Brendan's Blog

In my relatively short eight years in this business, I have experienced many peaks and valleys.  Months with eight settlements, followed by months with one, or none.  If there is one thing that I have learned, it is that the most important times seem to be the valleys.  If you put your nose to the grindstone in the tough times, you will reap the rewards.  It's also important, however, to remember that when you are in that month of eight closings, you need to be finding some way to spend some time focusing on the next couple of months, or these peaks and valleys get worse and worse.  You work for fingers to the bone when you've got the business, then crash when it's all done.  When it is easy, everyone does it...it is what we do in the rough times that set us apart from the crowd.

Happy selling,

Brendan

www.opera-houses.com

Recently I had a seller that was going to potentially list their property with us.  Sadly, her ideas regarding the property value were not in line with reality, and we were unable to help her (she listed with a competitor, and the home is still on the market...).  One thing that really struck me was that she was insistent that we did not install a yard sign.  She found us on-line, and although I appreciated the fact that she recognized all that we do in terms on internet marketing, I was baffled by the idea that she resisted the idea of a sign.  With ALL that we do on-line these days, the hours we spend making sure that our listings get in front of the right audience, how could you have issue with the old fashioned yard sign?  They still make the phone ring, and right now, that's a pretty big deal.  I wish this seller and her agent nothing but the best, but we learned a very important lesson through that interaction...sometimes it is OK, or even beneficial to lose some business!  We try to do anything and everything in order to increase exposure for our listings, if the seller is fighting us, we just can't get it done.  Let them slow our competition down.

Greetings!  Today I would like to talk about the importance of staging your property to sell.  Not only does it allow potential buyers to see your home in the best light, it allows us to put together better marketing materials in order to get people in the door.  I am posting two videos, sort of a "before and after" scenario.  This young couple had their condo on the market last summer, and then found that the rigors of packing up their newborn every time someone wanted to view the condo were a little too much to handle.  Their adorable boy is a little more portable now, and we have the property back on the market.  In the interim, we've had our designer come in and help them get some ideas for staging.   Both videos prove that I am not beyond exploiting all things cute and cuddly in order to sell a home, but don't you think that the second one shows much better? This video was actually on a site chosen by the folks that host our single-property websites as their "site of the month," and it got us some nice press...imagine if the home were as nicely prepared as it is in the second video! Video #2, after staging