They Made Me An Offer I Couldn't Refuse

My objective is to provide buyers and sellers superior results. I am one of those agents that believes that the agent creates his or her success, not the broker or company we might be licensed with. Over the years I have been licensed with the nations largest real estate company, I have been a loan officer inside one of the largest local real estate companies. I had my own small real estate company and my own very large mortgage company. I have been the real estate director for a developer.
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With confidence I selected a company to license with that rewarded my expertise by providing me almost all of the commission. That confidence included believing I had the tools necessary to provide the success my clients needed.

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Then along came MediaOne Real Estate. What you can offer is especially measurable in selling, or listing, a home. I offer terrific tools and service for buyers. When it comes to marketing a home there are numerous factors that determine the success. When homes aren't shown sellers end up being pressured to lower their prices. Simple things, such as the photos that are taken can eliminate great prospects. Difficult things like driving traffic require numerous strategies.
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I would say that I had almost enough, an approach beyond many. And then along came an invite to understand MediaOne Real Estate. They use the shortcut M O R E. They offer more. How do I say it? My old confident situation has been overshadowed by new potential situation.
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Just to name a few: 1- Newspaper advertising. My clients homes will be advertised each week, in full color in both The Deseret News and The Salt Lake Tribune. Statistics suggest that only 7% of buyers come from a home advertisement in the newspaper. That is important if your buyer is one of the 7%. MediaOne listings are on the market fewer days, therefore less likely to suffer price reductions, than the average in the MLS. 2- My listings will be Showcase Listings on Realtor.com. This is important as Realtor.com is the nations # 1 volume home search website. The more expensive showcase listings come to the top in searches, a big big deal. 3- I had over 30 websites I was setup to forward my listings to, now I have over  50. Perhaps the right buyer is in one of the other 20. 4- I have a support team, transaction coordinators to make sure the paperwork and deadlines are all up to snuff. Any concerned agent will be detailed oriented, but additional eyes and hands are valuable. 5- Each homes I list will be photographed by a professional photographer. Add this to Kathleen's staging and design skills and we have a winning combination.
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These are just five. I mention them as part of an offer I couldn't refuse. And why I couldn't refuse is simple, they do a better job for my clients. If it's better for them it's better for me. No wonder I couldn't refuse.
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So don't be confused. I have a lot of marketing pieces out there. They have my old brokerage, a good company as part of the advertising. New ones are soon to go out. It's a good thing.

Garden Towers Condos: Updated

Garden Towers

141 2nd Ave

Close to Temple Square

These photos are taken from the Garden Rooftop

Update: June 21, 2014:

A sold unit is now past the inspection contingency, leaving two nice units on the market.

One of the units just dropped their asking price by $10,000 to $385,000.00. This gives me an opportunity to emphasize a couple of points I try and make that makes my practice different.

1- This is a really nice home. It is kept in showing condition. You can immediately tell a young family lives here as the children's toys and things are many. Note, I said it is kept in showing condition. However most of us wouldn't know, including me, what my designer - staging expert wife points out. This is that with so many children's items in the home it is difficult for a potential buyer to relate to it. When people look at your home they go through a mental process of deciding if it will work for their things.

I refer back to this article Kathleen wrote in the staging category where she said Clean Up….Clear Out…..Fix In…..Fix Out; click here for that category link 

Were we to counsel this family we would go through the home with them and look to see what could be taken to the storage unit. I do understand, as we have sold a few homes of our own, that having your home on the market is a major pain. The condition of this home says that this family gets it as to the importance of how the home is presented. This takes a big effort on each family members part. Yet, in this case, there are important steps yet to be taken.

2- No matter how agents present their marketing plan they all boil down to two approaches. In 99.9% of the time what I call plan A is used. Plan A is to do what happened here, if it doesn't sell in a reasonable time it must be the price that is the problem. In this case the price dropped $10,000.00, almost half the amount of the commission. Dropping the price $10,000.00 only costs an agent $300.00 to $600.00 depending on whether or not the agent becomes a dual agent by selling and listing the home.

