Pasadena CA Real Estate

I just saw an interesting video of a Pasadena real estate agent describing the process that his team uses in pricing a home to sell.  The real estate agent shall remain anonymous here, but having watched the video, I was petrified in what consumers, home sellers that are relying on the real estate agents to price their homes to sell, think.  As the saying goes - "perception is reality!"

In the real estate video, the home pricing process went something like this:

Real estate agent #1 - "We need to price this Pasadena home.  This home doesn't show well, has a lot of deferred maintenance and really doesn't compare to any recent solds on the street."  Turns to his partner and says "What do you think?"

Real estate agent #2 - " I think we price it at $649,000"

Real Estate agent #1 - "How can you justify this home sales price of $649,000 when other homes, in better condition, on same street sold for the same?  I think that it's worth around $540,000"

Real estate agent #2 - "If we start out low and this home doesn't sell, we will not have room to go down in price!"

Real estate agent #1 - "Let's table this and address when we meet at the property later."

Several days later, both agents meet at the home that they are getting ready to list.

Real estate agent #1 - "So have you given any more thought to pricing this home?"

Real estate agent #2 - "Let's price this Pasadena home at $579,000 - just split the difference."

Real estate agent #1 - "Great idea!"

Shall I say more?  I know that the home sellers that I work with rely on me, their Pasadena real estate agent, to do my due diligence and come up with a price that will not only help them sell their Pasadena home or condo, but also sell with the highest possible return to them.

So what goes into the decision process of pricing a home to sell in today's real estate market?

First of all, what you think a home will sell for and the price the home is presented for to the buyers are two totally different things.  Pricing is yet another strategy or tool to use in selling your Pasadena home.

The saying in the real estate industry goes something like "pricing is 80% of the sale".  That is very true.  If a home seller overprices their home, it'll just sit there, get stale and ultimately result in a much lower selling price.

If a home seller drastically underprices their home, it'll sell fast, but will it sell for top dollar?

Should a seller "fix price" their home?  Or, should a home seller "range price" their home?

What kind of homes are selling in their immediate neighborhood?  What are the home's competition?  Will these homes help sell your home or will your home help sell these other Pasadena homes for sale?

What was the last home price sold, price per square foot, condition of the home in the Pasadena neighborhood that the house is in?

What is the absorption rate for Pasadena and specifically the neighborhood that the home is located in?

What are the trends in the real estate industry?

How will the price help drive home buyers to see your home?  Will the house's price deter potential home buyers from looking at your home?

Does the condition of the home support its price?  Has the home been staged to support a higher selling price?

There are so many questions to ask and address before deciding on how to price a home correctly!  It's not as simple as "let's look at the comps and come up with something in the middle."

If you are a home seller and see a video like the one I referred to, please know that not all real estate agents are created equal.   Interview your real estate agent and demand the best!

Posted by Irina Netchaev, Pasadena real estate agent.

Over the last couple of days we loooked at a Formula for Selling your Pasadena Home in 30 days or less.   It all comes down to getting your home ready for sale, pricing your Pasadena home correctly and marketing exposure.  

In my second post in the Selling Your Home series, we reviewed how best to showcase your home listing in the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) and the use of Flash Presentations or Home Tours.

Today, I wanted to take a look at how to create an effective Property Brochure for Pasadena home buyers.  This is especially helpful for our For Sale By Owner Sellers.

What is the purpose of a home property flyer or a brochure?

The main purpose of a home brochure is to ensure that home buyers will easily remember your home and be able to contact the home seller (if you are selling your home by owner) or the real estate agent representing your home.

Other reasons that home buyers pick up a brochure is to:

1. Share information about the home with their friends and family.
2. Easily access important data about the home - home sales price, square footage, HOA (if any), year home built, special features, etc.

3. Compare your home with other homes that they have seen around Pasadena.

Choosing a property brochure design layout:

1. Should this be a one page or a two page brochure?  I always recommend using both sides of your brochure.  Why waste the back of the brochure and leave it blank?  It's just like thinking of a real estate location - 1st page of the brochure is your prime real estate and the back is secondary real estate location.  I prefer to have a stunning picture on the first page with home address and price.  The second page on my brochures will usually have more beautiful photographs and specific details about the home for sale.
2. Color and Design of the Border of the brochure.  Using too many colors will actually take away from the brochure.  One or Two colors will add to a more striking presentation.

