Brian Vogt: Welcome everyone, to Ready, Set, Sold with your host Bryan Vogt. Thank you so much for joining us this Saturday. Greatly appreciate it. Hope you had a great week, and having even a better weekend.
As you probably noticed by the opening song, our hearts and prayers are also with Texas and the Houston area, and now. This show is being pre-recorded, so Louisiana could be in danger also. This is has been a horrific storm. Harvey has not done anybody any favors. I encourage everyone, you probably already have, but heck, even if you make another donation, what the heck? For me it’s the Red Cross, I’ve made donations to the Red Cross.
Hopefully, that you can do the same thing. Whether that is financial of course is great, whatever you can afford. It’s so simple now, you can do it from your phone, you can do it from any computer or iPad. If not, you can also, there could be other great organizations not just the Red Cross, there’s other great organizations.
Maybe churches, maybe whatever you want to do or however you want to make a contribution I really encourage you to do that. I really do and hopefully most of you have but just in case you haven’t, please do. And every report I’ve seen, this is going to be something that’s going on for years. This could be a very, very long time before Houston actually rebuilds back and that’s the whole surrounding area. So again, even if you have made a contribution, why don’t you make another one?
With that said, I want to go back now into what we’re going to be talking about today and that is very simply is pricing your house right the first time, wins almost every time. In this segment here, the first one we’ll be talking about location, location, location. Second segment we’ll be talking about the what other two factors have an impact on the pricing of your house.
And in section three we’re going to talking about one of the myths and quite frankly talking to the insurance agent Joe Harnist prior to the show, I found out one of the myths was really a myth about homeowner’s insurance and what sellers need to know and buyers need to know when they come selling your house.
And number four, mine subsidence it rarely happens in Metro East even though they have all kinds of mines. But if you’re in that situation, it’s a tough situation. Some tips about what you can do, what you mabey can’t do and some great information that we have planned when we talk with Joe in the segment four. And of course then our $5,000 tip for the week and I named it Before You Spend a Dime, Call an Agent. I’ll go more into that in the last segment there.
A little brief history if you don’t know this, many of you do, you’ve been faithful listeners, my Aunt Ag in Keysport listens every week. My mom and then there’s other people too. Those are ones I want to give shout outs to. That’s always nice to have that kind of support. My kids too, my wife does. Those are great things too. So I want to thank them all for that and there’s a lot of people that have said some very kind words so I do appreciate that.
But briefly my history, I’ve been doing this real estate for 16 years. It’s really become my passion and so much so that I wound up writing a book called, Ready, Set, Sold, 12 proven steps to sell your house. And that’s for top dollar and a fast sale for the Metro East area. I wrote this book, it became a number one bestseller.
The radio program, 1260 Answer approached me and that hey, I’m out doing a weekly program, talking, letting sellers know what they need to do to get their house in top order and be able to be able to make top dollar in a fast sale. And so I agreed to that. That’s how we got here with this segment. And this is how the show developed. We have a fantastic team of agents that work with me, very proud to be associated with them.
We’re always looking for other people that are interested in getting into the real estate market. This is the time, I will tell you, this has probably been the best market we’ve seen, or I’ve seen. But I think most agents would agree that probably in the last three to five years. It’s that good. And part of it is the staying power that it’s had that we haven’t seen.
We’ve started out hot and cooled down by the middle of the summer. This time we’re not seeing that, we’re seeing it, now we’re into September and we’re still having some great results. So if you’re thinking about selling your home, this is the time. I talk all the time about the three month period. After three months things can change. Hopefully for the better but you never know, it can go the other way too. There can be a lull in the market for whatever reasons.
Also the other aspect of it is in 60 days it’s 50/50 there. Things can change in 60 days. And 30 days rarely but it can happen. That’s usually traditionally your competition in your own subdivision. Meaning is there’s people putting their houses on the market before you do and that can have an effect on the sale of your home depending on where they’re at with price point and that’s one of the things we’ll be talking about today is the price point of getting top dollar for your house.
Like I said, what that said, is if you’re thinking about selling, you’re thinking about getting into real estate, call your realtor, someone you know I can trust. If you don’t go that direction, offering a free book, Ready, Set, Sold. It’s absolutely free, doesn’t cost you a dime. We’ll mail it to your house. Just go to readysetsold.org not .com, readysetsold.org not .com. Easy read, has some great stories in there, some great success stories, unfortunately some stories that things didn’t work out and the things that you want to avoid. Because your house is your biggest investment and this is geared for our area.
Not for the east coast, not for the west coast, this is just for our area and that’s, most people, sellers know that’s real estate is all local. And so this is what this book was made for. It’s Scott Air Force Base, O’Fallon, Shiloh, Belleville, Swansea, Glen Carbon, Edwardsville, Waterloo, all those areas and surrounding the Air Force Base, smaller towns around there.
Let’s talk about how do you get the best price for home? What should you be looking for? What should you and your agent be looking for? If you haven’t called an agent yet, what should you be doing? And that is, you’ve heard the expression, almost everyone has heard the expression, location, location, location. Your location is going to have the by far, largest impact on the price of your house period.
But again, you and your realtor should be looking at this quite frankly, what’s been going on on your street? As close as you can get, that’s what you want to go by. Sometimes, and I think it’s, this is why I talk about the east coast, west coast, there’s this fallacy and that is that most sellers think if I did one thing, if I did one thing and I spent $10,000 or whatever that is, that I will get X amount of dollars more for your house. And the truth of the matter is it sounds good but you know the expression of, it sounds too good to be true?
Well for the most part it’s not. And again this is where we talk about, even online seeing things online, that they’ll have different things that you got to go out and get your hardwood floors if you only have carpeting. Again big mistake, it’s in the book. We talked about that on previous shows. You spend 10 or $15,000, again, just heard the story about that, where seller did that, got little or no return on investment but they lost 10 or $12,000.
So again, hopefully your agent’s not doing that. Again it’s the three things in there. And that is the flooring, the painting, making sure both of those are neutral and make sure your kitchens, bathrooms are updated. With that said, I also want you to keep in mind is so where does that come to the location? Because it’s the overall rise. It’s like all ships rise and low with the tide, it’s the same thing with your location. If your location is hopefully is moving up, guess what? So is your house. And that’s a great thing.
So by literally just living in your house, enjoying the heck out it for the last five or seven or 10 years and making the updates as you need. I’m talking about updates there’s just things you love to have, who doesn’t like have like nice carpeting or nice beautiful kitchen. So enjoying your house while your living there which is always a great thing, that you’re going to have some fantastic results if you use those location of what’s going on in the past sales and three months. And we talked about this earlier in this segment. Three month period of time. If you have to go four that’s okay but you want to make sure that three months is good barometer to make that happen.
With that said, in the next segment we’re going to talk about the other two top things you need to know as far as when it comes to pricing your home and getting top dollar and a fast sale. Again the book is readily available, you don’t have to use us, it’s okay. Go to readysetsold.org not .com, get the book. Also you can like us on Facebook, we are on podcast, go to Google Play or iTunes, YouTube, we are everywhere.
Ready Set Sold with Bryan Vogt #16-01: Joe Harnist: Location location location!
September 9, 2017