Better money sooner for Sun City sellers
The new SCREED is out. Plus which, there’s a whole library of ’em.
If you are blessed by a Sun City home address, the new edition of The SCREED should be in your driveway, tucked into this week’s Independent. If not, click the link and all will be revealed. Better yet, click this link to gain access to the vast and burgeoning library of past editions of The […]
<img fetchpriority="high" decoding="async" width="793" height="737" src="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Screen-Shot-2025-03-25-at-8.57.40-AM.png" alt="" class="wp-image-1631" srcset="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Screen-Shot-2025-03-25-at-8.57.40-AM.png 793w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Screen-Shot-2025-03-25-at-8.57.40-AM-300x279.png 300w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Screen-Shot-2025-03-25-at-8.57.40-AM-768x714.png 768w" sizes="(max-width: 793px) 100vw, 793px" /> If you are blessed by a Sun City home address, the new edition of The SCREED should be in your driveway, tucked into this week’s Independent. If not, click the link and all will be revealed. Better yet, click this link to gain access to the vast and burgeoning library of past editions of The SCREED. I noted to a client that almost no one in Phoenix real estate survives all the way through a complete market cycle. It’s a buyer’s market, sellers, and it will be for a while. The agents who will survive – ahem! – know how to sell.
There’s no Screed like a new Screed. If it’s not in your driveway, download the latest edition here.
The year’s first edition of The Screed hit the streets of Sun City this week. If you didn’t get yours, download it here.
<img decoding="async" width="832" height="598" src="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Screen-Shot-2025-01-30-at-8.54.44-AM.png" alt="" class="wp-image-1615" srcset="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Screen-Shot-2025-01-30-at-8.54.44-AM.png 832w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Screen-Shot-2025-01-30-at-8.54.44-AM-300x216.png 300w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Screen-Shot-2025-01-30-at-8.54.44-AM-768x552.png 768w" sizes="(max-width: 832px) 100vw, 832px" /> The year’s first edition of The Screed hit the streets of Sun City this week. If you didn’t get yours, download it here.
Bloodhound Rules: There are NO three-quarter bath homes in Sun City.
From the end of World War II to the mid-70s and beyond, Phoenix built block ranch homes with beshingled rafters. Here and there was a split-ranch, very rarely a basement home. We had learned how to build on slab, which meant that all production homes needed was level lots – and we had a desert […]
<img decoding="async" width="470" height="1024" src="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/TraindancingDuck-470x1024.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-1609" srcset="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/TraindancingDuck-470x1024.jpg 470w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/TraindancingDuck-138x300.jpg 138w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/TraindancingDuck-768x1672.jpg 768w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/TraindancingDuck-706x1536.jpg 706w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/TraindancingDuck.jpg 792w" sizes="(max-width: 470px) 100vw, 470px" /> If you don’t have an inventory of rubber ducks, you may not have any use for a bathtub. From the end of World War II to the mid-70s and beyond, Phoenix built block ranch homes with beshingled rafters. Here and there was a split-ranch, very rarely a basement home. We had learned how to build on slab, which meant that all production homes needed was level lots – and we had a desert full of ’em. So: Two bedrooms, one bath. Very common at first. Even three bedrooms, one bath and an inadequate wall heater, all in 995 square feet. If you find half-baths in vintage ranch homes, they’re likely to be after-market additions. The big luxury upgrade was the three-quarter bathroom in the master bedroom – toilet, vanity and shower, often in a 6 x 8′ closet-sized space. Builders put up zillions of these homes, all across the Valley of the Ever-Fecund Sun: Three-quarter bath in the master, eventually with extra space and other luxury amenities, and a ‘full’ bathroom in the hall. What a full bathroom meant was a tub but not a shower. Babies, toddlers and children need bathtubs, so the kid- and guest-bedrooms have access to the tub. Del Webb built much of Sun City just this way, three-quarter in the master, sometimes with the vanity out in the bedroom, and a tub-bath in the hall. A very common after-market upgrade was to convert the latter into a shower-bath; if you have to duck to rinse off the shampoo, you found one. But given that the distinction between a two-bathroom home and a one-and-three-quarter is ultimately academic – where the true ‘full’ bath is substantially less useful than either a shower or a shower-bath – I plan to ignore it altogether, going forward. In other words, in my listings if there are two places to bathe, that’s a two-bathroom home. The inspector or the appraiser can quibble, if they choose, but if they actually look at the photos in the comparable listings, they’ll see that the two types of bathrooms are continuously conflated. The way to search is from 1.75 to 2 bathrooms, to catch everything, and the way to list is to not get bogged down over functionally-equivalent amenities.
‘The Screed’ hits the streets of Sun City for Christmas Eve.
There is a new edition of The Screed out today. If you live in 85351, it’s in your driveway, as a pre-printed insert to The Sun City Independent. If you reside elsewhere, click here for a PDF version. As it says right there in black and white, I am your best resource for Sun City […]
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="747" src="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Screen-Shot-2024-12-24-at-9.25.06-AM-1024x747.png" alt="" class="wp-image-1604" srcset="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Screen-Shot-2024-12-24-at-9.25.06-AM-1024x747.png 1024w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Screen-Shot-2024-12-24-at-9.25.06-AM-300x219.png 300w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Screen-Shot-2024-12-24-at-9.25.06-AM-768x560.png 768w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Screen-Shot-2024-12-24-at-9.25.06-AM-1200x876.png 1200w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Screen-Shot-2024-12-24-at-9.25.06-AM.png 1228w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /> There is a new edition of The Screed out today. If you live in 85351, it’s in your driveway, as a pre-printed insert to The Sun City Independent. If you reside elsewhere, click here for a PDF version. As it says right there in black and white, I am your best resource for Sun City real estate news. You should subscribe to this website, using the form at the bottom of this page, and to our facebook page. Working together, we’ll see what works, what doesn’t – and how to get your home sold ahead of its competition.
The five stages of staging: Delivering that ‘new-in-box’ experience to Sun City home-buyers.
Looking for a question that answers itself? Try this one: Does staging work to sell homes? Does freshness move the goods down at the green-grocer’s? Is there really anything to the idea of a ‘new-car smell’? Delivering a house that is ready in every respect for its new residents definitely works, but it fell to […]
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="795" height="795" src="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/image-1.png" alt="" class="wp-image-1598" srcset="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/image-1.png 795w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/image-1-300x300.png 300w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/image-1-150x150.png 150w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/image-1-768x768.png 768w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 795px) 100vw, 795px" /> Home sweet home: There’s no place like it – for you and no one else… Looking for a question that answers itself? Try this one: Does staging work to sell homes? Does freshness move the goods down at the green-grocer’s? Is there really anything to the idea of a ‘new-car smell’? Delivering a house that is ready in every respect for its new residents definitely works, but it fell to Steve Jobs to show us why staging works: It expresses extreme respect for the buyer’s sagacity – and funding – by delivering a ‘new-in-box’ experience. As with the iPhone App Store, the unboxing video is an emergent phenomenon, engendered not by Apple but by its customers. But the solemn unboxing of a new toy, very-carefully-boxed, has become a key part of the marketing strategy of new toys. And new homes, too – big duh. There are no dirty clothes or toast crumbs cluttering up model homes – and they are serviced continuously and cleaned daily. If you’re looking for perfect staging, the ideal ‘new-in-box’ residence, they keep regular hours down at the new home subdivision. But our job is to deliver that ‘new-in-box’ experience with resale homes in Sun City, many of which are themselves already of retirement age. For the right sum of cash, you can swap in a whole lot of ‘wow-factor’, all without turning your home into a born-yesterday dentist’s office. But with the right kind of staging you can put your best foot forward from wherever you start. Like this: 1. Declutter. You cannot do this enough, and you will only have finished when you are busily cluttering up your new home. Put away, give away, throw away, rinse and repeat. If you already live in Sun City, good for you: Parks and Sons will haul away almost anything, as much as you can drag out, two days a week. Clutter makes the house hard to see, and it declares that the home is yours, not the buyer’s, where you need for them to see things the opposite way. 2. Deflair. The idea of flair comes from the movie ‘Office Space.’ Flair is the stuff in your home that makes it uniquely your own: Family photos, sports memorabilia, religious symbols, etc. It’s all moving with you, so pack it all up now. White Sox fans are expected to hate the Cubs, but we don’t want them hating you or your house. Nota bene: It is not a denial of your identity to take this stuff down. When you list your home for sale, it becomes an investment property, a retail product, and your job as the seller is to remove as many impediments to the sale as you can. The sooner you pack up the flair, the sooner you can move. 3. Deep clean. Nothing sells houses like clean. If you have no budget for the listing, pay for deep cleaning in the kitchen and bathrooms, anyway. But, as you will have noted, we have substantially empty house to work from, by now. Skilled deep cleaners will unearth dirt you didn’t know you had – but which the buyer can always seem to find. When they are done, the house will seem to pop – the essence of that ‘new-in-box’ feeling. 4. Stage. Occupied? Make it work with what’s there. Vacant? Make something work. Everything’s a trade-off, and budgetary considerations loom, but recall that your model of perfection is the brand new model home. Given virtual staging, if your home is vacant you can make do with ‘decorator staging’ – candles, towels, tchotchkes – on the property. When buyers have fallen in love with the ideal in the listing photos, a sparser reality on-site will not prove dismaying. 5. Photography. Yes, the fifth stage of staging happens after the staging is done. You can’t do anything in the way of retouching or virtual staging without photographs. But more importantly, perfect staging doesn’t last. People move things. They track in mud or bougainvillea petals. They reclutter – incessantly. The MLS listing is where the house will sell, if it is to sell high and fast. The objective of all this staging effort is to get the perfect listing photos that will sell the house as soon as it hits the market. Don’t want to go to all that trouble? I do. We have people who can do everything that needs to be done – but it does need to be done. If you follow me on Facebook, you’ll see me highlighting badly-sold homes, but the tragic part of the story comes when they sell – badly. Does staging work? Only if you want your house to sell quickly and for top dollar…
The Dirty Thirty: October’s very most awful Sun City home sales.
