Real Estate in Barrington & The Northwest Suburbs

In my first post about selling your Palatine home we talked about the MLS, agents, and syndicating the listing. Now that's done and your home is beginning to appear on a lot of web sites, it's time to see what else we'll do to market your Palatine home.

Fortunately the MLS is just the start of your online presence and the marketing we do. Now it's time to take a look at a sign, the benefits and how we'll make it an interactive experience.

Sign or No Sign?

This will be a personal choice but as buyers of homes in Palatine still drive around preferred neighborhoods, we encourage home owners where-ever possible to have a sign. It's not always possible for town homes or condos, an alternative option is to have a sign on an upper floor window.

The sign tells buyers your home is for sale, and they'll slow the car down and start considering if it's the house for them. A  sign must have the name of the brokerage that is listing the property and a contact phone number. Some say for sale, others will have a seperate rider identifying a for sale or for rent. Agents can also add other riders , perhaps adding their name and cellphone.

The sign gives the drive buy viewer the option of calling for more details. However many buyers are not ready to make contact with an agent. So we'll hope they write down the address and go home, open up the laptop or tablet and search the address. WIth our syndication they should find it.

Is there a better sign experience?

Knowing that buyers crave information yet like to remain anonymous as long as possible why not make the best possible use of the sign? On the left you'll find a different type of sign. It is the same size as the one above, you can see everything we added to the sign. The required company name and contact phone number are there, but it includes a lot more.

• Property Address.
• Some essential details.
• Domain address - we'll talk about why in the next post.
• Three high quality photos of the interior.
• A QR code. Quick Response. These can be scanned by smart phones for more information about the property. (It's the black and white square on the left.)
• A text code, again for cell phone users to request more information.

Of course the choice is yours, sign or no sign, regular sign or interactive sign.

Next time we'll talk about that web address on the sign and how we utilize a single property web site.

The marketing of your Palatine home will continue.

Did you know that at least 80% of the buyers that walk through your home will do so with an agent of their own. It still is the leading source of finding a buyer and therefore is the number one prioritized item on a good marketing plan. The way to these buyers is through advertising to those agents and also online.

Let's look at the Palatine agents first.

If an agent wants to find homes to show their buyers the largest source is our MLS. (Multiple Listing Service). So it is the first place to advertise your home for sale. Now you are listed, any broker with a buyer in the Palatine area can check the database of homes to find properties that might be suitable for their client.

Now let's see where we can get the MLS listing to show up.

Where do buyers go to do research and find homes. Online. In fact it's now as high as 92% start their research online. That's before they hire a Realtor, before they drive neighborhoods, before anything else.

The simple addition of your home listing to our MLS will mean it now shows up on Realtor.com. It's still one of the most commonly visited sites by buyers but it does not stand alone. If you've heard of Yahoo real estate, Trulia, Zillow, Homes.com you'll know there are a lot of alternative web sites that buyers visit. So we want to be sure your home is on all of these sites, the big ones and the little ones. We achieve this by syndication. In fact we'll syndicate your home to over 900 of these web sites. If anyone inquires about your home on one of these web sites that inquiry will be sent either to Corinne, or if an agent has paid for leads from that site it might go to them. Either way buyers interested in your home will be directed to a broker.

Our picture is just a small sampling of the sites we always syndicate to.

Of course we'll be adding as many photos as we can to your listing, a virtual tour with more photos and even video, before we publish the listing. So right out of the gate your home will provide those buyer researchers with a lot of information. Viewers can send inquiry emails, request showings or just bookmark the listing for the future.

Do you think this is something you would benefit from when listing your Palatine home for sale?  

Stay tuned for the next stage in marketing your Palatine home for sale.

If your Barrington home is for sale, it's likely part of a subdivision. With the exception of homes in the center of the village of Barrington, it's an important piece of information about your home for sale. Which Barrington subdivision is it in?

While not all buyers know which subdivision/s they would like to live in this does not apply to every buyer. Local buyers may know the area well enough to have not only a target village but a target subdivision. They may go online and search for homes using the subdivision as part of their search criteria. So what happens if they search by subdivision, your subdivision, and your home does not come up in the results?

Simply they don't see your home for sale. 