3. Decide on text font and size.  Remember to have lots of white space for easy reading and headers as appropriate.

Describe your home:

1. The first thing I recommend doing is going through your house room by room.  Make notes about what is special about each room.  What are your home's highlights?  Think about how you entertain.  What do your friends and family like about this house?
2. Have a concise leading paragraph and follow up with bullet points of special items and amenities.

3. Be as clear as possible.  The very last thing you'd want to do is mislead a potential customer.  Do not over-enhance the home's features.  Stay factual.

READ MORE:  Power Words that SELL

Add Photographs:

1. Decide on the number of photographs that you will use.  I usually prefer to use 5 to 6 photos highlighting some of the rooms, the front of the house and the backyard.

2. Make sure the photos are in order of how a buyer would view your home.  It will make it easier for the potential buyer to remember what it was like walking through your home.

Contact Information:

1. Remember to put your name, phone number and email address so that potential buyers can get a hold of you quickly.

 Printing Property Brochures

1. Good quality paper is an important part of the presentation.  Make sure that you select a good heavy stock paper.
2. Always print in color.  Please, no black & white copies.  These are just a huge NO NO!

3. There are plenty of printers that would be happy to print off 100 to 200 copies for you.  The average charge is about $75 for 100 flyers.  Have plenty on hand for the buyers and the potential agents that might stop by.

Distribution

1. Keep the home sale brochures available at the entry of the home presented in a nice stand.  Dining room table or kitchen bar works nicely as well.
2. I am not a huge advocate of having brochures in front of your home in a brochure holder.  The idea here is to have buyers visit and view your home, not just pick up a brochure.  If you do choose to have some outside, make sure the brochures are of the highest quality so as not to discourage potential buyers.
3. Distribute property brochures to local real estate offices.  Remember that even if you choose to sell your house by yourself, in all likelihood a real estate agent will end up selling it for you.  Get the local real estate community involved by letting them know that your home is for sale.  Most buyers will be represented by a professional real estate agent.

Okay, you are ready to start working on your property brochure.  Don't forget to check your spelling!

In the previous post, Sell Your Pasadena Home in 30 Days or Less, we discussed the basic formula for selling your home. There are three parts to your selling success:

1. Preparing your Pasadena home for sale.
2. Determining a price for your home.
3. Deciding how to market your Pasadena home.

Today, I wanted to go into a bit more detail on the type of marketing and advertisement methods that are available in today's Pasadena real estate market.

We talked about the importance of bringing "eye balls" to see your home. Exposure is of utmost importance in getting the highest possible price for your home and selling it in record time. The more people that see your home, the more opportunity you have in selling it well.

To fully market your home today, it is imperative that you put the power of the internet to work for you. Internet, not only, exposes your home to the immediate real estate market consumers, but it also is an extemely powerful tool which will bring buyers that are thinking of relocating to Pasadena.

We already know that we need to have your home listed in the local Multiple Listing Service. Please note, that in Pasadena there are several Multiple Listing Services (MLS). We have ITEC which is part of Pasadena Foothill Association. And, there is IMRMLS, which is part of Arcadia Realtors Association. Please make sure that your Pasadena home is listed in one of these MLS services. If it's listed in one, it's listed in both through the magic of new computer programming that was recently implemented.

If you have a realtor friend who is working out of the area, who will be listing your home for you. Not the best idea, but that's a different post. Please ensure that your real estate agent contacts one of these MLS services and enters your home there.

MLS Listings are very different. How do you make your Pasadena home stand out?

• Make sure that you have a wonderful, detailed and honest description of your home. You want people to read the description and want to visit your home to see if it's the right home for them. You need to create the emotion of really, really wanting to see your home.

READ ALSO: Words that Sell Your Home

• Use lots of photos. Now... when I say lots of photos, let me clarify. Use GOOD photos. Please do not place photos that are out of focus, or show messy rooms, or are crooked, or show a ton of ceiling, or showcase your furniture. Remember, you are trying to sell your home. MLS services allow anywhere from 25 to 30 photos per listing. Put up as many photos as the service allows. Buyers love to be able to see photos of homes, especially buyers that are thinking of relocating to Pasadena.

Photography Tip: Use a wide-angle camera! It's very difficult to photograph a house without one.

