If your home hasn’t sold, what should you do?

I get this question a million times a day. . .ok maybe not a million times, but sure feels like it. If your home is on the market, with a professional realtor who is trying to sell it to everyone and their mother, the obvious thing to do is adjust the price. Sometimes staging or depersonalizing the home might help, but in this market, the buyers are motivated by deals.

In other words, they have to see the value in the property. The property may have been home to you, but for buyers they see it as a product initially and they have to be able to see themselves living there before they consider making an offer. Absent of a deal, the market will not move and that can be bad for everyone. The housing market makes the economy go round and round and the sellers have the power to make it happen.

I know what you’re thinking. I can wait. Well, yes you can. That wait might be longer than your intended goal. If you are a seller and a buyer at the same time in this maket, just think of your difference in profit as an exchange. You might lose out on the sale side of your home, but you’ll make up for it on the purchase of your next home, which could mean more to now now that its cheaper to borrow many to buy.

 Keep a eye out for the Feds and wait to see what they do with interests rates.

To all the New Agents Just Getting Started.

Let’s face facts: the real estate market is stabilizing (not declining-stabilizing) and interests’ rates aren’t exactly climbing up the wahoo. So, what does that means for you? People are still going to buy houses. You just have to work smarter not harder. In fact, if you’re a realtor in this market and you haven’t been in the business for more than 3 years, let me tell you how it’s going to be for the next 2-3 years. This is my advice for newer associates and seasoned agents, who now have to sell houses.

First: There are 4 things that keep the market going:Birth, Marriage, Divorce and Death; as long as these things continue to happen, you should be fine.

Second: You have inventory to sell houses. If you just got into the business, you gotta act as if. This means find one house that shows well and if it’s reasonably priced to sell, sit at it every other Sunday. Rotate houses until you get your own listing. Conducting an open house is one great way to network. You have the product and interested parties, whether they are 9 months or 9 days way from buying, they will follow the balloons and stop by especially if the house is new to the market.

Now that you have the client in the door, you might say to yourself, “now what?” Well, keeping with the act as if mentality, introduce yourself as the neighborhood specialist; get their accurate contact information. Find out what motivated them to come in and find some reason to call them the very next day. You have to respond to them at least 4 times within 1 month to establish buyer loyalty. Don’t forget that buyers are not the only people that come through open houses. You might have a noisy neighborhood who is thinking about selling in a couple of months, or a pissed off seller, who’s agent hasn’t contacted them in three weeks. The opportunities are endless. You just have to create an atmosphere of urgency. I’ll talk about that later.

Third: Accept that not everyone is going to turn into a client.

I’m a strong believer that open houses can jump start your career. It did for me and when I was acting as if, my leads had no idea I had gotten my real estate license two weeks prior to being in front of them telling them I was the neighborhood specialist. And after a couple of years in the business, guess what? I am the neighborhood specialist. I’ve seen the same house sell twice in my short career as an agent. I can tell them about the wall paper the previous owners had or the red carpet that they apparently had on sale in 1981.

Even still, if you have 7 guests at your open house, one person or couple should want to work with you. Buyers are not only shopping open houses. They’re shopping agents and they trying to find someone they trust and someone they won’t kill in the car. I’ve ridden around with couples I didn’t care for and the car rides were painful. This business is time consuming. If you’re going to spend your time with people, at least do it with people that you like. With the same breath, I realize that not everyone likes me. People buy People before they buy product or service. If the buyer can’t see the value of having you as their agent, walk away and work on another lead.

Fourth: You have to create urgency at the first open house. If it’s your first listing, you should naturally scream off the top of your lungs that you have a property to sell and you should tell everyone you know even if they’re not buyers. Call everyone in the neighborhood. Ask them if they know someone that wants to move in. Tell them there’s no better way to choose a neighbor other than recommending one. Ask them to come to the open house and give feedback on price and condition. Remember you’re there to network. You might be thinking that I’m forgetting the obvious reason why you are even at the house. Yes, sell it to the serious buyers. Have a contract out on the dinning room table or stable it to the wall (not literally). Give out those calendars with your picture on it. Some buyers go home and stick it on the refrigerator and call you 4-6 months down the road because you’ve been in contact with them once or twice within that 4-6 month period.

Fifth:

Get some type of contact management system in place. Document everyone you meet; names, addresses and phone numbers. These people become your network and will give you referrals i.e. business you didn’t have to prospect for.

Don’t turn into a know it all. If you have some success in this business, pat yourself on the back. A large percentage of the people that become real estate agents leave within the first two years not because they can’t cut it, but because they don’t want to cut it anymore. It’s hard to manage people when your mortgage or car payment is on the line. Just follow the golden rule no matter how large that commission check might be. The real estate Gods are always watching and Karma is a B14C8.

Seventh bit of advice and the most important one: Don’t count the dollars. Count the success stories and if at all possible, stir clear of grumpy agents. They have a funny way of bringing you down.

