The Consumer Speaks Volumes

While waiting for the war stories from yesterday’s National Help-U-Sell Get A Listing Day to pour in, I did a little idle surfing and came across the following.  This was on a Q&A website owned and operated by a Re/Max agent in the Minneapolis area.  I don’t know who the Help-U-Sell Broker mentioned is, but he/she is doing one heck of a job representing us in the local market.  Enjoy!

What are the costs associated with selling your home?

How much does an agent take? How much is an attorney? How much is a title company policy? What are the other costs associated with selling my home? Is there an average % people use to estimate all selling costs?

Courtney H

01 Feb 2010

I work for a real estate agency…I wouldn’t do it for sale by owner if I were you. I don’t know a lot of the costs, but I do know that most FSBO’s never sale and end up wasting a LOT of money trying and then end up hiring an agent anyway. If you do hire an agent, more then like the seller’s agent and the buyer’s agent each get 3% of the cost of the home. But…they do all the marketing and negotiatin for you and that can get expensive. Good luck either way!

jvazjr07

01 Feb 2010

Of course agents here will tell you NOT to go FSBO, they need to pay bills and nothing is selling! FSBO only works in a HOT market. I am not willing to pay 6% of my equity (approx 30k which is nuts) to a realtor so I am going with a hybrid which is Help-U-Sell. Only thing I have to do is show the house and I save thousands.
I just interviewed 2 ‘traditional agents’ and 1 Help U sell broker. Help U Sell  DOES NOT charge the fee up front. You can pay when it sells just like the traditional way. After chatting with them I am thoroughly convinced the only thing the traditional agent does the discount agent does not is SHOW THE HOME. The traditional agents tried to BS me by saying they have tons of buyers, the market is going up, they have unique marketing plans, blah blah blah . The Help U sell broker worked for Prudential and  Remax in the past and he is no joke. Interview all your options and go with the one option that will be cost effective AND will market your home. Good luck.

National Help-U-Sell Get A Listing Day Is Here!

How to play:

1.  Get at least one new listing today, February 2, 2010.

2.  Tell the war story about your new listing(s) here at the Set Fee Blog.

(click the ‘Comment’ link at the bottom of this post, enter your name and your email address, and tell us:  how you got the lead,  the biggest challenge you faced and how you overcame it, and why they chose to list with you.)

3.  Click ‘Submit,’ and you will be entered to win a complete website makeover and search engine optimization consultation with Robert Stevens!

We’ll draw the winner on Thursday Feb. 4,  at noon Eastern Time.

You may enter once for each listing you take on February 2, 2010.

Now:  Go Make It Happen!

 

 

 

Get Ready!

Tomorrow is National Help-U-Sell Get A Listing Day!

Every war story you report here at The Set Fee Blog is a chance to win a one-on-one website make-over and optimization consultation with Robert Stevens ( a $548.27 value, worth tens of thousands in increased business).  We’ll draw the winner at Noon, Eastern Time on Thursday, February 4.  You do not have to be present to win, but you do have to submit your war stories for a chance.

Today is a great day to get organized:

  • Before you leave the office tonight, pull the Expired Listings you will call — that will be one step that won’t hang you up tomorrow.
  • Identify the FSBOs you’ll call, too.
  • If door-knocking in a target neighborhood is in your plans, what will you be leaving behind?  Perhaps an explanation of the current Tax Credit would be good.  Get that piece done today so you don’t waste time on it tomorrow.
  • If you’re planning cold calls, take a few moments to scrub your list for Do-N0t-Calls, or ask a lender or title rep to do it for you.
  • Take a few moments preparing your dialogues:  what will you say to your past clients, to FSBOs and Expireds, to cold contacts?  If you need ideas there are some HERE.
  • Open your day planner and block time for prospecting activities.  Plan to devote at least three hours prospecting for new listings.  Remember, tomorrow the future of the entire Free World depends on your getting a new listing before the sun goes down! (well, actually, before close of business — lots of listings happen after dark).
  • Finally, tonight, when you are lying in bed, before you turn out the light, think about it. Picture yourself getting to the office tomorrow morning.  Picture yourself calmly brushing the crisis of the moment aside to be dealt with on your time, not despite your plan.  Picture yourself picking up the phone and calling all of the people you’ve planned to call, saying exactly what you planned to say.  Picture yourself pulling a market analysis and prepping your clipboard for the listing appointment you just booked.  Picture that unknown seller smiling as they sign your listing agreement.

Then Tuesday morning, getting up and getting it done will be a snap!

