April 2008

I just don’t get it.

Agents talk about “How to Sell Your Home” all the time.

Pricing, curb appeal, condition, staging, marketing, declutter, blah blah blah. You can read real estate blogs for days and get great tips on how to sell your home.

But there seems to be a disturbing trend developing. Oh, it’s been going on since time immemorial, but recently it seems to be getting worse.

Dru Bloomfield up in Scottsdale mentioned it on Twitter yesterday.

I’ve written about it in the past

Yesterday Kris Berg, in typical Kris Berg brilliance, wrote about it. 

What is it?

It’s the simple fact that unless a home buyer can SEE your home, it’s highly unlikely they will try to purchase it.

This isn’t rocket science. It’s fundamental human nature. People tend to want to look at something they are going to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on and take a significant portion of their lifetime to pay off.

Yesterday, in a scene reminiscent of The Exorcist, I watched my lovely bride’s head spin around backwards while she was trying to set up showings for a wonderful couple visiting from Canada.

Unanswered phone calls.
“No, tomorrow is not good, how about next week?”
“The house is a disaster.”
Unanswered phone calls
“I want to sleep in.”
“Only between 4:30 and 5:00.”
Unanswered phone calls
“We’re having a party, need to prepare for that.”

And on and on and on.

It’s insane. It makes no sense. We have a ready willing and able buyer who wants to see YOUR home that is for sale.

And either the seller and/or their agent makes viewing the home impossible.

I just don’t get it.

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Been toying around some this weekend with a new site dedicated solely to searching for Phoenix area homes.

The URL is a mouthful, PhoenixRealEstateSearchSite.com (affectionately now called PRESS…).

There is no question that it will morph and change over time. Numerous pages and searches still need to be added. Eventually, it will have dedicated pages for home searches for specific neighborhoods, zip codes, price ranges, features, etc.

I’ve been wanting to experiment with a “home search only” site for quite some time, and never had the right MLS / IDX solution to pull it off. That’s no longer a problem — now it boils down to time, and the ability to get a site with minimal text and back links to rank in the search engines. Time I have to find a way to manage, the search results we’ll just have to wait and see…

PRESS is built on the Wordpress platform, using the fabulous premium Thesis theme from Chris Pearson. It’s not free, but it’s worth every nickel. Chris is a brilliant, and responsive, designer. I’ve been using his free Neoclassical theme for single-property blogsites — his sense of style and typography is unmatched. And his SEOness is pretty dang great!

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17 years ago today, I married my best friend.

Every day, I’m amazed by her…

Every time our eyes meet
This feeling inside me
Is almost more than I can take
Baby when you touch me
I can feel how much you love me
And it just blows me away
I’ve never been this close to anyone or anything
I can hear your thoughts
I can see your dreams

I don’t know how you do what you do
I’m so in love with you
It just keeps getting better
I want to spend the rest of my life
With you by my side
Forever and ever
Every little thing that you do
Baby, I’m amazed by you

The smell of your skin
The taste of your kiss
The way you whisper in the dark
Your hair all around me
Baby you surround me
You touch every place in my heart
Oh, it feels like the first time, every time
I want to spend the whole night in your eyes 

— Written by: Aimee Mayo, Marv Green and Chris Lindsey. 
Performed by Lonestar.

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Conversation overheard today in Starbucks:

Man on cell phone: “blah blah, yes the car is still available. Yep, that’s the correct address. The gate code is 4375 pound sign. OK, see you then.”

Man’s apparent wife: “You just gave a complete stranger the gate access code.”

Man: “So. Everyone from the pizza guy to the florist to all the friends of the insane teenager next door has it. Hell, 90% of the traffic in the neighborhood just follow someone else in.”

Apparent wife: “Yeah, that’s all true.”

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