Home Selling

I speak with a lot of real estate agents on a daily basis and they all seem to be talking about how many deals are falling apart over inspection items. If you are not familiar with what I am talking about, it is when a buyer puts a home under contract and then terminates the contract after the home inspection. The question is, why is this a growing trend now? To answer that question, let’s take a look at two different time periods.

It’s 2005 and it’s a hot real estate market. Bill Smith has a home for sale and Tom Jones puts it under contract. Jones has an inspection done, items come up on the inspection, some minor and some more serious in nature. Jones doesn’t object to the inspection items, he doesn’t even bat an eyelash and moves on with the purchase of the home asking for nothing to be fixed.

Fast forward to 2010 and Bill Smith is selling his home, Tom Jones put it under contract and orders his inspection. Items come up on the inspection, some minor and some more serious in nature. Buyer and seller argue, haggle, and fight over who is going to fix what and how much. Jones is not happy and terminates the contract shortly thereafter.

What’s the difference between these two scenarios? What happened between 2005 and 2010? Did all of the homes in America all of a sudden fall into serious disrepair? I think not! The answer is, “It’s all about perception.” In 2005, buyers looked the other way on inspection items or thought “No problem, I’ll fix them myself.” Buyers did not want anything to get in the way of them getting the home they wanted, not even inspection items. Today the buyer perception is, “I have the seller’s over a barrel, I am going get what I want, when I want it, and if I don’t win, I’ll take my money and go home or elsewhere.”

In most cases, deals should not be falling apart over inspection items. This can and should be a give-and-take compromise with both parties winning. I understand what the market is right now and buyers have an advantage, but I think that we can make even more progress in the recovery of the real estate market if we can get to a more equitable “perception.”

Dan Polimino is a Realtor with Fuller Sotheby’s International Realty. He can be reached at DPolimino@fullerproperties.com and www.coloradodreamhouse.com/denverpost

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A few weeks ago Dan Polimino told people that the relationship between buyer and seller had never been worse. Now comes along some buyers from Virginia, and he has to eat those words. What happened with the buyers from Virginia? How did they prove Dan wrong, and why is he eating his words? To find out watch this week’s market update with Fuller Sotheby’s International Realty agent Dan Polimino.

More and more realtors, as well as consumers, are using social networking these days as a way to market and sell properties. I am sure that by now, you have heard about Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace, Foursquare, and many others.

For most consumers as well as realtors, it can be overwhelming as well as confusing, but it is a must in going forward if you are buying and selling homes in this web 2.0 real estate world. It’s not enough just to have a profile on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. You need to know how to leverage it, use it for marketing, and drive traffic. In the case of Twitter, people have to first learn the Twitter language before they can effectively use it and use it well. Most of all, once you have all of these profiles, you must have a marketing strategy on how to use them. Here is what I do and this may work for you as well.

I spend 15 minutes in the morning and 15 minutes at night on social networking and I follow this simple formula:

1. I make three comments on other people’s posts in Facebook.

2. I check my twitter account and reply to any @ mentions and direct messages. I then re-tweet three items of interest.

3. On Linkedin, I post my status update (connect that with twitter), respond to any messages in my inbox, check my groups, and comment on one discussion.

4. Last but not least, I open up Hootsuite, share three links on twitter (scheduled two hours part) and share three links on Facebook (scheduled two hours apart).

5. I repeat the exact method above later that night.

Move fast; you don’t need to get bogged down in social networking and have it take away time from all the other things you need to do. Remember that the majority of people are finding out about homes for sale through the internet and that’s why this is so important. Do not use this as your sole method for selling a home, but use it to compliment the other activities that you are already doing.

Dan Polimino is a Realtor with Fuller Sotheby’s International Realty. He can be reached at DPolimino@fullerproperties.com and www.coloradodreamhouse.com/denverpost