I hope this helps. Look for more stuff on real estate from me. I find myself with more time on my hands now that I’m home all the time . . . just kidding!

Infomercial Backlash!

As is often the case, I have trouble sleeping at night. So, I do what every other person does at 1:30 a.m. I flip through channels and long and behold, I came across an infomercial about eliminating debt.

The product: A book by Kevin Trudeau. “Debt Cures They Don’t Want You To Know About.” Apparently, it’s a tell all type of read disclosing secrets credit card companies and banks don’t want you to know about, etc. So, I’m motivated to call after about 10 minutes of watching the program. The author of the book was animated and believable. I was thinking, “A book for $29.99; not a bad price. I can spend that on one outing.” So, I get on the line with the salesperson; she takes my contact info; billing address, blah, blah, blah, then SMACK. I get bombarded with other offers: Try this for free; apply for this; do you want to purchase other books as gifts for half the costs, free shipping, etc. 

I got so infuriated with the call, that I couldn’t complete the order. Here is a guy preaching that people can get out of debt if they know “the secrets” companies don’t want you to know about and yet his sales people are plugging away at more ways for people to spend money. Typical pitch: “Try it for free and cancel in 30 days.” Oftentimes, people are too busy to make that follow-up call or simply forget, and get charged for a service or product that they didn’t even have a chance to use or like for that matter, which is a scam within itself. “They” bank on you forgetting to following up. Hey Kevin, is this one of your secret? Case in point: Avoid specials you are not interested in, even if they sound good.

I did like one of the offers. Apparently, you could buy other copies of the book at like $11 you get free shipping. The beauty of it is that I suspect people are going ahead and getting the other books because I see a lot of Debt Cures books for sale on ebay for more than the original price. Hmm, that’s one way to cure debt.  

The Story Behind My Name

When I get married and the priests says, “Do you Audeliz take Juan Maldonado to be your lawfully wedded husband”, my family may question just who is that girl standing at the alter. My birth name is Audeliz, which is pronounced, ou-del-lease. My older brother, who was four years old at the time when I was born, apparently disagreed with my mother’s name choice and decided that it would be “better” to call me Angie, which was the name of an actress on a tv show that he liked. So there it is. I have gone through many years of schooling explaining why my familiar name has nothing to do with my real name. And, I’m telling the story here so that I can refer my aunts, uncles and cousins to this site and avoid the awkward stares or giggles when I’m up at the alter taking my vows. I’ve been Angie for so many years that the name Audeliz fell to the wayside. I even have Angie printed on my business cards.       

So for future reference, don’t call me Audeliz, unless you’re mad at me. My name is Angie Perez and welcome to my blog.

Hello world! This is me in a nutshell!

I was always an awkward child; quiet and to myself. During the wonder years, on the weekends, I spent a lot of time with my mother. She would take me with her to do the groceries and other errands. It is to no surprise that my mother was also first employer. When school was out, I would tag along and help her at work. Mom was and still is a merchandiser for a well-known, greeting card company and she managed the inventory. I helped her create the displays, removed unsold inventory and calculate profits and loses. I knew then that I was not necessarily interested in the work that she did. When she wasn’t looking, I would sneak a peak at the messages in the cards, especially the funny ones and then stock them. I was very imaginative and as I was stocking, I would spend my time thinking about stories I’ve seen or heard. I could even make myself laugh, but the occassional paper cut would snap me back into reality. 

That was my first job and it was great and mundane at the same time. That experience taught me a very important lesson from an early age and that is: money is power. She paid me minimum wage, which was like $5.05 at the time and she took out taxes to show me that the government always get it’s money. My pay after taxes was disappointing, but at 11 years old, I was just happy to have enough to buy small things. Then, at about 13 years old, I had another life changing experience. I wanted two expense, yet equally important toys: one was a Gameboy and the other was a learning pc.  

My parents were very good about rewarding me and they would never deny me anything I wanted until this particular conflict, which was yet another lesson that we don’t always get what we want in life and second, we were not rich. They said, ”If you want the Gameboy, you have to work to get it yourself.”

So, I did. At 14, I became a telemarketer for Sears selling maintenance agreements on appliances and lawn equiptment that left the store without an extended warranty. That was interesting work. We had quotas and spifs on how many service plans we were able to sell on a daily basis. I had to learn dislogues and handle objections, but Sears was too far from home and my family grew tired of driving me to work on the weekends. So, then I became a waitress at a not so local IHOP, but at least at this job I was able to bribe my family to drive me there so long as I came home with some extra pancakes.

I’ve had many, many different types of work experiences and thus, I became what I am now: a workaholic. I hate losing and not getting what I want. When my mom denied me the Gameboy, I was flabbergasted. No one ever said no to me until that day.

I hate hearing no and I hate saying it to other people. I’m a sucker for a favor. But, I am what I am. Fortunately, I enjoy what I do and that’s all that matters.

P.S. I never bought the Gameboy! Game  Gear came out shortly thereafter.