My apologies for being late with the latest excoriations. The bad news is always bad, as above, 2167sf with three bathrooms thrown away as the inevitable consequence of starting sleazy and high. See for yourself, by chart and by way of this 30-day live link into the listings: The good news? The Snowbirds are back […]
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="960" height="640" src="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/image-1.png" alt="" class="wp-image-1589" srcset="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/image-1.png 960w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/image-1-300x200.png 300w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/image-1-768x512.png 768w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 960px) 100vw, 960px" /> I remarked on this property when it listed: No one should be able to guess what is going on in your home – or why you have it up for sale. 27 DOM, 74.50% SP/OLP. My apologies for being late with the latest excoriations. The bad news is always bad, as above, 2167sf with three bathrooms thrown away as the inevitable consequence of starting sleazy and high. See for yourself, by chart and by way of this 30-day live link into the listings: <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="363" height="652" src="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Screenshot-2024-11-23-at-11.26.29 AM.png" alt="" class="wp-image-1590" srcset="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Screenshot-2024-11-23-at-11.26.29 AM.png 363w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Screenshot-2024-11-23-at-11.26.29 AM-167x300.png 167w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 363px) 100vw, 363px" /> The good news? The Snowbirds are back and buying. The other end of the chart has some impressive performances, and – huge surprise – homes that are priced wisely and to market are selling well. The cloud around that silver lining is that new listings are being added in Sun City much faster than closed listings are depleting the available inventory. That argues for profound pain when the Snowbirds go back home again. Plan accordingly…
SCUBA: The name of the game for Sun City buyers? “What’s missing? What’s undone?”
Scio in Latin is ‘I know.’ It’s a beautiful as atoms – both ‘sc’ and ‘io’ denote beautiful ideas – but it’s ‘sc’ in English that lends so much ammunition to my cannonades of wit. We have already had The Screed – Sun City Real Estate Eviscerations and Dismay – and now I inaugurate SCUBA […]
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="960" height="640" src="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/image.png" alt="" class="wp-image-1582" srcset="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/image.png 960w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/image-300x200.png 300w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/image-768x512.png 768w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 960px) 100vw, 960px" /> Flippers are strippers: They throw away appliances, window treatments, shower bars, etc., on the way in, but don’t always replace them on the way out… Scio in Latin is ‘I know.’ It’s a beautiful as atoms – both ‘sc’ and ‘io’ denote beautiful ideas – but it’s ‘sc’ in English that lends so much ammunition to my cannonades of wit. We have already had The Screed – Sun City Real Estate Eviscerations and Dismay – and now I inaugurate SCUBA – the Sun City Underground Buyer’s Agenda. I don’t even represent Sun City home-buyers, but I’m not sure anyone else does, either. Luckily, Del Webb’s homes are the very best of ‘good bones’. If you stay on top of the roof, so to speak, the block home beneath it will last for centuries. And yet: A retirement home that is itself old enough to retire will have required successive updates to deliver on the promise of its good bones. The buyer’s agenda is to nail those issues down, discounting for anything that is either missing or undone. So here is my EZ punch list for every home, for every buyer in Sun City: 1. No fridge? 2. No window treatments? 3. No landscaping? 4. Popcorn ceilings? 5. Single-pane windows? 6. Two-prong wiring? The first two mean time, money and effort before you can move in. For the third, the neighbors are good and ready for you to stop looking like a rental. And if the home needs serious upgrades to remain competitive, you will do them on the way out if not on the way in. Only a plumber can tell you if the pipes need help, but you can see everything I’m talking about in the photos in the MLS listing. None are deal-killers, necessarily, but they all make a difference, both on what you should pay as a buyer and on what you will reap, in due course, as a seller.
The Dirty Thirty: Sun City’s worst closings for September.
Do you know what is most interesting about real estate commissions? It’s entirely the wrong number to focus on. The metric I use – net-Sold Price / Original List Price – is far better. After all, what good does it do you to save 1.5% on commissions only to lose 10% or more of your […]
What happens to throwaway homes? They get thrown away… 88DOM, 73.48% SP/OLP. Do you know what is most interesting about real estate commissions? It’s entirely the wrong number to focus on. The metric I use – net-Sold Price / Original List Price – is far better. After all, what good does it do you to save 1.5% on commissions only to lose 10% or more of your equity by working with the wrong agent? Here are the 30 most-wrong marketing efforts for Sun City real estate in September: <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="362" height="653" src="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Screen-Shot-2024-10-10-at-11.13.31-AM.png" alt="" class="wp-image-1574" srcset="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Screen-Shot-2024-10-10-at-11.13.31-AM.png 362w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Screen-Shot-2024-10-10-at-11.13.31-AM-166x300.png 166w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 362px) 100vw, 362px" /> This link to the listings is live for 30 days. I can demonstrate every claim I make in these consistently dismal results. If you want to do better with your home, I can show you how to get at, near or above Fair Market Value in very few Days On Market.
Why subscribe – here and on Facebook? I am the best source of real estate information in Sun City.
My apologies for not writing here more often. I intend for the posts on this weblog to be canonical – enduringly true for all Sun City home sellers. Whenever you come here, you should learn something important. For matters of lesser moment, or for the individual instances making up a trend, see me on Facebook. […]
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="716" height="768" src="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Screen-Shot-2024-10-09-at-11.48.02-AM.png" alt="" class="wp-image-1567" srcset="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Screen-Shot-2024-10-09-at-11.48.02-AM.png 716w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Screen-Shot-2024-10-09-at-11.48.02-AM-280x300.png 280w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 716px) 100vw, 716px" /> My apologies for not writing here more often. I intend for the posts on this weblog to be canonical – enduringly true for all Sun City home sellers. Whenever you come here, you should learn something important. For matters of lesser moment, or for the individual instances making up a trend, see me on Facebook. I read the Sun City MLS every day, and I use what I see in every day’s new and closed listings to teach lessons great and small. And you should be subscribed to both resources. There is literally no one else telling you the truth about about Sun City real estate, so it’s lucky that I’m the best person to do that job. Here’s fun: Sun City sellers should definitely be following me, and, as above, I can be helpful to buyers. But the people who should be glued to their screens are the listing agents: I know all about what they’re getting wrong – and I know how to get this job right. If you subscribe to the weblog, using the form at the bottom of this page, you’ll get email notices when I post here, a few times a month. If you follow me on Facebook, you’ll see a few brief posts a day. Either way, I’ll show you everything that is and isn’t working in Sun City residential real estate.
Why does everything matter on a new Sun City listing – especially the list price? Because you never get a second chance at the first weekend.
