Introduction
Hi, I'm Julie Sullivan author of Ready for Market and a seasoned consultant to sellers everywhere. And I have a question for you...
If you could pick your greatest challenge to preparing your property to sell, what would it be?
a) Finding a great Realtor I can trust
b) Deciding exactly what upgrades and changes to make
c) Choosing colors and finishes
e) Organizing and decluttering
This book is written as a guide to help you with any and all of the above tasks associated with selling a home. My background in as a Realtor, House Flipper, and Remodeling Contractor has prepared me to consul sellers in the best and most necessary preparations. People call me from all over the country to walk through their homes, or review their listing photos online. My special skills include a keen eye for the detracting features of a home that may keep it from selling. From pointing out clutter that sellers no longer see, to recommending new countertop materials in the kitchen, I've helped hundreds of homeowners over the years come to terms with what needs to happen to sell their home for the most money in the least amount of time.
Unfortunately, too many Realtors and their clients take a "let's list it and see what happens" approach to selling a home. The biggest mistake I see homeowners making, is to too easily trust this philosophy. The Real Estate market has changed immensely in recent years, with younger buyers coming into the market that literally grew up watching HGTV. This new breed of home buyers look for move in ready properties. They expect to make few repairs or upgrades. For this reason, sellers need to heed the advice of home stagers, saavy Realtors, and other professionals who make it their business to know the market.
This book is the product of an online telesummit I conducted. I set out to interview some of the best people in the industry. The result of my interview series is published here. The information I gleaned in the process prepared me to become the consultant I am today. I hope you'll find it valuable.
Presentation that Pops
Michael Ackerman
Coldwell Banker
Michael Ackerman been in real estate with Coldwell Banker since 1993 and he’s a five star real estate agent, which is an award for best client satisfaction, every year since 2004. He’s one of the ten most dependable real estate professionals in Seattle. He’s a senior ranked leading realtor at his company and a nationally certified residential specialist.
JULIE: Tell everyone about your principles as far as connecting with your clients and your sellers.
MICHAEL: When I first started in the business I kind of hesitated getting into real estate because I, like a lot of the public I think, envisioned the industry being a lot of pushy sales people and that’s not who I am at all and I don’t want to be that guy. So I hesitated getting in and then once I finally took the plunge I realized very quickly that there is room for all different personality types and all different kinds of people in this industry. And I quickly learned from myself because I don’t respond well to pushy sales people that that’s not who I was, that was not my role, my role is really a team member with my buyers or sellers as an advocate to assist people through the process so when they get to the other end – either purchasing a home or selling a home – they’re educated or empowered with the knowledge of how that happened. And if they’re buying a home I want to get them a home that financially fits their needs, emotionally fits their needs and is also going to be great for resale, and if I’m helping a seller, obviously getting them really good value with the price of their home.
But obviously beyond that I want the experience that they buyers feel when they work with me to be spectacular. I am really good at communicating and I just tailor-make each transaction to benefit whoever I’m working with and to make it as much fun and educational as possible. So that’s kind of my vibe, it’s all about connecting with people on a very real basis and that’s how I’ve become very successful.
JULIE: What’s the biggest mistake you see sellers making these days?
MICHAEL: Well Seattle is a really hot market right now, it’s definitely a seller’s market, which means there are more buyers moving to Seattle looking for homes than there are sellers putting their homes on the market. I’ve never seen a gap in lack of inventory as we see now. That being said, sellers still feel like they can put their home on the market in kind of any condition they like at any price and they assume that it will sell and that is probably the biggest mistake that I see. I always tell sellers that you have two things that you can control in a real estate transaction when you are a seller; preparation and price. How does your home look right when it comes on the market and how is it perceived by the public as far as the value that you bring it on at? If those two things are on you will do extremely well, and I’ve got a couple of stories I can go into later, but if you present it properly and price it properly you’re good to go in any market so concentrating on those two things is paramount to being successful as a seller.
JULIE: So I had a chance to look at some of the photos on your website and I was really impressed. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone do such a good job with cinematic property videos so I was wondering if you want to talk a little bit about that process that you do for your clients.
MICHAEL: Absolutely. So my marketing strategy with any home that I list, and this is a personal decision that every agent makes on his or her own, so for any listing that I bring on the market I want it to be as emotionally appealing as possible. So I work really, really closely with my sellers in preparing their home for market. Part of that strategy is employed because the first impression that anyone a buyer has on any listing that comes on the market is not when they walk through the front door, it’s when they’re sitting in their pajamas at 11 o clock at night surfing the internet, looking at homes. And I want the photos and the video, so I’ll talk about that in a minute, of my listings to pop. I want those to be so emotionally appealing that people want to come see the home. That’s how you get people to come into the home; that is the purpose of marketing, it’s getting people excited about the product you are selling.
So we’re very careful with the sellers and I myself decided that I would pay to have all of my listings professionally photographed and now I have all my listings, I have cinematic property videos shot of each home as well. So I work with a company is Seattle who is amazing and they shoot all of my listings, photos and video, and get the home prepared for market. And we going in probably a week before I list the home and we shoot the photos and the videos. Photos are done in high definition so they really are crisp, clear and they pop. And the company that I use has a process that they shoot without the camera and they will shoot the same shot of the same room with different aperture openings. And then when they go back and they run it through their software program it actually brings the best of each of those photos as far as the amount of light, shadows – it amalgamates the ten photos into one really crisp clean photo – so it shows the home off at its best advantage.
So the photos are crisp, clean, high definition and those are used on the multiple listing service. I build a website for each home that I list, I use them on that, on the marketing flyers, on basically any advertising that I do for the home and then also the videos as well. And the video’s been amazing, many, many brokers or agents use photographs to advertise their listings but fewer have video. And there was a national study done a couple of years ago that homes that have videos attached get 85% more traffic driven to them than just photos. The public I think kind of expects photos now and if you’re going to do photos I think just make sure the photos are crisp, clean and the house is well presented so that you have something nice to shoot and the public is going to be emotionally drawn to it.
But video captures a whole other level of emotional experience, you really feel like you’ve walked the videos that I have shot shoot the entire home, usually starting from the outside, going in the front door, the main rooms, upper level rooms and then lower and then maybe the main yard. With a video you can’t Photoshop; the light is coming in, the way the rooms are attached, the scale of the rooms and the size of the rooms I feel is much more evident when you’re watching