Speaker 1: 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: Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Ready, Set, Sold. I’m your host, Bryan Vogt. I hope you’re having a fantastic Saturday and a fantastic weekend, and thank you so much for joining us. Again, we were talking about Texas the last two weeks, and now we’ve got Florida, South Carolina, I think Alabama … all of those Southern areas that had gotten hit by a storm, a hurricane situation. And again, the only good news, at least that I can tell from it, and I happen to have … and I’m sure maybe you listeners have the same thing, a lot of family friends that live in Florida. And the good news is it seems like it wasn’t, maybe, quite as bad as what they had hoped it … that they had thought it might be.
It doesn’t mean, though, that there isn’t some severe hardship. Like Texas and like before, I urge you, if you haven’t already, to contact the Red Cross. Maybe there’s a charity out there, whether it be a church or whatever, but do something. Get involved. Make a donation. I think is something that is going to be going on for some time, and so your help, whatever you can do, would really be appreciated, I’m sure. Like I said, that’s … it’s unfortunate. I think … what, Mexico had a hurricane and an earthquake, or something like that? Hopefully this … the hurricane season is behind us and we can move forward and they can get their lives back together.
That’s one thing about America, that in times of need, that we all pull together. And again, make any contribution, whether it’s $1,000, whether it’s $10, 25, $50, or just … There’s a lot of station places, I know, in the Metro East and St. Louis, I’m sure, that you can bring water, you can bring supplies to and what have you. Anyway, hopefully that will … Miami, Texas, Florida, all those areas will get better soon, sooner rather than later. But in the meantime, whatever you can do would be fantastic.
With that said, kind of going into the show, a little recap. I’ve actually been on now for … gosh, it’s been over three months now, I believe. My goodness. If you’re a first time listener, where you been? No, I’m just kidding, but again, we’ve been here for a while. And if you are a first time listener, thank you so much for joining us. But if you’ve been with us for a while, you kind of know, have an idea of what Ready, Set, Sold actually stands for. And that’s a book I wrote. It became a number one Amazon bestseller called Ready, Set, Sold, 12 Proven Steps to Sell Your House Fast and for Top Dollar in the St. Louis Metro East.
I wrote this book this year, and basically, it’s an accumulation … I’ve been in real estate, gosh, going on close to two decades. And it’s a culmination of things that I learned through trial and error, some of them, and also through courses, coaching, all kinds of different ways that I learned it. And it’s 12 Proven Steps to Get Your House Sold. And I say proven, because this is not theory and conjecture. This is not, “I hope it works.” These are things that we have been able to share with clients that have had … they’ve been able to have some great success.
And I will tell you this. If you get the book, whether you use us or not, that’s okay, that you’re going to have some tremendous success. And really, that’s what it’s about, when you’re selling your biggest asset and for most people it is. But for most people, it’s a big thing. And that’s why I wrote the book. I can put all the pieces together. The response has been tremendous. I think for that, those people that have read it, have given me kind of feedback on it, it was meant to be an easy read. It is an easy read. It’s definitely more informational, talking about, “Do this, do that.” It has stories in it, and it just gives you a well-rounded understanding of what, exactly, you need to do to get your house sold.
The other problem that really comes up is … I guess the selling shows that are … I don’t know, 25 or 30 of them, it seems like. They pop up every day, and they’re always telling you how, if you’re on the East Coast or on the West Coast, this is how you can sell your house. And there’s nothing really for the St. Louis, and more particularly, the Metro East area. And so that was another reason for the book.
My goal is to get as many people to have this book, again, whether they use us, whether they don’t use us, just so they have that information, because we’ve seen so many people, too many times, spend tens of thousands of dollars. I’m not talking a couple hundred dollars. I’m talking about tens of thousands of dollars of improving things that they didn’t get a value back. They didn’t get a return on investment, and that’s heartbreaking for everyone, everyone concerned.
