How To Navigate This Market

Well, first of all, if you’re a buyer we have a proprietary, exclusive designed way to help you get to the top of the offer pile. We can also help you look for softer targets. They do still exist! Even though rampant over-bidding is the norm, every weekend there are still some homes that don’t go under contract. Of course, it’s the vast minority, but we’ve created custom searches so you can watch for soft targets. There are other soft targets to watch for as well, which we’d be happy to tell you more about.

A good buyer agent can also help counsel you about what it takes to win, and how to possibly not bid more than you need. Here is some broader advice, but we’d be happy to share more with you personally on this subject as well. Contact us.

In a market this nuts, do sellers still even need realtors? Well, your list price is still important, and the most optimal list price maximizes over bidding the most. Often if you increase list price too much you only rob from your over bidding price. Sometimes when sellers get TOO ambitious they don’t go under contract at all the first weekend. So, pricing it JUST right is still important, and that’s that makes a good realtor’s price analysis invaluable. When overbidding can go up to 30% over list price when marketed optimally, the fees paid to realtors begin to become a smaller expense relatively. There’s also plenty of macro data to show the lower sale price of FSBO’s (for sale by owner homes), and there’s a definite argument to be made that your seller agent won’t cost you anything by comparison to the amount undersold.

All this is not to mention the normal advantages of working with HomeSmith. We market aggressively and spend more marketing dollars than the competition. We pay for extra premier placement on the high traffic websites and get you on many websites that others miss. Theoretically, more exposure equals more buyers, and more buyers translate into higher sales prices.

Because we’re top 1% realtors, in this fray day in day out, our experience and pulse on the market also enables us to be able to give better relevant negotiation advice. In short, our guesses about what the other guy is thinking is better.