Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Weekly Sales Report

The subject of last Thursday's entry was staging, and in our meeting this morning staging seemed to be the theme as well. It is something I have been hearing a lot about lately. The reason is that properties, for the most part, are not selling themselves anymore. As Anja says, "A year or two ago you could have put crates in the house and it would have sold straight away!" That's no longer the case. At the moment, as you will see in the statistics, the majority of the properties that are selling are only receiving one offer, and the average days on the market is longer. True, it only takes one offer, but that one offer does not always come easily, nor does it give the sellers a good position for negotiating. We had gotten used to the sellers having the upper hand, but we are in a very balanced market right now. It is an equal playing field for buyers and sellers. Yes, the market has changed and softened. It has gone from completely out of control to balanced.

In the midst of the craze, you could put a sign up in front of a house and expect 5-10 offers. Now we must work to get it sold. Yes, folks, life is hard. It must be price correctly and marketed aggressively. It also needs to be presented in the best possible way which is where staging comes in. I am only following up on the story because we heard some pretty great success stories in our meeting this morning and I thought I would share one with you.

The best example was a condo on Clayton that had been on the market for seventy eight days. It came out at $1,080,000 and after a month on the market with no activity they lowered the price to $995,000. It sat at that price for another month with no activity, and the sellers realized they needed to make another change. They did not want to lower the price again, so they decided to pull the property off the market temporarily, have the place professionally staged, and put it back on at the same price. Guess what. It sold within five days. What the staging really did for the place was lighten it up and gave it a more spacious feeling. Also, the consensus was that it helped the condo appeal to a younger crowd; the owners had larger pieces of furniture with a more antique feel, and the staging made the place feel young and fresh.

When putting your property on the market in a time like this, you want to leave no stone unturned. Like I said, price it right, make sure everybody knows about it, make sure everybody sees it, and make it look great. Pricing it is something we help you do, making sure everybody knows about it and sees it is our job, and let's leave making it look great to the staging companies.

Statistics

There were 11 open escrows this week. Three of those received multiple offers. The most offers were received by a home on Morningside in the Lakeshore District. I know, you've never heard of it. It was priced at $1,035,000 and received five offers so it seems at least a few others are familiar with the neighborhood.

There were 7 closed escrows. Four of those sold under asking, one sold at asking, and two sold over asking price. The scale has tipped slightly in the buyers direction.

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