• • Front of the house photo
  • Back yard
  • Entry
  • Bedrooms
  • Living Room (preferably several views)
  • Kitchen (preferably several shots from different angles)
  • Bathrooms
  • Pool & Spa (if you have one)
  • Garden
  • View of the surrounding area (street, etc)
  • Special features of the house (think what made you buy this house, photograph it and put it up on the MLS)

READ ALSO: Pictures are Worth a Thousand Words

• Videotape your home. Yes... you heard me, video your house. Not only should you video the home, you should narrate the video and talk about what made you buy your house, what you loved about living in your home, what did you love about living in Pasadena, why the buyers would want to purchase your Pasadena home, etc. Trust me on this... it works!

Place your video on www.YouTube.com . I video tape my clients' homes all the time. Out of town buyers love that! Even the buyer down the street will love it. There are other services that I use to upload your video to. The more the merrier.

• Create a Flash Presentation or a Virtual Tour. Companies like www.RealEstateShows.com do a wonderful job of hosting these presentations and distributing them to additional search engines.

In my next post, we'll talk about creating a real estate home brochure and other ideas to help you in selling your house. In the meantime, please do not hesitate to call me if you have any questions. I can be reached at 626-627-7107 or via email at Irina@Irina4RealEstate.com

Yesterday, we talked about why a Pasadena home seller should order a home inspection before listing their home with a Pasadena Real Estate Agent.

The following checklist will help you prepare for that home inspection or your buyer's home inspection.

The items below should be done PRIOR to the home inspection:

• Turn on all services including water, gas and electricity.
• Make sure that attic is made accessible.  If your real estate agent will be meeting with the home inspector, make sure she knows where the entry to the attic is!
• Make sure that under floor crawl space is accessible.  Again, make sure that your real estate agent knows where the entry point is.
• Heater(s) should be accessible
• Electrical panel needs to be accessible.
• Take your pets out of the house or backyard.  Have a friend pet sit them for awhile.
• Disclose any and all problems that you know about the property.
• If you have documentation like building plans, guarantees, operating instructions, etc, have it available.
• Write a note explaining any special operations of things especially if you have special switches operating certain lights, etc.  Don't forget about the pool and spa area, if you have one and any special instructions for these amenities.

Items that could enhance the outcome of the home inspection:

• Service and clean your air conditioning and heating systems.
• Make sure that all built-in appliances are operable and clean.
• Same thing goes for the exhaust fan(s) - operable and clean.
• Make sure that your laundry dryer vent is clean.
• Water heater has to be strapped.
• Smoke detectors have to be installed in correct locations.
• Have your pool cleaned and make sure that the equipment is operable and accessible.
• Make sure that the gutters are repaired and cleared of debris
• Have your chimney(s) cleaned.
• Ensure that windows and doors are operating and any broken parts are repaired.

Usually, when a buyer purchases a Pasadena home, one of the first things that their Pasadena real estate agent will recommend that they do will be a home inspection.

A common home inspection usually takes anywhere from 3 to 5 hours depending on the size of the home and after the inspection, a buyer will receive a pretty complete report identifying both small and large items.

The home inspection also takes place in the first week or ten days of the escrow AFTER an offer on your home has been accepted.  The buyer will review the list of items on the inspection report and will submit a list to you the seller of items/conditions that they will want you to repair, replace or give the buyer credit for.  This is a perfect opportunity to re-negotiate the price of the home for many a savvy buyer. 

This is usually step 2 in home price negotiations. 

As a seller, you can prevent further negotiations AFTER the home sale price has been set and accepted by ordering your own home inspection report PRIOR to listing your Pasadena home for sale.

By having this inspection done in advance, you can take steps to repair as many items as you and your Pasadena Realtor feel necessary to ensure a quick sale of your home.  In most instances, these repairs will cost you less to do up front with your choice of contractors.

Seondly and most importantly, your Pasadena Real Estate Agent will be able to present this home inspection report to all potential buyers for review BEFORE the price is negotiated and accepted.  This way, items that have been repaired can be pointed out to the buyer and they can sign off on the review and the receipt of the report so there are no surprises later on when they hire their own inspector.

A pre-inspection of your home can save you lots of money and take away some of the stress in selling your Pasadena home.

If you would like to get a list of CREIA (California Real Estate Inspection Association) approved home inspectors, please do not hesitate to call me at 626-627-7107 or email me at Irina@Irina4RealEstate.com.

For a private consultation on how you can get the most money for your Pasadena home, please give me a call.