Sellers Who Are Still Too Far Ahead of the Market With something like 2,000 Twin Cities homes temporarily off the market over the holidays, it’s a good bet that 1,500 or so homes will come back on the market the next few weeks. Or are already back on the market. Of those re-listed homes, how...Read More
The Art of Doing Comp’s Want the science art of Comp’s (for “Comparable Sold Properties”) in a nutshell? It’s placing a given (“subject”) property on a continuum, between the home just below it in price, and the one immediately above. What could be simpler, right? “This and That” Ahhh, but which two homes are those...Read More
(Mis)Reading the Signs Pricing real estate is fundamentally precedent-driven. In other words, if you want to establish an estimated fair market value for “Property H,” you first need to determine what Properties E, F, and G sold for. In Realtor (and Appraiser) lingo, E, F, and G are called Comp’s (“Comparable Sold Properties”), and the compare-and-contrast process...Read More
Dubious Logic According to a recent Wall Street Journal article, “some high-end sellers are taking a counterintuitive and risky step: raising the price.” Does such a strategy ever make sense? Before answering, let me trace the three-step logic implicit in such a move (at least most of the time): One. “Their home is like mine.”...Read More
Shooting the Messenger Listing Agent I think the prospective client to whom I made a listing presentation the other week is hiring someone else. Or, at least, I think he is; he never returned my phone calls after the meeting. Setback — Or Not? Five years ago — 60 or 70 deals back, in Realtor vernacular — I would...Read More
(And You Should, Too) My job — and every other Realtor’s — would be a lot easier if Zillow simply didn’t exist. Notwithstanding its (inexplicable to me) popularity, information on Zillow is frequently wrong, dated — or both. Oh, and one more thing: Zillow’s margin of error for calculating home values — the “hook” that...Read More