I despise this approach. I believe it places the entire burden of the sale on the home and the decisions of the sellers on what price to ask. So what happens in another 73 days? Do you drop the price again? I saw a home go up over a year ago in our building. It started at $290,000.00. Everything that you can image was wrong with the whole for sale situation. Eventually the home sold for $240,000.00, a pretty serious 17+ % price drop. The seller wore out.

There is always a range agents can select for coming up with a price they believe in. They usually select a few comparable sales to justify what they recommend. I know agents that push for the lower price so it is more likely to sell. Whatever price is selected most you will find start pushing for a price reduction. It didn't sell, what is the other option?

I have what I call plan B. I don't broadcast it as it is different. It's a conglomeration of things I have learned over my many years in real estate. It is different. It's goal is to earn my commission by selling in the higher range. It's goal is to never ask or hint that you should drop your price.

By the way, I wont be presenting you a fancy pre-packed book. I will have facts and a plan. You will get your monies worth.

From June 4, posting:

Currently there are 3 units on the market at this time, actually two as one just went into contract subject to inspection..

The other two are listed at $645,000 and $395,000. I would classify both of these units as best buys on the current market. I would be glad to show them to you.

More detail:
$395,000: 2028 square feet, 2 bedroom. Corner unit.

$645,000: 2326 square feet, 2 bedroom.

The MLS

How can one provide top notch service without listing their homes in the MLS?

I call the MLS, the big elephant.

Every REALTOR (C) uses the MLS. When they are working with clients they look in the MLS. When they are preparing to list a home the MLS provides the software for a comparable market analysis. 

Many agents and companies have home searches on their websites for visitors of that site to find homes. If it's not in the MLS it's not found. 

Some corporations with their own home searches are contracted to upload the MLS listings. 

If your home is not listed on the MLS you are missing the number one source of traffic. 

We call those folks selling their own homes FSBO's. If you are a FSBO or a using an agent and you are missing the MLS your are missing traffic. Traffic is what causes home values to rise. Lack of traffic is an instant death sentence to your homes value. Lack of traffic causes home prices to drop. 

Utah Has A Strange Policy

Actually, Utah joins six other states with this one. If you have bought or sold your home in one of the other 43 you too will seem this a strange one.

It is that Utah is a non disclosure state. In other words there is no publicly recorded record of what a property sold for. That is unless it sold through the MLS. Even then sellers can place a written request that the MLS not disclose the sales price.

How would  Yoda respond to this one? "Stunning that is".

The only upside to this policy that I can see is a tax issue. If the price is not recorded how can the sale be taxed? In King County, Washington State for example, their is a 1.76% excise tax. It is collected at funding and recorded in the county records. There is no way to escape this tax as it is a law to record the sales price. Those who try to avoid it by non recording face stiff fines and penalties.

This leaves a Utah appraiser without an important tool. This makes pricing a home less of a science and more of an art. This also makes a case that the traditional agent approach of pressing the seller to reduce the price if it doesn't sell in a certain amount of time a bad approach for the seller. Traffic drives prices up, lack of traffic drives prices down. So pricing a home to the sellers advantage coupled with a unique plan for traffic becomes of paramount importance when seeking to get top dollar and in seeking to move the home quickly.

In speaking with an appraiser today I am told that banks are not accepting the paperwork from escrow as a comparable on sales closed outside of the MLS. The reason, potential fraud, as these documents are easily forged or falsified. Is this to mean that people actually do this? They do.

Selling Your Home? I Go All Out!

It's just this simple, the longer your home is on the market the more likely the prices will drop. My goal, when listing a home, is to market hard and heavy seeking enough activity to hopefully create multiple offers.

Multiple offers causes home prices to rise.

I will share two personal examples of homes Kathleen and I owned. You probably have your own good or not so good story.

Story 1: Immediately after listing our home we had a low ball and actually offensive offer. The buyers agent, I was an agent too, came with ridiculous comparable's to try and drive the price down. We sent him packing.