Taking this one step farther a buyer might contact a Realtor and ask to be sent a list of homes in a specific subdivision. I can search my MLS adding all their criteria including the subdivision name. Our system relies on the data input by the listing brokerage/agent. If the subdivision is not input, your home would not be returned in the results, and therefore not included in that list I just sent out.

Estates at Lake Barrington - A Subdivision Entrance

Our MLS input forms have mandatory information needed, like address, price and a lot of other data. Subdivision name is there but it's an optional field. Your subdivision is freely available information. Even if you are not sure, or it's not obvious, the tax records generally have the information. All Realtors using our MLS system have access to the tax records, it's linked directly by PIN - Property Identification Number.

I highly encourage you to check with your listings agent to find the Barrington subdivision your home is in and publish it as part of our MLS data. You never know, it could grab your buyer!

If you are about to sell your home you'll likely be calling on Barrington Realtors to list your home and expose it to the largest part of the real estate market - the other Realtors. The reason for this is quite simple. We as Realtors are the ones with the majority of the buyers.

To list your home for sale requires what we refer to as a listing agreement. A better term is an exclusive right to sell your home utilizing our MLS as a vehicle to expose to other Barrington Realtors. It is a written contract laying out what the Realtor is expected to do and in what timeframe.

Today we are talking about that time-frame, what it can be, what it should be, what effect the time-frame may have on the marketing of your home. An agreement can be anything from 1 day to 1 year. After a year you can agree to extend the agreement but it must be in writing. If another year passes, another written extension can be agreed and so on.

Barrington Realtors prefer longer agreements.

Why? Any Realtor that lists a home for sale does so on a commission only basis. No income from the broker, no help with marketing costs, no salary for any time spent during the sale process. Payday is a few days after closing day once the broker pays the agent. With an average market time in Barrington over 6 months, it's a fair assessment to assume it might take this long to sell, even more. A sale rewards the Realtor for the work, and reimburses for any costs incurred.

The longer the agreement, the better chance a Barrington Realtorhas of  selling and closing the sale and getting paid.

Sellers prefer shorter agreements.

Why? Some sellers don't like the idea of being tied to long term agreements. In the event the partnership does not work well, there are disagreements with no resolutions, the seller feels they are not receiving the service they expected, it stands to reason they would want to be able to get out of the agreement.

So how long should Barrington Realtors & Sellers Agree to stay with each other?

Well there is no rule, it's up to both parties to reach an agreement. If a seller wants a 3 month agreement but the Barrington Realtor wants a 6 month minimum, one of you will compromise. Don't be surprised though if you stick to your guns to find the Realtor will not take your listing. We have to do a risk assessment, if the risk if not selling is high, the brokerage may decline the listing based on office policy or the Realtor may decline.

What's Fair to both parties? I would say the seller should give the listing agent enough time to get the sale and the Barrington Realtor should be fairly sure they can get the sale in the time-frame they agree to based on price, condition and market reports. Interview a few Barrington Realtors before you sign an agreement, find out what they are going to do to market your property.

Question? If a seller wanted to be able to cancel an agreement at any time for any reason, would they be prepared to buy that ability by paying an upfront fee to help cover the administration and marketing costs incurred? ( Not legal for short sales.)  

Open houses in Barringtonin the years preceding the explosion of the internet, were a very common thing. In todays real estate business they have certainly declined in popularity, let's face it the chance of someone driving around, stumbling upon an open house, visiting and buying the house are slim to none. I am not saying it doesn't happen but the odds are very low. Buyers today use the internet to do their research, which is a good thing.

So why are Barrington open houses a liability Corinne?

A Barrington listing Realtor, or not so good, a Realtor from the same office will hold your house open to the public for 2 to 4 hours. One person. The Realtors job is to sell the house right? Maybe not! It's a true statement that the reason other Realtors will hold the house open is not to sell your house but to snag a buyer. Or more than one buyer. But here are some of those liability issues:

• Realtor's have been murdered at open houses. Grim as that sounds we are opening ourselves to that possibility.
• Burglars can case a house for possible theft of high ticket items and check out security.
• More than one visitor at a time makes it difficult to watch everyone-items may go missing.
• Breakage, it's not deliberate but kids can break expensive items, even adults can be clumsy.
• Food and drink if spilled can cause expensive damage to carpets and hardwood floors.

