If your listings are gathering dust, it’s time to talk about what to do when listings sit! Crickets chirping instead of offers rolling in? Don’t stress! In this episode, we’re tackling the tough topic of stagnant listings. We’ll share strategies for re-energizing your marketing efforts, navigating a slow market, and keeping your sellers motivated. We are sharing our list of questions to ask yourself as the agent plus an important seller question, “what’s your budget to sell?”. From staging and photography to social media and open houses, we’ve got the tips to turn those crickets into a chorus of offers. So, tune in and let’s conquer those listing woes together!
Leave us a review at RateThisPodcast.com/HustleHumbly
Get your FREE Database Template
Email Templates 101
Agent Systems 101
All Resources
Submit your topic ideas and toasts to Hello@HutleHumblyPodcast.com.
—————–
Rate, Review, & Follow on Apple Podcasts
“I love Katy and Alissa and The Hustle Humbly Podcast.” <– If that sounds like you, Click here,
scroll to the bottom, tap to rate with five stars, and select “Write a Review.” Then be sure to let us know what you loved most about the episode!
Also, if you haven’t done so already, follow the podcast. We’re adding a bunch of bonus episodes to the feed and, if you’re not following, there’s a good chance you’ll miss out. Follow now!
The following is a rough transcript provided by Otter.ai.
Alissa 0:01
What can I do to make this home appealing to the biggest group of buyers? What
Katy 0:07
a great visual.
Alissa 0:10
That’s a great strategy. That
Katy 0:12
is the point we’re gonna have to try strategy something different when things are not selling, not just more fluffy marketing, actual strategy. Okay,
Alissa 0:23
I am not investing anymore into marketing your home until you do your homework. Yeah, I cannot want to sell the house more than you want to sell the house, right? Hi y’all, welcome to hustle. Humbly, it’s Alyssa and Katie, and we are two top producing realtors in the Baton Rouge market. We
Katy 0:42
work for two different companies where we should be competitors, but we have chosen community over competition.
Alissa 0:47
The goal of our podcast is to encourage you to find your own way in business, so stop
Katy 0:51
comparing yourself and start embracing your strengths. Hi Alyssa. Hey Katie. Welcome to episode 270 when listings sit we’ve
Alissa 1:00
been getting a lot of emails lately about what to do, so that kind of lets us know that this is going on around the country. Yes, I
Katy 1:09
have some emails to share. Okay, but first I wanted to set the tone as our recording. It is September when we’re recording this, and we have a hurricane headed straight towards us right now, which gives you that feeling of impending doom, sort of like when you’re listening
Alissa 1:29
very similar feelings. Now that you mention it, you’re
Katy 1:32
like, oh God, when is the seller gonna call me? What’s gonna happen? Is this gonna expire?
Alissa 1:38
Yes,
Katy 1:40
okay. Are you ready for the emails we received there too? Okay, what to do with listings that are just sitting there? The sound of crickets is the only thing I’m hearing. Opposed to showing, opposed to showing request. Have done the just listed cards, open houses, text messages to agents in the area sharing the listing, as well as info on opens, sellers have done price adjustments. Now I am having staging and new photos done. Ugh. What more can I do? Listings are tough with no control, and I like to have control with my buyers. I can share homes with them and recommend homes they need to look at, but I can’t drag people into my listings help what to do when crickets are the only thing I’m hearing at my listings. Oh, wow. Let me give you our next friend. Okay, and then you can dive in. I’ve been in the business six years, so this is the first time I’ve had listings sit. I wonder every day why people like sellers over buyers. Why I get so stressed when my listings sit longer than 30 days, and I don’t quite know what to say to sellers on my weekly check in call with market updates. This is the most listings I’ve ever had, five at one time, which brings me so much gratitude. But I keep finding myself going down a negative rabbit hole of emotions, even as far as thinking, will this be the one I just can’t sell. Maybe I need a mindset refresh. I don’t know what I need.
Alissa 3:06
Oh my gosh. Well, I can relate. And I was actually very thankful to do this episode right, which I did not want to do, yes, because it’s like I needed it. That’s true. It would help me talk through it with you. Like, this will be a good little podcast therapy for all the listings out there. Yes.
Katy 3:25
I mean, I do have a listing that is also not flying off the shelf.
Alissa 3:29
Yeah, yeah. What do they say when you need to learn something, you should teach it? Oh, dude, that’s a that’s true. If you need to learn something, you should teach, right? Well, we’re about to teach our way through this problem. And what is funny is that as I was preparing for this episode, I’m like, Oh yeah, okay, yeah. Like, I just, and you know what it is, i i Even though I know better get in my head and I think I need to do all these crazy things, and I forget that it’s really just the very, very basics, yeah, to be done, yes. One of the biggest things that our first emailer said is like, when, when is the seller gonna like, what do I say? When is the seller going to call me? And it’s like, as long as they are hearing from you,
Katy 4:18
yeah? And you just have to be honest, though, hey, the market is moving slow right now. I’m talking to other agents. They are also not getting showings. Even like showing time. You can print up reports or email reports that show how many showings are being scheduled in your whole market, like and that’s up or down from last month, or how that looks in the trend. So there’s data, but you have to tell them, I’m not expecting you to get 50 showings the first weekend and five offers. Yeah, no one else is getting that correct.
Alissa 4:52
This last two weeks, I have had two sellers reach out to me and said they wanted to interview. Me because they’ve had their house on the market for over six months and it has recently expired. Okay? I’m thinking, okay, great, let’s just add some more inventory to the portfolio of things that are not selling. Hooray. But sometimes I found as the second agent, I went in so much tougher. And
Katy 5:21
I like that you said that in a recent episode where you’re like, listen, as the second agent, I am not trying to beat up on you, but I have to give you really strict homework and all of the tough, tough criticism because your house didn’t sell the first time. Yeah, so it’s kind of nice that you get that someone has already primed them, yes,
Alissa 5:41
they’ve already experienced the rejection, right? They are off the high of thinking my house is the best house. Now they’re just desperate. Now they’re like, my house is not the best house. Nobody wants. Nobody wants it. Loves Me, right? Like they’re in a different this is actually the ideal listing agent to be it really didn’t know wrong. You’re just gonna be like, Look. And I thought I would share how both situations have gone. Please tell us the first one I actually thought was going to go worse. Okay, the house is in a great location, but the lady, she’s older, she custom built the house herself. Okay, when she built this big house, she made it a two bedroom. Oh, so it’s just very it’s just gonna take a very specific buyer. Yeah, if you’re watching on YouTube, I’ve been giving this analogy a lot lately. Oh my I make like, a big circle with my hands, and I tell sellers, listen, this is the buyer pool. Every time a house has something unique or different about it. The pool gets a little bit more specific and smaller. So when I come in as the agent, I’m like, What can I do to make this home appealing to the biggest group of buyers? What a great visual like I’m here to neutralize how’s that going? It’s actually going really well. Yeah, I think even just doing it with your hands, I’m like, for example, if this is the buyer pool now it’s like this, because if you need more than two bedrooms, you don’t this is not the house for you. Yeah? Also, like, because you built such a nice house, it’s in the luxury price point, yeah, most people who pay this are getting more than two bedrooms naturally, right, just because they’re paying this price range, right? So it’s like just figuring out this, this little circle. So I was, I also could tell that this very sweet lady could be a bit needy. Okay, so I’m also like, I need to say my piece, and if she wants to hire me, she can hire me. If she doesn’t, I am very much at peace. This is a Dodge. Dodge the bullet, yes, yeah. Okay, so I really went through the house and was like, this, okay, I told you this. You know, I always tell people this house had not been staged. Well, okay, it photographed, okay. But in person, I was like, Oh, my. Like, what
Katy 8:14
happened here? We
Alissa 8:14
need to definitely like the art is very eccentric. It’s just very, very different furniture. Okay? It was also very hard to place furniture because there’s so many windows that you don’t have a lot of room to put things against walls. So we had to do some major tweaking, which I told her, good news, I think there’s room for improvement here,
Katy 8:38
right? That’s what you need.
