If you’re a home seller and you’re not doing this, good luck!

Scott Himelstein with the Scott Himelstein Group. All right, so one of the things that I am seeing a lot right now, there’s a lot of agents putting in the Multiple Listing Service, whether it be in the public remarks or in the agent remarks, stating that the home has now been reduced 40k, 50k 60,000k below recent comparables. So the question becomes, okay, what are the comps?

Now, the problem with using recent comps in the market that we’re in right now, you’re talking about a lagging indicator because the comparable that just closed escrow literally was probably 30 to 45, 60 days ago that it actually went into escrow.  So you’re looking at a totally different market back two to three months ago, as we all know. So if an agent’s doing that, you know, you’re not really doing a real service to the seller.

So one of the things that we’re really telling our sellers right now is that you need to be ahead of the pricing curve in this downward market. It’s really critical if you really think about it. Now, again, if the inventory is going up and the interest rates are going up but the sales are going down, well, that makes sense that you’re going to have to be pricing ahead of the curve if you want to get out in front of it right away to avoid sitting on the market for a very long period of time.

So it’s really critical right now that we’re telling our sellers that you really need to make sure that you have a plan when you meet with a real estate agent. Yes, a really good real estate agent is going to be able to have incredible marketing that will be able to get your home in front of many people, as many people as possible. Yet at the same time, it’s really up to you as the seller where you price the home so that way the buyers feel that they’re actually comfortable and they see the value in your home.

So one indicator that we’ve really been tracking lately, and I actually think it’s probably one of the most important, is the list to successful sales rate. In Los Angeles County, it’s actually hovering around 68%. Now, that’s not a bad number, but it’s obviously significantly lower when you consider that the beginning of the year we were looking at 92%. So at 92%, a seller is going to have the opportunity to be much more aggressive in their pricing just due to the fact of the lack availability of homes for sale, lower interest rates, whatever the factor may be, you can take that risk, but at 68%, going back to what we were talking about earlier, that it’s really important that you as a seller get ahead of the curve and actually get in front of it.

So we’re actually seeing numbers here in the San Fernando Valley right now that the numbers are down just in the last week here from October of last year at this time to October of this year, that the number of pending sales is down 55% and the number of closed escrows is down 58%. So homes are still selling, but they have to be priced accordingly. So again, make sure that you talk with your real estate agent to come up with a detailed plan of actually how they’re going to market the home and what your pricing strategy is going to be. If you are actually on the market two, three weeks and you’re not getting any showings, you, as a seller, are probably going to be very upset. So it’s important to address the pricing strategy up front.

If you’re not getting any showings and you’re not getting any offers the first two weeks, then maybe it’s a really good idea before the home comes on the market to kind of decide, “Hey, if we’re not getting any activity or any offers the first two weeks, it probably makes sense for us to reduce the house 15, 20, 30,000k ,whatever it may be, every two to three weeks until we actually get in front of the pricing curve.”

Any real estate questions, give me a call. 818-396-3311, 818-396-3311 and thanks for watching our vlog as always.