Using Twitter to introduce home buyers to FSBOs

admin April 24, 2008

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This time of year, most real estate agents are helping sellers prepare their homes for the Spring housing market. But as fee-for-service real estate consultants who specialize in representing buyers, The Real Estate Cafe wants to introduce our clients:

To sellers BEFORE they list their homes in the Multiple Listing Service (MLS), and
To homeowners who are selling "for sale by owner" (FSBO).

That’s why we celebrated the Boston Marathon Monday by updating some buyer profiles from our 1,000 Click Club, a highly-motivated group of buyer clients who have viewed at least 1,000 pages on the MLS. If you’re a seller who falls into either category above, we’d be glad to introduce you to our buyers. We assure you that our menu of fees are quite modest by comparison to traditional real estate commissions, and the potential savings are substantial.

For example, one of the buyer / sellers matches we helped earlier this year will save approximately $80,000. We can’t guarantee those kinds of savings, but if you’re a seller who’s struggling to get your home ready for the Spring market, we can offer you three hours of decluttering / organization / home staging for just $99 for three hours (limited offer). We’d also like to invite a limited number of sellers to attend one of our upcoming "for sale by owner" seminars, most likely in Arlington, MA or to schedule an in-home presentation. (One of our dreams is to teach 50 to 100 sellers how to save $1 million as a group. We passed that milestone for buyers during one recent 12 month period, see map of client savings).

We’ll publish more buyer profiles, special offers, and seminars for buyers and sellers in the future. You can receive updates by following us on Twitter.com/RealEstateCafe

Categories: Extreme Househunting, Fee-for-service, FSBO: Best Practices, FSBO: For Sale By Owner, Savings & Rebates, Social Networking, Timing the market

FSBO Makeover: $99 for 1st 3 hours of home staging

Selling your home for sale by owner (FSBO) in Greater Boston? Need help
decluttering, organizing and staging your home before you put it on the market
this Fall? Take advantage of this money-saving introductory offer from
The Real Estate Cafe’s "$99 Menu of Services":

FSBO Makeover: 3 hours of home staging, organizing, and decluttering for just $99

Our transition consultant, a designer/psychotherapist, will work with you to transform your home, based on
your needs, personal style and budget. Our consultant says:

"I
will use what you have in a new way to redecorate rooms, and make
recommendations about treatments and new furnishings to create a look
which will enhance the salability of your home. You will see an
immediate
improvement after only one hour!"

Beyond this introductory offer, our consultant is available on a sliding scale of $35 to $45
per hour, two hour minimum per visit. Our consultant’s goal is to create a balance of
materials and flow throughout a room — organizing each area (including
closets, drawers and surfaces) to provide a highly functional and
beautiful living environment.

Client references available and photos online soon.

admin July 27, 2008

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Educating & celebrating “do-it-yourself” clients in real estate

Over the past decade, The Real Estate Cafe has had the privilege of working with some extraordinary home buyers and sellers who are not afraid of doing parts of their own real estate transactions, and who do extraordinary things in their own personal and professional lives, too.

To launch our new "FSBOs on Steriods" seminars and to celebrate our 10th anniversary, we will profile a number of past "do-it-yourself" clients through a series of "Do’ers profiles." Some of our baby boomer clients and blog readers will remember the original "Dewar’s profiles" from the 1970’s, or it’s recent revival. The Real Estate Cafe’s current and past clients are notable, too: one recent Cambridge client is building a "do-it-yourself" air craft in his garage, and another friend is one of the nation’s leading advocates for "do-it-yourself" funerals.

What’s the "do-it-yourself" movement got to do with real estate? That story will unfold in subsequent blog postings. Stay tuned to learn how you can save thousands of dollars in your own real estate transactions by doing some of the work yourself, and hiring professional help "a la carte" from The Real Estate Cafe’s menu of services. If you are thinking of selling your own home, visit our step-by-step guide online or attend one of our upcoming seminars to learn how you can save money and save lives by "doing-it-yourself."

admin April 3, 2005

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If airlines have fare sales, should real estate agents? Part 3

For the past five years, Real Estate Cafe’s clients have been asking, “When will housing prices bottom out?” Some began their house hunts two years before…

admin December 29, 2008

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Real time “comps”

Link to recent press post Inman re "real time real estate."

