Secrets to selling in soft market
Book Review: 'Staging to Sell ...'
By Tara-Nicholle Nelson, Tuesday, June 16, 2009.
Cover image courtesy Wiley.Book Review
Title: "Staging to Sell: The Secret to Selling Homes in a Down Market"
Author: Barb Schwarz
Publisher: Wiley, 2009; 267 pages; $19.95 list ($13.57 on Amazon.com)
Never have listing agents and sellers so needed a leg up as they do now. This is especially true for Realtors representing individual home sellers, who might not be able to compete with foreclosures and short sales on price, and so need some other way to create a compelling value proposition for the buyers who do visit their homes. Enter home staging.
According to author Barb Schwarz, who markets herself as "The Inventor of Home Staging," even in a down market staged homes sell in 35 days or less, on average, while those that are not staged take an average of 172 days to sell. Schwarz paints a vivid, data-backed picture for why and how real estate agents who list homes should master the key tenets of home staging.
"Staging to Sell: The Secret to Selling Homes in a Down Market" is interesting in the novelty and comprehensiveness of its approach. It is a book on staging that has various ingredients targeted toward agents, stagers and even homeowners themselves.
In addition to sketching out the key elements and principles of successful home staging, Schwarz weaves in a good deal of very strong material on how listing agents can use their home-staging successes -- i.e., past transactions that benefited from home staging -- to market themselves and obtain listings and get sellers to buy into the concept of staging going forward.
For example, Schwarz teaches the concept of a "career book" agents can compile and use in listing presentations that includes not only credentials, awards and testimonial letters, but also before-and-after pictures of staged past listings, with the corresponding sales success data.
Further illustrating the depth of her understanding of Realtors and their business opportunities and challenges (and the utility of the solutions she's come up with in 30 years as a real estate broker and home stager), Schwarz reveals her system for analyzing and presenting comparative market analyses and pricing recommendations to a prospective seller, working in the staging status of the comparables vis-à-vis the subject property as a meaningful metric. ...CONTINUED
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Submitted by Ron Taylor on June 16, 2009 - 2:58pm.
Is Obama Hurting or Helping the Real Estate Industry?
Like many of you, I get e-mails and magazines from the National Association of Realtors and from my state association wanting me to write my representatives and endorse many things the Obama administration are proposing to “stimulate” the real estate industry.
Now the Obama administration has proposed to pay each lender $1,000 for each successful short sale. In addition, they want to pay the homeowner $1,500 as “moving” money. They will pay the first lender $1 for every $2 the second lender is allowed to receive.
While this may loosen up the lenders a little to accept more short sale, now the lenders want to put a stipulation in the closing instructions that a home cannot be resold for 90 days after their closing. How is this going to stimulate the economy?
I recently read that 40% of home sold were bought by investors. These investors bought the homes with the idea of reselling for a profit. By adding this stipulation to any closing instructions will only hurt the sale of these homes. I am thankful that many title companies have said they will not issue title insurance with that stipulation. They can’t monitor what happens to a home after closing. Secondly, I even wonder if it is legal.
The loan modification program established by the Obama administration just postpones the inevitable, viz., a foreclosure. Even with reduced payments, you still have to have a job to make the payments, plus many homeowners are finding out they don’t qualify for this loan modification program.
More foreclosure homes are coming on the market affecting the value of the one next door. Unemployment at a all time high while real estate is at an all time low. Which raise an important question? Where is the money coming from to pay for all this? You got, from you and me in the form of higher taxes.
Can anybody tell me what country or individual has ever spent their way into prosperity by going deeper into debt? Why does our government think otherwise?
For information on working with realtors through short sales, go to my web-site page at http://www.cansellnow.com/shortsaleinfo.html .
Ron Taylor<><
President/Broker/Auctioneer
The Restorer, Inc.
D/B/A Taylor and Sons Real Estate & Auctioneers
252-257-4822 (Office)
252-257-5823 (Fax)
www.canSellnow.com