The internet is as good a tool as any I know to weed out the "lookie loo"s from the "worthy buyers". It the worthy buyers you want to visit. The ones that have proved they can financially afford your home, have a good reason to buy not just a whim and have pre-qualified your house online by looking at photos and tours and deciding it needs to be seen. Those buyers will either have a Realtor, call a Realtor, or call the listing agent.

If you don't know me there's one thing for sure, I shoot straight and this is one of those posts. I believe honesty is always the best policy, even though sometimes it might sting.

Just remember this post is written by Corinne Guest, therefore it is my opinion and others may disagree, but I have the right to publish my opinions, and if it helps some of you make a decision about open houses, then for that I am thankful.

I had lunch with a friend today and we were discussing internet advertising and how far it can reach versus print advertising and it's limitations. Of course we were talking real estate but the principal applies to much more. Consider the upcoming Black Friday. Many buyers will do research online, go shopping on Friday or the new trend forget Friday and shop on "Cyber Monday" online.

Back to real estate:

There is no doubt as each year passes, more real estate buyers and sellers are using the internet in their pre-buying or selling research.

Sellers want to know what market conditions are like and with many local agents providing regular market reports on their blogs, this information is freely available, published by Realtors and Brokers online with charts and graphs to back up the "speech". I provide markets reports every month for the Barrington area, and quarterly for Wynstone and Lake Barrington Shores, because these areas are my market. Yet as a member of the MLS in Northern Illinois I can prepare market reports for any area I wish because I have access to the data.

Buyers search for homes by city or area from the comfort of home or even office. They can browse through thousands of listings, save favorites, even request more information or showings. It works well because not all buyers want to have to call to get information. They can digest it at their own pace as often as they like while remaining anonymous until they are ready to take the next step.

Tell me you don't like remaining anonymous while you are internet surfing and I'll eat my hat!

So why does the internet  have a far wider reach than newspaper print in the real estate world?

• It's available 24/7 365 days a year, and it's updated more than once every day.
• Visitors can sign up to be notified of new listings immediately.
• Any website is world wide, not limited to a few local readers. 35% of my visitors are from around the country and world,  and nearly 50% are not locals. That only leaves 15% local visitors. Those 15% might buy a paper but many do not.
• We can publish not just one tiny little photograph but literally hundreds of high definition photos.
• We can expand the information we publish, information relevant to home buyers.
• Virtual tours are easily added to listings.
• Video is an upcoming media, and online its easy to publish. Virtual tours are good, videos are better.
• Visitors can click a bookmark for every page they may want to return to, better than starting over each time, right?

As Realtors we tell you to keep your listed house clean and tidy. If you don't know by now it's, curb appeal, location, price. A well presented and positioned house in the market will attract buyers and bring you an offer, maybe two.

As a buyers agent I show a lot of homes. Most of the time the listing agent has a key available in the lock-box for me to open your door and show my buyers your home. What could be easier? For me it makes my scheduling simpler, I don't have to stick to an exact time, for the seller it's important to know our lock boxes are indestructible, so your home is safe.

Time after time I get to a property and then have to deal with sticky locks. The key won't turn,  I'm supposed to pull the door to turn a key, or push or lift. You might look at me and wonder what the fuss is all about, all I have to do is........turn left, turn right, lift up, push down etc. etc. Well it's easy for you to say, you know what to do to get your sticky lock to turn, but I don't.

So for your Illinois Realtors sake, if you are going to list your home for sale, please fix a sticky lock. It's also worth the little extra effort to make sure your door is easy to open and close. If you have one of those more complex locks, tape the locking instructions to the inside of the door where I can see it. Then I'll be sure to lock your door nice and tight. Make it easy for me to open and lock. I will truly appreciate it.  

In a time of uncertainty where property values have been falling for a number of years now, we all look to data to see how our market is fairing. You can read my market reports, they are always being updated and more Northern Illinois real estate areas are added every month. You can also ask me any specific questions you might have, I am happy to answer, unless it needs a crystal ball, they don't give those out in licensing classes or continuing education.

One piece of data everyone wants to know is the value of their home. Owners want to know, sellers need to know and buyers should know. Sellers must price right to sell and buyers want to pay market value and no more. To find this data out, Illinois Realtors can provide a CMA-comparative market analysis.

