[5-DayForum] The Butcher Joke

[Helen Ash]

BTW, we thought the price of 319,500 followed your book to the letter.  Zillow shows it at 654,000.

:)  Helen
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Bill Effros 
  To: How To Sell Your Home in 5-Days 
  Sent: Tuesday, June 12, 2007 10:32 AM
  Subject: [5-DayForum] The Butcher Joke


  Helen,

  A woman goes into a butcher shop and asks the butcher,

  "How much is the porterhouse steak?"

  "$20 a pound."

  "But the butcher down the street is selling it for $10 a pound!"

  "So why don't you buy it from him?"

  "He doesn't have any more."

  "When we don't have any more, we sell it for $5 a pound."

  Selling your home is not about what someone else got for their home at another time.

  The current price of your home is not what someone who can't afford it thinks it ought to be.

  $319,500 is not a magic number.  You would have done better had you started your home at $299,500.

  If you use a higher number you will do worse.

  Do not run another 5-Day Sale in the near future.  If you are sure your home is currently worth well over $600,000, offer it through a broker at $650,000.  Sign a contract for a time period as long as you are prepared to wait.  Make sure your contract states that you do not have to pay to the broker anything after the end of the contract, even if the eventual buyer previously inspected your home with the broker.

  If you get $650,000, sell.

  If you don't, run another 5-Day Sale.  Start at a magic number 50% of a price you now know you can get.  Follow the book exactly.  Sell to the high bidder.

  Bill Effros







  Helen Ash wrote: 
    Thought I should share our results too.  Sounds like our sale followed the same pattern as everyone else's this past weekend.

    We had 12 bidders, 3 of whom were HOT!!  3 more were very serious too.  Price in ad was $319,500.  First bid was $450,000 and was placed on Sat am at 10:45am.  High bid before RR was $500,000.  After Round 1, only 3 bidders were left and high bid was $510,000.  Other 2 dropped and that was and is our high bid.  No one can convince me that this is FMV.  Two homes in our neighborhood which are much smaller and offer less, both sold for more than 510 in the past 60 days.  Our bidders each told us that they loved the house, but that they knew it was worth more than 510,000.  Two of the bidders even cried on the phone (I am not making this up) because they were soooo disappointed.  I did get on the phone with our highest bidders after we were all done to tell them that we could not accept the high bid and I also asked them some questions which I hoped would shed light on why this did not work as well as it should have.  What drew their attention to our ad?  After they saw the property, what did they think the house would sell for?  They all said that they thought the house would easily go for over 600,000 IN THIS MARKET!!!!  One family even brought back an uncle who offered to help with financing.  We have pored over and analyzed our data and we feel very strongly that had we used a higher number in the ad (perhaps 399,500) we would have attracted a better buyer pool.  We are convinced that the 319 number just did not bring in the right people.  That being said, how long do we have to wait to try this again if we tweak the wording in the ad and use a different phone number?  We did have a few people attend our inspections who felt they were being scammed because we wasted their time by using such an artificially low number to bring them in.  

    Needless to say, we are extremely disappointed in our result.  I have not felt this exhausted since the birth of my last child.  I feel like I just went through 3 days of labor!!!  

    Looking forward to hearing everyone's feedback.

    Helen
      ----- Original Message ----- 
      From: Kimberly Gildroy 
      To: How To Sell Your Home in 5-Days 
      Sent: Monday, June 11, 2007 12:23 AM
      Subject: [5-DayForum] Sale in Edmonds, WA


      Our sale did not work out as far as the high bid being the fair market value.  We had only 7 bids, we thought four were serious but they did not go far.  The one that is actually serious didn't want to be involved in the RR and wanted us to just call him when the rest of it was done, but he did make a bid when I asked him to stick to the rules.  Then, everyone else dropped out or wasn't home and didn't call back in the half hour I set in the rules in the next round, so he ended up being high bidder at a price we cannot afford to sell the home for.  My husband is talking to him right now and it seems to be going well.  We apologized profusely that we could not sell the house for this price, as we just cannot afford to.  We are embarrassed mostly because we know he is a straight shooter and really wants the house and I asked him to stick to the plan but now we cannot financially afford to do so.  He may be buying the house for $70,000 more than his top bid, but the bidding process itself did not get up to the fair market value.  

      We had a TON of calls, a lot of people today saying, "great, I'll be there this afternoon," and only two people showed up to look all afternoon.  Today was horribly stressful until 5 PM finally hit, then I was relaxed until the bidding process which took about 15 minutes and was done with an extremely low bid, and then it was very stressful, and my husband, who is a great diplomat, has smoothed things out, but quite an embarrassing experience.  

      At this moment, am too tired to try and figure out what might have gone wrong, I just want to rest and let myself get through the emotions.

      Kimberly G.
      Edmonds, WA (Seattle area)

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