In the event that you are selling your home in, say, Mobile, Alabama, please pay very close attention. If you’ve had lots of activity, and you just had an offer at your asking price, you no longer need to pay attention. However, if you’ve been working to sell your home for a long time, and you’ve listened to the suggestions of your Realtor, the suggestions of your neighbors, the suggestions of the lady who used to be a Realtor but now does your nails for you, lean in. There’s one very keen secret to selling your home that you likely haven’t yet tried. While we’re in a discussion with Mobile sellers, this would also work in Burr Ridge, Anchorage, Phuket, and Fontana. Lean closer.
If this home sale has been vexing you, just call me. I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking this is a Realtor stunt, where the Realtor tells you that they know what ails your listing, and that they’ll sell it in 60 days or THEY’LL BUY IT, but that’s not what this is. This is, instead, a sure fire way to sell that house, or condo, or farm, or trailer, or caboose-turned-condominium. I haven’t really tested the theory out on the latter three in that list, nor have I attempted to intervene in a condo-tel sale, but I’m betting this magic works anywhere I choose to deploy it.
Typically, I deploy it in Lake Geneva. But sometimes Williams Bay. Often Fontana. And Linn, oh, Linn. of course you, too. Here’s how this will work. You, own a struggling piece of real estate. Me, work with a buyer to talk them into that struggling piece of real estate. You, wait patiently while I do this. Me, call your agent, who should also be me but shamefully, usually, is not. Me, set up a showing on a Wednesday for a Saturday. You, have hundreds of showings on Thursday. Me, sit patiently for Saturday, sometimes twiddling my thumbs in homage to my other grandmother, Grandma May. You, receive offers on your home. You, Friday, accept one of those offers. Me, call my buyer to tell them that the property has sold. You, act happy. Me, act discouraged. My buyer, reeking of disappointment with a growing hint of ambivalence.
At the end of that day, you have sold your house because of me, but you thank your Realtor anyway, and pay him or her, possibly handsomely. While this is, hopefully obviously, satire of some degree, this has been happening with alarming frequency. A scroll through the MLS shows lots of active homes. In fact, it shows lots of homes that have been active for lots and lots of days. It also shows huge amounts of pending activity, meaning there is a June Swoon for our weather, and for our collective baseball teams, but not for our real estate market. June, it seems, couldn’t be any hotter.
There are deals pending on the lakefront, lots of them. I still have a fragile deal on my lakefront in Loramoor, and there is still a deal on that listing on Park in Linn for $1.9MM or so. There’s a deal on the large lakefront in the Birches listed at $2.95MM, the piece with wide frontage blanketed by Conservancy. There’s inventory being added to the lakefront as well, but nothing on the lower end that most buyers will find delightful. There’s a new big estate coming to market next week for a price that will make all the other estates feel like a bargain. Years ago I wrote about the market testing these upper bracket waters someday, and that day has arrived. Are there buyers to snap up these larger properties? I suppose that depends on what you mean by buyer(s)…
Remember, with these expensive homes, there has to be something defining about the property and the home in order to make people interested. There also has to be a price involved that makes sense, one that has been proven in the market before. That’s why a $7.5MM home can find a buyer so much more easily than can a $10MM home. That’s because we’ve sold $7MM+ homes in this market, but even the billionaires here haven’t paid over $10MM for their acquisitions. If I had a $10MM+ home on Geneva, I’d enjoy the heck out of it, and as long as I wasn’t broke, which is something you shouldn’t be if you own a $10MM vacation home, and then I’d leave it to my kids and let them deal with it.
The rest of the market is similarly active. Perhaps the story of 2014 will be the resurgence of buyers in the $600k to $900k price range. This range was DOA for years, and has now come roaring back. A property on Arrowhead in Country Club Estates closed this week for $835k- $10k over the ask, after multiple offers drove the price up. A home in Shore Haven closed at $625k as well, and while the home will not be featured on the cover of any home design magazines, it was a cute enough home with a slip and a pleasant, short stroll to the lake. I didn’t sell either of these, and though I think I might be leading the closed sales volume for 2014 for this county with somewhere north of $13MM closed, this business cares so very little about what you did last month, and worries a heck of a lot about what you have scheduled for next month.
This weekend, I’ll be showing houses, again. I’ll be skipping some that I had set up the other day, because they’ve since gone under contract. Key to finding value now is to absolutely pounce on new inventory that is unique or otherwise blue chip, and to seek out aged inventory that might have a seller who is growing exceptionally tired of watching these other homes sell.