 

Do It For the Whistle-Pig

‘Whistle-pig’ is a common name for the Groundhog (Marmota Monax), and his day is coming:

February 2, 2010

Although PETA and other animal rights activists want to retire the real Groundhog, Punxsutawney Phil, from his annual responsibility of predicting the end of Winter and replace him with a robot rodent, their efforts have not resulted in a change to this year’s event.  As always, Phil will be prompted to come out of his burrow at Gobblers Knob, PA, and look for his shadow.  If he sees it, we’re in for six more weeks of Winter.  If not, there will be an early Spring.

Personally, I’m hoping for a very cloudy day at Gobblers Knob and for Phil to have a shadow-free experience.  Not only do I want our brokers in the North and Mid-West to have an easier time getting their signs in the ground (one broker told me he carries a mallet and a railroad spike in his trunk for making sign-holes in the icy dirt), I also want an early Spring selling season — something I’ve been predicting for a long time.

Groundhog Day is not the only thing happening next Tuesday.  It’s also:

National Help-U-Sell Get A Listing Day!

Remember?  It’s the day when everyone in the Help-U-Sell family will have one prime objective:  to get at least one new listing before the sun goes down.  We have a contest going around the event and you can get details HERE.

Maybe there’s a way to pull the Pennsylvania Groundhog event, the interests of animal rights activists and the National Help-U-Sell Get A Listing Day together.  Maybe we could get Punxsutawney Phill to sleep in on Tuesday and let our brokers handle the prognostication.  You know:  if you see a shadow when you put your Help-U-Sell for sale sign in the yard, it means six more weeks of winter.  No shadow . . . and the big thaw will have begun.

It’s About the Buyer, Klem!

I met Don Taylor for the first time last month.  I had a meeting with his daughter, Marci, and when I showed up at the Orange County Starbucks we’d chosen as our meeting place, there stood Don, as well.  Needless to say, it was a thrill and an honor to meet them both.  They deservedly occupy a very hallowed perch at the top of the Help-U-Sell family tree.

We talked about all kinds of things but Marci said something that was quickly echoed by Don:

‘People forget, but Help-U-Sell was always about the buyer.’

(Stop.  Think about it for a minute . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ok)

I immediately pictured a slide I used in the first round of Help-U-Sell rallies done last year.  It is a simple diagram of how Help-U-Sell generates leads:

Put succinctly, we go into the marketplace, set a fee for our home marketing services that is reasonable and logical, that saves sellers money and still generates a nice profit for the office.  The Low Set Fee* creates interest and results in more sellers inquiring about our service than would if we were ordinary brokers charging a one-size-fits-all, percentage-based commission.

We all know what happens when a prospective seller asks about Help-U-Sell:  they almost always list with us.  So more interest, more inquiries, means more listings.

It almost makes me sick to think about it today, but during the high flying times of 2004, 5, and 6, many Help-U-Sell brokers stopped right there, where the dashed red line is.  They put blinders on and believed that if they just worked listings and didn’t worry about buyers, they’d make plenty of money with fewer staff.  They thought, ‘It’s a sellers’ market.  I have a model that enables me to get more sellers than anyone else.  Why should I scramble around chasing after buyers?’  All you have to do today to comprehend the completeness of that folly is to look around . . . and see that those brokers are no longer with us.  Like the Dinosaur, they became extinct.

You can’t ignore the buyer, no matter how overheated the market becomes.

While listings are not a loss-leader at Help-U-Sell (we expect to make a reasonable profit on them), one of the benefits of having them is the buyer leads they generate.  These are buyers who might buy one of our listings, perhaps generating a selling fee, or buy an MLS listing, thus generating a co-broke commission.  In either case, the buyer side usually generates more revenue to the Help-U-Sell office than the listing side.

That’s why the most popular way to implement the Help-U-Sell model is with the Broker and/or a licensed assistant taking the listings (after all, with our system, it’s not Rocket Science), and licensed agents working with the buyer leads the listings generate.  There’s usually a few more dollars on the buyer side, making splitting commissions with an agent possible.  In most cases we don’t have that kind of latitude on the listing side.

So, here we are in 2010.  The market is still weird, but it’s not nearly as weird as it was last year at this time.  And you know what?  It doesn’t matter how weird the market is anyway;  the great truth is still true:

He who controls the inventory, controls the market

So get out into the marketplace.  Tell your story.  Take more listings.  And then . . . capture, incubate and close the buyer leads those listings generate.  That’s the Help-U-Sell way.

*By the way, Don has no problem with ‘Flat’ fee.  He thought the whole campaign about tires going ‘flat,’ and ‘Set’ fee being preferable was splitting hairs.  I have a feeling the consumer would agree.

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