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Is Spring really the best time to sell your home?
I’ve been advocating for listing your property for sale during the typical doldrums for years, and occasionally a few brave souls take the plunge. Have a look at this image below and the data used to arrive at the conclusion next time you think it’s best to wait til Spring or Summer.
Why should you list your home right now and not wait until everyone else? It’s simple: Supply and Demand. The buyers are still out there, but the homes for sale are not. So when a good one comes up, it’s like chum in a pool of great whites.
As an example, I was at two open houses Sunday with a client, one at 468 Noe, the other at 442-444 Noe. It looked like a holiday block party, or a daytime Halloween Trick or Treat extravaganza. It was a madhouse! So many buyers…serious buyers…walking in and out of those homes. When I hold my own open houses I usually have to stay at the front door and greet visitors. At these open houses I was able to walk around and hear the conversations. Real conversations about what it will take to “win” it. How will their financing stack up against a potential cash buyer. They could “live with the kitchen”, or “we’re definitely going to remodel”. It’s the same with just about every other good house, priced right, in a good location. San Francisco simply has more buyers than good, quality, property for sale, and so I say again…it’s a great time to sell.
Buyers are out there. Don’t wait until your competition lists their home for sale.
Tis The Season For “Temp-Off-The-Market” Listings
This week and last, I’ve seen countless emails like this from real estate professionals:
” My listing is off MLS for the holidays, but still available.”
” Withdrawn in MLS, but seller wants to sell before Spring!”
” Not back on MLS until January, but actively showing. Motivated Sellers!”
” Off MLS for holidays, but can still show with some notice.”
During the past two weeks, in Marin and San Francisco, almost 100 listings have been withdrawn or temporarily taken off the market- but they aren’t really off the market.
Contrary to popular belief, homes DO sell during the holiday season. Last year, in San Francisco alone, there were over 350 homes sold from November 15th through the end of the year.
So how do you market your listing during the holidays when it’s off MLS and your sellers still expect you to sell their home before Spring? You use PocketListings.net. Why? On Pocketlistings.net any post can be searched, linked to, ranked, Shared, emailed, marketed, and seen by potentially thousands of people around the world. We also feed every post you do to our Twitter page (over 1800 followers) and to our Facebook (over 1600 friends).
Your sellers may go dark for the holiday, but your listing doesn’t have to!
“Hip Pockets”
In Dallas, pocket listings are “hip.”
The vast majority of home sellers who list their homes with an agent put the property in the multiple listing service and stick a sign in the yard. But more and more folks opt to market their property on the down low. Agents in Dallas call them hip-pocket listings.
The number of such off-market home deals has ballooned as the number of properties available has declined in Dallas-area neighborhoods. The trend is especially gaining steam in affluent neighborhoods in North Dallas, Highland Park and Lakewood.
“With the shortage of inventory — especially in the Park Cities — more hip-pockets are selling,” said Amy Detwiler, an agent with Briggs Freeman Sotheby’s International Realty. “A lot of people prefer private sales because they don’t want to put their house on the open market.
“It is privacy issue,” says Detwiler, who estimates that 30 percent of the sales in her office are hip-pocket transactions. “Sometimes I put a sign up after the transaction closes, but not before.”So rather than endure legions of weekend lookie-loos and have images of the inside of their properties plastered all over the Internet, these buyers and their agents keep the listing a secret.
Well, sort of. To sell the house, someone has to know about it. “We rely on our Realtor network to get the word out for hip-pocket listings,” said Karen Luter of Allie Beth Allman and Associates. “We have a hot sheet, and they get spread around at Realtor networking groups,” she said.
Luter said some sellers she represents don’t want to go through the entire process of putting their house on the MLS, with photographs and scheduling open houses.
“There is also an unspoken prestige with hip-pocket listings,” she said. She’s marketing another North Dallas property that the owner doesn’t want to list formally right now. If it doesn’t sell, the home might get a traditional listing after the first of the year.
“If they have a great property, they can give it a shot,” she said. “But the property has to be very unique — it has to be best in show.”The scant number of homes on the market in some neighborhoods is the chief reason off-market listings are on the rise, agents and analysts agree.