The emails go out Thursday morning, early, to catch your early-morning eyes. A search portal from your agent? An auto-search you set up yourself on a real estate website? However you arranged things, that email is there to help you plan your weekend home search. And, of utmost importance, the newer listings are flagged with […]
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="1024" src="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/bored-1024x1024.jpeg" alt="" class="wp-image-1557" srcset="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/bored-1024x1024.jpeg 1024w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/bored-300x300.jpeg 300w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/bored-150x150.jpeg 150w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/bored-768x768.jpeg 768w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/bored-1200x1200.jpeg 1200w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/bored.jpeg 1280w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /> Is it rude to laugh? It takes a LOT more work for a listing agent to sell a house badly than it does to do the job right from Day Zero. It is pure luck that they have but two feet to shoot themselves in… The emails go out Thursday morning, early, to catch your early-morning eyes. A search portal from your agent? An auto-search you set up yourself on a real estate website? However you arranged things, that email is there to help you plan your weekend home search. And, of utmost importance, the newer listings are flagged with some form of eye-catching text like “NEW!” And the emails go out again Friday morning, and you pay special attention to the “NEW!” listings because you’re not enthralled with the list you made Thursday. And the emails go out again on Saturday morning – to go unread or to be set aside for later consideration. Come Saturday morning, you’re looking at houses, not listings. And if a home was newly listed after Friday’s emails went out? It has, just by that one false move, lost two-thirds or more of the selling power of the word “NEW!” If you jumped on the grenade while the general was golfing, you didn’t get the medal. And if you moved heaven and earth to list a property for sale on the wrong day, this error alone is likely to have enduring consequences. I’m belaboring this for two reasons: Second, there were ten brand new listings in Sun City from 1:22 am Friday to 2:52 am Saturday. That’s a lot for any day, and it’s very likely that most or all of them missed out on Friday’s emails. They will not be showing today, Saturday, because the buyers didn’t see them when they were looking for homes to visit today. But first, this mistake (there will be new listings tomorrow, Sunday, the worst day to be “NEW!”) goes to everything I talk about. EVERYTHING counts in a new listing. The list price matters most, but absolutely everything matters. The reason is in the headline: You will never have more attention, more excitement, more follow-up interest in your MLS listing than you will have over the first weekend. It is your magic moment to shine, with everything in the listing as close to perfect as you can make it – the wishbook page of your buyer’s idealized future, a breathtaking rhapsody to be heard only within the confines of this one perfect space… If the price is right – if the value is right – you will excite all the interest you need to sell the home from Thursday to Tuesday – at, near or above list price. The first weekend is your best and perhaps your only chance to ‘beat’ the Fair Market Value of your home. Not by much – everyone is doing the same math – but an irresistible listing can beguile more than one buyer, resulting in a bidding war, which is unlikely to happen later. Everyone makes mistakes, and you fix what you can when you realize your errors – or when very generous buyer’s agents point them out in showing feedback. But: You never get a second chance to make a first impression. By the time the “NEW!” is off your rose, you may already be doomed to sell below market – no matter where you started. Everything matters – price first – because you never get a second chance at the first weekend.
The Dirty 30: The worst real estate sales in Sun City for August 2024.
Ahem. It’s easy to look at a long list of failed, fractured listings and think, “Well, the agents are really dumb, after all.” That surely is true, but it doesn’t mean that they are not also cynical, craven, mercenary, deceptive and predatory: You can’t slash the list price on a listing you don’t have… So […]
Probably not a deal-killer, but no one would have missed this photo, had it been omitted. The listing started at $50k over FMV, finished at $40k under FMV. 278 DOM, 72.67% net-SP/OLP. Ahem. It’s easy to look at a long list of failed, fractured listings and think, “Well, the agents are really dumb, after all.” That surely is true, but it doesn’t mean that they are not also cynical, craven, mercenary, deceptive and predatory: You can’t slash the list price on a listing you don’t have… So here we have The Dirty 30 for August 2024 in a 30-day live look into the MLS, the worst closings in Sun City this month: <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="363" height="655" src="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Screen-Shot-2024-09-06-at-9.57.24-AM.png" alt="" class="wp-image-1547" srcset="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Screen-Shot-2024-09-06-at-9.57.24-AM.png 363w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Screen-Shot-2024-09-06-at-9.57.24-AM-166x300.png 166w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 363px) 100vw, 363px" /> When you’re giving away anywhere from 11% to 27% off the Original List Price, it’s not hard to figure out what the problem is. And whether or not agents are too dumb to learn better, I have every confidence that YOU are not. Pricing to market in wise numbers produces better, faster results. If, on the other hand, you would rather wait for months for your money, you can pocket a whole lot less of it for your trouble…
The redemption of Hope? Whatever it takes.
When life hands you a lemon… make the most of it! I shot my mouth off about throwaway homes, so life handed me one and told me to put up or shut up. Well, it didn’t quite happen that way. Karen Mushier, a Sun City paralegal who handles wills, trusts, probates, etc., sat me down […]
When life hands you a lemon… make the most of it! I shot my mouth off about throwaway homes, so life handed me one and told me to put up or shut up. Well, it didn’t quite happen that way. Karen Mushier, a Sun City paralegal who handles wills, trusts, probates, etc., sat me down and explained to me how so many Sun City homes come to be thrown away: The last living resident dies with no heirs, and so it falls to the probate system to reckon with the estate’s assets and debts. And then she did me one better, referring a badly-neglected property to me to list for sale. The heirs had been identified, and one of the two, designated as the ‘personal representative’ (think executor) of the deceased, was to be my client. So: The owner had been old and ailing and her live-in paramour was a hoarder of the first water. He packed the house with stuff for around ten years, and then it was abandoned for another four. This is a view of the living room on the day I followed our locksmith – my nephew Tim Brannum of Lockology – into 10754 West Hope Drive: <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="768" src="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/image-2-1024x768.png" alt="" class="wp-image-1531" srcset="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/image-2-1024x768.png 1024w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/image-2-300x225.png 300w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/image-2-768x576.png 768w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/image-2-1536x1152.png 1536w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/image-2-2048x1536.png 2048w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/image-2-1200x900.png 1200w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /> The water was off but the power was on, and had been on without interruption for the four years the house sat empty – there were still-frozen Klondike bars in the fridge. Every room was stacked high with stuff – some of it just debris, but a lot of new-in-original-packaging merchandise. A patio had been converted into a dining room at some point, and then that room had been converted into a barn-like kennel for big dogs. That particular space has impressed itself upon my olfactory nerve, seemingly permanently: I will smell those dogs forever. The two front bedrooms were so packed as to be impassable, at first. Maybe half of their contents was landfill-bait: Huge tubs of old paper documents and VHS tapes. But the other half was resalable merchandise in huge quantities: Paper goods, especially, but all sorts of stuff, much of it obtained at clearance prices from places like Harbor Freight Tools. I needed the house emptied, but I had no budget. So we had a sale, not in pursuit of money but of bulk-reduction: Everything you buy at a deep-deep discount is trash we don’t have to pay to send to the dump. <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="768" src="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/20240720_062031-1024x768.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-1532" srcset="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/20240720_062031-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/20240720_062031-300x225.jpg 300w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/20240720_062031-768x576.jpg 768w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/20240720_062031-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/20240720_062031-2048x1536.jpg 2048w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/20240720_062031-1200x900.jpg 1200w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /> The house, the garage and the back yard we are packed with stuff that either could be sold or needed to be trashed. We spent Friday through Sunday emptying everything – and we made that part of Hope’s redemption pay for itself. Friday was cheap, Saturday cheaper and Sunday was free – if it can be moved, remove it. A sweet lady wanted to search the kitchen for cookware, so I made her this deal: “If you touch trash, don’t just push it aside, put it in a trash bag.” As a result of that little speech, she got what she wanted and she cleaned the kitchen for me in the process. The sale paid its own labor costs – one person outside selling, one inside removing stuff – plus it paid for the landscaping I had had done, and there was enough left over to pay a cleaner to follow up on the final trashout. But the real triumph was getting virtually everything off of the property at no cost to the seller. Oh, but if only that was all that needed to be done. The next step, after the sale, was whipping the house into a more-presentable shape. It needed more than we could give it, but I wanted to put its best foot forward, which meant getting the rest of the debris out and dismantling clumsy home-handyman constructions like the dog kennels/stalls. An enormous job, and it was done from Monday to Thursday: <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="768" src="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/20240726_170024-1024x768.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-1533" srcset="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/20240726_170024-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/20240726_170024-300x225.jpg 300w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/20240726_170024-768x576.jpg 768w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/20240726_170024-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/20240726_170024-2048x1536.jpg 2048w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/20240726_170024-1200x900.jpg 1200w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /> Next came my real function, listing the home for sale. Because it is in such rough shape, it could not qualify for conventional financing – cash or hard-money loans only. Even so, I made a wishbook listing, rhapsodizing the home’s past and future glory. We had met a number of monied Yuppie couples at the sale, and I was hoping for similarly-situated buyers: Cash-rich and eager to take on an adventure. I met more of those couples as the house was listed, but none prepared to pull the trigger, alas. Instead, I heard from swarms of wholesalers, predatory and destructive. It took me three tries, but I figured out how make it safe to negotiate with them. We finished in 12 days-on-market, but at 90.90% of the Original List Price. But Hope Drive’s redemption is but barely begun. We sold the home to a true investor, not a wholesaler, and he is already at work rehabbing the property. Here it is last night: <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="768" src="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/image-3-1024x768.png" alt="" class="wp-image-1535" srcset="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/image-3-1024x768.png 1024w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/image-3-300x225.png 300w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/image-3-768x576.png 768w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/image-3.png 1060w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /> I’m eager to see what happens next for this home. When we took possession, its value was hidden under deep piles of debris. As we worked, we discovered the good bones that had been buried there all along. The next step in Hope’s redemption will be dramatic – so stay tuned. Meanwhile, this experience illustrates perfectly the listing agent’s job in getting a home sold: Whatever it takes.
