Author: James Dingman

Pending Home Sales Jump in October

Remember May, 2006?  That’s when the Pending Home Sale Index hit its last big high before the market began to tighten:  112.6.  We got close to that last October when the first Homebuyer Stimulus Program came into play:  112.4.  Not surprisingly, the index had another peak last April when Stimulus Program number 2 happened:  110.9.

The good news right now is that the Pending Home Sale Index showed a strong increase in October, without the additional help of a Stimulus package.  The index surged 10.4% over September’s level to 89.3.  My guess is that ridiculously low mortgage interest rates coupled with a little flicker of consumer confidence has led to the increase.

There seems to be a lot of good economic news right now.  Retailers are having a better time of it this Holiday Season and a number of pundits are predicting a break-out surge in the stock market in the near future.  My mental image is America, like Mohammed Ali,  leaning against the ropes with gloves held up in defensive passivity as negative economic forces pound away;  then suddenly coming to life to win the match.  I think the negative forces are growing weary and our rope-a-dope response is about to end.

Just makes me want to go out there and sell something!

To read the full article from NAR (and get a video dose of the coolest economist in the biz, Lawrence Yun) go HERE.

Foreclosure Sales and Discounts: 3rd Qtr

Realty Trac is out with foreclosure stats for 3rd quarter.  It is an ugly picture but one also full of opportunity.  Sales of foreclosed property were down from the previous quarter and from the same quarter last year but remain an enormous factor in many markets.  Here is a snapshot of the states with the largest numbers of foreclosure sales for July, August and September:

By the way, Realty Trac calculates the ‘discount’ by comparing the average sale price of foreclosures in the State with the average sale price of non-foreclosed properties.  It’s not a perfect method (kinda like comparing the juice of this pile of apples, oranges and lemons with the juice of this other pile of apples, oranges and lemons), but the result still indicates that sellers with equity in the top foreclosure states have monumental competition.  Still, if your house is worth $200,000 and you have to price it at $175,000 to sell so you can buy your dream home (which happens to be an REO) valued at $400,000 but priced at $300,000, I think you’re way ahead.  Where else can you give up $25,000 and gain $100,000?  No stock market I’ve ever heard of.

Even if you’re not trading up, it’s a wonderful time to refinance.  I just did it on a streamline process that required minimal paperwork and no income verification (something I thought was gone forever).  It did require an appraisal but I think the appraiser must have been tipsey that day because he gave me way more value than I expected. My timing was a little premature:  I got a 4.375% rate and a few weeks delay would have probably saved a a nano-point or two but it sure beats the 6.25% interest only loan I gave up! Really: ’tis the season to touch base with everyone you’ve ever sold a house to, so why not help them discover if a refi might be available to them?

AND, OH BY THE WAY:  As you are paying your REALTOR dues this year be sure to make your voluntary contribution to RPAC and/or your State political action fund.  Congress is seriously debating taking away the tax deduction homeowners receive for mortgage interest paid, a move that in my opinion would be horrendous for America.  I hate lobbiests as much as anyone else, but ours are wearing white hats and need your help.

ETM Angst

Working with Jeanne on University today, we got into the marketing plan.  I explained that for the past several years, the Help-U-Sell ETM (Entire Target Market Mailer) had fallen from general use.  It was that M part that was causing pushback:  Mailer.  Mailing thousands of marketing pieces regularly enough for them to have impact was proving cost prohibitive in the down market.  Some altered the delivery method, replacing the stamp with a poly bag that could be hung on a door knob, but by-and-large, most just quit doing them.

I understand this.  One of the guiding principals of Help-U-Sell is that we constantly evaluate the cost of our marketing pieces against the leads they produce, and if the ETM was not producing leads and the cost was high, the right thing to do would be to move on to something else.  After all, there are market realities at play here:  John Powell told us if he did a blanket mailer in Tucson, a large portion of them would arrive at vacant houses; other brokers asserted that the ETM was not effective in a short sale market.

It all made sense until Jeanne responded to my statement.  ‘If most brokers are not doing ETMs ,’ she asked, ‘How is that message getting out there.’

Bam!

She had reminded me that the ETM is not just a marketing piece.  It’s a message.  It’s our identity.  It’s one of the principle ways we differentiate ourselves in the marketplace.  We can’t simply abandon that without an effective and more efficient replacement.  To do so would drop us into the soup and mire of mere discounters!

Remember the message?

  1. We are HERE
  2. People use our service
  3. It works and they save money

Remember how we get that across in an ETM?

  • Pictures and descriptions of homes for sale
  • At least 1/3 of the listings feature a ‘Sold and Saved’ banner
  • At least 1 customer testimonial with photo
  • The Easy Way (probably on the back)
  • Our Guarantee

All of these elements work together to stake claim to a small piece of mental real estate between the ears of the consumers in your marketplace:  that we are different, that we get the job done, and we represent savings. 

I really want to hear from you:

Are you doing a regular ETM?  If so, how, how often, and what results are you getting?

Are you doing something similar but delivering it in an alternate way?

Do you have ideas about how we might adapt the ETM to today’s reality?

