“Go This Way (Not That Way)” The most interesting thing about this morning’s Exceptional Properties meeting — at a $3.5 million chalet-style mansion in Southwest Edina — wasn’t the home, but the route the listing agent marked for Realtors attending the meeting. Especially when a home is tucked away or otherwise hard to find, it’s...Read More
Sell the sizzle, not the steak. –Advertising slogan Is that saying still accurate? At least in real estate sales today, I don’t think so. In fact, I think it may be exactly backwards: Buyers want to be sold “steak,” not “sizzle.” For at least some Buyers, I’d go even further: they don’t want to be...Read More
Showing Owners You’re Hustling For Them I know many agents who swear by doing Sunday open houses. They claim to pick up new clients that way, and — at least occasionally — actually find a Buyer for the house they’re holding open. While there are ample reasons to do Broker open houses (see, “Open House...Read More
The Next Big Thing? Not Yet Not all technological innovations take the world by storm. Or at least the real estate world. Case in point: so-called QR codes, short for “quick response.” Essentially a bar code (like the one at left), they allow anyone with a smart phone to take a snapshot of an image,...Read More
My Favorite Real Estate Movie My favorite real estate movie, “Groundhog Day” (1993), actually isn’t even about real estate. It’s a romantic comedy in which the suitor, played by Bill Murray, gets to perfect his courting strategy — courtesy of a time loop that causes him to relive the same day, over and over. After various setbacks, his...Read More
“Forget about being on [street name], this lovely family home lives out back!” –excerpt, MLS listing How do you market a home on a busy street? Certainly, one tack is to ignore it. The other? Address it head-on, then defuse it by adding some softening context (example above). Of course, the part about the home “living...Read More
