I participated in the PLS webinar recently:
We’re excited to be hosting our first ever ZOOM meetup with James Harris (Million Dollar Listing Los Angeles & Founding Partner, ThePLS.com). We’ll be discussing Los Angeles real estate market trends for Q2 (and beyond) and James will be sharing his take on things.
There was a CB realtor from Santa Monica who said his market has slowed down, with many price reductions, fewer multiple offers, and longer market times. A discussion ensued – my takeaways:
A. The market is level (at best) and sellers need to be realistic. You can spend a million dollars on advertising, have the best photography and videos, and do open house every day, but if the price isn’t right, it still won’t sell.
B. James thought open houses are a good way to expose a property to the market, and for knowledgeable agents to impress the attendees about the value.
C. James also said that when it’s slower, it’s better to test pricing off-market first. (But wouldn’t it be natural for sellers to say, ‘let’s test the price on the open market to find out for sure.’)
D. When a home is on the open market but not selling, it’s better to lower the price in weeks, not months.
Those sum up the basic fundamentals for today’s market.
I suggested that to enhance the value of private-listing clubs, they should limit membership to the top agents only, but they didn’t want to get into it. They did like my idea of having more webinars where agents can discuss topics and listings.
The club hasn’t made much of an impact yet in the San Diego area. There are only 34 listings county-wide on the website, and some are older and/or already sold. Curiously, one had been on our MLS this year, but expired and is now on the PLS only as an off-market opportunity at virtually the same price.
The other large private listing club, Top Agent Network, is limited to the top 10% of agents in a region (based on volume). They were thinking of opening in San Diego, but I haven’t heard any updates lately:
https://www.topagentnetwork.com/
There may come a day when the private listing clubs have an impact, but it would take their leaders to constantly sell the benefits to agents – and those are people who have become wary about the benefits from the traditional MLS (if any). If an agent wants to pursue an off-market sale, then it’s too easy for them to throw a sign in the yard and wait (if the price is right).