Alissa 8:39
It’s hard when it didn’t sell. They had an amazing agent. The pictures were flawless. You get there, the house is great, yeah. I was like, that’s not the case here. There’s a lot of room for improvement, which I think is good better. Both of these sellers were also very eager to get the house back on the market, like immediately, right? They were stressing that it was no longer active in the MLS. And I was like, listen, nobody wanted it when it was right. I was like, Don’t stress. It’s okay to take two, three weeks a month to make changes. Yeah, it needs to be there is it will do nothing for you to list the house as the exact same product that it was.
Katy 9:19
You as an agent or not a miracle worker, right? Because they have now chosen Alyssa to be their agent. Doesn’t mean, oh, it’s gonna sell just like it was before.
Alissa 9:27
And I do think that, you know, I’ve said before that when, when sellers have a house for sale, every day they come home and your game, they want
Katy 9:36
to in their yard, they are going to blame you if it doesn’t sell,
Alissa 9:39
they see your sign every day and every day they come home, right? Like, Alyssa. Alyssa, Alyssa, yeah, has not sold. My there
Katy 9:46
are sellers that want to jump around from agent to agent to agent, because, obviously it can’t, because they didn’t get the message it was their house. They’re like, obviously it cannot be my house. It has to be my agent. Yes, they’re doing something wrong. They don’t want to. Market my house. They don’t, they don’t know what they’re doing. Yes, you need to sell my house. This
Alissa 10:04
lady in particular actually said, and her agent was fine. He, he was a decent agent, okay, he’s not. He has a good reputation in our market. Okay? She’s like, he never brought a buyer one time that were you like, that won’t be me either, right? I had to set that expectation up front. And she was like, well, you would think he would have buyers. I said, Listen, I have, you know, I even told her about my Trello. I’m like, I have a list of sellers and a list of buyers. It is very rare that there’s a perfect match, right? Very radical whole market right now, of course, if I have someone that met Awesome, yeah, but it’s very rare, and so it was almost like she had never thought about that before. Yeah?
Katy 10:54
See, it’s just goes more to the consumer doesn’t actually understand how the market works, how the how being an agent works. They think that you just have this they she thought you had a list of buyers, yeah, that I was gonna show the house. Currently, I’ve got this house, so now you’re gonna come to it right? Like, no, the buyers I have have already they’ve already told me what they want. I choose what’s on the market, right?
Alissa 11:17
I never showed it either when I was a buyer’s agent, like, when
Katy 11:21
it was listed, none of my buyers fit. Then I didn’t get a new buyer today, correct? And
Alissa 11:26
it was sort of a light bulb moment for me at how much they don’t realize. They don’t understand. So I explained to her, Listen, if you had showings, he’s he did his job, right? Because the marketing was working. Yeah, you have people coming into the home, the product did not sell itself, so that’s what we have to fix. But of course, everybody wants to blame the agent that had it for sale. So I was very hard on her, and she was like trying to give me a key that day, I said, I think you should wait until you get my full list right and my price suggestion, I said, because now that I’ve seen the whole house, I want to go back do a market analysis. And I said, to be honest, you may not hire me after. And she kind of laughed, and was like, Well, I appreciate your honesty. And I said, that’s the thing. I am not here to just get a listing, right? My sit on any card. I do not want to over promise I am here to tell you the truth and to tell you that as much as I would love to just say, The house looks great. You don’t need to spend any money, you don’t need to do a thing. I’m just gonna stick my sign in the yard, and because it’s my sign, it’s going to sell, I said, but I cannot tell you that there is actually work to be done here, and a pretty large price correction that needs to happen. And if that doesn’t fit your financial needs, yeah, you may want to consider moving back into it. She was moving to like another city, yeah, I was like, you may want to consider staying in it longer. You may want to consider renting it out, but what I’m telling you is the truth, so that you can make the best possible financial decision. Did you? You didn’t list it yet? No, but she did review everything, and she is it’s been off the market for about two weeks, okay? And she’s making changes, and she still wants me to be her agent. And you gave her the new price, I gave her the new price, and she was like, everything, how much lower was the price? It was about 50,000 less, and my commission was a little bit more. Yeah, okay. And she asked, Would you go lower here? I said, No, because I’m just not. I’m looking at this listing is a very specific business decision for myself. I understand that she is gonna need a lot of hand holding, and I’m gonna there’s no way I’m making less, especially on this one, yeah, because I’m about to put in a lot of work,
Katy 13:55
and it may not sell. It may not sell, okay? I cannot wait to hear the follow up of this. Yeah, me too. All right, when you came, you said something during that story, though, that reminded me. I took a staging class locally at our board once, and the agents that ran it said, one of the first questions they ask when they take a listing it to the seller, is, what is your budget to sell? And I was like, what a light bulb moment. If you frame it to your seller before even you listed as, what is your budget to sell, they will suddenly be like, wait a minute, I have to spend money to sell. Like, yeah, your house isn’t perfect, but since we’re doing it in the context of your listing is sitting, yeah, maybe you it’s time to say to your seller, Hey, what is your budget to improve the property so we can sell it like, what? Tell me. Give me a framework that I can like. What is your budget to make this, you know, more appealing that way. You know, maybe it’s 5000 maybe it’s $500 but what can we do with that amount of money to actually get it to move? Yes, I want to talk about the state of the market a little bit okay, because obviously, like our friend who’s been in it six years, has never experienced this particular problem before. I wanted to just discuss like, as we’re recording this and as it airs, we’re still in this weird election year market. And as we get closer and closer. It feels like it gets more and more like people are like, Ah, just wait it out in look, historically, regardless of how the election goes, directly after it, sales go up. It doesn’t even matter the fact that the uncertainty. Yeah, they just right so they just after and you know, the world doesn’t implode. Then they buy the houses, or
Alissa 15:39
they sell the houses again. Guess the world is still here. I can buy a house. It’s
Katy 15:43
gonna keep on going. So keep that in mind. I’ve also noticed a lot of interesting marketing from builders. Have you gotten a lot more emails lately? I’m like, Oh, now all of a sudden, you know when it was we’re going, oh, there’s buyers everywhere. The rates are low. They were like, we couldn’t build enough houses, right? Yeah. Now they’re sending the emails like, hey, we have these great houses available. I’m like, Oh, now you need my help to sell it. Like we’re
Alissa 16:09
starting to see new construction active. Never lived in 2024, year built 2022 Oh, yeah, that’s bad. Like been sitting there complete for just waiting for a buyer. Well, I got a couple of
Katy 16:27
builders, like local custom high ends. That’s we’re starting to send emails, even one that sent a whole newsletter. I’m like, Y’all have never sent a newsletter before. Ever, ever. I mean, look, that’s what happens, though, with agents and builders or who like listings. Everyone’s going to ramp up their marketing when things aren’t moving, because that’s all you really can do to try and, you know, encourage a sale. But I got one yesterday, and I will just say it was a DR Horton neighborhood that was offering 1.99% interest for the first year, and then 4.99% for the term of the loan, if you use their lender to try and if they got the contract before whatever date, end of October, I don’t remember. So like, they had enough houses sitting that were like, we will make this deal so sweet that you’re like, I gotta have that house. So it’s not just coming though from your builders. I think it’s also going to start coming from the other listings, other agents.
Alissa 17:27
Yeah, one of the articles I read recently said we’ve never had more inventory than we’ve had right now. But the problem is, the inventory that we have has very high day on market. Yeah, so as new listings slowly trickle in, there’s not as much rolling off, yeah. So the inventory it’s building, it’s not that everybody’s selling, yeah, it’s just that things are not necessarily rolling off, which is when I think it’s extra important that we are having those conversations with our seller, yeah, so now that we have the house listed, and it’s not selling, right? And we’ve done, you know, open houses and all of those things, now, what?
