Robert Darrow, @properties

Archive for the ‘Marketing’ Category

The website www.hitwise.com – released its rankings for the top real estate websites for December, 2008, last week.

Each day, Hitwise provides insights on how 10 million US Internet users interact with more than 1 million websites, across 165+ industries.

Dominating the search results is the real estate web portal run by Realtors, with over a million listings online at any moment.

What you should keep in mind when reading the list:  we keep our eye on this list of top websites and make sure our listings show up wherever people go to look at real estate listings online.

Our listings are available on every single one of these websites with the possible exception that homes for sale won’t be displayed on the websites that only show homes for rent; and vice-versa.

Yikes, there’s nothing like advertising how long your listing has been on the market than having jarringly dissonant photos compared to what the place looks like today.

This townhome is actually a beautiful and architecturally stunning property.

At least the photos will be back in season in 5 months.

Teresa in St. Paul says it best:

When I look at property photos on the MLS, I am reminded of winter.  It is August yet there are property photos where the homes are covered in snow.  Those photos let the buyer know that the home has been on the market forever and that the seller does not care much about it.  Not enough to even check to see how it is being marketed.  Nothing says neglect like a property photo with snow in it at the end of August.

I don’t know what it is about trying to get appointments to see two, three and four-flats in Chicago, but it seems to be near impossible.

We’ve written before on the unique convention of Chicago Realtors actually showing up to show their listings here and here.

And when showing apartment buildings, there are even more people to coordinate with.  Of course you remember that to coordinate showings that the listing Realtor shows up for, we need to accommodate the schedule of the Seller, the Listing Agent, the Buyer, and the Buyer’s Agent.  Now – add the Tenants.  And the Tenants are usually the LEAST cooperative of the bunch. 

They don’t have an interest in the sale.  They usually worry that the new seller is going to raise the rent, kick them out, or perhaps both.   Invariably they’re still in bed.  I’m amazed at the number of college grads with decent jobs still in bed at Noon on Saturday.

But we still can’t figure out what the problem is with Agents and their Apartment Building Listings.  Trying to schedule six showings on Saturday, we’ve been told "no", we’ve been told "not at 1:30, but how about 3:30?", we’ve been told "not Saturday. How About Sunday?", or still the ever popular ~ Nothing.  No call back.  Silence.

For the guy who told us 3:30 rather than 1:30 because that’s when he’s showing the building, I hope he’s there showing to no one in particular.

Ironically, the same Agent’s tagline in his E-mail signature is "Striving to be the best Realtor in Chicago!"

Good luck, buddy!

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. – Home sales activity improved slightly from January as Illinois REALTORS gear up for the spring market. According to the Illinois Association of REALTORS latest report, total home sales (which include single-family and condominiums) were up 15.1 percent in February 2008 to 6,832 sales compared to January 2008 sales of 5,938; sales were down 22.9 percent from February 2007 totals of 8,860. The Illinois median price in February was $181,265, down 5.6 percent from $192,000 in February 2007. The median is a typical market price where half the homes sold for more, half sold for less.

“REALTORS are seeing some signs of the spring market with increased activity and interest from potential buyers. If people have good credit, their finances in order, and are looking for a home for the long haul, they should get in the market with confidence,” said REALTOR Kay Wirth, president of the Illinois Association of REALTORS. “Conditions in many local markets are good and present opportunities for first-time and move-up buyers.”

In the city of Chicago condominium sales fared comparatively well in February with 1,047 units sold, down just 9.7 percent from the same month last year with 1,160 units sold. The condo median price in the city of Chicago was up 10.5 percent to $314,900 from February 2007.

“In the city of Chicago condominium transactions continue to lead our sales activity,” said David Hanna, president-elect of the Chicago Association of REALTORS. “The 10.5 percent increase in the median price for February shows buyers are finding great value in the city. We see this increase as further proof of the resilience of the Chicago marketplace, and expect the smart buyer here to prosper from taking advantage of historical low interest rates and abundant inventory to find their next home.”