Better thinking, better results: BINSR-whipping wholesalers back into negotiability.
What’s a home-buyer? Someone who wants to move up or to stop paying rent or to relocate from another city. Someone with stuff to be housed and who desires, periodically, to bathe and sleep in private. They want a specific, carefully-chosen home, and they don’t want to lose out on it. But then there are […]
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="1024" src="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/wolf1-1024x1024.jpeg" alt="" class="wp-image-1527" srcset="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/wolf1-1024x1024.jpeg 1024w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/wolf1-300x300.jpeg 300w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/wolf1-150x150.jpeg 150w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/wolf1-768x768.jpeg 768w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/wolf1-1200x1200.jpeg 1200w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/wolf1.jpeg 1280w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /> “Have I got a deal for you…” What’s a home-buyer? Someone who wants to move up or to stop paying rent or to relocate from another city. Someone with stuff to be housed and who desires, periodically, to bathe and sleep in private. They want a specific, carefully-chosen home, and they don’t want to lose out on it. But then there are buy-and-hold and fix-and-flip investors. They want the home to invest in, but not quite as urgently: They keep their stuff in their own homes, and, at a certain point, other opportunities can seem more promising. And then there are wholesalers. They want the home, but only at an insanely low price, and they don’t particularly care which home they happen to be lily-padding on, provided the price is insanely low. So first, as a warning to Sun City homeowners: Zillow your address. I am Zillow.com’s first and harshest critic, but your home’s Zestimate is a much better reflection of its Fair Market Value than the number some fast-talker is quoting you over the phone. Unless you are beset by an insuperable emergency that brooks no possible delay, you have no interest in talking to pawn-brokers. But true pawn-brokers at least bear the risk of owning the merchandise. The self-idealized perfect wholesaler owns nothing except the temporary right to palm a property-under-contract off on a greater fool, who in his turn hopes to flip it to an even-greater fool, each taking a fee for the assignment of the contract. Eventually the contract lands with a lesser wholesaler, whose job it is to effect the second scam: Renegotiating the already-discounted purchase price even lower – much, much lower. The theory is that you will be so desperate for whatever money you can get that you will cave. Does this work? I can show you MLS listings that suggest that it does, at least sometimes. But it’s scummy, scummy, scummy, every bit of it. The assignment game is pure rent-seeking – demanding compensation for no added-value. And cancellation blackmail is white-shoe extortion. How can this be? Don’t free markets protect us from this kind of predation? They should, but markets work by equilibrium – balancing costs and benefits on both sides. Where one side has an unfair advantage, fair outcomes are unlikely. The problem is Section 6j of the Arizona Association of Realtors Residential Purchase Contract: <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="589" src="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Screen-Shot-2024-08-24-at-8.51.42-AM-1024x589.png" alt="" class="wp-image-1526" srcset="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Screen-Shot-2024-08-24-at-8.51.42-AM-1024x589.png 1024w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Screen-Shot-2024-08-24-at-8.51.42-AM-300x172.png 300w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Screen-Shot-2024-08-24-at-8.51.42-AM-768x442.png 768w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Screen-Shot-2024-08-24-at-8.51.42-AM-1200x690.png 1200w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Screen-Shot-2024-08-24-at-8.51.42-AM.png 1374w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /> The specific villain is line 266 – the right to cancel. Owner-occupants only cancel on inspections if they have deeply misjudged the house – foundation issues, rampant infestations, sewer/septic-tank failure. Normal investors will cancel if turns out there is less juice or more squeeze than was expected. But wholesalers cancel deals with abandon, because there is zero cost – to them – to turning every crank on every candy machine until they find the one that’s broken – the homeowner who didn’t Zillow his address. The assignment problem is actually trivial, it’s the blackmail-by-threat-of-cancellation that makes wholesalers toxic: The game is to get a property under contract, ideally at a deep discount but at full price if necessary, then torque the seller with demands for a much deeper discount on pain of cancellation. The buyer has nothing at risk; the earnest money comes back, if it was ever even deposited. But the seller will have gone through escrow’s nine circles of hell, will have made plans and, at a minimum, will have suffered market-bruising from the experience. How to slay this dragon? It’s actually pretty easy for an MLS-listed home: “By mutual agreement of the parties, Section 6 of this contract is stricken in its entirety.” That does what I want done, but judges might not love language that comprehensive. Instead, my plan for wholesalers is simply to insist on a signed BINSR – the buyer’s inspection form – along with the contract, accepting the house as-is. That would be the literal intent of entertaining an as-is offer: The seller agrees to accept a discounted price, and the buyer agrees to underwrite his own risks in operating from an information deficit. Second, if you imagine that you can evaluate the property financially without seeing it, then presumably you can also physically inspect it in the dark. But first, if you actually do want to perform the due diligence appropriate to a true investor, and not a scam-running rent-seeker, do it now, before you write the contract. Do you see the benefit? I don’t want to deprive genuine investors of the opportunity to inspect the property and to demonstrate its value to their own standards. But I do want to chase away all of the fleas who will never do what I am asking – which takes care of the assignment problem, too. And I want to make sure that I am negotiating price only once. The purchase contract is broken in the same way the marriage contract is broken, rewarding defection and penalizing cooperation. The fix is to take away the reward for defection: If you insist you must buy from the discount rack, the terms are cash-and-carry – a contract with no contingencies.
How Sun City homes stack up in my custom MLS list view.
Now that is a W-I-D-E image. That’s a screenshot of my comps for Hope Drive, as seen in my custom list view in ARMLS. If you click on the picture, it will get bigger so you can actually read it. It’s called ‘Zesidential’. I started building it when I was a ‘pricing algorithm’ for Zillow’s […]
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="278" src="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Screen-Shot-2024-08-10-at-12.24.55-PM-1024x278.png" alt="" class="wp-image-1519" srcset="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Screen-Shot-2024-08-10-at-12.24.55-PM-1024x278.png 1024w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Screen-Shot-2024-08-10-at-12.24.55-PM-300x81.png 300w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Screen-Shot-2024-08-10-at-12.24.55-PM-768x209.png 768w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Screen-Shot-2024-08-10-at-12.24.55-PM-1536x417.png 1536w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Screen-Shot-2024-08-10-at-12.24.55-PM-1200x326.png 1200w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Screen-Shot-2024-08-10-at-12.24.55-PM.png 1870w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /> Now that is a W-I-D-E image. That’s a screenshot of my comps for Hope Drive, as seen in my custom list view in ARMLS. If you click on the picture, it will get bigger so you can actually read it. It’s called ‘Zesidential’. I started building it when I was a ‘pricing algorithm’ for Zillow’s iBuying spree. You’re seeing it in its ideal application: Stacking up comparable properties by their mission-critical features to make at-a-glance apples-to-apples comparisons. It literally creates a table of details, making it easy to select the most comparable/proximate/recent sales. I’ve talked about some of my other pricing tools. There are others: Custom data exports from ARMLS imported into Google Sheets and calculated and sorted thereupon. That’s how I make The Dirty Thirty, for example. I can write software, and I used to do things that way. But the customizable tools built into ARMLS coupled with the infinite, intricate elegance of Google Sheets, are giving me everything I need right now. If you are an ARMLS member, I can share this list view with your broker, who can share it with you. Otherwise, you are stuck with the very limited default list view, when you look at a selection of listings in a 30-day-live-look ARMLS link. But: At least you know what you’re missing…
The Dirty 30: Sun City’s worst real estate sales for July 2024.
My apologies for not writing here more. I wanted to reflect on the second quarter, and I have interesting things to say about 2-bedroom/1-bath floorplans generally. All still undone. But: As ever, we are graced with very bad closings in Sun City – 81 Days-on-Market on average for July, with and average of 6.51% clipped […]
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="960" height="640" src="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/image-1.png" alt="" class="wp-image-1513" srcset="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/image-1.png 960w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/image-1-300x200.png 300w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/image-1-768x512.png 768w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 960px) 100vw, 960px" /> Coulda, shoulda, woulda: Started at $335k – an erroneous entry – but that may have killed it. Corrected price was $235k, stupid but not egregious and clearly hinting at $220k, where it might have sold on the first weekend. Finally sold at $212k after 97 Days-on-Market. My apologies for not writing here more. I wanted to reflect on the second quarter, and I have interesting things to say about 2-bedroom/1-bath floorplans generally. All still undone. But: As ever, we are graced with very bad closings in Sun City – 81 Days-on-Market on average for July, with and average of 6.51% clipped off of the Original List Price. (Attention sales-commission shoppers: You’re focusing on the wrong metric.) This is a 30-day live link to the Dirty 30 listings for July 2024. And here they are summarized – concentrated catastrophes: <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="359" height="651" src="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Screen-Shot-2024-08-09-at-3.41.53-AM.png" alt="" class="wp-image-1514" srcset="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Screen-Shot-2024-08-09-at-3.41.53-AM.png 359w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Screen-Shot-2024-08-09-at-3.41.53-AM-165x300.png 165w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 359px) 100vw, 359px" /> Thirteen of the 126 Closed listings for July finished at or above Original List Price with no concessions. Guess what they have in common…?
The Dirty 30: Sun City’s worst closings for June 2024.
June has shuffled away, taking the second quarter with it. I’ll have more to say about both shortly, but for now I want to harp on a familiar theme: The unrelenting ineptitude besetting Sun City home sellers. Summarized above and linked for 30 days are The Dirty 30, June’s worst performers in terms of net […]
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="960" height="640" src="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/image.png" alt="" class="wp-image-1414" srcset="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/image.png 960w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/image-300x200.png 300w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/image-768x512.png 768w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 960px) 100vw, 960px" /> None so dirty for June: It was worth $220,000 on the day it listed – for $350,000. After only 238 Days on Market, it sold for $205,000… June has shuffled away, taking the second quarter with it. I’ll have more to say about both shortly, but for now I want to harp on a familiar theme: The unrelenting ineptitude besetting Sun City home sellers. <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="371" height="651" src="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Screen-Shot-2024-07-01-at-12.20.47-PM.png" alt="" class="wp-image-1413" srcset="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Screen-Shot-2024-07-01-at-12.20.47-PM.png 371w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Screen-Shot-2024-07-01-at-12.20.47-PM-171x300.png 171w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 371px) 100vw, 371px" /> Summarized above and linked for 30 days are The Dirty 30, June’s worst performers in terms of net results – (Sold Price minus Concessions) / Original List Price – giving up 9% or more. Yes, that’s awful, but 64% of June’s 111 closings gave up 3% or more off of the Original List Price – typically taking forever to fail with a whimper. Of those 111 closings only lucky number 13 finished at or above Original List Price – and, of course, some of those are inflated FHA/VA transactions. There is a right way to sell real estate – at or above Fair Market Value in minimal Days on Market. Sadly, almost no one in Sun City works that way.
Divorced? Depressed? Deceased? When you are selling your Sun City home, no one should be able to guess the state of your desperation.
I am every day aghast at a class of homes-for-sale that I have never seen before, nowhere but here in Sun City. I call them ‘throwaway’ homes, since this seems to be the essence of their marketing appeal: The net effect if not the conscious intent is to repel all but the most rapacious of […]
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="360" height="480" alt="" class="wp-block-jetpack-slideshow_image wp-image-1382" data-id="1382" src="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/m2.jpeg" srcset="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/m2.jpeg 360w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/m2-225x300.jpeg 225w" sizes="(max-width: 360px) 100vw, 360px" /> <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="360" height="480" alt="" class="wp-block-jetpack-slideshow_image wp-image-1381" data-id="1381" src="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/m3.jpeg" srcset="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/m3.jpeg 360w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/m3-225x300.jpeg 225w" sizes="(max-width: 360px) 100vw, 360px" /> <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="360" height="480" alt="" class="wp-block-jetpack-slideshow_image wp-image-1383" data-id="1383" src="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/m1.jpeg" srcset="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/m1.jpeg 360w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/m1-225x300.jpeg 225w" sizes="(max-width: 360px) 100vw, 360px" /> <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="360" height="480" alt="" class="wp-block-jetpack-slideshow_image wp-image-1380" data-id="1380" src="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/m4.jpeg" srcset="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/m4.jpeg 360w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/m4-225x300.jpeg 225w" sizes="(max-width: 360px) 100vw, 360px" /> <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="720" height="480" alt="" class="wp-block-jetpack-slideshow_image wp-image-1384" data-id="1384" src="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/kittch.jpeg" srcset="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/kittch.jpeg 720w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/kittch-300x200.jpeg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 720px) 100vw, 720px" /> <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="720" height="480" alt="" class="wp-block-jetpack-slideshow_image wp-image-1385" data-id="1385" src="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/lr.jpeg" srcset="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/lr.jpeg 720w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/lr-300x200.jpeg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 720px) 100vw, 720px" /> <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="720" height="480" alt="" class="wp-block-jetpack-slideshow_image wp-image-1386" data-id="1386" src="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/pat2.jpeg" srcset="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/pat2.jpeg 720w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/pat2-300x200.jpeg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 720px) 100vw, 720px" /> <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="720" height="480" alt="" class="wp-block-jetpack-slideshow_image wp-image-1387" data-id="1387" src="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/br.jpeg" srcset="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/br.jpeg 720w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/br-300x200.jpeg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 720px) 100vw, 720px" /> <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="720" height="480" alt="" class="wp-block-jetpack-slideshow_image wp-image-1388" data-id="1388" src="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/patio.jpeg" srcset="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/patio.jpeg 720w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/patio-300x200.jpeg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 720px) 100vw, 720px" /> <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="360" height="480" alt="" class="wp-block-jetpack-slideshow_image wp-image-1389" data-id="1389" src="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/nmess.jpeg" srcset="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/nmess.jpeg 360w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/nmess-225x300.jpeg 225w" sizes="(max-width: 360px) 100vw, 360px" /> <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="640" height="480" alt="" class="wp-block-jetpack-slideshow_image wp-image-1390" data-id="1390" src="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/ngar.jpeg" srcset="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/ngar.jpeg 640w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/ngar-300x225.jpeg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px" /> <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="360" height="480" alt="" class="wp-block-jetpack-slideshow_image wp-image-1391" data-id="1391" src="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/nkit.jpeg" srcset="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/nkit.jpeg 360w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/nkit-225x300.jpeg 225w" sizes="(max-width: 360px) 100vw, 360px" /> <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="360" height="480" alt="" class="wp-block-jetpack-slideshow_image wp-image-1392" data-id="1392" src="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/ntoi.jpeg" srcset="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/ntoi.jpeg 360w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/ntoi-225x300.jpeg 225w" sizes="(max-width: 360px) 100vw, 360px" /> <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="360" height="480" alt="" class="wp-block-jetpack-slideshow_image wp-image-1393" data-id="1393" src="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/chaos.jpeg" srcset="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/chaos.jpeg 360w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/chaos-225x300.jpeg 225w" sizes="(max-width: 360px) 100vw, 360px" /> <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="360" height="480" alt="" class="wp-block-jetpack-slideshow_image wp-image-1394" data-id="1394" src="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/garb.jpeg" srcset="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/garb.jpeg 360w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/garb-225x300.jpeg 225w" sizes="(max-width: 360px) 100vw, 360px" /> <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="640" height="480" alt="" class="wp-block-jetpack-slideshow_image wp-image-1395" data-id="1395" src="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/34gar.jpeg" srcset="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/34gar.jpeg 640w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/34gar-300x225.jpeg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px" /> <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="640" height="480" alt="" class="wp-block-jetpack-slideshow_image wp-image-1396" data-id="1396" src="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/34lr.jpeg" srcset="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/34lr.jpeg 640w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/34lr-300x225.jpeg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px" /> <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="640" height="480" alt="" class="wp-block-jetpack-slideshow_image wp-image-1397" data-id="1397" src="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/34din.jpeg" srcset="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/34din.jpeg 640w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/34din-300x225.jpeg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px" /> <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="640" height="480" alt="" class="wp-block-jetpack-slideshow_image wp-image-1398" data-id="1398" src="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/34bath.jpeg" srcset="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/34bath.jpeg 640w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/34bath-300x225.jpeg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px" /> <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="640" height="480" alt="" class="wp-block-jetpack-slideshow_image wp-image-1399" data-id="1399" src="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/34stor.jpeg" srcset="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/34stor.jpeg 640w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/34stor-300x225.jpeg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px" /> <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="640" height="480" alt="" class="wp-block-jetpack-slideshow_image wp-image-1400" data-id="1400" src="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/34kit.jpeg" srcset="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/34kit.jpeg 640w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/34kit-300x225.jpeg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px" /> <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="640" height="480" alt="" class="wp-block-jetpack-slideshow_image wp-image-1401" data-id="1401" src="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/34pat.jpeg" srcset="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/34pat.jpeg 640w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/34pat-300x225.jpeg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px" /> I am every day aghast at a class of homes-for-sale that I have never seen before, nowhere but here in Sun City. I call them ‘throwaway’ homes, since this seems to be the essence of their marketing appeal: The net effect if not the conscious intent is to repel all but the most rapacious of all-cash investors. Do you doubt me? Take the time to watch that slide show – until your heart breaks. Home after home, worst feet forward – and these are marketing photos, intended to entice buyers! A Sun City home represents a lifetime of effort for its owners. And at every step of their residential history, those owners were fastidious about the husbandry of their wealth. Until the last step. Is the home’s seller widowed or divorced – abruptly amputated from the place where we are most human? Or beset by diminishing health and rising expenses? Or has the owner expired without heirs? Many throwaway homes fall into the last category – probate sales. There is literally no one to defend the homeowner’s equity – nor anyone to defend it for. That justifies nothing. Whatever the seller’s state of mind – or state of desperation – this is none of the buyer’s business. The listing agent is being paid a substantial sum of money to obtain the best possible return on the seller’s investment, even if the seller is no longer with us. Neither the buyer nor the buyer’s agent should be able to tell, either from the listing or the home itself, what the seller is going through. Nothing about the seller’s circumstances should be obvious to the buyer from the listing. It is literally the listing agent’s job to direct the seller toward the highest attainable return, and telegraphing desperation – or even just despair – achieves the opposite: It attracts only predators and makes them ravenous to inflict the greatest possible pain. Moreover, the neighbors have not volunteered to have their own equity trashed because they made the mistake of living too near a throwaway home. There can be no wolves without sheep, but the owner of real property should never be a sheep, not even post mortem: It is never an honest man’s job to talk the other guy into making a mistake. I would go further and say that it is incumbent upon a listing agent to make sure his seller, regardless of the circumstances, is not being fed to the wolves.