Katy 18:14
Now, what? Okay, I have some questions you should ask yourself, yourself as the agent. Here are the questions you should ask yourself. Let’s just start. Okay, it’s not selling, right? Yeah, start from the very beginning. Who would want to live in this house? Why would they want to live in this house? Like, what are the things about this house that make it special different? What about the location? Like, are you actually pointing out to buyers.
Alissa 18:44
If you hear that alarm, it is because the impending Dune, the impending dune of hurricane Francine, is headed this way.
Katy 18:53
Okay. Alert, alert, alert, okay, keep on going. Okay. So why would someone want to live in this house? So okay, maybe the house is just Okay, right? Maybe in the neighborhood it’s in, it’s just okay, but maybe it’s nearby. Some great amenities. Go, restaurants, school, whatever, churches, I don’t care. How are the buyers finding out that information? So now it’s time to have, like, a pretty thorough seller top 10. Do you have, you know, a listing binder in the house, so that, if you do get a showing, they open it up, they’re like, Oh, wow. I didn’t realize this was right around the corner, or there was a park in the back of the neighborhood, or whatever. But even more than that, take it and make it a graphic and it be one of the photos on your carousel that’s nice, like, so if they’re, if they’re looking at the photos of your property, and they’re like, Ah, it’s just okay. And then they’re like, wait a minute, it’s around the corner from this. I didn’t even like, yeah, give like, a little radius, one mile away, five miles away, make a list of things, put it on the listing, where they can find it as a doc or as a photo. It’s probably where you’re gonna get most buyers to see it. That’s a great idea. Okay, so next. First up, be sure to point out anything that makes the home different than others that are available. Okay, so it is not selling, but it’s the only house in the neighborhood with the pool. It’s the only house in the neighborhood with a fourth bedroom. It’s the only house in the neighborhood with a whole home generator, which is great for your hurricane season. Like, yeah, we’re gonna have to start really pointing out these, like, key features, and maybe you make a list of key features or some and make that a another photo in the line. That’s
Alissa 20:25
a good idea,
Katy 20:26
because people just don’t know. I will tell you, regardless of the price point, the houses that I had a really you came to it, remember, we did that tour, had this really specific listing. It had kind of a weird floor plan. It was not selling. It was renovated. It was, you know, not in a crazy price, but for its neighborhood. It was a little different. I sold it when I showed it like, if you go and, you know, and you keep talking about, not just like, fluffy made up, but like, Hey, did you notice that you can drive into the backyard? That means you could park a boat back here, or RV or whatever. There’s no HOA restrictions, so you can build a big old she shed, or you have to know the details of the house, and then you have to figure out a way to relay that to the public, or to at least the people who scheduled a showing. Sure. Okay, here’s the questions now we’re gonna ask ourselves, are we having showings? Okay, okay. What is the feedback? Okay? If there are no showings, then it’s probably a price issue, right? Price photos something.
Alissa 21:32
They’re not even coming in the
Katy 21:33
door. They don’t even show up. They’re just like, No thank you. If you’re having showings with no offers, then it’s a condition problem. They get there, it doesn’t look like the photos. It’s there’s a cell tower in the back. Something is going on, right? So now we have to maybe up the condition of the property. Okay, you ready for the next question, is there anything we can do affordably to change the look of the home and redo the photos? Like, what is something that we can do to freshen this listing in a way. And look, when I first started, y’all the market was good, real good. And then crashed pretty soon after, okay? And people would do the craziest stuff. They would pull it off the market for one day to get a new days on the market. And then our MLS got hip to that, and they started making a like continuous days on the market. So you could still
Alissa 22:22
see, so for us in our market, if you want to start that day on market over it has to be off the market for 90 days, right? Which, I
Katy 22:29
mean, that’s a pretty big commitment. Yeah. I recently lost a listing during this I was like, Hey, if you want, you know, it’s the winter, things are slow. If you want to reset our days on the market, you can, you know, just wait for the spring. They’re like, yeah, that really sounds like a good idea. Like we have to wait 90 days on the before the 90th day was approaching. I’m like, Hey, are you ready to relist? And they’re like, yeah, we’re just gonna go with another agent. I’m like, Cool, okay, cool, but it is what it is. All right. So what are the affordable things we’re gonna do, change the look and then redo the photos and then put it back on the market. I mean, look, you don’t always have to lower the price. You can also raise the price. Did you paint the whole house and raise the price a couple $1,000 and then now you get a new price and new photos and a new like, redo your listing. Yeah,
Alissa 23:18
you know the one that we just went to together to do a walk through what I have found, and I have found this to be a common problem, as was with this house that we went to. The house is now vacant. Yeah, the photos are of it furnished. Yeah, looks better, yeah. Now that it’s vacant, when you walk through, you really see the
Katy 23:38
flaws. Yeah, it almost has to look like, as close to new construction as it like, how can we make this look fresh? Fresh, fresh. Yes,
Alissa 23:45
but when it’s when there’s just nail holes on the wall or scuffs on the base,
Katy 23:50
even in that house, it was just dirty baseboards. Yeah, look. Someone’s got some elbow grease. Somebody has some skin. In this game, if the seller doesn’t want to get on their hands and wipe the baseboards. Then they can hire someone to wipe the baseboards, sure, but they’re making a choice. And if you allow them to say to you, it’s you, it’s your fault, you’re not bringing me buyers. And you say, well, here are the things that you need to do to bring it up to show quality. And if they’re not willing to do it, they can’t keep turning it around on you. I’ve even
Alissa 24:21
had a seller that I told several times to do a list of, like, three things, very simple things that he definitely had the means to do to this house. Okay, we kept getting feed. We were having showings, and when they didn’t want it, he was just so mad about it. It’s my fault, you know. So I find he he wanted me to do all these things for marketing. And I finally said, Listen, I am not investing anymore into marketing your home until you do your homework. Yeah, I cannot want to sell the house more than you want to sell the house, right? I Alyssa Jenkins, am not going. Trying to scrub your baseboards. And I know that there’s agents out there that are like, look at me scrubbing baseboards. I’m just, you know, it’s like, full service. Full service over here, it’s like, that’s, that’s actually not our job, and we need our sellers to understand the importance of us being a team
Katy 25:17
and it and the importance of it is work to sell your home? Yeah, it is not, it is not always going to be easy, right? You mentioned the vacant house. The next question I asked myself is, would Virtual Staging help? So if the house is vacant or all the photos have always been empty, is it a confusing floor plan? Can we get some Virtual Staging? It’s very nice. It’s not that expensive. It looks really realistic, and it helps. And you just, when I do that, though, on a listing, I try to do the virtual staged photo and the vacant photo in a line, correct? Yeah, because I really don’t want them to also expect to show up to a fully furnished, perfectly staged home, right? So just be mindful when you do that. How about do we need drone photography? Like, is it a big lot? Is it? Is there a pool? Is there? Is the neighborhood? Like, is there something outside the box that we’re not showing them?
Speaker 1 26:09
How about should we do a video? Yeah, have we done a video? Do we need video? Could we do some little, small snippets of video that really, like, hone in on a specific feature, like, what kind of social media content could help accentuate great features? Because a lot of agents think to get a video of the house, they need to be in the video. They need to be dressed in a suit, and they need to give a video of the whole house. Hi. This
Katy 26:35
is Katie Caldwell. Welcome to 123, Main Street.
