Thursday, July 30, 2009

"I need more Showings for my House to Sell!!"

A common concern for most sellers today is the "lack of showings." I heard from one agent that a new Seller client actually emailed her the other day with the subject line, "House on market 24 hours and no showings." The email went on to talk about how "worried" she was that her home had been in the MLS for a day and there was no interest even to see it yet.

How do we get traffic? Do Open Houses help get your home shown more? Do advertisements in the Real Estate Book of Athens get your home more previews and traffic? Should you care? Is the idea we have been conditioned to that tells us we need foot traffic in our homes for sale an outdated, old school, way of looking at home selling in 2009?

Looking over 20 current listings which are active, under contract, or just sold I have tried to see if the number of showings mean anything toward finding that right buyer. In the end, I feel that through the technology of Virtual Tours and putting multiple High Resolution photos of a home for sale online, that this in itself will inherently reduce the amount of foot traffic. So let's take a look at some listings to see if physical showings necessarily create a buyer.


MLS DOM Price Range
Showings Status
988488 63 $200k-$250k
2 Sold
910245 76 $150k-$175k
28 UC
907301 262 $100k-$110k
48 UC
909612 112 $125k-$150k
2 UC

UC (Under Contract)


None of these listings has had an Open House. None. Why you might ask? It is a little known secret in real estate circles that Realtors have Open Houses to find Buyers. Yep, but not necessarily for the listing they are "using" to hold the open house, but for "any listing." This is also why they spend money on the Real Estate Book and other media. To find buyers. Not to sell a particular listing, but to "get the phone ringing."

Yet on average it appears that Days on Market for my listings before going under contract (just using this sample group) is 127 days. Not bad when the average Days on Market is 205 days in Athens over the past year.


What begets a buyer offer? Good exposure and the right price.


Exposure is the easy part if your agent can handle Web 2.0. Listing #988488 above was actually "sold" to the buyer "before they had ever set foot in it." That's right. The Virtual Tour sold it to them. The traditional "staid" buyer's agent didn't know what to do with herself. She called me "concerned" and bewildered all at the same time because her clients had never "seen" the house. Well they had. About 2 dozen times online via the Web.


The hard part is price. How to get price right. This is something that always works, but sellers either are not in a position to bend or won't. It is a tough market. One of these listings under contract currently is actually selling for what the current owner paid for it in 2003. This is not the situation with everyone, but hopefully with get you to think.


If you want a Current Market Analysis to see what the value of your home is please contact me. I am good at what I do and I would love to be of service.

1 comment:

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