Should you market your home for sale through the holidays?  It’s now mid November, and if your property has been listed for sale but not gotten an acceptable purchase offer, you may be thinking of taking your house or condo off the market until sometime in the new year. Is that a good idea?  Below, please find some considerations for you as you decide what to do. We’ll

Pricing: will the home sell for more now, or in the new year or spring?

No one can tell you whether prices will be better or worse in the first quarter of 2012 than they are now.  I just returned from the annual conference for the National Association of Realtors (of which I am a member), and quite honestly, I got conflicting information.  Some reports indicate that prices will be lower in the spring, others that they will be higher – or interest rates may be higher, which puts pressure on pricing since affordability is strained when that happens.   Pricing is local, though – so no matter what’s happening nationwide, it could be different in Silicon Valley, in Almaden, Cambrian, or Los Gatos, or in your subdivision or school area.  But bottom line: we really don’t know what pricing will do, we only know the probable buyer’s value – a range of likely sales prices – right now.

Being disturbed during the holidays

Many home owners really don’t want a lot of traffic coming through the home from Thanksgiving through the New Year due to visiting relatives, events planned such as parties at the home, the presence of gifts and concerns over theft, etc.  They may also be worried about rainy weather and carpets getting soiled.

At the same time, though, during the holidays many of us make our homes warm, bright and inviting, particularly if we decorate for Christmas, Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, etc.  Even the smells can do wonders: gingerbread cookies, Christmas trees, hot mulled wine…. With family and friends coming to visit, we tend to “deck the halls” and make our houses really feel like homes.  For many condos, townhouses and houses, during the holidays these homes really show at their best. (more…)

Selling your Silicon Valley home? The common wisdom is to interview at least 3-4 real estate agents, ideally from as many brokerages,  before selecting one to work with you on the listing, marketing, sale and escrow of your home.  Many Silicon Valley home sellers don’t do that, though – in fact about half hire the first person they speak with – for better or worse.

But let’s say you’re doing your “due diligence”  and have interviewed a few agents.   How do you dismiss the ones you aren’t hiring?  Today I want to present a few thoughts and ideas on this for you, and I’ll keep it brief.

1. On the off-chance that your property doesn’t sell with the agent you are now selecting, you want to keep the door open for future business with the other agents whom  you’re not hiring now.  In other words, if the agent you hire today ends up being a dud, you do want to be on good enough terms that you can go back to one of the agents you’re rejecting today to hire later. So # 1, be polite and friendly with every agent, even the ones you aren’t going to employ.
2. Additionally, many of the agents you are now dismissing may later have a buyer who’s perfect for your home later. So again, be polite and friendly with every agent.
3. Please remember that for Realtors and other real estate professionals, each listing presentation or buyer presentation is really a job interview.  Just as you would be waiting anxiously to hear back if you’re going to be hired for a position, so do they wait for news to learn if they are employed or not!
4. It is important for agents to know what you’ve decided, even if they don’t get the job.  If they’ve done a good job, but you’re selecting someone else anyway, do tell them that you appreciate their hard work but are hiring someone else at this time. Sometimes it is really difficult to choose whom to hire if you meet a few stellar agents.   The worst thing is for them to not hear back from you at all, or led to believe that you’re going to hire them, only to have someone else’s sign show up in the front yard.  Almost every agent I know has had this happen and it’s one of the low points of being in real estate when it does happen.

Agents often spend many hours preparing to meet with potential seller clients, studying the market, pulling comps, and gathering presentation materials as well as listing papers, most likely, in case you want to sign with them when they arrive. (One of the worst things an agent can do is to show up at a listing presentation and not be prepared to sign a listing if the clients want to do so – and that does happen at times!) Whether you decide to hire them or not, it’s best for them – and for you – to communicate nicely and clearly what your decision is.

Related Reading:

What do Silicon Valley Real Estate Agents Do?

Selling Your Home in Silicon Valley

What happens if your home does not sell within a few months and you take it off the market? If your property status is changed to a cancelled, expired or withdrawn listing, it may be viewed by real estate agents as their potential business, and you may begin to hear from them  – a lot!

What is the difference between expired, cancelled and withdrawn listings?

Let us begin by discussing the difference between cancelled, expired, and withdrawn listings and how each impacts your vulnerability to being swamped with messages from real estate agents.

1. A withdrawn listing means that the property is still listed for sale with a real estate agent or broker but is no longer listed on the multiple listing service (MLS).  It’s still a valid listing and other agents should not approach you about working with them since you are still in a contract to sell your home with your current agent.
2. An expired listing means that the contract for your listing has come to an end and the listing is no longer in place.  Other agents may approach you since there is no valid listing in place.
3. A cancelled listing is one in which the seller and agent or broker agree to terminate the listing. Since the listing has ended, other agents are free to contact you.

In a nutshell, if your Silicon Valley home’s listing becomes either cancelled or expired, real estate sales people may contact you, but if it is merely withdrawn, they are not supposed to reach out to you because you still have a valid listing in place. (more…)

Selling your Silicon Valley home this summer? Don’t make the two most common mistakes which cost sellers money when marketing their home in the hottest months of the year!

#1 Common Home Selling Mistake in Summer: a “closed up” house

So many sellers try to beat the heat by closing up the house, turning off all lights and shutting all blinds during the hottest part of the day.  I see this all the time in summer, particularly if the San Jose area is enduring a horrendous heat wave.  But walking into a darkened house, condo or townhouse is a huge turn-off for home buyers.   It’s depressing.  Yes, we can turn on lights and open blinds, but the initial impression is terrible.