Alissa 26:39
No, I love the idea of being like, look at this pantry door, right? This pantry door is amazing, like, just something to sort of grab their attention. Yeah, short little videos, because sharing one five minute video of a house, of a house, is not going to be watched the whole way, no, and you can only share the same video so many times. Yeah, this is, again, why your seller Top 10 is so crucial. They have sometimes, as an agent, you don’t even know the features of the house. Like, you’ve got to tell me the really fine details about this house. Do you love that you
Katy 27:14
have plugins in your pantry where your appliances go right? Like, do you love? Like, we need the real specifics. So making social media content that could accentuate a very specific feature would be great. For instance, we are in this room as my office, right? This is technically the fourth bedroom of my house. Yes, if I was selling this house, I would specifically come to this room and be like, This is our multifunctional room. It is currently used as an office. It is set up with a closet and a window. It is actually the fourth bedroom. It is also what I would consider to be the formal dining space if I was going to have one, because I have a big open dining because my floor plan is super open, yeah. But if somebody wanted a formal dining space, I would be like, This is the room where you’re going to do that, yeah, but you would have to. People do not have vision, and sometimes you’re like, oh, I need four bedrooms, and this is only three, but there’s an office and there’s, that’s actually a bedroom, right? So like, Come on, y’all. Next question, do you have all of the allowed labels on the photos? I need to do these on my current listing we’re gonna carry we’re going to case study in a second. Okay, but there are two in our MLS. There are two places you can put labels. There’s a like main title, and then there’s descriptions, if you assume that most buyers are just flipping through photos and not reading your lovely, well thought out description, you got to put as much as you can in the photo. So, new appliances, brand new water heater, like you got to put some extra stuff in there.
Alissa 28:46
I definitely need to fluff mine up, because these, this is where the
Katy 28:49
people are looking, but they maybe don’t understand the photos, or they don’t know the features right from the photos. Okay, so get your labels on there. Have you changed the front photo recently? I think some MLS is require you to keep a front like a front photo of the house. It has to be the front door, front whatever. Our MLS will allow you to put any freaking photo first. Yes, it can be the backyard, kitchen, whatever, whatever. So as you sit on the market, you do need to freshen that front photo so that it looks different when buyers maybe run across it again.
Alissa 29:23
Like, I like to do the like, dawn to dusk photos. That’s not the front just to sort of Twilight, yeah, just to change it up a little, yeah. You
Katy 29:32
have to think if all, if you’re going through the MLS and all the photos you’re seeing are playing sky, blue sky, blue sky. Straight on, blue sky, big driveway like Right? Can you get tight on the front door? So when you get your photos done, I always try to get two or three angles of the front and then, you know, you’ll mix in. But if you’re gonna go do a price change, you are wasting your time if you also don’t change the front photo, right? Because this is. A moment when people who are signed up for a search are getting that listing resent to them because the price changed, and if it’s the same old, boring photo that it had before that didn’t get them in the front door, then
Alissa 30:12
I try not to do a price change without changing a few things. I try to read my description see if I need to revamp it. I’ve also been a big fan of a little bit of a shorter description lately, just to the point these are the rooms it has. Like,
Katy 30:27
can we bullet point this? Yes, yeah. I
Alissa 30:28
wish that we could, because I just feel like, especially with all the like, AI stuff right now, they’re getting so long and fluffy, so fluffy. I mean, no, so I’ve just been trying to be very like, look, I have, like, 30 seconds to capture the fire that’s reading this. So how can I get them to read what’s actually important? Oh,
Katy 30:48
I also, there are those agents that capitalize the whole thing. Please, don’t do that. Yeah. Don’t yell it. Don’t do that. However, I will go in and capitalize in midst of my description, new roof, yes, new AC, like, if it’s new, something, I will go and capitalize, especially a roof right now, it’s
Alissa 31:05
a big deal.
Katy 31:06
That’s a big deal. It’s a big deal. All right, a couple more questions, and then we’ll move on. Have you had an open house? Did you specifically invite the neighbors? The number one people who are going to sell your house are the ones who live nearby and know someone that want to live by them. They already live there and like it, right? So put them to work, bring them over to the open house. The only door knocking I would ever even consider would be, hey, I’m having an open house tomorrow.
Alissa 31:33
Well, that’s not salesy. I’m not asking you. I’m inviting you over. Yes, I am just letting you know I’m not here asking you for anything. I’m not trying to sell your house. That’s not for sale right now. I’m just inviting and
Katy 31:44
again, employ your seller. Hey, are you in your neighborhood Facebook group? I need you to post that I’m having an open house tomorrow or Sunday, or whenever, and I would love for the neighbors to come visit. I’ll be serving, you know, donuts and orange juice. Bring the kids, yeah, like, how can you get those neighbors to get excited to come see the house? And then once they’re in there, you’re then you get to sell it, right? Hey, do you have friends that want to live in the neighborhood? What do you like about the neighborhood? I want to make sure I’m covering all the special features whenever I show it, you know? But your seller has to be your teammate. Okay, so that’s the open house. All right. Next one. What about getting an appraisal so you can share it’s priced below. That’s a good idea. So if you’ve been price adjusting, price adjusting, price adjusting, no one seems to want it. I used to see this a ton, back in the hard market. Y’all, this ain’t a hard market. Is the other thing I want to say, it’s not it’s just normal. It’s just normal. I have seen a hard market and talk about having a thing outside the box, but a lot of times you would get these huge all caps in the listing, priced $50,000 below appraisal. Well, look for any person who plans to buy the house and live in it for five or more years. This is really automatic equity, especially if they’re going to come in and change out some countertops or do some, you know, work to the house right room. Hey, if you’re planning to, you know, update this house. Good news. There’s already $30,000 of built in equity. So I would consider that $500 appraisal completely worth it. We’re, you know, we’re sharing this with you. All right, how about a pre inspection, and then you do the repairs so you can advertise that that’s nice move in, ready? Y’all we’re gonna have to make this house move in, ready? So get a pre inspection done. There lots of
Alissa 33:32
and I feel like you could do that in the middle of a listing, yeah? Like, if a listing is not selling, be like, Hey, do you have it in the budget to get it pre inspected, right? Let’s go ahead and do that so we can average right, or
Katy 33:45
go with the or go with the Hey, do you have in the budget to to get an appraisal? You keep dropping the price? Let’s prove to everyone how much, because sellers will fixate on, Oh, it’s this is worth so much more, which maybe it really is. But if you have it in black and white to show a buyer, then they’re like, Oh yeah, I see. Okay, let’s go back to do you have a listing binder? Okay, I love my listing binder. So good at this. It goes into every listing. Is it making sure that the buyer sees the home and knows all of the details and special features. So this is where I put in, you know, like the seller, top 10 the homeowner info sheet. Does it list the ages of everything, and have a long list of updates. So whatever the list you would make for the appraiser when they’re gonna come and appraise this listing, I just go ahead and get the seller to write this up and put it in the binder, right? Okay. Here is the list of we changed out all the doors. We changed out all the appliances. Like, then the buyer’s like, oh, they don’t know. They don’t know. They don’t know. All right. Last question, are there nearby listings available pending recent solds that you can call the agents and see if they had extra buyers, or did they. Have multiple offers, or kind of get a feel for how did the listing go? Maybe they have buyers that are still they’re like, oh, you know what, we did have a second offer. Here’s the agent who
Alissa 35:10
wrote it. I actually sold a listing that way. I was about to list a condo, and I thought, oh, gosh, this complex is going to be tough because they weren’t financed, approved. And I remember, at one point, a few years ago, there was several on the market, so I was about to list it, and I saw that there was one that I had been watching that was active, had been active for like, 89 days or something. So I called the agent. She’s like, Oh, you know, it’s going really slow. We’re not really having any showings. And I thought, okay, so I told my seller, look, I called this agent. I know we discussed listing it at this but I really think we need to hit this next lower bracket price point below that. We need to win. So he was like, okay, okay. So he agreed. And then I saw, like, the day before we were going active, they went pending. Oh, so I called the agent. I’m like, you went pending? And she’s like, yes, it’s actually an investor who’s buying in here. And I was like, do you know if they want more? Like, are they just buying one? And she was like, I don’t know, but, like, this is the agent. So I called the agent, and was like, Hey, I haven’t listed it yet, but it is so cute and it is pretty renovated. I said, it’s gonna be this price. And I said the original price, the one that was a little bit higher, yeah. And she was like, Oh, could I see it early? I was like, Sure, they bought it for the higher price, for the higher price. Look at you do in your work, I know. But I was like, wow, if you hadn’t called that agent, yeah, it probably would have left some money on the table, because we would have gone active at a lower price, even
Katy 36:49
if he came along and bought it. Yep. But then it felt like they were getting something exclusive. Yes, I love it. They were excited. Also, when you’re reaching out to these agents in the neighborhood, do you need to do a group open house, like, can you all work together, right, to get some more eyes on it. All right, we’re gonna do case studies. By that, I mean, we’re gonna go over one of each of our listings, okay, but before, I just wanted to say that the slow market tends to reveal nervous and anxious agents and nervous and anxious
Alissa 37:20
sellers like whatever, which is why the agents we are anxious, we are
Katy 37:25
mirroring each other’s behaviors. So you just really have to keep in contact. Yeah, and you’ve got to check in regularly and look the feedback. I know lately there’s just been some like reels and stuff circulating about I’ll never provide feedback again. Okay, I would still stand by anything we said in our feedback episode, which was a million years ago. I don’t remember the number, but I also would like to say you as the listing agent, owe it to your seller to go above and beyond, to get feedback from the few people who’ve been there, and if the agent isn’t willing to put in writing, the buyer didn’t like it, at least call or tech, I would call y’all.