A recent buyer could not find anything they liked in their preferred price range. So up goes the budget and bingo we find the right house. This Northern Illinois property had been sitting on the market for a while, with a few price cuts but no sale. Buyers decide it's the one, so we start a CMA on the property and low and behold, it's still drastically over-priced. Nevertheless an offer is presented, it may seem like a low ball offer to the sellers based on the asking price, but it isn't based on the market value range we came up with. Of course I never blindly throw out a low ball offer, I present my data with the offer for all to review. Deal agreed and this Northern Illinois property is under contract, closes  just over a month later. The appraised value comes in on target, not way up there at the original asking price; so the finance approval sailed through that litmus test too.

Now it's time, the buyers have moved in and want to sell their property. CMA prepared, a market range determined based on comparable sales, it's never an exact number as most properties are different in some way but a range gives us an idea on where to set the asking price. Bam, the buyers, now sellers are ignoring everything they just taught the sellers of their new house. They want to price high and test the market.

I don't understand, we just showed the seller their mistake and now you want to do what they did....WHY?

If you are in the market to sell your Northern Illinois real estate or just want a list of home sales near you, we are happy to assist.

When you've got Barrington real estate to sell, you need exposure. Exposure will ultimately bring you a buyer. By listing with a Barrington Realtor, you'll get exposure to all the other Realtors and their clients. In terms of where your buyer is that pretty much accounts for 80% of buyers. But what about all the buyers who are just researching, the ones in the early stages, the ones not yet ready to start offically looking for a new home. We all know they are online surfing the cyberspace waves and looking at listings.

Do we? Well we know but what about you? Time after time we tell you that your Barrington property is being advertised online and getting the best exposure possible. As the seller you accept what we tell you, and that's great because it means you trust us. But wouldn't it be nice to know how many buyers are actually looking at your Barrington property?

No problem, I can do that.

As listing agents selling Barrington real estate, we use a service called List-hub that takes your listing in the MLS and syndicates it to other real estate portals, like Zillow for example. They'll advertise your home for sale in the Barrington real estate listings section. Now you get the idea, let me tell you it syndicates your listing to many portals, so no matter what a users favorite site might be, you're listing will be there. Even buyers who already have an agent will go online to continue looking.

Here's a section of my September List-Hub report for one of my listings. For privacy I have removed certain information including the photo but you'll get the idea.

For this property at the top right it tells us most viewers came from Zillow, followed by Realtor.com and one via Hotpads. Trulia obviously had some looks as you can see one person actually clicked through. Farther down the report it all tells me how many enquiries were made, in other words how many people filled in a form. Not all sites provide the same data.

So yes there are buyers out there in Cyberspace looking at Barrington real estate listings, and our sellers are provided with this report free of charge if they would like it, every month.

If there is one thing true of my daily life as a real estate agent selling ranch homes in Arlington Heights Illinois it's this. I can always find subjects to write about that are true life.

We are back to talking about over-priced homes in Arlington Heights, whether they are ranches or not, finding the right listing price to attract great buyers and get a quick sale, and why ignoring data might just cost you dearly. Arlington Heights does have it's fair share of ranch homes, they are spread out among the two story homes. It's not that difficult for a good agent to estimate market value, so why do owners ignore the proof and list far too high?

You are lucky to get a buyer in the first month of marketing, a buyer that will put down a hefty proportion of the cost, is well qualified for the finance, can close quickly, can carry their existing house so make the offer non sale contingent. Now you dig your heels in and ignore the fact that the buyers agent has also proved market value. Your Arlington Heights Ranch home works well for the buyers, they liked it enough to make you an offer.

But you are refusing to budge off your emotional platform so the buyer is off to look at other properties. How long are you going to wait to find the buyer has disappeared, lost interest or worse bought another ranch in Arlington Heights?

After all when it comes to relocation buyers they are ready to buy. They have to move but they are never desperate and will not overpay for a ranch home in Arlington Heights when they are working with a good buyers agent. Of course I wonder if you were told about selling your home three times. To the buyer, the buyers agent and then the appraiser?

Many a good working relationship between owner and Realtor goes sour not because anyone did anything wrong but because there was no meeting of minds at the beginning. If you price your Arlington Heights ranch home right at the beginning you should attract buyers and pass the buyers agent and appraiser tests too.

Visit Relocation House Hunters for all Arlington Heights ranch homes.