Are you wondering what it is like being a buyer these days – and how we can asisist you?
This is a good example. Our buyer above made offers on seven different homes over the last year before winning the right home, at the right price. We survived a five-offer bidding war when the sellers accepted our offer of $1,340,000, then we worked them down by $50,000 after our inspection.
At $1,290,000 for 1,801sf, I think it will be one of the better buys in Carlsbad this year:
We took four listings in a row and I was going to document the whole experience but it was turning into a feature-length movie. Here is the segment where we discuss the bidding war in Rancho Penasquitos, its failure, and how we handled the aftermath:
I was going through some old footage and found these – and I’m not sure they’ve been seen before:
For those who don’t know, our daughter Kayla worked worked with us for five years before moving to Manhattan in 2018, where she’s a realtor. Here is her Instagram account (she is a great agent!): https://www.instagram.com/kaylaklinge/
She’s been doing real estate videos for ten years!
Are you thinking about selling your home and are trying to identify the strategies used by listing agents to get you top dollar with minimal inconvenience?
Are you finding that agents aren’t real specific about how they do their business, and just want you to trust that because they sold houses in the past that they can do it again?
Here is my specific strategy to achieve top-dollar sales with minimal inconvenience: 1) Do a minor tune-up of the home prior to hitting the open market, 2) Price attractively, 3) Make the home easy to see via the open-house extravaganza, 4) Allow all buyers to bid it up, 5) Treat buyers and agents with respect and deliver full transparency that encourages participation.
Here are the results of our last 25 listings:
None of these were priced artificially low to generate a bidding war. When a property is ‘attractively priced’, it means the presentation is worthy and it causes buyers to want to see it in person.
I have not come across any agent who sells homes like I do, and rarely do I ever meet an agent who has any strategy about handling multiple offers.
It happened again yesterday – the listing agent said on the phone that he had 3-5 offers, so I asked how he planned to handle it. Literally, he said, “I don’t know”, to which I replied, “How about doing a highest-and-best round?” He said, “Well we will probably counter the best 2-3 offers”.
Why he would eliminate any buyer is beyond me – I always counter every buyer because who knows how much higher they might go when asked.
In further discussion, he made it sound like none of the offers received were full price, and later I sent him a text that we were sending in a full price offer. Two hours later, he sends a text back that said, “It sounds like the seller wants to move forward with the first offer he got”.
This is the standard procedure in the realtor business – just grab one.
If your listing languishes on the market, it gets worse. Even the chief economist says so:
You want to sell early – during the first week on the market – when urgency is highest, and not languish for weeks or months just to take less later. In case everything goes right and multiple offers are received, you want an expert who creates a proper bidding war. In 2023, when buyers are more tempted to cancel and move on, you want your escrow handled in a way that it closes successfully, and on time.
Your eventual sales price can vary 5% to 20%, depending on your listing agent.
This is the easier part – charting the next six months.
Either the Fed will pause and delight us all, or their threat of higher rates will make buyers antsy and ready to pounce. The best-looking inventory usually happens in springtime, so all the necessary the ingredients for a selling-season surge should come together nicely.
We played in the charity whiffleball tournament to benefit Camp Kesem, a week-long camp for kids who have parents who suffering from cancer. We raised enough money to send another TEN kids to camp! We got smoked 13-2 in our game though.
Here is the story on Camp Kesem – Natalie was a camp counselor 4x, and loved it:
