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.

Related Articles

Using Twitter to introduce home buyers to FSBOs

Marathonbuyers_042108This 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

If airlines have fare sales, should real estate agents?

Businesssuckssale_2 If airlines have fare sales, should real estate agents?  We think so.  We understand buyers are waiting for prices to fall, but candidly, that’s translated into a cash flow crisis for The Real Estate Cafe.  Still, as one of the nation’s first fee-for-service real estate concepts we’ve had the experience to develop a menu of fees and rebates to get through slow times.  The key is offering compelling saving opportunities for clients — so compelling, we hope at least one new or existing client decides to select one of our "flat fee" options the next three days.  So, if you think you’ll be buying a home in the next six months and want to "buy down" your hourly consulting fee, we’d be glad to explain how you to save up to $75 per hour.  (Current client case study available upon request or just read what the Wall Street Journal said about our 100% rebate options.).  If our $3,000 to $5,000 flat fee options are beyond your budget, consider these SPECIAL OFFERS:

  • Prepay for 5 hours of consulting service ($500), get one hour FREE ($100 savings). 
  • Prepay for 10 hours of consulting service ($1,000), get three hours FREE ($300 savings).

Limited to the first three existing or new clients to respond. 

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

DewarswantedOver 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."

BUBBLE HOUR: Slowest real estate sales since 1991 got you cheering or crying in your beer?

Bubblehour_beergoogles1Bubble watchers in Massachusetts, time to pull out the beer googles and celebrate today’s headline in the Boston Globe about the slowest pace in real estate sales since 1991 with a Bubble Hour?

Sellers, does the same news have you crying in your beer, prepared to drop your price again, or tempted to drop your real estate agent (once your listing contract expires, of course) and try "for sale by owner" this Fall? 

If you’re one of the 15,000 sellers across Massachusetts who’s listing has already expired, been canceled, or temporarily withdrawn from the MLS during the past two months, The Real Estate Cafe is eager to talk to you about selling for sale by owner, or help you evaluate and select your next listing agent

We’ve just returned from LIVE BLOGGING the leading real estate technology conference in San Francisco, and are eager to demonstrate new money-saving tools and web sites. Do-it-yourself home buyers and sellers, would you like to see those demos in a small group or a personalized one-on-one presentation?  We’re eager to take advance reservations for a "FSBO Cruise" in Boston Harbor aboard the Yacht Starship: $99 includes a private, one-on-one presentation of our "FSBO on Steroids" seminar plus a lunch buffet with four-star cuisine.

Sellers:  we don’t see the housing bubble through rose-colored glasses, so if you are intimidated by selling "for sale by owner," The Real Estate Cafe can
prepare a "Listing Agent Report Card" instead and try to negotiate a reduced commission.  If you pay in advance for
our analysis, we’ll rebate one-third of our referral fee.

Thousands of MLS page views over 2 to 4 years: Will Bubble-wary buyers extend wait thru 2008?

1000pageviews_010308v1Temperatures in Boston are approached zero yesterday which, regrettably for this fee-for-service real estate consultant, was about the level of client billable activity over the Holidays.  But that doesn’t mean that The Real Estate Cafe’s "do-it-yourself" home buyers aren’t busy house hunting; to the contrary, 36 of them have looked at over 1,000 MLS pages online.  As shown on the graph above, house hunts of 2,000 to 6,000 MLS page views stretching two to fours years are not uncommon.

Can you imagine how long it would take to drive by that many properties, particularly in this frigid weather?  That’s why The Real Estate Cafe offers two MLS access systems, one which includes thousands of expired listings plus another map-based search with links to Zillow estimates. 

That’s also why we’re eager to invite new and long-time home buyers to network online and off in 2008. Regardless of whether you’re a member of our "1,000 click club" graphed above, please join one or more of the subgroups on The Real Estate Cafe’s new experimental social networking web site and exchange market insights with other clients — particularly if you’re in a long-term holding pattern

Our survey of housing prices in Greater Boston includes a few questions about potential educational and networking events, like our "Bubble Hour."  Please let us know what interests you and where you think housing prices are headed in 2008 and beyond.

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