Alissa 38:10
They just start talking. They will just when you call
Katy 38:13
anything. So look, I will give you an example of my listing, my current listing that’s been on the market a few weeks or a couple of weeks. There was one. We’ve only had a handful of showings. There was one buyer’s agent who said, hey, they showing. Went great. Buyer loved it. They have to find out if they need to sell their home before they can buy. And I’m like, okay, great. And it was during, you know, like the weekend. She’s like, I was like, so I’ll, I’ll just check back in, you know, in the during the week, couple, you know, day business days go by. I reached back out, Hey, did they find out? Are they still interested? Yeah, they’re still talking to the lender, and they are interested. And then a couple more days go by, and I’m like, hey, you know, what? Did they find something else? And they were she was like, no, they still really want the house, but they do have to sell in order to buy. Okay? And then I was like, Okay. I said, Well, do they have the house listed? And then she said, I’m calling you. So she called me, and she was like, Hey, I just wanted to share, like, a little bit more about their house, how long I think it’s gonna take to sell. I didn’t want you to, like, just be holding your hopes. She’s like, they still really want your listing, but this is what we’re work up against, right? I really appreciated the call, and there are a lot of things that agents will tell you on the phone that they’re not going to put in writing anywhere else. So making the phone call is going to be huge, right? So that’s really important about the feedback. And when you when you do get really vague feedback. Also, don’t be afraid to call that agent and be like, Hey, I know you said your buyer wasn’t interested. But is it the is it the color of the house? I know all the rooms are different colors. Did they mention that? Like, if there’s something you’ve been trying to get your seller to take care of, trying to push the feedback to, like, ask specific questions. If. Like, no, they didn’t really care about that, but they hated the size of the yard. Well, I mean, we can’t do anything about this, right, right? Or they they would have only bought it if it had a fence. And I’m like, well, maybe we can do something about that. So you need to ask really specific questions if you’ve gotten no feedback or really vague feedback.
Alissa 40:16
Well, and also is, now is the time you’re not really making money because your listings aren’t selling, right? So you don’t want to spend money on said listing,
Katy 40:25
yeah? Like a putting an ad in a in a magazine. Oh, yeah, here
Alissa 40:29
special for $300 Yeah, no, we’re not, we’re not spending any money right now, no, because I’m not making any money if I
Katy 40:36
was gonna spend, oh, it’s a great question. If you were gonna spend $300 on a listing that was sitting what would you
Alissa 40:43
do? I would probably put it towards an appraisal or inspection.
Katy 40:47
Okay, I think if I was going to go the marketing route, I would do the postcard to the 100 nearest houses. Maybe there’s someone who didn’t notice it was for sale and has somebody who’s been wanting to live nearby, right? Maybe, yeah, yeah, okay. And then I think the last thing I wanted to say about checking in with your sellers is they just need to know buyers are moving slower right now. This is the buyer behavior. You’re not nervous. If you tell or if you’re like, nervous, and they pick up on that, just be like, Hey, I’m not nervous. The average days on the market in your area is 60, and we’re only on day 32 so this is totally normal. I’m not nervous. This is what we can do. This is what we’re waiting on. This is the feed. Like,
Alissa 41:30
one of the things I like to do that’s free is I’ll email my listing out to like, 20 agents that I know, yeah, and I’ll say, Hey, this is my listing. It’s not selling. Would you mind scrolling through the photos, looking at the MLS, letting me know if you see any red flags or have any questions, or if anything looks confusing, if you want to go a step further, and let me know how you think it’s priced based on comps like and then I say, and if you have a listing that is struggling, send it to me, and I’d be happy to return the favor. How does that go over so good. I love that. And I’m like, why am I not doing this? Like all every time, all the you could. Because even if you sent it to 10 agents, and you did this every other week, yeah, every other week you’re selling your seller. Hi, Mr. Seller. I went on ahead and made sure 10 agents from the market that worked this zip code the most reviewed your property. Here is a list of the feedback that I got back, bullet points, and it could be everything they said, even if you only get three or four responses. It’s like, add in your thoughts too, because you’re just giving them feedback. I’m always trying to say, like, Okay, I’ve said this. How can I get it to come from somebody else? Yes, you know, open houses are good, still time consuming, but going to agents who already know you and like you and want to help you. Is that? How you how do you pick? Yeah, I usually will start with, like, people who were at our sales meeting recently, or someone who I just, like, like, just Yeah, 10 top of mind agents who I’ve seen recently, so they may be more inclined to respond, yeah. And then maybe the second time I do it, I’ll just do it by zip code, I’ll go to that neighborhood or general radius and pick 10 of the people I know from there, and I might even say, Hey, I see that you have one too. How is yours going? Would you look at mine? If you send me feedback, I’ll look at yours. But again, all of this is free and just so much more effective than paying to have a snowball stand at the open house, right, right?
Katy 43:47
I mean, and the word of mouth to a producing agent or an agent that’s working nearby is helpful. It really is, because even though it’s in the MLS, and they could go find it if they wanted to, maybe when you talk to them about it, they’re like, oh, you know what? I didn’t even realize that this kind of boring house on the outside because that was the front photo was so well updated, so it’s worth pointing it out. Yeah. Are we ready to case study? Yeah. Okay, all right. So I only did well I did to look at your two listings that were longer than 10 days on the market, okay? But one, we’ll start with the the one that I didn’t have anything to say about. Okay, you have one that it is an inherited property. Yeah, it is a full gut Reno, full gut Reno. And I just had questions, okay, have you had showings? We’ve had like, four showings, and what is the feedback? They’re like, way too much work, too much work, way too much work. But
Alissa 44:45
you’ve adjusted the price. We did adjust the price, but we are about to do an even bigger adjustment. So the roof has been repaired, okay, but there is some water stains on the ceiling. I noticed that, yeah? And I told my photographer on this house. I said, I do not want editing, yeah? Like, I want them. I don’t want any surprises how much work the house needs. I’m not trying to sugarcoat this house. I’m very much like it needs work. It also is, like, not a great floor plan, yeah? So even renovated really large, yeah, it looks like it would be really large, but it feels small, but the feedback is it’s just too choppy, so you don’t actually have the benefit of all the square footage, yeah? So even if it was renovated, it’s not going to be the floor plan that people want. So I actually, you know, we threw it out there. And I did have some sellers who are delightful and so nice, but wanted to make sure they weren’t leaving any money on the table, so we started a bit higher. Yeah, agreed to come down. We did a pretty significant price reduction. Nothing since the price reduction. Yikes. It was like, you know, we had the showings trickle in very negative feedback on how much work it needed, yeah. And then we dropped at the price pretty significantly, okay? And we haven’t had any showings. So I’m like, that’s not necessarily the problem. So we went through it again and I said, Okay, we’ve put it out there. I think with confidence, we can say we need to at least paint the things that look like they need to be repaired, because it’s causing concern where there really is no concern needed because the roof was fixed. So let’s get these water stains painted like we’re not gonna go there is no point in putting granite in this house, no.