Easy way. I’m giving the book away free. No strings, no nothing, zero. If you go to readysetsold.org … not dot com, readysetsold.org, not dot com, and pick up the book, it will be … well, a little bit of information. The book will be sent to your doorstep, and take a look at it. Look, if you’re a year out, two years out, that’s okay. We’ve had people get the book that we know that aren’t going to be selling for some time. Or they got it for … getting the book for a friend or a family member. Again, all of that information that we’re going to be talking about during the course of every week is already in one package there, so you can get it and read it and find out what you have interest in.
With that said, understanding that not everybody gets to listen to the whole program, that maybe you’ve had bits and pieces … I was talking to somebody just this week, and they said, “I missed this half section.” Well, the good news is, now, we are and have been on Google Play and iTunes with podcasts, and they are separated out so you can go specifically to a certain section, or you can listen to the whole thing. There’s nothing wrong with that. But you can go to a certain section and pick out what you want to listen to, whether it’s the whole segment or just a couple of minutes or whatever, and get the information you need.
Also, don’t forget about the app, 1260 app. It’s so easy to load onto your phone. You just go to wherever you get your apps at and put it on your smartphone. Pretty well everyone has a smartphone. We’re also on Facebook. You can like us on Facebook at Ready, Set, Sold.
With that, let’s talk about what we’re going to be talking about this week, and it’s a little bit … we’re going to deviate a little bit away from what we did before. This is a little more of a mailbag situation. These are questions that come up quite often throughout the course of, really, I guess my career, but also just in general conversation that people have, and trying to answer some of those questions and so that you have a better understanding. Because I find that, if 2 or 3 people have a question, it seems that there’s 5, 6, 7, 10 people that have the same question. I’ve kind of capsulated some of those, of questions, and I’m going to be going through those.
One of the questions … I’ll just kind of give you kind of a snapshot of what we’re going to talking about. When should I put my house on the market? I.E., when should I call a realtor? That sometimes is a big thing for people. Do open houses really work? The answer is yes, but I go into a little bit more detail about that. How do you know you have good marketing? How do you know that your agent is marketing your home to the best, and how much of a factor does marketing play in the overall sale of a home? Should I have my house staged?
Again, these are things that come up quite often. People ask, “Should I stage? Should I not stage?” And we’ll talk more about the benefits of what that’s going to look like and the things that you need to be aware of. Also, the tip of the week, and that’s going to have to do with as-is houses. And briefly, as-is houses are houses that the seller’s saying, “Take it as it stands.” That’s really what it boils down to, and I’m going to give you a big tip on that, how you can easily save $5,000, if not more, on doing some things that can help you if you’re going that route with an as-is house.
With that said, let’s kind of go into our first question, and I get that all the time, is when should I bring in a realtor? When should I call a realtor? And the simplest answer is sooner rather than later. If nothing else, that’s another reason to get the book. I mean, to have that information right there, to start working on a plan or plan of action. The reason why I say that is many times … you’ve heard these stories if you’ve listened to the show at all, that people start making improvements. And I was just listening to someone talking about $10,000 and what have you they put in landscaping and they’re not going to get back.
The reason why I say that is the best time … and this is the best rule of thumb. Once you start talking about spending money, that’s when you want to call a realtor. You still may be six months out. You still may be a year out with working with people. You’re just working with people right now that, within a year and a half that we started talking with them. We met with them, found out what we can do, what we can’t do, those type of things.
It’s really, really important that once you start taking the action of spending money, that usually means you’re getting kind of serious about it. At least sooner rather than later, best rule of thumb, that’s when you need to call a realtor. Bring in a friend, somebody you know, somebody you like. Start talking to other people, whatever. But make sure that you have a realtor that you can trust and that you want to sit down and talk with. With that said, we’re going to have more questions that we mentioned before and answer those.
Ready Set Sold with Bryan Vogt #17-01: Answering questions from Mail Bag
September 16, 2017