Another piece of the home pricing puzzle: Fishing with your bait out of the water.
Every detail in an MLS listing carries marketing weight – everything counts – but nothing matters more than the price. If a house is priced wisely and well – if it is priced to market using a number that makes sense to the buyer – it should sell at, near or above list price in […]
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="489" height="547" src="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-13-at-4.38.38-AM.png" alt="" class="wp-image-1353" srcset="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-13-at-4.38.38-AM.png 489w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-13-at-4.38.38-AM-268x300.png 268w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 489px) 100vw, 489px" /> Every detail in an MLS listing carries marketing weight – everything counts – but nothing matters more than the price. If a house is priced wisely and well – if it is priced to market using a number that makes sense to the buyer – it should sell at, near or above list price in single-digit Days-on-Market. I favor numbers that break evenly on $20k boundaries, because that’s the way six-figure homes tend to close in ARMLS – the Arizona Regional Multiple Listing Service, the Phoenix-area MLS. I call them wise numbers, because all other numbers – stupid or sleazy prices – induce delay, at a minimum, and are therefore inherently UNwise. But there is another piece to this puzzle: Lender pre-qualification tiers. How much is the buyer qualified for? Is it $344,850? Or is it more like $350k? Lenders like round numbers, too, but they often work in $25k increments. This matters why? If you’re priced at $305k, you might be missing some or all of the buyers who are qualified only to $300k – which you would gleefully take – since they are only searching to their pre-qualification number. If you then reduce the price to $279k, you’re still fishing with your bait out of the water with respect to the buyers qualified to $275k. That’s a sad but true story, as seen here: <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="670" height="386" src="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-13-at-4.17.08-AM.png" alt="" class="wp-image-1352" srcset="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-13-at-4.17.08-AM.png 670w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-13-at-4.17.08-AM-300x173.png 300w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 670px) 100vw, 670px" /> These are yesterday’s price changes from my Sun City hotsheet. None of the prices, before or after, is wise – which is typical, alas. But note how many of them are or were fishing just above the nearest $25k boundary. The Imputed Value is just an expression of the Sun City Over-Pricing Effect: If a price is not at least $15k over the nearest $20k boundary, it is not that number that is being defended but the next lower value. In other words, $279,900 and $275,000 are both defending $260k, but $269,900 is defending $240k. There’s no substitute for CLOSED comps, but peering through the SCOPE lets you read the listing agent’s mind. There’s more, of course: You have to price wisely and well with respect to the closed listings while keeping your price lender-friendly – all while undercutting your Active competition, such that yours is the house that closes next. Everything counts – but nothing counts more than price.
A sad Sun City real estate saga told five times over: List high, sell slowly, close low.
Tell me if you’ve heard this story before… As always, the price of delay is FHA. 194 DOM, 91.34 net-SP/OLP. Started at a wise price, just much too high. The Sold Price looks like a counter to me: Buyer offered $220k, but the seller had had enough of this dagnabit discounting. 116 DOM, 88.42% SP/OLP. […]
It takes more than just an upright toilet seat to make a listing languish for months… Tell me if you’ve heard this story before… <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="815" height="215" src="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-05-at-3.23.10-AM.png" alt="" class="wp-image-1335" srcset="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-05-at-3.23.10-AM.png 815w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-05-at-3.23.10-AM-300x79.png 300w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-05-at-3.23.10-AM-768x203.png 768w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 815px) 100vw, 815px" /> As always, the price of delay is FHA. 194 DOM, 91.34 net-SP/OLP. <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="816" height="179" src="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-05-at-3.26.49-AM.png" alt="" class="wp-image-1336" srcset="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-05-at-3.26.49-AM.png 816w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-05-at-3.26.49-AM-300x66.png 300w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-05-at-3.26.49-AM-768x168.png 768w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 816px) 100vw, 816px" /> Started at a wise price, just much too high. The Sold Price looks like a counter to me: Buyer offered $220k, but the seller had had enough of this dagnabit discounting. 116 DOM, 88.42% SP/OLP. <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="816" height="179" src="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-05-at-3.30.44-AM.png" alt="" class="wp-image-1337" srcset="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-05-at-3.30.44-AM.png 816w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-05-at-3.30.44-AM-300x66.png 300w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-05-at-3.30.44-AM-768x168.png 768w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 816px) 100vw, 816px" /> FHA again, and another counter offer for the Sold Price: Buyer offered $300k, seller countered at list? Or are there undisclosed seller-paid concessions? 126 DOM, 95.38% SP/OLP. <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="816" height="179" src="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-05-at-3.34.22-AM.png" alt="" class="wp-image-1338" srcset="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-05-at-3.34.22-AM.png 816w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-05-at-3.34.22-AM-300x66.png 300w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-05-at-3.34.22-AM-768x168.png 768w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 816px) 100vw, 816px" /> The Original List Price hinted at $340k, as did the reduced List Price. But cash is a rapacious king: $330k again is likely a countered number, with the original offer coming in at $320k. The $35k concession is going to be in lieu of repairs, and taken all together this reads like an iBuyer-style flipper offer: Gouge ’em on price, then nick ’em again on repairs. Why did the seller go along with it? They ran themselves out of time playing stupid pricing games. 71 DOM, 80.82% net-SP/OLP. <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="816" height="215" src="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-05-at-3.45.11-AM.png" alt="" class="wp-image-1339" srcset="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-05-at-3.45.11-AM.png 816w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-05-at-3.45.11-AM-300x79.png 300w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-05-at-3.45.11-AM-768x202.png 768w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 816px) 100vw, 816px" /> From sleazy to sleazy to sleazy. I like the buyer’s offer at $380k, with the difference split by counter-offer. Regardless: 239(!) DOM, 86.46% SP/OLP. In the mood to draw conclusions? These are all of yesterday’s Closings in Sun City – and every one of them pursued the same faulty strategy: List high at a stupid or sleazy number, languish pointlessly for weeks or months, periodically making price reductions to other stupid or sleazy numbers, ultimately approaching market value only to cave to an offer that discounts on price, concessions, repairs – or all three. And that’s how we get here, with virtually every listing agent in Sun City making the same boneheaded mistakes in the same ways over and over again and learning nothing from the experience: <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="666" src="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Screen-Shot-2024-04-26-at-1.51.28-PM-1024x666.png" alt="" class="wp-image-1187" srcset="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Screen-Shot-2024-04-26-at-1.51.28-PM-1024x666.png 1024w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Screen-Shot-2024-04-26-at-1.51.28-PM-300x195.png 300w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Screen-Shot-2024-04-26-at-1.51.28-PM-768x500.png 768w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Screen-Shot-2024-04-26-at-1.51.28-PM-1200x781.png 1200w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Screen-Shot-2024-04-26-at-1.51.28-PM.png 1216w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /> If you want better results – (ahem) better money sooner – you have to work from a different strategy, one focused on selling high and fast rather than low and slow – and to the least-prepared buyers.
What’s the wisdom behind wise pricing? Your home will sell faster and for more money.