If you are not doing an ETM, how are you getting the message out there?

Help-U-Sell in a Nutshell

I am working with Jeanne Strayer — whom most of you know — on the next generation Help-U-Sell University.  Jeanne is a nationally recognized Instructional Designer and Educational Technologist.  She’s brilliant and comes with the added benefit of having worked with Help-U-Sell for a number of years; so she already understands us.

As we wrestle with content, we’ve identified a need for a concise description of Help-U-Sell, who we are and what we do.  We got a bit of a start on that with the ‘Help-U-Sell for Sellers,’ ‘Help-U-Sell for Brokers’ pieces we created for the NAR Expo (they are posted below).  But those pieces didn’t quite accomplish what we wanted; so here’s a first attempt at Help-U-Sell In A Nutshell.

  1. Help-U-Sell begins with a superior offer to home sellers.   We go into the market offering a service very similar to what ordinary brokers offer, but we charge a logical set fee (rather than a percentage commission), which can save the seller thousands.
  2. The superior offer enables the Help-U-Sell broker to take more than his or her share of listings in the target market.  In fact, the superior offer makes taking listings much easier.
  3. More listings means more signs and better marketing, and  ultimately the large listing inventory generates a strong flow of Buyer (and Seller) inquiries into the office.
  4. We capture those inquiries and turn them over to Buyer Agents who are carefully groomed and trained (via Science to Sales) to convert them into sales.  As listings increase, as the flow of leads increases, as we add Buyer Agents to handle the flow, production snowballs.

That’s it.

There are four critical areas that underpin this vision.  These are essential areas of focus on which the whole program depends.  If these elements are faulty, Help-U-Sell will not perform to its potential.  They are:

  1. The Buyer Inquiry.  This is the single most important moment in a Help-U-Sell office.  It is the place where we take the power of our superior offer and our marketing and convert it into leads, prospects, clients and sales.  That’s why we work so hard to make sure our people are handling the inquiry – whether from phone or Internet – effectively.  Really:  if you want to improve your production and your bottom line, I know of no better way than to improve the way inquiries are handled in your office.
  2. Broker Control.  The Broker is the business, and the business is the Broker’s.  The Broker is in the business of selling real estate.  This contrasts with ordinary brokers who, by and large, are in the recruiting business. The ordinary Broker recruits to expand his business; every agent added increases the Broker’s reach (well . . . in theory, anyway).  Help-U-Sell Brokers rely on their marketing and office systems to expand their business.  Agents come in to help the Broker handle the large amount of business the office is generating.
  3. Systematic Marketing.  Because the broker is in control, he or she creates and manages a marketing plan for the Help-U-Sell office and for all the office listings.  The marketing plan is constantly fine tuned and eventually becomes a relatively stable, almost fixed expense.  When we take a listing, we don’t create a whole unique marketing plan for that one listing — that’s what ordinary real estate agents do and the result is thousands of agents running around willy-nilly with almost no marketing coordination.  We take the new listing and simply plug it into our existing office marketing program which produces results for all of our listings.
  4. Buyer Agent Job Description.  Help-U-Sell Buyer agents focus on one single but very important aspect of the business:  they convert Buyer leads generated by the office into closed transactions.  They don’t prospect for listings, don’t call FSBOS, don’t go on listing appointments or orchestrate marketing.  It’s a small, easily managed job description that enables the agent to do many more transactions than he or she could at an ordinary office.

As I read this I am struck by how much of it deals with Buyers and Buyer Agents and Brokers hiring Buyer Agents.  The Listing and the Seller side of the transaction are mentioned only a couple of times.  But we are Help-U-Sell. Doesn’t that indicate that this description is a little twisted?  Not at all.  At Help-U-Sell, the listing side of the business is pretty simple.  It’s easier to take listings when you have a superior offer and our systematic approach to marketing gets your listings sold.  It’s the buyer side that requires the greatest shift in attitude by the largest group of people.

I am reminded of my first ever meeting with Don Taylor, about a year ago.  He smiled as only Don Taylor can smile and said, ‘People forget, but Help-U-Sell was always about the buyer.’

Let’s try to remember that.

NAR: Arrival Day

Ron McCoy and I arrived in New Orleans today, armed and ready for the National Association of Realtors Convention.  We are here to man the Help-U-Sell booth, to proclaim to the world that we are very much here and to kindle as much interest in our brand and unique operating system as possible.  In short:  we are here to conquer the world!   (Or at least take one more step forward in that process).

Ron arrived early and was able to get into the exhibit area and see our booth: he tells me it’s primo.    I got a first look at the final brochures we worked so hard to get ready in time for this show.  They rock.

So tonight there wasn’t much to do other than anticipate . . . and eat dinner!  We went to the French Market Grill where Michael, the bartender I’ve known from many previous visits, holds forth.  We ate catfish and jambalaya and some kind of corn slop-sui that tasted like the Brunswick Stew they make up in heaven.  It was delectable to say the least.

Tomorrow we meet 30,000 fellow Realtors, all looking for an answer, a new idea, a better way.  They need look no further than our beautiful double-wide booth.  There has never been a better time for Help-U-Sell.

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