Within the first week on the market multiple offers started coming in. Knowing this we wanted our price. We offered counter offers at full price. Eventually the original buyer, the agent for that buyer, came in with an offer above our listing price. We had so many choices we chose a buyer with a different agent. We were happy, the original buyers were not. Our home was terrific and they tried to get back in the game above our asking price but were too late. There are multiple lessons here. The one I point out is multiple offers cause prices to rise.

Story 2: I have seen this happen so many times, and here it happened to us. It was a Saturday and we found a model home in a development we found exciting.  While going through the home others were there also. For about a year this had been the model and that Saturday it went on the market. Realizing we weren't going to be the only buyers we quickly submitted a full price offer. To make it strong I included documentation that I was the President and CEO of one of the largest mortgage companies in our state. I did everything I could to assure the seller he was safe committing to us. This included proof we were making a large down payment with the purchase.

Monday I received a call from the listing agent. He informed us that his seller wanted to choose us, we were strong buyers and we were the first offer in. The catch however was that the others were also full price and we could have the deal if we upped the purchase price by $5,000.00. Again, there are multiple lessons here, but the big one is that multiple offers drive prices up.

I have seen homes sold only after going through two listing agents, one of the homes was on the market for a combined 9 months. One ended up selling for $50,000 below it's $290,000 asking price. That home was vacant, and presented in an awful manner to begin with. The second time around wasn't awful, but it was bleak.

Marketing a home takes a professional approach: great photos, great home presentation, and a full out marketing assault. That is what I do, with the help of my partner and wife Kathleen. Kathleen is an excellent photographer. She has been an award winning interior designer. She has been the lead designer on many multi-million dollar homes. She has won several best of home shows awards in Street of Dreams competitions. She has had homes published in magazines.

She is an important part of the marketing package I offer.

Think About this Before You Pick Your Realtor

Here is a capsule of what I mean, then let me explain one on one..........

The traditional approach to pricing your home is by using a CMA, or Comparative Market Analysis. Then agents bring out their great record, their companies great facts, and share a marketing plan. This traditional approach is seriously flawed. I realize the CMA is essentially the same CMA that every agent is taught to do. It’s the same basic CMA in every book about listing.  But it is seriously flawed, and I’m being nice. 

It’s flawed because we can make the price just about anything we want, within reason.  Any agent who has done many traditional CMAs knows that’s true, if they are honest enough to admit it.  If the seller balks, he goes back, find more comps, and take another swing. But why is it flawed?

It’s flawed because it is based on three comps. And it’s flawed because it is based on closed sales which have already been discounted to sell.

Really now, does the agent demonstrate competence?  Or does he just make a listing presentation much like everyone else’s?  The traditional listing approach is designed to be taught to the masses and it’s “idiot proof”.  You could practically train a monkey to do it!  It requires practically no special skill or knowledge, and any broker can quickly teach even the greenest agent to do it. And it’s easy.  Using this approach to sell the home requires no marketing skill or special effort from the listing agent.

Most agents don't need a large advertising budget or investment from the broker.  Why?  Because the traditional approach uses price to sell the home.  That’s all.  The truth is that anyone can sell anything if he lowers the price enough. This keep lowering the price method has always bugged me. I have hated it, always felt it was truly unprofessional. It places all of the excuse for not selling on the price.

I separate myself from all other agents by refusing to buy into this concept. Take note, agents may try and tell you their are numerous concepts on approaching selling your home. But there are only two. The traditional way, that which is discussed so far, and the way I want to show those about to sell their homes. It is surprisingly different. It makes you feel that you have made a good investment in choosing an agent to sell your home.

As agents one of our fiduciary duties to our clients is honesty.  Yet, many agents are presenting themselves in a less than fully honest way.  They don’t mean to be dishonest, but think about it.  Most agents use style over substance.  What if I could discuss your home with real credibility?


In this light I know that most sellers don't want us taking up one of their evenings to make a presentation. My approach, don't be standard. Be interesting, with interesting facts about the market your home competes in. I think you will  be shocked with my proposal, I know you will.

I mentioned there are two ways to market your home, every agents method I have seen falls into the first. What I want to show you is the second way.