I watch the million dollar shows on television. I used to think I liked those shows, because they portrayed Realtors as being cool and hip, and Realtors have, since the advent of the Realtor, been sufficiently anything but cool or hip. I liked the new Realtor, and I liked that the industry found a way to reshape their image. I don’t really feel that way anymore.
I like the fancy cars and pointy shoes as much as the next guy, and I appreciate snarky comments and faux conflicts, but there’s some damage being done to the industry if you look beyond the pocket squares and excessively gelled hair. While we’ve become accustomed to watching these television agents dance through negotiations and coyly bluff each other over drinks at a fancy bar (the deals always come together), the bragging about setting new records and beating the market has convinced much of middle America that this new game isn’t about facilitating market transactions efficiently and competently, but rather it’s about the gimmickry that can, or in the case of the show, always, leads to beating the market.
My market beating experience this year just played out last week at the South Shore Club. I saw there the last two sellers, those owners of lot 8 (unbuilt), and lot 7 (built). When I took over the South Shore Club marketing in 2012, these two parcels were for sale. When 2014 faded to 2015, both of these parcels were still for sale. Both properties held the lofty expectations of their owners, and if both parcels had been in Beverly Hills I likely would have sold them both to foreign investors and then tap-danced my way to a champagne lunch. But this is Lake Geneva, which is, if you’ve been dawdling, a small resort town in Wisconsin that caters almost exclusively to the Chicago affluent. It is a beautiful area, but it is to Beverly Hills what I am to an olympic decathlete.
These two properties weren’t catastrophically flawed. They were South Shore Club properties, owning all of the luxurious amenities that every other club property owns. They were on a dead end cul-de-sac, on a street that hosts a total of 8 parcels. In the time since these two properties were listed, nearly every other property on the street sold, and every buyer that bought on the street looked at these two parcels and said no thanks.
It wasn’t that these owners weren’t trying to sell. The vacant lot #8 switched representation a handful of times in an attempt to rouse a buyer through a different narrative, a different set of pictures, a different approach. That failed. The lot 7 owner, whom I was pleased to represent, chopped the price consistently. He re-painted. He removed the furniture. He had a pre-inspection performed (some agents love those now). He took the property off the market and then put it back on. He chopped the price some more. New pictures were taken. A new narrative written. After several years of efforting the properties had several serious looks, several seriously interested, and dozens upon dozens of showings, yet both sat unsold.
When both parcels sold last week, they sold for the reason that Lake Geneva properties ultimately sell. They sold because the prices were cut to a level that the market accepted. They didn’t sell because of pointy shoes or gelled hair. They didn’t sell because the Realtors drove shiny cars. They sold because the market had rendered judgement on them, and in order to find a buyer they both had to sell cheap. I sold lot 8 last week to a buyer of mine for $420k. I sold lot 7 for $1.45MM. These prices were discounted, tremendously, even as the remainder of the market appreciated. Importantly, these two parcels represented the last two available pieces of aged inventory in the South Shore Club. From here on out, any sale in the SSC will be something new to market, and that’s exciting for everyone that has played a role in this development over the past 14 years.
Did these parcels fail to sell years ago because the Realtors were somehow bad? Is it because the Realtors couldn’t manipulate the market to suit the individual needs of their clients? Well, no. Of course not. The properties didn’t sell because beating the market isn’t just something that supposes one side is extremely naive and gullible, it’s also very difficult to do, unless of course we were in Beverly Hills right now.