Chris Penn wrote about this last week and it has had my mind wondering for a while about it. As you know we are going to be selling our house. It's just a matter of time really as we are getting things in place to sell it right now. In fact a guy is here as I type this measuring a couple of rooms so that we can replace the carpet in them. We've looked at some houses and know we want to stay in the same town. It's just a matter of timing from now on.
What's cool is I found our agent through new media. I met Kelle Sparta at a New England Podcasting meetup and we got talking about real estate and she made a recommendation for an agent that I instantly connected with. I think we talked more about life then anything else when we first hooked up. I loved it.
I've registered a couple of appropriate domain names that I will be using to help sell the house. I'm going to be taking my own pictures since I've realized most of the people taking photos out there are CLUELESS how to shoot a house. I actually joked with Laura that I should do this as freelance for people. Come in and shoot their house so that on their listings the houses actually look great.
One crazy idea I thought of this morning (and I can already see Laura shaking her head) is what if we did not put a listing price on the house? People who are shopping know what similar houses are going for. With services like Zillow this is even easier. So what if we told people "make us an offer."
If I walked into a house and was posed with this I'd make them a real offer based on the value I thought the house was to me. If I gave them some crappy low ball number then they would laugh and move on. But, on the same time if I made them offer above and beyond what they were thinking they'd jump for joy. As a seller this makes me really think hard about it. When we bought the house I thought the price was way to low, but as a buyer I'm not going to argue. Now that I'm in the seller shoes why not see what people think of the value and have them make an offer. How is that for new media?
I will be posting photos, perhaps a video walk through and other things to help sell the house. You can be sure that I'll have lots of pictures because I hate looking at listings that only have a couple. I actually looked at one the other day that had three photos of the house and three of landmarks around town. Why in the world would someone want to see a picture of town hall when shopping for a house. Pictures of the parks, schools and other attractions? THAT makes sense and I will be doing that as well since I had never heard of the town we live in before moving here and I really like it now. Knowing what is around here and how good the schools are is a selling point to the right people.
My agent must have had his ears burning because I just got an e-mail from him. Too funny.