“It says that market for good listings is getting very tight,” said Steve Murray, founder of Colorado-based residential brokerage consulting firm Real Trends Inc. “This is happening in other markets as well, especially in higher-priced segments.
“This may be the case for some time as prices haven’t recovered enough to bring new supplies of inventory to match the demand from buyer.”
The number of homes for sale in North Texas has dropped about a third since mid-2010. There is only a 4.5-month supply of houses on the market. A six-month supply is considered a balanced market by real estate analysts.
“In a seller’s market, you always have more hip-pocket listings as the market turns around,” said agent Lydia Player of Ebby Halliday Realtors. “And it still only works if you have a realistic price — people aren’t going to overpay.” “We have only a two-month inventory in that neighborhood,” she said. “And the owners don’t want to have a parade of people through their home.
There’s a lot happening that never shows up in the MLS numbers.
Source: DallasNews
The Most Expensive Home On The U.S. Market Is “Off The Market.”
While reading one of the many real estate blogs that now cover pocket listings, I came across one featuring the most expensive home in the U.S. If you Google “most expensive home for sale in the U.S.” it doesn’t show up anywhere, as it’s still considered “off-the-market” or not in MLS (Multiple Listing Service). But this over-the-top piece of real estate is very much on the market and here are the deets:
“The colossal, hilltop contemporary compound in the hills of Bel Air that Robb Report named as their Ultimate Home in 2011 is very quietly being shopped around with a price tag $150,000,000 price tag. A Montecito, CA-based real estate broker well known in real estate circles to work with a very well-heeled clientele. The current owner—is a Saudi prince or another—purchased the property back in November 1993 though a corporate entity for $1,875,000 from legendary pop music composer and producer Burt Bacharach.”
The village-like residence—an interconnected collection of structures designed by Richard Landry and composed mostly of glass, steel, smooth stucco and rough-cut sandstone—sits high and tight on just over 1.5 acres and surrounds a fully-enclosed, piazza-like central motor court. Combined, the civic center-sized behemoth measures in at around 40,000 square feet and contains a staggering number of bedrooms—28! A few of the interior features include: numerous rooms for formal and informal entertaining; a zebra wood lined library; a home theater and separate recording studio; and a mini-mansion sized master suite with dual dressing areas and at least one bathroom sheathed almost entirely in white onyx; a complete spa facility with gym and private massage rooms.
Outdoor amenities include: a roof terrace with views from downtown to the Pacific Ocean; a deep and heated loggia for comfortable outdoor living even on cool winter evenings; a resort style negative edge swimming pool with tanning shelf; terraced fruit orchards. Below the pool there’s a titanic terrace with outdoor kitchen and sand stone fireplace perched atop a roomy recreation room outfitted with media lounge area, billiards table and a built-in leather-clad bar.
If $150,000,000 is out of your price range (darn!), check back with us weekly for our featured “Pocket Listing of Week.” Have a pocket listing you’d like to submit? Email us at: contact@pocketlistings.net. Or join Pocketlistings.net and share it with our fast growing network of buyers, sellers and real estate professionals!
Source: RealEstalker
Atop The Mondrian Hotel In #Miami (#SouthBeach), The Penthouse Could Be Yours For $2,100,000
Absolutely stunning unit! live on top of the Mondrian Hotel. Unit features 2 bedrooms, 2 baths, huge family room, massive bath room, with stand alone tub, steam shower, 2 plasma TV’s in Master bath alone. 6 plasma TV’s in the unit. 1800 square foot rooftop terrace overlooking Star Island, Biscayne Bay, and Miami skyline, by far the most stunning views in Miami. Unit has own double door hallway entrance. Building offers 5 star restaurant, and lounge. Stunning pool on the bay. 2 Valet spaces free!
We’re not quite sure if we like the views better, the bathrooms, or the fact there is a flat screen above what appears to be a full outdoor (rooftop) kitchen. Just one more reason to contact the agent marketing this amazing penthouse on top of the Mondrian Hotel in Miami Beach, Florida. If you find out, will ya let us know? Kthx!
-Mondrian Hotel Residences Penthouse Unit For Sale: 2 bed, 2 bath, 1900 sqft, $2,100,000 [PocketListings.net]
-Mondrian Hotel Residences [website]
-Mondrian Hotel Miami Beach, Florida
