The new NSDCC listings coming on the market have slowed up over the last two weeks – only 54 and 43.
Last year at this time we had 79 and 106! We also had 12% fewer pendings!
| Week | |||
| Feb 1 | |||
| Feb 8 | |||
| Feb 15 | |||
| Feb 22 | |||
| Mar 1 | |||
| Mar 8 |
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It got wild yesterday! All the details here:
Most realtors see other agents being vague and non-committal on how to handle multiple offers, so they think that’s how to do it.
But hiding out and refusing to have a game plan helps no one – especially the seller – yet it never occurs to agents to do it differently. Sales is a skill, and transparency is the key:
I also wanted to test the Zillow lead generator.
Now that they have buried the three Premier Agents at the bottom of the listing, how do consumers get more information – and from who do they get it? They added the Contact Agent box at the top of the listing, which kind of makes you think you will be connected to the listing agent. But that’s not what happens (though I do get mentioned about halfway down without a phone number or link).
Once Zillow published the listing on Wednesday afternoon, I clicked on the Contact Agent to find out.
Within minutes I received a text – here is the thread:
I was standing next to my phone and didn’t hear any ringing, but it’s possible he called. I let it go for the rest of the night to see about their follow up, and indeed it began again on Thursday morning. A new guy connected me to Cheri, who didn’t know anything about the house but was very nice.
Once our phone call was complete, I received this by email:
Coincidentally (or not?), one of the agents from The Avenue Home Collection did show my listing yesterday. Because their office is nearby, their broker Melissa also stopped by. She is a 19-year veteran and was brought up in the business by old-school people like me, so we got along right away.
She confirmed what I’ve been thinking.
Zillow has selected a handful of brokerages with high customer-service ratings as partners. Zillow has their own phone team make the first contact the consumer, then forward the call to one of the agents.
She didn’t say how much she is paying, but it’s not as much as the top Zillow agent in the area who she suspected is paying around $30,000 per month for the majority of the market share. It’s a ton of money to invest and be dependent upon the Zillow phone guys to serve up the leads fresh and hot. The Zillow guy who called me was pathetic, though it was early (around 9am) and every phone solicitor will tell you that they need to warm up first. I was probably his first call?
They have only been Zillow partners for four months, so it’s early. I told her to hang in there, because I am constantly amazed at how casual and naive the consumers are about selecting their realtor. Because there isn’t any transparency about an agent’s skill level, people just grab one – and with Zillow’s name recognition and horsepower, they should be able to convert viewers into buyers and sellers as well as anyone.
Realtor.com, RPR, HomeSnap, Compass, KW, CB, and others have said they might mount a challenge Zillow’s search portal, but there isn’t anyone close to spending the money on national advertising as Zillow.
It reminded me of this clip – Zillow is just waiting for a challenger – and the likely outcome:
There are a few Zillow issues to unpack here, so let’s start with them saying they are willing to buy your house for the amount of the zestimate – which is fine, if you don’t care about cashing in on the actual value.
In their press release, the boss claims that the zestimate’s nationwide median error rate for on-market homes of 1.9% which sounds simple enough – for years they have been adjusting their zestimate to the list price once a home goes on the market.
But once my new listing went on the market, they didn’t adjust the zestimate upward.
Would you sell your house for $1,336,035, when Jim the Realtor says it worth $1,599,000?
Factor in that Zillow charges more than I do, and it would mean that hiring me to sell your house would net you about $300,000 more – and that’s if we sell for the list price (it might go higher).
The big difference?
I don’t spend $100 million per year in advertising – they will reach people that I don’t reach.
Tell people to use me instead!
Link to my listing on ZillowUnlike the big teams who have clerks do all their listing inputs, I do them myself.
I feel it is the core of the business – it’s important to get the listing input right.
I got a lesson in that today.
I inputted our new listing at 3:45pm yesterday, and this morning the photos had not been uploaded to the search portals – which has never happened before. When I checked with the MLS help-bot at 7am, I got the typical response – blame the customer. She told me that nobody ever uploaded the photos…..literally as I am looking at my listing on my MLS screen with the photos included.
Finally, around noon the photos showed up on the familiar search portals. By then, Zillow had reported over 700 views of my listing with nothing but a satellite photo, but thankfully I figured it out last night and had included my YouTube video in the first sentence of the property description so consumers at least had that for a reference point.
The snafu didn’t stop agents from alerting their buyers, and by noon I had 11 showings booked – with no photos on Zillow!
Here’s my report from later in the afternoon:
When I screw up and lose track of time and play Wednesday Night Blogging on a Tuesday, I hope it’s understandable. In honor, let’s play the song that deserves to be played on a Thursday:
10541 Galena Canyon Rd., San Diego 92127
6 br/5.5 ba, 3,780sf
7,316sf lot
LP = $1,599,000 – SOLD FOR $1,830,800!
We represented the sellers.
Enjoy the American Dream of living on a quiet culdesac (rare in 4S Ranch) with big backyard that faces south for max natural light inside! This highly-upgraded and turnkey executive home in the estates by Mission Ranch has FOUR en-suite bedrooms (3 up and 1 down), hardwood floors, new carpet & paint, dual-zone A/C, three-car garage and is around the corner from Liberty Park and 1,000+ acres of open space!
The industry has been abuzz over Zillow buying ShowingTime, our appointment-scheduling service.
Wouldn’t it be great if Zillow published the number of showings publicly? The intel that could be gathered would be of great interest to buyers, and help enhance the home-selling transparency.
The data is already available.
Buyer-agents who book their appointments to show on the ShowingTime mobile app can see the whole schedule of times already reserved by other agents. It also makes you wonder if listing agents are reserving a bunch of times to make their listing look more popular (no names or other info is given on the app).
If buyers knew how many showings were scheduled, it would help them decide how much to offer.
Same with the number of offers.
The trend is to do less for buyers, so when asked, most listing agents won’t discuss how many offers they’ve received – and they certainly won’t divulge the offer prices.
But they should.
It would give other buyers a number to shoot at, and that transparency alone makes them more likely to hit it, or even offer more. It’s an old wives’ tale that you can’t divulge – the opposite is stated in the contract:
Another benefit of divulging the number of offers and their terms is you quickly eliminate the non-players. Most buyers are comfortable offering the list price, and +/- 5%, so why not just tell them that you have an offer that is 12% over list and save them the trouble – and save the listing agent from having to process another offer that’s going nowhere.
You can then concentrate on having the real players compete against one another.
It sounds like an auction, doesn’t it?
10541 Galena Canyon Rd., San Diego 92127
6 br/5.5 ba, 3,780sf
7,316sf lot
LP = $1,599,000
Enjoy the American Dream of living on a quiet culdesac (rare in 4S Ranch) with big backyard that faces south for max natural light inside! This highly-upgraded and turnkey executive home in the estates by Mission Ranch has FOUR en-suite bedrooms (3 up and 1 down), hardwood floors, new carpet & paint, dual-zone A/C, three-car garage and is around the corner from Liberty Park and 1,000+ acres of open space!