The monthly average commitment rate for a 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage for the North Central region was 5.99 percent in February 2008, up 0.26 points from the 5.73 average rate the previous month, according to the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation. Last year in February it averaged 6.25 percent.

“There are pockets in the state that are already seeing an early uptick in sales activity,” says Wirth, a broker with Re/Max Unlimited Northwest in Crystal Lake. “McLean County which covers the Bloomington-Normal area saw sales up 14.4 percent and the median price up 1.3 percent to $153,000. Sales activity in Macon County (Decatur) was up 2.7 percent, and in the Metro East county of Madison sales surged 6.3 percent in February compared to a year ago.”

The Chicagoland Primary Metropolitan Statistical Area (PMSA) logged 4,310 total home sales in February 2008, down 26.9 percent from 5,894 home sales in the same month of 2007. The median home sale price for the Chicagoland PMSA was $240,230 in February 2008, up 0.1 percent from $240,000 in February 2007. The Chicagoland PMSA, as defined by the U.S. Census Bureau, includes the counties of Cook, DeKalb, DuPage, Grundy, Kane, Kendall, Lake, McHenry and Will.

“Illinois is certainly revealing, through both jobs growth and state revenue collections, that it is bucking the national trend in the first quarter of the year,” said Dr. Geoffrey J.D. Hewings, director of the Regional Economics Applications Laboratory (REAL) of the University of Illinois. “The spillover of the economic forces into the real estate market is evident in the slowing in the decline in housing sales and recovery of median prices to levels that approach those observed in the first quarter of 2007.”

According to a recent report from the National Association of REALTORS, chief economist Lawrence Yun said: “Subprime loans and other risky mortgage products have virtually disappeared from the marketplace, and over the past five months, this has been reflected in soft but fairly stable home sales.” Sales and price information is generated from a survey of Multiple Listing Service sales reported by 35 participating Illinois REALTOR local boards and associations.

I swear that I did not plan on the previous post and this post to appear next to each other. That they did sort of makes me come across as a bit of a know-it-all or a show-off. Notwithstanding, I am delighted to have convinced one of my developers that staging would greatly aid in the marketing of the units. These condominiums are sprawling floor plans that have 1,700 square feet. They have a lot of rooms in a gracious old-world layout with the living room in the front, a formal dining room towards the back and the kitchen at the very rear of the home. In addition, what was an exterior porch has been incorporated into the homes creating a sun-room off the master bedroom.

With so many rooms, prospective buyers who visited inevitably wandered from room to room asking “Now what do we do with this room?” A nice problem to have. But if a buyer doesn’t know what to do with a room, he or she doesn’t place any value in having it. Sales were lagging as prospects didn’t know what to do with so many rooms even though it was clear that the home was enormous.

The sunroom is one of the hardest to explain to buyers. Without some kind of purpose, this feels like wasted space.

Prospects frequently could not visualize how to place furniture in this bedroom.

This seems like too much space just to devote to a dining room. Buyers often worried that this would be a big empty hole in the middle of their new home.

Now see what these same rooms look like after a professional stager has come through and filled each room with appropriate furniture.

This room – the sun-room – benefits from the greatest improvement in perceived value after being staged. Now buyers can envision themselves enjoying a quiet relaxing moment on a sunny morning, perhaps catching up on some reading.

Here the layout of the master bedroom is completely natural. And inviting.

Even with a four-place dining room set, the room feels perfectly utilized.

Here, the kitchen simply looks finished with the addition of the appliances and barely a few simple accessories. A whole world of difference.

It goes without saying that these condos are available for sale and ready for occupancy. Check out the development website at www.buenaflats.info. Or click on the property photo in the slideshow in the sidebar.

It almost seems cliche to do these kids of posts, but I cannot resist. There are many blogs that chronicle the history of bad real estate photography, so I thought this would be superfluous. However after coming across a few local examples, and realizing that many of the larger repositories of bad real estate photos elsewhere on the internets seem to have overlooked our local talent. Therefore, your guides are pleased to present the first in an ongoing series – Bad Real Estate Pictures.

What does this picture say to you?

“I am too busy to visit this property during the day?”

“Photo courtesy of Transylvania Realty?”