If you have air conditioning, turn it on and expect that the costs of keeping your home cool are a marketing item.  A hot, dark house (or even a cool, dark one) is not inviting.

What if you do not have air conditioning?  If I had to pick between cooler and dark vs hotter and bright, I’d go with hotter and bright.

#2 Common Home Selling Mistake in Summer: allowing the flowers, plants and lawn to wither and wilt

When the heat approaches triple digits, it can be hard to keep plant life, bushes, lawns and flowers in good shape.  Dead flowers in the house, or annuals that have lost their zip are not welcoming.    It’s important to water them (best time is early morning), and if necessary, replace annuals.

Most home sellers in Santa Clara County make a big initial “push” to get their property ready for the real estate market, and after it’s on the MLS, they want to coast and just “keep it clean”.  But if the Santa Clara Valley gets a terrible week of high temps, the fruit can fall from the trees (and rot), the annuals can die and the lawn can dry out.  It takes more effort to keep everything model perfect, but the good news is this: any home buyer who’s looking in 100 degree temps is serious!  (Same is true of buyers looking in the wet months of December and January.)

Remember, you only get one chance to make a great first impression!

Yesterday I got a phone call from a woman looking to find a lease option to buy property in the San Jose area.  “I’m tired of wasting money on the rent”, she explained.  Hoping to locate one, she was phoning the agents of San Jose houses for sale – maybe one of them would do a lease option?  Not likely.

Why are lease options hard to find in Silicon Valley?

It is a challenge to find a lease option in the greater San Jose area for a number of reasons, most of them related to the extra risks involved as opposed to simply renting or selling the real estate outright.

1 – Cash needed at close of escrow: An overwhelming majority of the home sellers here want their cash at close of escrow, so the buyers can be all cash or part cash and part loan (20% down, for instance).  Most real estate sellers want to take the cash from the property being sold and do something with it immediately – and the majority of the time that means putting it into another home in which to live.

2 – Don’t want to be a landlord: Doing a lease option means that not only will the owners of the property not get their cash right away, but they also have to become landlords in the meantime.  If they pay a professional property manager, that may cost 8% per month in overhead, too, so it cuts into any profit.

3 – Lease options are risky: With lease options, there is far more risk for the seller, of course, but also for the buyer!  (And by extension, real estate licensees who get involved with lease options.)

• The seller risks a default by the buyer/tenant and then having to go through the trouble of evicting him/her/them.
• Pricing risks for both seller and buyer:  the purchase price is decided upfront, but the sale isn’t finalized for a year or more.  During that time, the real estate market could appreciate like crazy (leaving the seller to feel that the house is sold for too little, less than market value) or the prices could fall (with the buyer unable to complete the sale since the property wouldn’t appraise – thus losing all of the downpayment in the process).  Either way, buyer or seller could feel unhappy and cheated. (more…)

A couple of days ago, I showed a home for sale along the Los Gatos border with Cambrian Park (area of San Jose) to a buyer couple.  It’s tenant occupied, was pretty much a mess  (and on top of being in disarray was dark – curains drawn, no lights on etc.) and the person who lived there walked us through the property, telling us things about the owners and the situation that really didn’t make my buyers want to purchase the home at all.  Between the condition of the property and the info-packed narrative, my clients could not wait to leave.   No sale!

If you own income property (or rental property) in Silicon Valley and want to sell it, you may be aware that a 1031 tax deferred exchange is something to consider.  What you may not remember to do is to strategize about what to do with your tenants.  How do you get them to be cooperative, responsive to showing requests and neat? And preferably, to be absent or at least quiet and out of the way when the home is shown?

When residential real estate is for sale, the occupants’ lives are turned upside down.  It’s no small amount of inconvenience and risk to them with the traffic in and out, the calls at all hours, the loss of privacy and on top of everything else, the risk of personal propertybeing stolen.  If you are a homeowner, you are motivated because you will get cash out of the deal at close of escrow.  If you are a renter and the home you’re renting or leasing suddenly goes on the market, there’s not really a “silver lining” built into the scenario most of the time.  That can set the stage for trouble and even financial loss.
(more…)

Buying and selling homes is stressful no matter who you are or what the occasion may be.  It is even more difficult for those for whom English is not their native language and for whom the US is not their native land.

First there’s a language challenge (depending on English fluency).  Even more, there’s a cultural challenge in terms of how homes are bought and sold. Add the normal stress to the cross-cultural confusion and there’s a recipe for misunderstanding, bafflement, surprises and upset.  One of the biggest areas for clashes is how negotiations are carried out.

I have had the pleasure of traveling to many places around the globe and to live in Italy for the better part of a year while in college (in Florence, and yes, I loved it).  I remember very vividly some of my own cultural frustrations and although I was fairly fluent, missing a whole lot of social cues. I had to work to learn to negotiate for simple things like fruit and sweaters in the open air markets.  And I was just 20, not trying to purchase anything as significant as a house or condo.

My clients today come from all over. Typically, at any given time, more than half of my clients are foreign* (and I love working with them and hearing about their experiences, customs and traditions).  Every once in awhile,  we discover that buying and selling expectations are vastly different from Silicon Valley to wherever they came from. Here are a few:

1. Expecting to negotiate at every turn, starting from the time the seller accepts the buyer’s offer and continuing until close of escrow (not done here: you negotiate at most two times – first when writing and countering offers and second prior to removing contingencies, if something new is learned during the course of the inspections.  If you negotiate at every opportunity, you will have everyone angry at you!)
2. (more…)