Author: Greg Swann (page 161 of 209)

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

This is me in today’s Arizona Republic (permanent link):

 
‘Fizzbos’ fizzle because of 3 key marketing issues

I have a friend in another state who is selling his home “by owner,” which Realtors affectionately refer to as a “fizzbo.” It’s interesting for me to watch, because he’s done a very professional job.

We should note at the outset that most “for sale by owner” (hence, fizzbo) efforts fail. Of the three P’s of real estate marketing — price, preparation and presentation — many fizzbos will fail on two or even all three.

First, if a home isn’t priced to the market, the home will not sell. This is why so much inventory, even Realtor-represented inventory, has lingered on the market so long over the past 15 months.

Second, the home has to be in turnkey condition: in excellent repair and staged to perfection. If it isn’t, it should be priced accordingly. Even then, most buyers in this market won’t give it a second glance.

And finally, the home must be appropriately marketed.

A fizzbo is at a huge disadvantage over a represented sale. At an absolute minimum, a Realtor-represented home is advertised through the MLS system to every other Realtor in the market.

By contrast, the by-owner home is promoted only to people who happen to drive by and see the sign or who happen upon a newspaper or online ad.

An aggressive Realtor will do even more to market your home, targeting promotions to the people most likely to buy.

And that’s what’s interesting about my friend’s efforts. He is a marketing professional, so he had presentation more than covered. He has excellent taste, and he keeps his home in pristine condition, so his preparation was perfect. And he consulted with Realtors and, ultimately, an appraiser to make sure his home was priced right.

You could call this a semi-professional for-sale-by-owner sale, and my advice would still be: “Don’t try this at home.”

But note this: He “launched” his home to the marketplace on Dec. 23, which no professional would have done. The result? Showings all through Christmas weekend, when people had time available to look at houses.

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by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Business Week’s Hot Property wrote yesterday about the NAR’s having gotten into bed with Hillary Clinton — who is “sponsoring a bill that bars commercial banks from hiring real estate brokers/agents” — but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The National Association of Realtor is routinely, habitually, congenitally anti-free market.

I’m doing the prep work to defend the traditional practice of real estate, but this is my radical yelp: The original and on-going purpose of the NAR is anti-capitalist. The organization was formed to limit entry into the residential real estate business — to push Chester the Barber and others out of the business. The NAR wrote the original state real estate laws to achieve this goal — however poorly. This on-going legislative campaign against banks competing for real estate transactions is just more of the same: “Protecting” mediocrities from fair competition.

It seems never to end. If you’re a member of the NAR, you get hit with spam about once a month about some vitally important piece of anti-free market legislation: Coerced health insurance for real estate brokerages, keep WalMart out of banking, keep banks out of real estate. The NAR is hardly alone in making appeals for legislation, so it is perhaps easy to forget that legislation is imposed by force of arms. What the NAR is doing is taking control of the massive firepower of the Federal government and deploying it to hijack potential competitors.

It’s a protection racket — vicious, awful, evil crime — dressed up in Brooks Brothers suits.

We are apt to think of Communism as being Capitalism’s natural enemy, but there is another, perhaps more insidious foe to unfettered laissez faire. I call it Rotarian Socialism, just to give it a name. Rotarian Socialism is legislation written by and for the membership of a politically-powerful elite. Most of the criticisms you hear about Capitalism are in fact criticisms of Rotarian Socialism.

Truly free markets require freedom, not laws. I have argued before for getting rid of the real estate licensing laws — or, at a minimum, eliminating the broker level of licensing — and for eliminating the real Read more