Rainmaker Properties

At my recent open house in downtown Mountain View, I was recently chatting with a real estate agent that earlier this year had been interested in joining my team, and she surprised me. I happened to ask whether she prepared brokers open houses for her two Mountain View listings, and she said, “What’s that?” Her answer was another reminder that not all real estate agents are the same.

A “brokers open,” as we Realtors call them, is an open house exclusively for brokers that takes place right after a home is listed but usually before buyers see the property. Brokers opens are an important first step in selling a home because they not only generate interest for a listing within the Realtor community, they’re also a great way to get feedback on listings.

Of course, brokers opens are useless unless brokers attend. I always have catered food at my brokers opens because the rumors are true—Realtors are always hungry, and they love free stuff. Sounds funny, but it works. I recently held a broker’s open in a great neighborhood in Mountain View bordering Los Altos area, and 30 agents come by. At another in a great downtown Mountain View location, 20 agents stopped in. And at a broker’s open in Sunnyvale, 10 agents attended. Those stats say something about which Silicon Valley markets are most active. Mountain View and Los Altos aren’t too affected by the economy, but some areas of Sunnyvale is seeing a slight slowdown in activity today.

The Washington Post has a great article commenting on how during a real estate downturn, the focus for selling homes shifts back to traditional marketing to brokers and real estate agents.

Once they’re there, real estate agents’ feedback at the brokers open house can be very helpful. I always ask, “What would you recommend with this listing?” I’ve had brokers suggest that I stage a certain room and even mention that the bathroom smelled funny (That was particularly helpful since I don’t have a great sense of smell).

I don’t change my marketing based on every suggestion. But if I get several remarks on an issue, it’s probably something I need to address. For example, if a few brokers tell me I’ve priced the property well, that reinforces my confidence. But if three or four tell me the listing is overpriced, I’ll discuss those comments with my sellers.

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It’s always helpful to have people excited about your listing, whether it’s a rental or a home for sale. A bit of anticipation and a sense that there’s competition often serves to generate strong offers. I use a couple strategies to create buzz about properties.

One approach is putting a house on the MLS for a week or so, but not letting anyone see it until I hold an open house. Holding back on access to the listing creates a little extra eagerness and sometimes it even yields better offers. After all, when 20 people show up at an open house and they see others oohing and aahing about a property, it ends up creating a sense of competition. Truly interested buyers feel a sense of pressure because they don’t want to miss an opportunity. Most also see that lowball offers won’t fly.

The approach is especially effective when you have a unique offering. I had an Eichler located in Sunnyvale’s Cumberland Elementary school district and I knew they were pretty popular among buyers interested in mid-century modern houses. In fact, one had sold recently in Sunnyvale at $227,000 over the asking price. So I listed my Eichler on the MLS, applied my customized online marketing campaign,  and set a date for the first open house a week later. When I arrived 30 minutes before the scheduled open house time to prepare, I discovered 14 people standing in line!

With that property, I also listed it at $850,000–about $50,000 below what I though it would sell for. By undercutting the price a bit, the listing created even more buzz, especially among Eichler enthusiasts. The result: The house sold for $910,000– $60,000 over the asking price.

This delayed open house strategy also works for rental property. I use in when I’m serving as a property manager, and you can do it for apartments you manage on your own. Right now, there’s already some built-in competition for apartments because demand for them is so high now. So pulling in 15 or 20 prospective renters to an open house provides a just one more competitive edge helping to land the best tenants. When people see 15 or 20 others vying for a unit, prospective renters are more likely to submit an application and move quickly on an apartment they like.

Another benefit is that I save time by doing group open houses. Rather than running over to show an apartment seven separate times, I often find the perfect tenant—or buyer—during a two-hour, specified group open house.

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Modern architecture buffs will be familiar with the mid-century modern homes built by Joseph Eichler between 1949 and 1974. The properties, aimed at middle-class buyers of the time, have helped to define what’s known as California modern architecture.

The homes were especially unusual at the time because typical features included low or flat roofs, clean geometric lines, a somewhat spare sensibility, an open floor plan and lots of natural lighting that came from skylights and floor-to-ceiling windows. Another signature was a design that de-emphasized the delineation between the indoors and the outdoors. Views to the outdoors were always accessible and part of daily life.

I recently sold an Eichler house at 759 Pear Avenue in Sunnyvale near Cumberland Elementary School, and were pleased to see that Eichlers grab lots of attention when they go on the market. Even though there were about 11,000 Eichler homes built in Northern California and Southern California, they’re still considered a unique commodity and can command top dollar. The one I sold, in addition to being an Eichler, also was walking distance to the top rated Cumberland Elementary School in Sunnyvale. This Pear Avenue Eichler hadn’t been updated since the 70’s and definitely was a fixer-upper that needed a little TLC. We used our unique selling system to market the property, it generated multiple offers and sold for $60,000 above the asking price. And another Eichler, situated in Sunnyvale’s West Valley Elementary School district of Cupertino, recently sold for an eye-popping $227,000 over the asking price!

Later, I’ll talk more about the pricing strategy we used for the house and how the approach can help get more attention and offers if you do have a truly unusual property that you want to market.

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You’ve heard it said a million times: “That photo doesn’t do it justice.”

“It” can be a landscape, a flower, a car—even a home. That’s why it’s critical to ensure that photos of your property do your home justice. I have all my listings professionally photographed because I want as many people as possible eyeballing them. Professional photographers know how to present spaces in the most flattering light—literally and figuratively—and use wide-angle lenses so that viewers get a sense of an entire room.

Here’s an example of how much photos matter. One of my listings was a townhouse situated in the Mountain View Gardens development off of Tyrella Avenue. This townhouse was built in the early 1970s and though it was maintained quite well, the floor plan was slightly dated. With smart staging and the use of wide-angle lenses, the photos have drawn callers asking when they could see our “model home.”

A recent sale also proves the point. I was working with a couple relocating from Toronto. The husband had already moved to corporate housing in the Bay Area and was doing the legwork of looking for a home for his family. He found one he was sold on near Ponderosa Elementary School, so we e-mailed photos of the property to his wife. Based on the photos, she liked the home, too.

I drafted a contract so that when she came to town, we could schedule a showing to confirm the couple’s choice and then submit an offer. In person, however, the wife waffled. The photos hadn’t prepared her for the true condition of the home, and she asked to see more properties. The couple
ended up buying another home in Sunnyvale’s Ponderosa Park neighborhood that they’d earlier eliminated from their search on the basis of a less-savvy agent’s unflattering photos. That couple learned a lesson all buyers should keep in mind: Never fall in love with a home—or eliminate one from your search—based solely on photos.

The lesson for sellers is that buyers’ first impression of your home isn’t something you can ever get back. Be sure to choose an agent who makes sure that first impression doesn’t disappoint.

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The mark of a good agent is adaptability. What works to get one buyer a great home may not work in another sale—and a smart agent knows when and how to pivot on behalf of a client.

Case in point: I recently represented first-time homeowners in the purchase one of the Sunnyvale’s largest townhouses in the highly desirable The Gardens tract in Sunnyvale located near W. California and Mary Avenue. This Sunnyvale townhouse was listed at $699,000, and my clients submitted an offer for $685,000. By the time my clients’ offer was to be presented, there were two other offers, so my clients increased their offer to $705,000.

I asked the listing agent if I could present my clients’ offer last. That way, the sellers would be ready to make a decision, and I could probe for information about the other offers so I’d know whether to recommend that my clients adjust their offer.

We arrived to the appointment before the first presentation—but nothing happened. As we sat in the parking lot, no agents came or went. Maybe there weren’t really three offers. Or maybe the listing agent was presenting my client’s offer first.

Time to pivot. I called the listing agent, who told me the other agents were “running late,” I asked her to call me after the other two offers had been presented. An hour later, we got the call. Another pivot. I asked the listing agent if my clients could sit in on the presentation. That turned out to be a blessing. Small talk revealed that one of my buyers worked at the same major high-tech company as one of the
sellers, and the techies bonded. My buyers’ offer (which was not the highest) was accepted—and the sellers even shaved $1,000 off the buyers’ offer as a courtesy.

The moral is that a great real estate agent always think of ways to give their clients a leg up. By having my clients come to the presentation and by scoping out the parking lot to be sure we would be last to present, we were able to outsmart two agents with solid offers. Make sure you choose an experience agent who knows when to pivot on your behalf.

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