Instead of developing a "CMA" type of report that describes sold data, I’ve
been using the "pending date" instead of the sold date.

Reason? The market is changing so much on a daily or monthly basis,
that considering "comps" may not be as accurate if the sold date is used, as
much as using the "pending date." If you develop a list of 6 houses that
sold in August to compare those sales with an offer you’re making today, then
what if the market has been in a decline since March? How much of a value
difference may there be from properties that went pending in the spring,
compared to a property on the market now?

Some, if not all of those 6 "comps" could have sold last spring. As
we know, listing agents and appraisers will often use the "comps" that best fit
the subject being appraised rather than an objective assessment of the sales
data.

So, next time you structure some type of analysis, why not use "pending
dates" instead of "sold dates" to make any comparison to a subject property
you’re trying to negotiate for on behalf of your buyer clients?

I suggested this to one of the "honest" appraises we typically use
here…he said he’s only using month old "comps" because there is an ongoing
decline in values here.

admin September 2, 2007

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If airlines have fare sales, should real estate agents? Part 2

Poking fun at the current cover story in Barron’s Magazine, "Bottom’s Up: This Real-Estate Rout May Be Short-Lived," Bill Apgar of the Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing predicted, "There will be 10 articles a month [like that] until we hit the bottom, and the last one will be right."

When will it be the right time to buy? That’s what all The Real Estate Cafe’s clients are asking. Some of their house hunts began two years before the market peaked, and are now into the third year of falling prices. Nearly 50 of our active buyers have looked at more than 1,000 MLS page views. Twenty-one have looked at more than 1,000 MLS pages in the past year alone, but only four of them have paid any fees to The Real Estate Cafe.

Unlike listing agencies who represent sellers and charge 5% to 6% commissions, or dot.com start-ups that are venture funded, The Real Estate Cafe pays it’s overhead almost entirely from hourly consulting fees paid by clients. With so many buyer waiting out the housing bubble, those fees have slowed to a trickle. Now, after 13 years, we need your financial support.

We constantly look for ways to help you save money, by learning more about the housing bubble and the latest technologies. Today, for example, we attended a seminar on State of the Nation’s Housing and a Foreclosure Prevention Workshop. This weekend, we’ll participate in PodCampBoston (for the third time.) Next week, we’d like to participate in two real estate technology conferences in San Francisco: REBarCamp and Real Estate Connect.

To do so, we need to raise $2,000 to $3,000 quickly. You can help us, help you save money by selecting one of the following special offers:

Money-saving offer #1: Fare sale
Repeat the Fare Sale we used successfully in 2007 to get two to three clients to prepay $500 to $1,000 in exchange for 1 to 3 hours additional work for FREE. Email for details.

Money-saving offer #2: Experiment with monthly fees
Introduce an optional monthly subscription fee. If you agree to pay $250 per month, we’ll slash our our consulting fees, normally $100 to $150 per hour, to $50 per hour for five hours—that’s a savings of 50% to nearly 70%! Like frequent flier miles, hours you prepay accumulate and you can use them any time you like. Email for details.

Money-saving offer #3. Attend educational seminars
Host a technology debriefing after our trip to San Francisco to share best money-saving tools and tips from the two real estate technology conferences. We would like to host two events, one for buyers and the other for FSBOs ("for sale by owner") within 10 days of the conferences at TogetherInMotion, One Broadway, Arlington, MA. $49 per household, per event. Email for details.

Finally, your best savings opportunity may already be part of our normal menu of fees & rebates. For example, one of our $3,000 flat fee options enables you to buy down our hourly consulting fee from $150 per hour (without retainer) to $75 for 40 hours – that’s a 50% savings before payment of any performance bonus. (Contact us for more details on this option and others.)

We encourage buyers to wait for the housing prices to correct, but don’t wait to take advantage of these savings opportunities. Once we raise $2,000 to $3,000, they’ll be gone.

admin July 17, 2008

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