I am proud to say that I have had a salutary influence on real estate agents who live and work nowhere near me. Locally, no one has learned anything, but that’s their problem – and their clients’. This is me DM-ing in Facebook with an a team leader in Florida whom I’ve known for – […]
I am proud to say that I have had a salutary influence on real estate agents who live and work nowhere near me. Locally, no one has learned anything, but that’s their problem – and their clients’. This is me DM-ing in Facebook with an a team leader in Florida whom I’ve known for – could it be? – 17 years or so: <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="717" height="368" src="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-02-at-5.18.36-AM.png" alt="" class="wp-image-1313" srcset="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-02-at-5.18.36-AM.png 717w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-02-at-5.18.36-AM-300x154.png 300w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 717px) 100vw, 717px" /> We’re talking about pricing, of course. Nothing in residential real estate matters more. And specifically, we’re talking about my ideas about wise, stupid and sleazy prices. I’m telling my friend to look at thousands of prices, but we’re not going to do that. But there were nine Closed listings in my Hotsheet this Sunday morning – why? it’s a mystery – so we’ll use those to demonstrate my logic: <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="318" height="418" src="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-02-at-5.13.40-AM.png" alt="" class="wp-image-1314" srcset="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-02-at-5.13.40-AM.png 318w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-02-at-5.13.40-AM-228x300.png 228w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 318px) 100vw, 318px" /> But wait! Only four of the nine Closed prices are wise. Perhaps. Let’s post-mortem them one-by-one and count again at the end. <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="815" height="215" src="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-02-at-5.34.52-AM.png" alt="" class="wp-image-1315" srcset="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-02-at-5.34.52-AM.png 815w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-02-at-5.34.52-AM-300x79.png 300w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-02-at-5.34.52-AM-768x203.png 768w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 815px) 100vw, 815px" /> Not adorable – collapse for cash at ~60 DOM – but wise. <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="816" height="215" src="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-02-at-5.38.01-AM.png" alt="" class="wp-image-1316" srcset="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-02-at-5.38.01-AM.png 816w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-02-at-5.38.01-AM-300x79.png 300w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-02-at-5.38.01-AM-768x202.png 768w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 816px) 100vw, 816px" /> Another big drop for cash at high DOM, but wise. <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="816" height="215" src="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-02-at-5.39.38-AM.png" alt="" class="wp-image-1317" srcset="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-02-at-5.39.38-AM.png 816w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-02-at-5.39.38-AM-300x79.png 300w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-02-at-5.39.38-AM-768x202.png 768w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 816px) 100vw, 816px" /> This is why appraisers hate Closed sales with low DOM: They conclude that the property was thrown away. I expect the original offer was $240k – 80% – with $255k – 85% – being the counter-offer. Listed at a wise number – which, as I’ve noted on Facebook, is often a tell for throwaway homes. Is 9 DOM, 85% SP/OLP a full, free and fair test of the market? Regardless, unwise. <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="816" height="251" src="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-02-at-5.44.59-AM.png" alt="" class="wp-image-1318" srcset="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-02-at-5.44.59-AM.png 816w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-02-at-5.44.59-AM-300x92.png 300w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-02-at-5.44.59-AM-768x236.png 768w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 816px) 100vw, 816px" /> This is a double-dip – same agent ‘represented’ both seller and buyer – and that looks like a $300k offer with a $5k face-saving counter. I call it a wise offer. <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="816" height="225" src="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-02-at-5.47.47-AM.png" alt="" class="wp-image-1319" srcset="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-02-at-5.47.47-AM.png 816w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-02-at-5.47.47-AM-300x83.png 300w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-02-at-5.47.47-AM-768x212.png 768w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 816px) 100vw, 816px" /> Concession-bait. Born to be unwise. You can see that the intent is to simulate a $300k offer, though. <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="816" height="179" src="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-02-at-5.54.00-AM.png" alt="" class="wp-image-1320" srcset="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-02-at-5.54.00-AM.png 816w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-02-at-5.54.00-AM-300x66.png 300w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-02-at-5.54.00-AM-768x168.png 768w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 816px) 100vw, 816px" /> Wise. It actually sold in 7 DOM. No idea why it took ~40 days to close cash. <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="817" height="215" src="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-02-at-5.58.07-AM.png" alt="" class="wp-image-1321" srcset="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-02-at-5.58.07-AM.png 817w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-02-at-5.58.07-AM-300x79.png 300w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-02-at-5.58.07-AM-768x202.png 768w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 817px) 100vw, 817px" /> Virtually the same story – with both serving as nice illustration of the dilatory power of sleazy pricing. But: Wise. <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="816" height="179" src="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-02-at-6.00.30-AM.png" alt="" class="wp-image-1322" srcset="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-02-at-6.00.30-AM.png 816w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-02-at-6.00.30-AM-300x66.png 300w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-02-at-6.00.30-AM-768x168.png 768w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 816px) 100vw, 816px" /> Cash taking a concession is probably repairs. My bet: Offered $320k, countered at the then-reduced list price, then the investor split the difference post hoc with a repair concession. I like this as a wise offer. <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="816" height="252" src="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-02-at-6.03.11-AM.png" alt="" class="wp-image-1323" srcset="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-02-at-6.03.11-AM.png 816w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-02-at-6.03.11-AM-300x93.png 300w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-02-at-6.03.11-AM-768x237.png 768w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 816px) 100vw, 816px" /> Offered $400k, countered at $405k? I like this as a wise offer. You have to look at a lot more listings to know for sure where Closed prices cluster in your market. Is it on $20k, $10k or $5k boundaries? But I know for sure where it isn’t – at $xxx,999, $xxx,995, $xxx,990, $xxx,900, $xxx,500, etc. But: We went from mostly unwise to mostly wise offers, and we dissected the logic behind the unwise numbers. This is the most painfully obvious truth in real estate, and the one that is seemingly hardest for agents to learn: If you price your listing using a number that seems both fair and honest to buyers, you will sell faster and for more money. Who knew…?
How one Sun City listing agent is using duct tape to repel insects – and buyers.
Me on Facebook: Hard to see what’s going on? Here are the three photos at full size: See the duct tape? Why is it there? Much as any buyer would, I read the worst possible portents into the mystery. My wife Cathleen, herself an exemplary lister, explained to me what’s going on. First: Sewer Roaches. […]
Me on Facebook: <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="683" height="376" src="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-01-at-7.53.28-AM.png" alt="" class="wp-image-1302" srcset="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-01-at-7.53.28-AM.png 683w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Screen-Shot-2024-06-01-at-7.53.28-AM-300x165.png 300w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 683px) 100vw, 683px" /> Hard to see what’s going on? Here are the three photos at full size: See the duct tape? Why is it there? Much as any buyer would, I read the worst possible portents into the mystery. My wife Cathleen, herself an exemplary lister, explained to me what’s going on. First: Sewer Roaches. Big, red, ugly, crunchy when dead. They’re not an infestation but an accident: They live where the unmild things are, not in houses. But: When plumbing J-pipes dry out, as they will in the desert, dumb roaches climb up and get lost in houses, where they die of starvation, dehydration or ennui. They are NEVER found in occupied homes, where the drains are in steady use, but ONLY in vacant homes that are not being serviced. That last clause matters: The listing agent for an Active property should be in the home every day – if only to make sure it wasn’t left unlocked from the last showing. But for the entire time a vacant Sun City property is subject to the listing contract, the home should be serviced at least every-other-day. Why? To keep the Sewer Roaches out. All you have to do is run water down the drains. And that’s why the drains are taped over, Cathleen reveals: Either the seller or the lister doesn’t want to service the property and yet doesn’t want for it to be cemetery to a dozen red warriors. Hence it was truly inspired on the agent’s part not to remove the tape prior to taking the photos: The house should be safe from roaches and buyers, both.
What’s the difference between houses and mudpies? If you waste a lot of time doing nothing productive with a mudpie, it’s not worth less than when you started…
Me, on Facebook: Wisdom clearly eludes us: I did the same analysis yesterday: I won’t promise to do this daily, but clearly I don’t need to: For whatever reason, Sun City listing agents are committed to pricing tactics that incite either rancor or confusion – resulting in costly delays, either way. Here’s why this matters: […]
Me, on Facebook: <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="632" height="792" src="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Screen-Shot-2024-05-29-at-8.38.20-AM.png" alt="" class="wp-image-1292" srcset="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Screen-Shot-2024-05-29-at-8.38.20-AM.png 632w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Screen-Shot-2024-05-29-at-8.38.20-AM-239x300.png 239w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 632px) 100vw, 632px" /> Wisdom clearly eludes us: I did the same analysis yesterday: <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="689" height="671" src="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Screen-Shot-2024-05-29-at-9.57.23-AM.png" alt="" class="wp-image-1293" srcset="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Screen-Shot-2024-05-29-at-9.57.23-AM.png 689w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Screen-Shot-2024-05-29-at-9.57.23-AM-300x292.png 300w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 689px) 100vw, 689px" /> I won’t promise to do this daily, but clearly I don’t need to: For whatever reason, Sun City listing agents are committed to pricing tactics that incite either rancor or confusion – resulting in costly delays, either way. Here’s why this matters: While listers goof around playing theory-free, strategy-free pricing games, their sellers’ equity goes up in smoke. Witness: The buyers got the golf-course lot-premium for free: <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="753" height="750" src="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Screen-Shot-2024-05-29-at-10.12.22-AM.png" alt="" class="wp-image-1297" srcset="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Screen-Shot-2024-05-29-at-10.12.22-AM.png 753w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Screen-Shot-2024-05-29-at-10.12.22-AM-300x300.png 300w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Screen-Shot-2024-05-29-at-10.12.22-AM-150x150.png 150w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 753px) 100vw, 753px" /> Justice is a piece-rate and a toll road: You get what you pay for and pay for what you get. Straight-commission compensation is the best possible incentive for successful sales results. But for every dollar your home falls short of its Fair Market Value at Close of Escrow, your listing agent feels only a few pennies of your pain – and you will pay those pennies even on dollars you concede to the buyer. Your home is not a mudpie – pointlessly filigreed even as it loses its luster with every wasted Day on Market. You will never draw more attention to the property than on the first weekend. If you repel buyers with stupid or sleazy pricing, your house may do something no real mudpie can do: Lose value.
