[5-DayForum] 5 day recap in MA

[brentday at althor.net]

Hi Guys,

I wanted to post a detailed recap of our 5day sale in
MA.

We felt the house is worth about $250k.

Bill suggested we use the magic number of $99,500...you
can't start too low is the advice.  And we think this
was wise given the current market.

We spent about $1000 advertising in 4 newspapers in
the state.  They were all about $300 each.  The Telegram
and Gazette in Worcester (closest to home) got us the
best response.  Metro West and Boston Globe got us
very little response.  Most of the weekend calls might
have been from the Globe, but we weren't checking closely
at that point as the sale was on.

In Mass there is this small Town-to-Town classifieds.  It
gets stuck in a bunch of local town newspapers (not large
regional ones).  It got me in my nearest 6 towns and some
in Connecticut.  It was only about $50, but mostly those
were weekly papers coming out on Friday.  Still, I got
more responses from that than the Boston Globe.

We had 60 phones/emails by Friday night.  Probably another
15-20 over the weekend.

There were about 25 parties that came through.  Saturday
was pretty dead, only 8.  Sunday was very busy.  There might
have been 15 minutes when no one was there.

We had an aweome time!  Best time in a long time.  The
buyers really liked the process, too.

On the initial bid sheet our lowest bid $1, the highest was
$138,000.  People were bidding it up from the listed $99,000.

We had one (really annoying, possibly on drugs) guy that came
and talked really loudly about how he was a cash buyer.  He
showed me the bank statement.  He was of course a cash buyer
at $99k, not market price.

I just nodded my head and told him we'd be taking the best offer
Sunday night.  Everyone was kind of glaring at him.

Lots of buyers took our printed materials and looked around,
they all mostly left bids.

There were maybe 6 groups that took the material, sat by the
pond and read everything over in detail and talked for about 
an hour.  They all expressed really great interest in the place.

There were two parties that bid that called in to increase
their price to be first called.

8:00 we started calling people.

21 starting bids.

4 people dropped out first round, 3 answering machines.

One of the answering machines called back second round and
I let them participate.  I gave up on the other no answers
after second round.

Most people were doing $500 increments, a few were jumping
it a couple thousand.

When it got into the $160,000s there were 6 bidders but
it was really slowing down.  People asked to call
back and then they'd go up another $500.  There was only
one strong bidder at that point that would immediately answer
and jump the bid a few thousand each time.

We could see the writing on the wall at that point.

The final round (2 bidders), one bidder took 20 minutes and up'd
the bid $500.  The other bidder said "What a pain in the butt!"
and up'd their bid to their maxiumum of $175k (a $6000 increase).

We knew they wouldn't go any higher and the other people would
drop out.  Thats just what happened.

We called the high bidder back, told them they'd scared away the
other bidders.  Unfortunately it was an offer we just couldn't
financially accept.  They understood.  They knew the property
was worth more, but they couldn't go any higher.

I left the communication open with them, but talking with them
later this week they are firm that they can't go any higher.


Other things to note.

None of the people who "loved" the place and took a lot of 
time lasted past the 3rd round (there were 8 total rounds).

I had a few phone calls on monday, asking if it was still
available.  I would tell them yes, briefly explain what
happened during bidding and encourage them to stop by.

One person who came and saw the place (and dropped out
first round) wanted to know how it went.  He wanted to
use the same method for selling some of his properties.

He seemed to get it...you need at least two real buyers
to move the price up to market.  Don't know what he's
gonna do.

At this point we're going to figure out a new plan.

If anyone has advice, we'd love to hear it.

If/when we sell we'll post to the forum and let everyone
know what we did.

Thanks guys...you're a great group and I really appreciated
all the support during my sale.  Sorry I couldn't give
better news.

-Brent