make the updates that would give them value so they could get their house sold for top dollar in the short sale.
The third reason is, I’ve been doing this for a while. I’ve been doing this for really, actually over 16 years. One of the things that we’ve seen, this is your biggest asset that most people have. It just really is. It’s the biggest asset they have, and we work with people that maybe life didn’t go the way they planned. It just didn’t work out the way they were hoping to. To sell this house is everything. It’s literally how they’re going to live. Maybe get some social security, but literally this is the money they have.
So having that understanding, having this book available to people, that’s really the goal of why I wrote the book. I’ve had some great success stories of people that have read it. It’s an easy read. It’s nice if you read the whole thing because it’s not just theory, it’s not just [congesture 00:03:39]. It’s actually proven steps that people have used and had some great success. So that’s the reason why I wrote the book. That’s what led me to the radio station, and that’s kind of where this program is gonna be going to.
So on a weekly situation, step by step, we’re gonna be going through what you can do. If you want to get the book now, go to readysetsold.org, and that’s readysetsold.org, not .com. Get the book. It’s free. Simply free. Go there, get the book. It’s information. It’s loaded with information that has helped many, many, many past [inaudible 00:04:21] have great success.
And I tell people this, and I mean this sincerely, you don’t even have to use me. That’s not what it’s for. Get the book, read the book, give it to [inaudible 00:04:31]. Doesn’t really matter, it really doesn’t. It’s just getting this information because I’ve seen so much confusion, so much loss of money, so much heartbreak at times of not getting their house sold for top dollar, and it could be easily avoided. The information is in there.
With that as I told you, we’re gonna be talking about the steps in the book. We’re gonna start with the first step. One of the first steps in the book is when to sell your home. Talking to you earlier Jim, basically you’ve been in your house now for what? 25 years or something like that?
Jim Vernier: Yes.
Bryan Vogt: So I don’t know if you had any plans in your future of leaving. I doubt it.
Jim Vernier: Sometimes I do.
Bryan Vogt: Sometimes you do? Yeah. And again, I’m with Mayor Vernier. He is the mayor of
Shiloh. Mayor, I know you’ve been mayor and been [inaudible 00:05:21] for a long time. Did you start back in the Eisenhower years?
Jim Vernier: Back in 1984 is when I first started.
Bryan Vogt: 1984, so it’s been over 30 years. Congratulations.
Jim Vernier: Thank you.
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Bryan Vogt: Good for you. What I want to talk about is step one. Right now we’re in the spring market, we’re in the summer market and the metro east and other areas are doing exceedingly well. It’s a breath of fresh air. We’ve had some great successes in the Shiloh market. An example, I think you were telling a story about how you have a friend that …
Jim Vernier: Yes. A friend of mine recently was telling me this story, his daughter put her house up on the market, and it was sold that same day for full price.
Bryan Vogt: Right. Love it.
Jim Vernier: Very happy.
Bryan Vogt: Love it, yeah. So those are great stories that are happening. One of the things that I wanted to tie into the book and some of the stories are in here, but one of the things is that people when the market is good, not most people, but some people say, “Well maybe I can do better. Maybe I will wait it out. Maybe I’ll try to see if I can guess the market.” Don’t know of a [inaudible 00:06:27], don’t know of anyone out there that can guess the market. I’ve been doing this for a long time. I know I can’t. The problem that you run into is two things.
It’s important for sellers to know that the market is a season is a year. And that’s broken down into three month segments. Now that’s not a calendar year, so if you put your house on the market in February, you’re looking at three months. And in three months, one of two things are gonna happen. Either it’s gonna up or it’s gonna go down. Now if it goes up, that could be happy days, but if it goes down, not so good. Also understanding in that period of time in a two month period of time, it’s about a 50/50 chance of changing, rarely but every once in a while every 30 days it will do it also. Having that said, to kind of illustrate that, I’ll give you two examples.
Two stories that actually happened. They weren’t moving out of [Shiloh 00:07:20], just so you know, these homeowners. But what happened what is they were looking to get more money for their home. They could make the deal work, but they just wanted some more money, so they decided to push it off for a year. Well, what you have to understand is the true cost of home ownership. That’s your monthly payments, and that’s not only your taxes and insurance and your principle of interest, but that’s utilities, that’s maintenance, homeowners associations, all those things pointing in.
There’s a Murphy Law that sometimes come into play, and that is that if something’s gonna wrong, it tends to go wrong when you’re waiting to do something. So water heater in this situation went out. What came down to, the next year came in and guess what? The market wasn’t responding. Actually the market had gone down. They decided they had to move. It was a situation now they were waiting, but now they had to move so they were kind of pressed for time. They put their house on the market. They sold it, and they got about $10,000 less than what they could’ve gotten if they would’ve sold it the year before that.
But that’s only part of it because again, average $1,500 to $2,000 per month. If you use $2,000 as an example, it’s $24,000 is the true cost. That’s what people need to understand. That’s the true cost of selling your home plus what you gain or you don’t gain. Now what’s really interesting about this, and it’s really important to understand, is that that’s the good news. When markets go up, it goes the exact opposite can hurt you.
Ready Set Sold with Bryan Vogt #01-01: Jim Vernier Mayor of Shiloh, IL: When to put your house on the market.
May 27, 2017