[5-DayForum] Florida Home Sale went OK

[Mike Carter]

Dear Bill / Forum:
It's Mike Carter, Realtor with Assist-2-Sell, from Jacksonville, Florida.
Held my first 5-Day sale this weekend.  Here's the results:

Property is currently listed at $ 236,900.  For the sale, we offered it at $
119,500 or highest bidder (yes Bill, I "got over" the wording issue).
Only 9 calls/e-mails during the Wed-Friday period.  Barraged the area with
merchant flyers during the same period.  Listed the home on 40 free Internet
classified sites.  Ran the ad in the two local papers, but the ad rep failed
to tell me that when the ad runs on a 2 column ad due to its layout, it runs
on a "space available" basis, which happened to move my ad to the bottom of
the page!!  I cancelled the ad on Thursday since it didn't even show up in
the classified section of town where the home is located.  So, I had to
depend upon my signage and free Internet classified ads that I ran to
generate my calls/inquiries.
On Saturday, placed 25 custom signs w/balloons attached leading to the
property.  Started placing signs at 7:30am.  Had 22 visitors (3 per hour) on
Saturday and received 2 initial bids.  On Sunday, had 18 visitors, and 8
more initial bids for a total of 10 initial bids for the weekend.  Round
Robin started at initial high bid of $ 175,000 and bid up, over an hour
period, to a final bid of $ 190,000.  Seller couldn't accept it due to owing
more on the mortgage than the final bid.

Questions:

1)  I learned that another local office who ran a 5-Day sale said they did
not get any response from their print ads, but lots of apparently "real"
visitors from their signage.  Are signs more effective than print newspaper
ads in some areas of the country?  I know Bill and George have different
philosophies on signage.

2)  Do you advise that the Seller throw back what he WOULD be willing to
accept when the final bid is still too low after the Round Robin?  We did,
but the buyer wouldn't budge off the final $ 190,000 bid.

3)  What is the reasonable time frame to wait to do another 5-Day sale on a
property that did not have an acceptable offer on the first sale?  I have
already booked 3 more 5-Day sales for the next 3 coming weekends on 3 of my
other listings, and WILL work on the ad so it shows up in the right area of
town in the newspaper.  Do you have any suggestions for the ad layout to fit
in the standard 1 inch columnar ads of many metro papers?

Thanks for anyone's feedback,

Mike Carter
(One of those Realtor guys, trying a new method)

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