Realty Freak

Real Estate Ads Suck

My friend Andy Sernovitz had a great post today about creating content instead of ads.  

Real estate agents should take notice since there is hardly anything more full of cliches than the typical remarks of a real estate listing.    Here's an example.  "Newer", by the way, means it's not new.

Real estate agents also like to make shit up soften reality.  Take this example.  In my version of reality roofs, chimneys, furnaces, windows and foundations aren't upgrades, they are necessities that should be in good working order.

I am a big fan of telling it like it is, as I do with this Park Ridge home for sale or this Evanston condo.  It's an opportunity to be honest and funny at the same time.

From the Stupid Email Collection - What?!

Sellers are still interested in selling but they don't want to be on the MLS.  Really?  I can't even begin to fathom the logic behind this.  "We want to sell our house, but we don't want to use the most effective marketing channel." REALLY???

 

Someone please explain.

Dear Hip Real Estate Agent

Dear Hip Real Estate Agent,

It's really cool that you tweet, facebook, blog, text and email; but on occasion you still might need to use that thing called a telephone (don't worry, it can be your cell phone or even skype.)

This is still a people business and sometimes the best way to communicate with someone is to talk.

The Biggest Lie In Real Estate

I got another email from one of those staging companies today and no surprise it included a lie that has been repeated so many times it is accepted as truth.

I would like to introduce _____ who services the Lake County, North Shore and Northern Illinois areas.  Staging is a vital marketing tool that statistics reveal will sell homes 35% faster and for 6%-9% more money then homes that are not staged.

PLEASE someone show me these statistics as they appear in an actual scientific study or journal.

Average Co-Op, BFD.

So ZipRealty is showing the average co-op commission offered in a given zip code and I say BFD.  Shouldn't the buyer know if his agent has a vested interest in one property over another?  Shouldn't the buyer know the actual co-op being offered to his agent for every property?

Deceitful or Stupid?

Let's say you have $300,000 to spend on a condo and you don't own a car.  You go to your favorite real estate website, plug in your criteria and you find this listing.

"Great!"  you think to yourself, "it's just what I am looking for and since I don't need the $25k parking space I can afford it."

Problem is, this listing agent (like many other Chicago real estate agents) knows that the seller will not sell the unit unless the parking space is sold with the unit.  "Bull Shit!" you say and I agree with you.

If the seller won't or can't sell a condo without the parking space then it is deceitful to list the unit without the cost of the space in the list price.  Listing a condo for $299,000 with a $25k parking spot that has to be purchased is no different than listing a condo for $299,000 but demanding and extra $25k for the kitchen.

Besides, any marketing novice can tell you that "included free" sells.  So is this bait and switch practice deceitful AND stupid?

If You Talk To Your Agent

Dear owner of 700 W Van Buren unit 1209,

If you happen to talk to your agent could you please tell him that I would really like to show your  home.  We have been calling for three days without a response.

Sorry, I tried to show your home.

Dear owner of 434 Briar Pl, I wanted to show your home on Sunday to my ready willing and able buyer, but your agent was to0 busy to accommodate us and won't use a Sentrilock.  Oh well, on to the next one.

CMA, A Guess By Any Other Name

Many studies have addressed how people make important decisions, one of the classics was conducted way back in the 1970s, by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky.  Even at this time, psychologists knew that people often make decisions that aren't supported by seemingly obvious evidence.  In the study researchers had asked people which of two hospitals was more likely to have a day with at least 60% male babies born, a hospital with 15 births per day, or one with 45 births per day.  Most people said that the chances were the same in each hospital, but in fact there should be more variance in the male-female ratio in the smaller hospital, which means it would have more 60-percent days.

It should be obvious that 3 or 4 comparable properties is not a big enough sample size to make any kind of rational decision about a properties value, yet it is the standard industry practice.

Keep Guessing

Real estate agents in the NY time article are in a tizzy about the  adjectives used to describe listings, but they are all just guessing.  I doesn't seem to occur to any of them to test the effects of different words.  Steven Levitt describes the effects of descriptions on sale price and days to sale in his paper Market Distortions when Agents are Better Informed: The Value of Information in Real Estate Transactions.

In our own internal study we found a strong correlation between agent remarks and perceived curb appeal of properties.