Bryan Vogt: Welcome back to Ready, Set, Sold. I’m your host Bryan Vogt. As I left you with the last segment, if you were with us last segment, I’m just going to recap it. I talked about the Realtors on occasion and they tend to be the less experienced one, at least that’s what we see, that have what I call the shiny ball, and just look at the shiny ball and don’t worry about anything else when it comes to marketing.
What I mean by that a little bit more specifically is there are things out there that we see every week and I literally get emails and it’s been going in everystate. To kind of give you an example, back in the day years ago there was a thing called the talking house, and what it was some type of a transmitter near the sign and if you pulled up to it and if you went to the radio station, the house would talk to you.
Now I didn’t get it because quite frankly I don’t know, people probably have seen it or heard of it. Maybe not. There’s this thing called Mr. Ed, the talking horse, and that’s all I could think about was, is the house that was talking was just about as likely to happen as a horse talking to you, but again that was a personal opinion there. It was kind of interesting because some of the agents used it and they were talking about it, and I just asked a simple question. I just said, “Well oh, so you’re getting more buyers in by using this versus not using it before.”
They said, “Well we don’t know.” I said, “Well okay, then why are you using it?” They said, “Because it’s cool.” Too often many times that’s what happens. Agents bring in these “great marketing” things with no result behind them. So again, if you have that situation, do they have proven results that work in your area, in the Metro East area? Not in California, not in the East Coast which a lot of them come from. That’s where some of these ideas come from, that could be or maybe not be something that you want to use, but do they have proven results?
Does it have a track record because ultimately that’s what you’re looking for. When it comes to marketing is, you’re looking for proven results. But also understand, and again I’ve always known this on one end. There’s four factors. Marketing is a factor. Again we talked about you want to have good marketing. That usually means that you have experienced agents that’s had years of experience, that they have a good track record, that they have that type of marketing that works. That’s number one.
But number two, the three other factors are the price that you’re asking for your house, also the location and also the condition. Again if all those three things, or one of those three things was out of whack, the marketing, whatever that shiny ball looks like, is probably not going to have any success. In fact you’re probably not going to have any success at all.
So if the condition of your home, if your house is … I mean your carpeting is 20 years old, I mean again sellers get this. We don’t see that very often, but 20 years old and no updating has happened in forever. Or your location is not one that; it’s a good location but you’re not priced for your location, that you’re 20, 30, 40, 50, whatever that number is, over the location. The best marketing in the world is just simply not going to work.
Again, most sellers I think get that, the shiny ball thing, but again just more of a friendly reminder. I get that a lot of people are asking about marketing and what have you. Again what you should be looking for from your realtor is do they have a plan? We all kind of have that same kind of website. We have the same websites; Realtor.com, Zillow, Trulia, all the major ones. Most agents are already on there. The question really is, is after the initial surge what’s the plan after that?
I know we have a six week plan that we’re actually looking to extend it to eight weeks; eight week program that week after week there’s something else that we’re doing for your house to make sure that you stay top of mind. I mean that’s important, and make sure that your agent has something like that and there’s other agents that do also. If they don’t, understand there’s initial push when your house goes on the market, and that is where the vast majority of all your marketing is going to be, but there’s still about a 10 or 15% lag time. Part of that is with open houses, and part of that is with social media. There’s other things you can do to make sure that your house is staying in the forefront of all the buyers and making sure the marketing is working.
The last part is that I get all the time is should I get my house staged. It really depends on what you’re trying to get. If you want to have it staged, there’s nothing wrong with that. Bring a professional stager in. Many times we’ve seen that the house does sell quicker. It really does, so that can be a savings. So the cost factor that you put into bringing the stager in can be very beneficial. It could be a win/win for everybody.
However, if the idea behind it is that you’re going to spend $2,000 with the hope of getting $20,000 back in return, that’s just not going to happen. Again, I know. I’ve seen some of those shows on the East Coast, West Coast. I get it, but I can tell you in this market here that’s just simply not going to happen. You’re not going to get 10 for 1. You’re probably not going to get 2 for 1.
Again to kind of give you an example we had a seller that actually wanted to use staging and they spent about $1,000. They felt that it was a well, good earn investment and they got their house sold in three weeks. Their house payments was usually when you put in the interest, taxes, principal, utilities, just all those things combined was about $2,000 so they felt that you know what? That was kind of a win/win. They got their house sold quicker and they saved $1,000 that they wouldn’t have had to spend for another additional payment down the road.
So those are things that work. Now we’ve seen other situation where people have spent $4,000 or $5,000 on houses and they did not get that return of that $40,000 or $50,000 or that $10,000 or $20,000. If you’re dealing with an agent or you’re dealing with a realtor that is saying that, you might really want to question that. That’s something that quite frankly just doesn’t happen. It’s good on TV. It could be good on the internet. I’ve seen those claims by different realtors even talking about that. I’ve got to tell you we just don’t see that here in the Metro East. So be leery of that, but again getting it down quickly and soon, or getting it sold sooner, that could be a great idea for staging.
With that said, information like this and more information is in the book. If you have a friend or family member that’s even thinking about selling their house in the next three to six months, the market has proven to be fantastic so quite frankly if you’re looking to sell your house, I’d be talking to an agent now. I’d be getting on the phone now. The market has had some great success and we want to keep that moving forward.
Ready Set Sold with Bryan Vogt #17-04: Should you have your home professionally staged
September 16, 2017