Katy 46:43
But every room was a different very dark and bold color, yes, and the floors were loud, loud, yeah. But I almost wonder, do you remove all of the interior photos? Take a pretty big price drop, okay, have a front and a back photo, and make sure the first part of your listing description says investor special.
Alissa 47:06
That is good Katie in all caps.
Katy 47:09
So investor special means this house is in the worst possible condition, right? Yeah, I don’t even want you to look at the inside. Either you’re an investor and you want to show up, or you don’t, or you don’t, but it’s a large square footage, and it’s got a nice yard, yeah, and the outside is what it is, right? That might be the way that you get people
Alissa 47:28
in it. That is a great point, because honestly, I think the photos of this house could be deterred to good well, oh, and because the floors are so ugly, the floors are everything is so up. Everything there was so there was bad wallpaper.
Katy 47:43
Yeah, it was bad, bad. But I think if you remove the photos and classify it as investor, if you will. I mean, there’s no way to put that in the MLS, but there is fixer upper, like you can click that button. I wonder if I did on this one. Please make sure that you do, yeah, well, at least then you’re gonna get the buyer pool that makes the most sense, which is the investors, right? Because people don’t want to owner occupy, right?
Alissa 48:07
So at this time, I think this is great, because we’re going to get these things painted. It’s actually happening like next week. Great this week, but hurricane, so next week. Then, instead of revamped, because I was going to wait till everything was painted. No, you could do this the
Katy 48:21
price again. You could actually take the photos off, drop the price anytime. Yeah.
Alissa 48:26
And then it’s like, Wait, there’s no pictures.
Katy 48:29
Investors expect that.
Alissa 48:31
Yeah, brilliant. Katie, okay, that
Katy 48:34
was the one I thought was hard. Oh, I didn’t have any written notes. I was but I did. I needed your
Alissa 48:40
strategy. That’s a great strategy.
Katy 48:43
That is the point we’re gonna have to try strategy something different when things are not selling, not just more fluffy marketing, actual strategies. Okay, okay, so good luck with that. Please keep us posted. Yeah, I can’t wait to hear. All right. Next case study. Do we want to do? Mine or yours?
Alissa 49:02
I didn’t have as many notes on yours. It’s a great house, and it hasn’t been on the market that long, right? Okay, so my thoughts were on your listing because it’s sort of like on a more rural road. My like looking through the photos, some of it looked like it had been updated, like kitchen and stuff. When I was looking at the kitchen the way that the choice selections were, my thought was, did it flood? Because it just was very like basic updates, which is what we see a lot. Yeah, house flooded. Like
Katy 49:37
these people selected a lot of gray, a lot of gray. Love Gray, and that was the time frame of the flood. But this is actually good feedback, if I everything got redone in gray that was flooded, because that’s what was that’s what was popular at the time in 2016 so
Alissa 49:55
when you see an open market, a lot of gray, that is all gray. Okay, so, for example, one of my houses, my listings, that is just now pending, did flood? I asked another agent to look at it and look at the photos, and she said, If I had to, like, give it a meme, it would be like, say you flooded, without saying you flooded. Why? Because what it was, because it was all gray tile, like this was the gray tile special that you could get, yeah, after the flood, yeah. And it is in the whole house. It is the same floor in the whole house, which screams, we flooded. We did this all at the same time. We did this all at the same time when the house flooded. That year was 2016 I and I think I didn’t do this, but I thought this was funny, because I see it sometimes it’s like, totally renovated kitchen, 2016 new AC. 2016 I’m like, this house went underwater. Yeah, a lot of it, whenever you’re really you’re trying to brag about, no
Katy 50:57
not how. So a full renovation in 2016 is now eight years old, right? Wait, am I do at four? Yeah, yes, whoa. So it’s not even that impressive. It’s an eight year old appliance, an eight year old roof, an eight year old whatever. Okay, okay, this is good. Anything else? Some of
Alissa 51:14
the pictures because the walls are gray as it as you’re going towards the crown molding. I feel like it gets darker, like the lighting is a little bit more. Lighting is not great. Lighting is not great, okay, mining. I didn’t love the stool in the kitchen at the end of the skies. I didn’t love it either. Okay, didn’t felt weird. But then they did not update their bathrooms, like it was more it went back to beige, yeah, in the bathroom, right? So I thought, Okay, well, maybe water only got in the kitchen. Oh, my God, but the curb appeal is like, so great. That might be a good Google Earth. Yeah, Google. Or, like, a big something to show, like a drone photo, something to show that you are rural in a good way, yeah, like, this is what the space you get, okay, yeah, but I think you looked really great, perfect. What
Katy 52:15
about the price? Um,
Alissa 52:17
it was four bedrooms. And I remember thinking the price seems pretty good, okay, maybe for the bathrooms not being updated. I was thinking, because it ends in a 50 now, right? I was thinking maybe like 30 or 25 okay, but I did not actually run cops. Got it. Okay? Thank you. You’re welcome.
Katy 52:39
Are you ready to move on to your hard one,
Alissa 52:41
yeah. The Can we call it the backwards house? It
Katy 52:44
is the backwards house, yeah. All right, I have a ton of notes. First of all, walk me through the backwards house. I know that it is situated on the lot strangely, because another house got basically built in the front yard. Yes, okay, it has two side yards. Yes, one is giant sized, and just open it fully fenced. Yes, one is a bit smaller and has some shady trees near it, and has the there’s a generator, has the generator and the ACS on that side of the yard, right? That is the side yard that is opened to the courtyard,
Alissa 53:27
correct? Why? I don’t know it’s backwards. It’s back. It’s
Katy 53:32
like everything’s backwards. Everything is backwards to the nice yard needs to come down. It doesn’t make any sense that we’re not showing that yard, the big open yard, without the components as the yard, okay? It’s like there’s this whole other yard that is at the way it’s look done now, it’s like you’re not even gonna use this. Now, is it a double gate on the driveway to the big yard?
Alissa 53:58
From the driveway to the big yard. I don’t know if it’s a double,
Katy 54:01
okay, I would definitely advertise or consider maybe even you could take the gate from that little piece, yeah, and put it on with the driveway gate to make it a double. Okay, but being able to park in your backyard is something people love here, yeah, so getting into the backyard from the driveway would be huge. That’s a good point. Okay, so the wrong yard is open to the house. I didn’t get that. It’s so we need to fix that. The other thing I would say is, can we get a price from someone to make there’s a little, kind of almost bay window in the breakfast area that goes to that nice yard. If that was a double door or even a single door, it suddenly becomes, it doesn’t matter how I got into the house. Now I can use the big yard. Yes. Now the only problem is that there is no zero patio of any kind, right, like it is. I don’t know if you could put. And some rocks, stones, pavers, a little wooden deck, I don’t know, yeah, but there is no usable space. It’s just grass, yeah? But if it had a door, or at least a price for a door, so we’d be like, Oh, I see. Now I go out here, and here’s my big yard, yeah, it’s like a blank slate yard, brilliant. Okay, thank you. I’m not done yet, but that was the big one. Okay, so we need the doors now. Let’s go back inside for a minute. I don’t know, because I’ve not been in this house, the couch in the first living room you see is against the wall. Yeah, I think it needs to float closer to the fireplace, yeah, and you need to take i There’s a bedroom with a diagonal
Alissa 55:46
bed in it. I told her to fix that.
