I had a dream last night. In the dream I was just myself, no one else. I wasn’t able to fly, or able to breath under water; nothing terrific like that. I was just a Realtor in this dream, going about my Realtor business. I was in a living room, someone else’s living room, not a room I had been in before. It wasn’t a very nice living room, but it was okay, I guess. In dreams, decor rarely matters.
The seller was someone I knew. A kid I knew a few years ago, he couldn’t be more than 22 now, as he was in the dream. He was sitting in his house, except in real life it is his parent’s house, but not in dreams. It was his house and he wanted to know how much it was worth. He kept repeating three million dollars. He was intent. Three million dollars. Maybe three million five hundred thousand dollars. He wasn’t sure.
I was uncomfortable in the dream. I wanted to hear him out, to listen to the myriad reasons his house was worth this much money, and so I sat on the couch as he pointed to comps. The comparables were indeed nice homes, lakefront homes, big ones and fancy ones and I had sold many of them. I nodded along with his charismatic plea. Three million dollars.
When it was my turn I explained that those homes were large lakefront homes, and that his home was a small A-frame located two blocks from the lake. He sat back in his chair, feigning disgust at my lack of enthusiasm. I used the example of the Knollwood house that sold two years ago for $2.2MM, and said that the only reason that home sold for such an incredible number was because the home was so amazing. It was perfect, I said. Luxe Magazine, I said. Three million dollars, he said.
When I sensed I was making some progress with him, I asked what he had into the house. He said $300k. I said, “you mean your parents had $300k into it”. He smiled and acknowledged that yes, it was his parents’ money and their investment, not his. I told him he’d be lucky to get $400k for the house, but that he shouldn’t be so upset because that’s a lot of money for a kid his age. The dream ended without any further commentary. I’m uncertain if I got the listing, but it didn’t matter because I didn’t want it anyway.
This was a dream, but this is my life today. The market at Lake Geneva is filling with competition, I should say, with other agents whom, no matter their lack of knowledge or prior success, are intent on telling the world of their proficiency. The competition isn’t that, but it looks like it when you drive around and see names on signs that you’ve never seen before. It’s a market chock full of agents, of open houses, or letters and websites and Instagram hashtags. Experts are everywhere. Things are changing, and it’s the competition in the business of real estate that’s often bad for the consumer.
And that comes back to my dream. Sellers know the market is hot. They know it because all 500 some agents in Walworth County are telling them. Hot. Hot. Hot. And so agents are bidding up the listing prices of houses, especially lakefront houses on Geneva Lake, and sellers are feeling flattered by all the attention. The dream I had was just that, a dream, but it’s based on the reality of this season. Sellers, a note of caution. A hot market means there are market buyers for your house. Someone might even pay 5-10% more than the market value if they love it enough. But if we take the bait and price homes too high just because there’s a slight chance we’ll get away with it, we’re going to damage the market by filling it with overpriced homes that will, ultimately, drag on the market and put downward pressure on the unrealistic listing prices.
Buyers, work with an agent who knows the market because they’ve proven that they sell the market. Sellers, work with an agent who knows the market because they’ve proven that they sell the market. This isn’t really that hard.