I pulled a few statistics from the Multiple Listing System that I would like to share with my readership. I know statistics can be manipulated but these are pretty straight forward. Over the past 4 months, I have sold 11 homes in our area while my closest competitor sold 3. That means I sold almost 4 times as many as my closest competitor. In the last 3 months, my average price per square foot of sold homes was $102.58 per square foot versus the average price of home sold was $96.24 per square foot , That doesn’t sound like a huge difference until you actually break it down. On a 2000 square foot home, that is a net difference of $12,680 when listed with Al Gage.
This doesn’t mean that I can automatically sell a home for $12,000 more than its worth just that on average, I get closer to the maximum possible value on the homes that I have listed. I also often am able to push the appraised value of a home slightly over what similar home have sold for based on the location price and terms of a home that is for sale.
I also calculated the net difference is days on the market. My average for that time period was 25. 25 days on the market while the average was 55.95 days for a net difference of over 30 days on the market.
I received a phone call this week from a lady that had listed her home with another agent voicing her dissatisfaction with the fact that her home had not sold. She stated that her home had not been shown once in 60 days and her agent had done nothing to sell her home. She also stated the agent was from the East side of town and had had a tour of realtors from that side of town tour the home. Ethically, I didn’t feel comfortable assessing her situation while it was listed with another agent. Bottom line, there are a lot of part timers and amateurs out there. The agent’s explanation for this performance, according to the caller, was that the property was not staged properly and was too crowded. Both of those may be true but a potential buyer probably cannot know that until they arrive at the home. The most probable explanation may be a combination of a few things. The home is likely overpriced and their may well be some condition issues in the property.
Every home is different! When we evaluate a home as a potential listing there are numerous things that go into listing a home. The location and condition of the home, amenities and market competition all factor into the end price of home. The market is an ever changing set of circumstances. The fact that someone received a certain price for a similar home 3 months ago does not guarantee that you will receive the same price.
Currently our market is slowing just a bit after the flurry of the early summer. This means that homes must be priced almost perfectly and in almost flawless condition in order to sell.
As always the market will self correct based on the minor ebbs and flows of supply and demand. Although, we are currently off of the peak of the market, very few experts are predicting a significant downturn in real estate prices.
One anomaly that I find especially odd and totally unexplainable is the disparity in demand for homes with a pool this summer. There is almost always an increase in demand over the hot months for a pool because it is on peoples minds but this summer the demand for homes with a pool has been especially high.
Any time I have published statistics like these in the past, I have inevitably been confronted with home seller’s feeling that they cannot list with us because we are too busy. The bottom line here is when we get to the point where we cannot handle the business we have in front of us, we will either turn down listings or clients or higher more staff if necessary. The main reason that we can handle more home sales with less people than most is that we don’t spend a lot of time on marketing strategies and gimmicks that do not work. We do our jobs each and every day so that we don’t have to do non=productive, time eating activities such as open houses or home tours to make our seller feel like we are doing our jobs. Our track record speaks for itself:
Over 1000 homes sold in Avondale
30 days Shorter Sales Time.
Higher Average Price per Square Foot
Fully Cancellable Listing