Katy 55:50
I’m like, I don’t know why, and the rug is diagonal and the bed is diagonal, and it’s nice furniture, so then it can fit. Okay, so in the photos, it makes me think this room’s too small for a bed, yep. So the diagonal bed absolutely has to be turned onto a wall correctly, but there’s room for it. But please take the diagonal rug. Okay, go downstairs to that living room, put the rug in front of the fireplace, pull the chair and the couch away from the wall, and make that look like a cozy room around that fireplace where we’re walking
Alissa 56:23
empty it and have it staged like, manually staged. You could do that too, because I don’t love that couch,
Katy 56:30
but she has a nice couch in a different living room. Okay, right? So you could shuffle furniture like, that’s the other thing y’all use what your seller has. Yes, it doesn’t have to stay where it’s always been for them. Yep, you move it around. So if we can get the nice couch down to that room, even better. But the nice that’s a nice light, neutral rug with a nice couch, I would make that look better. Also, the mantle is freakishly high. It just needs to be moved down, okay, where someone could visualize an appropriate size piece of art or a TV. I don’t know if that’s an option for the way the cable is run, but yeah, I would move the mantle so the people, Oh, I see. I could put my TV here,
Alissa 57:12
right. Okay,
Katy 57:15
all right, fine. And I already told you this. Okay. Now, yeah, the diagonal, okay, accentuate the things that are unique to this property. One the long driveway. It’s super long. There’s so much room for parking with access to the backyard, I would find out. I know it said the HOA was voluntary, but like, Are there any rules? No, can we park an RV? Can we park make a boat port. Is this the best backyard ever for someone who’s like, you know what? I need to park my RV, yeah, drive the driveway straight in double gate, all this space. So I would definitely accentuate the RV, the RV or boat, parking a long driveway and the generator. So suddenly this house, to me, is like, this is for some sweet old retired people, yeah, they’ve got an RV. They want their generator. It’s already renovated, right? Okay, so unique stuff I would accentuate and then get access to that big backyard, yeah, okay, all right. I would add a seller top 10 to the docs photos, like I mentioned earlier, yeah, I think that would help. So he’ll be Oh, you could park an RV back there, put it in the top 10. Okay, all right, um, the fourth bedroom situation is there. It says office. Like, there’s no way to make that a bedroom.
Alissa 58:29
She has even said, should I spend money making it’s making it like a fourth bedroom, and I’m like, it’s off the kitchen. Even if it was a bedroom, it would be small and there is no access to a bathroom, like you would have to walk through the whole house to shower. Yeah? So then I think people are going to be like, No. Fourth bedroom doesn’t work at all. So I didn’t think that was an answer. Well, I
Katy 58:53
think if we get your sweet old retired people, they don’t need a fourth right, so maybe let’s focus on that. Yeah, they’re like, we just we’ll use the office. But
Alissa 59:01
I really think that your idea of moving the couch from the front formal living to the actual living. Yes, brilliant. Okay, thank
Katy 59:10
you. Free, also free. Then my last couple of things are, if you want to spend money, I would do the postcards to the nearest homes. People are always looking to move into that neighborhood. Advertise at nearby businesses. I don’t know if there’s something there or if they know anyone that works nearby, or at least get a good list of nearby amenities in my top 10, I would be very clear that this location in the neighborhood is the easiest access to both interstates that we have. So whether you’re working North Shore, New Orleans, or in New Orleans, or going to, you know, Lafayette, like it. This is really easy access to travel around.
Alissa 59:47
I think, like times like this is the only time I wish I had, like, a team, yeah, not a I don’t really want a team, but it would be so nice. But that’s also why I like doing the part. Podcast with you, or having, like, a free team, yeah? Well, it’s just so nice to be able to, like, talk it out with somebody else,
Katy 1:00:07
talk it out, and almost you have to get excited again about it. Yeah, I’m
Alissa 1:00:13
actually feeling that way,
Katy 1:00:14
because you’re like, oh, this house is never gonna sell. This Yeah, part of your mindset about the house is how quickly the house will sell. I know
Alissa 1:00:22
we got it. What do you call it? Self fulfilling prophecy? Yes,
Katy 1:00:25
we need to manifest the sale of the home to a sweet RV couple. Yes, I see them now. There. It’s a flat driveway. It’s straight back. They’re going to be like the easiest RV parking ever. Yeah, the last idea I had on this house was maybe get a lender partner to put a together a flyer with numbers. Is the seller willing to maybe do a two, one buy down or closing costs to appeal to a buyer? I could also, I would also say you could probably, at the price you’re at, even go back up $5,000 and offer 5000 in closing. Like, I don’t know that you’d have to just offer it. You could try and because I know it’s tight from when they bought it. So thus concludes my ideas for that that
Alissa 1:01:07
was excellent. So here’s what I think would be something to do with these ideas. Okay, I have, I do. I try to remember that when a listing is sitting that doesn’t mean I need to hire the circus to come. No, I don’t need to throw big events at the house and spend all this money, and I don’t need to do all these fancy, fancy things. What you do need to do is communicate with your seller, yeah, okay, so, and that’s really hard to do when you don’t have an update, yeah. So one thing that I do that does help me and keep me on track, uh huh, whenever I get a new listing, I go into MLS and I set myself up to receive notifications. Oh, nearby, nearby. That’s smart every and then I just name the subject, title like, you know, Main Street, nearby seller. Update, okay, and that, when it pops in my email, that is my cue to somehow reach out to my seller. That’s smart. Hey, Mr. Seller, I saw that this house just popped up. Thankfully, it’s a little bit smaller than ours. I think ours is price. Just elaborate on your thoughts and then say this is a good one to watch if they go pending before us, something’s going on, or whatever, whatever. Or, hey, this one just listed. It’s totally renovated, priced the same as us. We’re not renovated. I had an agent in my office say she’s trying to work for sale by owners right now, and she’s trying to convince this, this for sale by owner, that their house is not worth what they want. And I’m like, Okay, well, one maybe we don’t need to be doing that. Like, right? It’s just, but what you can do is keep that person on your radar. And every time something comes up in their area, say, Hey, Mr. Seller, this one just came up. I wanted to check in on you. It made me think of you. How is your house? This is one to watch. You are educating them using real market data, and that is valuable. Yeah, it is not valuable to call and check in and say,
Unknown Speaker 1:03:08
Hey,
Alissa 1:03:09
did you decide your house is worth less? Yeah? Or hey, Mr. Seller, still no showings this week. I’m just checking in to see how you’re I know it’s a tough market right now, like right call with something of value, so have that campaign. What I’m gonna do with the information you have given me on mine, because I one, I think this would be somewhat of a lengthy email, yeah, but I could say, Hey, I met with a colleague today. We really went through your listing together. I wanted to get a pair of fresh eyes on it. I typed a bullet point list of suggestions. They’re attached, but I’m going to do it in a video. Great. Love it so she can see my face, hear my that feel like I’m really excited about this potential and sellers, when they don’t hear your voice or see your face, they buy or see your face because you’re showing them. Sellers, you don’t see them as much. Sometimes they’ve already moved away. The more that they can see your face. They remember I do like her, yeah, or just she is, she is working. She’s not trying to say this rudely, right? Sometimes an email of things that are wrong with your house, and come across can feel a little Yes, yes, but doing like a quick four to five minute video, walking through the feedback that you got and attaching it to an email and saying, let me know your thoughts. So that’s just another way too. But when I do my feedback campaigns is what I call them my free feedback campaigns. Okay? For myself, I email my sellers on Monday, okay? And I say, you know, hi sellers, I am about to send your listing out to some agents in our market that really work that area. I’m offering an exchange to review some of theirs. I’m going to be collecting a lot of feedback. Back today, I know that the market has been slow, and I just want to get some fresh eyes on your house so that we can see if we’re missing anything. Yes, I should have all of the information compiled and back to you by Friday. Love it. Now you’ve you have a week right to get something, to get to get things together, and also, when you send that, it needs to have the updated Market Report. Like, look, this is the updated chart. I know we may not have looked at this in a while, yeah, but I think sending them an updated chart, like a ours in our MLS, is called the CMA summary. Yeah, I love the CMA. So that’s the only one I ever used you. It’s so simple and it just shows don’t need more than that. This is how many days we have been on the market. And you know what I find about that chart? A lot. I’ll tell my sellers, and this is just what I see, nine out of 10 times. If you look at the active listings, we’re all priced about the same. So if you’re looking at the active listings, they’re all at 220, a square foot. We’re not that far off. But when you look at the recent sold listings, they’re all selling in the 190s right? So we’re way off, right? We may not look off in regards to the competition that is not selling. Yeah, and
Katy 1:06:13
I always like to try to get under the if I can, yeah, the lowest priced house, even if it’s just by $1,000 try to get under your competition where it’s like, Oh, if I’m choosing between the two, right, especially if they’re pretty similar, yeah, I think the last thing I would just like to say is, before you You’re right. If you could have an agent tour, you can do the circus party, but the people who come to that are the ones that aren’t busy working with actual clients, or who want the free lunch or want to register for the door prize, but what you really need to do is make sure your listing is tight and right are all of the parts of the listing accurate. Is all of the information out there for buyers who are actually searching online because they’re not coming to your circus party, you
Alissa 1:07:01
know, way before the podcast, Katie and I had listings in a market in Central, yeah, and they were not selling. So did I coordinate this? No, who coordinated this?