Why won’t your Sun City home sell? Could the problem be stupid pricing?
I classify list prices for real estate as being wise, stupid or sleazy. A house that is priced well – priced to market – and wisely should sell right away. Pricing stupidly causes delay, as we’ll see. And if the list price is sleazy – such as $449,999 – the buyer will be hostile to […]
I classify list prices for real estate as being wise, stupid or sleazy. A house that is priced well – priced to market – and wisely should sell right away. Pricing stupidly causes delay, as we’ll see. And if the list price is sleazy – such as $449,999 – the buyer will be hostile to the seller and the listing agent from first contact: Conniving people are connivers. Take a look at this Expired listing: <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="822" height="125" src="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Screen-Shot-2024-05-25-at-2.08.17-AM.png" alt="" class="wp-image-1283" srcset="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Screen-Shot-2024-05-25-at-2.08.17-AM.png 822w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Screen-Shot-2024-05-25-at-2.08.17-AM-300x46.png 300w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Screen-Shot-2024-05-25-at-2.08.17-AM-768x117.png 768w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 822px) 100vw, 822px" /> Both the listing agent and the seller knew on Day Zero that the market value of the home was $360k. The stupid Original List Price says so, as does the subsequent List Price reduction, also stupid: Both numbers are hinting at $360k, while simultaneously praying that buyer’s agents can’t comp and buyers can’t cope with so many confusing numbers. Had the home been priced to market – $360,000 – on Day Zero, it probably would have gone for full price – or more? – by Day Seven. Instead, by pricing the property stupidly, the listing expired at 89 DOM. But wait. There’s more. <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="822" height="179" src="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Screen-Shot-2024-05-25-at-2.08.52-AM.png" alt="" class="wp-image-1284" srcset="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Screen-Shot-2024-05-25-at-2.08.52-AM.png 822w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Screen-Shot-2024-05-25-at-2.08.52-AM-300x65.png 300w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Screen-Shot-2024-05-25-at-2.08.52-AM-768x167.png 768w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 822px) 100vw, 822px" /> Here it is again, Closed yesterday. Priced stupidly yet again, again clearly hinting at $360k, but this time the lister stood by his number, dagnabit! Finally sold at a small discount – after six-and-a-half-months(!!) from the original listing. 158 total DOM, 95.33% net-SP/original-OLP. There is no rationale for any of this. Both listing agents knew what the home should ultimately sell for, and they must have included the seller in their wily machinations: Phase 1, over-price; Phase 3, profit! <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="827" height="605" src="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/gnomes.jpeg" alt="" class="wp-image-1285" srcset="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/gnomes.jpeg 827w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/gnomes-300x219.jpeg 300w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/gnomes-768x562.jpeg 768w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 827px) 100vw, 827px" /> The theory is what? We’re so smart we can trick those clueless buyers – and their appraisers – into over-paying for a largely-fungible production home. As witness – here and day after day on Facebook – it doesn’t work. A sleazy price annoys the buyer, but a stupid price confuses him – necessarily introducing delay. I believe in the sweet spot – the price that makes buyers act immediately. Priced wisely and to market, a brand new listing should be irresistible to the buyers you’re looking for – ideally so much so that they bid against each other to snag the property. There is no greater energy for a new listing than in its first weekend on the MLS, and that sweet spot price is what incites all the action. You don’t have to take my word for this. You can see it all here in black and white: The listers and the seller knew all along that the house should sell for $360k. Thanks to repeatedly stupid pricing, it only took a buyer 158 Days-on-Market to figure that out…
The post-mortem lexicon: What all the acronyms mean and why they matter.
As I’ve noted, I will often post-mortem closed listings on Bloodhound Realty’s Facebook page. Yesterday, I did nine houses in bulk: Here’s a single closing from this morning, explicated in greater detail: I love those two little boxes of dates and numbers. Sometimes I have to read the full listing history to figure out what […]
As I’ve noted, I will often post-mortem closed listings on Bloodhound Realty’s Facebook page. Yesterday, I did nine houses in bulk: <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="687" height="696" src="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Screen-Shot-2024-05-24-at-1.26.34-PM.png" alt="" class="wp-image-1278" srcset="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Screen-Shot-2024-05-24-at-1.26.34-PM.png 687w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Screen-Shot-2024-05-24-at-1.26.34-PM-296x300.png 296w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 687px) 100vw, 687px" /> Here’s a single closing from this morning, explicated in greater detail: <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="688" height="391" src="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Screen-Shot-2024-05-24-at-1.33.48-PM.png" alt="" class="wp-image-1279" srcset="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Screen-Shot-2024-05-24-at-1.33.48-PM.png 688w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Screen-Shot-2024-05-24-at-1.33.48-PM-300x170.png 300w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 688px) 100vw, 688px" /> I love those two little boxes of dates and numbers. Sometimes I have to read the full listing history to figure out what happened, but 95% of real estate transactions are perfectly summarized by those two boxes. They are a residential real estate sale’s obituary, and my one-line summary – e.g., 190 DOM, 87.80% net-SP/OLP – is that transaction’s epitaph. That’s morbid, so don’t even get me started on Expired and Cancelled listings. Meanwhile, here’s a lexicon to explain all the acronyms: ADOM is Agent Days on Market, so it’s just DOM. There is a CDOM, Cumulative Days on Market, for exceptionally badly marketed properties. SP is Sales Price, what it sold for, excluding concessions – which many of these closings had. If I say net-SP/OLP, I’m subtracting the concessions. That is, I am arriving at the seller’s gross proceeds before commissions, closing and parasitic costs – so call it another 6.5%-7.5% off that gross number to get to the net payoff. OLP is Original List Price, which may have been eclipsed by many subsequent price reductions, each of which is known in its turn as LP, List Price. Note that, typically, if an agent gloats, “Sold at list price!,” he means the reduced LP, not OLP. In that circumstance, he probably doesn’t want you looking into DOM or concessions, either. The kind of reporting I’m doing closing-by-closing, as Cautionary Tales, should be built into the MLS. There is no objective way to evaluate buyer’s agents, but listers sort themselves over time by those two numbers, DOM and SP/OLP.
Listing Sun City real estate at Death’s Door: Representing your interests when you can no longer speak for yourself.
Allowing for linguistic infelicities, language like that appears in most Sun City real estate listings: “Welcome to Death’s Door. Try to stay out of the way.” That much is crass – and it is terrible as a real estate marketing strategy. But the underlying truth – the fact of our own mortality – remains, regardless […]
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="788" height="384" src="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Screen-Shot-2024-04-26-at-12.07.19-PM.png" alt="" class="wp-image-1179" srcset="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Screen-Shot-2024-04-26-at-12.07.19-PM.png 788w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Screen-Shot-2024-04-26-at-12.07.19-PM-300x146.png 300w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Screen-Shot-2024-04-26-at-12.07.19-PM-768x374.png 768w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 788px) 100vw, 788px" /> Allowing for linguistic infelicities, language like that appears in most Sun City real estate listings: “Welcome to Death’s Door. Try to stay out of the way.” That much is crass – and it is terrible as a real estate marketing strategy. But the underlying truth – the fact of our own mortality – remains, regardless of how much we’d rather not think about it. So: To be much more blunt than that ham-handed send-up of senescence: I want to be your last real estate broker. I want to be the broker who represents your interests when you can no longer speak for yourself. That’s morbid, and I apologize for that. But fortune favors the prepared mind, and I want for you to be prepared to defend your legacy in full. So let’s talk about this now, long before it will matter. I want to meet your attorney and your kids – and I want my business card with each of them. <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="584" src="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Screen-Shot-2024-03-24-at-4.18.48-PM-1024x584.png" alt="" class="wp-image-1122" srcset="https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Screen-Shot-2024-03-24-at-4.18.48-PM-1024x584.png 1024w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Screen-Shot-2024-03-24-at-4.18.48-PM-300x171.png 300w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Screen-Shot-2024-03-24-at-4.18.48-PM-768x438.png 768w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Screen-Shot-2024-03-24-at-4.18.48-PM-1200x685.png 1200w, https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Screen-Shot-2024-03-24-at-4.18.48-PM.png 1504w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /> Too many houses get thrown away at the end. I’ll make sure yours commands its full market value.