Katy 1:07:21
I don’t know, but it was one of the other there’s like, six agents. So someone else reached out to
Alissa 1:07:25
to us. They did a radius, and we agreed, instead of, you know, Agent open house, please come to my open house. There’s food, there’s gift cards, there’s this, please come. We said, hey, the six of us all have a listing. It is area,
Katy 1:07:40
maybe you did coordinate.
Alissa 1:07:42
That sounds like something you would do. I think, Okay, continue. So the six of us got to and I said, we’re gonna speed date. Yeah, we there’s six houses. It’s actually fun. We can’t do this all day. We met for lunch. We Yeah. I said, here’s what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna go into each of our six listings. We’re gonna have five to 10 minutes per house? Yeah, when we are in the house, you listing agent will open your phone, and we’re just gonna start spitting out feedback to you, and you’re just gonna type it all out as fast as you can. Then we’re gonna go to the next house. Then after all six houses, we’re gonna go to lunch, and everybody pays for themself. Yeah, it was great. It was so fun. And then when I got back to my computer, it took me like five minutes to organize my notes. I took, yeah, and it was a lot of information. And I was like, Look, we had all these agents in your house, yeah, and these are the comments that we and my seller for that house was an agent in another market, and she was very appreciative of the feedback. So I just think that we overthink it. I know I do, and I That’s why I was excited about this episode, because I feel like I’ve been in a little bit of a listing funk. Yeah, I actually just advised one of my sellers that we should take his house off the market. Yeah, and we did, and he is so great and so thankful for me and but I knew that we were approaching, so I list. I was the second listing agent, and the goal was to sell it by the by August. Oh, because he wanted they were going to move to Texas, and he wanted his daughter to start her new school year. Yep, it didn’t happen. Yeah, as August was approaching, we were buckling down on all these things, and we slashed the price like more than I ever dreamed we would have to, and it still didn’t. Not even a showing. Wow, it was wrong, discouraging, the flood insurance. Oh, it did flood, and the premium is pretty high. Can you tell us what it is? It was like over 3000 Yeah, for the year. And the thing is, the house was like in the three hundreds. So it was percentage wise. It’s percentage wise. It was really affecting those. Buyers. I had a buyer that was really excited about it, and then after getting, like, their numbers on they were already pre approved, yeah, but the flood insurance kicked them out of their debt to income, yeah? Now I did advise him to shop his homeowners, and we found an estimate that was $1,000 less a month. That’s good. So helps him and helps buyers. And, yeah, you know, but it still just wasn’t but I told him, I said, Look, I wanted to run this by you. I said, we, since I’m the second listing agent, it’s approaching the 365
Katy 1:10:36
days on market. Yeah,
Alissa 1:10:38
I do think it would be good to do the 90 day reset. Are you doing that right now? We took it off, but I don’t know when. I don’t know when we’re gonna put it. He said, Would it be okay if it goes past 90 days? I said, Sure. I said, Look, I’m telling you this because I know what you paid and I know what you thought you were gonna get. Yeah, and the market in its current state is just rejecting the property, yeah, rejecting the property, rejecting the price. He is the cleanest seller.
Katy 1:11:09
Well, if you put it back on the market, my out of the box strategy would be go back to the higher price that it was, or try and figure out what that debt to income changes with the with the with the flood insurance, but, but let’s just say it’s 300,000 you list it for 300,000 but he’s willing to sell it for 250 still list it for 300,000 so you get the right buyers. Yeah. And then you could just call the agent and be like, hey, look, the insurance, the flood insurance, is going to be this. He’s willing to come down $30,000 to cover that. DTI, that’s awesome. But instead of because if you listen it to 7270 buyers are gonna show up and they can’t afford it. It’s like this problem that keeps coming. You need 300,000 buyers to show up, and you tell them, hey, good news. Yes, you’re still gonna need that, that approval, but I’m gonna actually sell it to you for 270 because you got to cover this flood insurance, yeah, and I’ll pay your first year free. And you
Alissa 1:12:07
know what made me a little sad? What? So his first agent would not let him out of the contract. Oh, he wanted to fire this agent so bad. It was a bad situation. And the agent was like, sorry, you signed six months. I’m not letting you out. Never heard of that. So we he had to stick it out. He’s such a nice guy. So I said, Look, hasn’t your daughter started her semester now at her school that she’s been at here in Baton Rouge? And he was like, Yeah, she did. I said, so am I correct in thinking that the urgency is not there? Like, do you want to take a break, or does that stress you out? He was like, you know, honestly, I’d love to take a break. I just didn’t know if my contract allowed it. I was like, buddy, yeah. I said we will do whatever you need to do for yourself. Yeah? And I had no idea he was thinking over there, she’s gonna hold me to this. Yeah? I was like, Absolutely not. And so we took it off. He was like, thank you so much. Like, he was like, I have no complaints about your work. I mean, that’s good. He was like, your night and day on communication. And you know, it’s just an unfortunate situation with this flooding. And I said, I know, I know. So maybe we list it in January, February and give it another go before the summer to see if next summer we can get him in his new place, yeah. But actually, when we took it off the market, I did feel a sense of relief, yeah? And he probably did too, because it was like, It’s been a long six months, and I don’t know when he thought his contract. Did he consider renting it, or that was, well, the notes too high, yeah, we did look into that. We looked at all the numbers, and we actually have one person that was gonna make an offer, like to lease to own, but the note was just, he’d be paying them to live there, like
Katy 1:13:53
a lot. So no, no, no, no, okay. This was wonderful. This was so
Alissa 1:13:57
keep it simple. Yeah, communicate with your sellers, you don’t have to make a professional video if you’re in our hustle, humbly community, I even shared an you did. I did for one that was just very casual, very well received by my seller. Just let us connect, because it’s like we spend so much time with sellers. We spend so much time face to face in the beginning. Yeah, then, and maybe not even so much time, right? Maybe just once or twice, yeah, yeah. And then we just don’t hear each other’s voice, yeah, then you’re just an email, yeah. So we need to keep the relationship good, and don’t feel like you have to spend all this money. There’s so much value you can provide by using your realtor resources. Yeah,
Katy 1:14:43
agree. Wonderful. This was good. Hey, let’s Okay. Thanks, goodbye.
Speaker 2 1:14:47
So my name is Shannon, Stella. I am from yerba, Linda, California, and today I am toasting to my teammates, Mike Weller and Adriana Kesley. I just. Know where I would be without them. They have been very instrumental in starting up my business. We’ve been named business of the month through the Chamber of Commerce. We were just at the City Council. We’re just thriving and one of the top teams at our brokerage, and I just couldn’t be more thankful for them. So cheers to Mike Weller and Adriana Kesley with the Weller Group at Keller Williams Realty.
Alissa 1:15:25
Thank you so much for tuning in to the hustle humbly podcast. If
Katy 1:15:29
you enjoyed this episode, please go to rate this podcast.com/hustle, humbly, and leave us a review or drop a comment if you’re listening on Spotify.
Alissa 1:15:37
If you have an episode topic or someone you’d like to toast on the show, please email us at team at hustle humbly podcast.com, find
Katy 1:15:44
us on social media at hustle humbly podcast, don’t forget to find all of the free resources at hustle humbly podcast.com/resources,
Alissa 1:15:53
see you next week. You.
