How Do SW Florida Homes for Sale Fare in Election Years?

How Do SW Florida Homes for Sale Fare in Election Years? This one was news to me. The Wall Street Journal had it buried in a ‘spread sheet’ section of their online Real Estate section: “Why It’s Harder to Sell Your Home in an Election Year.” If you are like me—never having had an inkling that SW Florida homes for sale have rough sledding in an election year (like this one)—you’d have to read the details.

“The uncertainty of a looming election can cause a dip in home sales,” it detailed, “especially if the race is close.” The article was illustrated by a cartoon showing a neighborhood street whose every lawn was graced by alternate “vote!” signs and homes for sale signs. The underlying thesis was that in close elections, house hunters are reluctant to buy if an uncertain political future makes them unsure about their own financial fortunes.

This might sound reasonable from a logic perspective, but as you read further into the factual basis for the idea, you’re likely to start losing confidence.

The whole basis for the article is a political science paper published in 2014.

In the British Journal of Political Science.

Based on housing sales back in 1999-2006.

In 73 elections.

Most of us would begin to worry about why this couldn’t make the grade in a United States journal of political science, since it centered on U.S. elections. Perhaps a research quality issue? Then there’s the fact that those dates are 10-17 years old. There is also the puzzling notion that there have been 73 elections in the past couple of decades…but it turns out that they are dealing with gubernatorial elections from a select number of states. Perhaps our average house hunter checking out homes for sale in SW Florida actually does hang their financial fortunes on who the next Governor is going to be…but I wouldn’t bet on it.

As for Presidential elections, the article mentions a separate analysis that “uncovered a similar effect.” But, on closer reading, not really. This analysis was by someone who studied California sales only, and determined that in the Golden State, home prices rose by an average of about 1% less during election years. But they still rose by 4.5% in those years. If that means they were “harder to sell,” you’d have to explain why…

This is only a guess, but if you were trying to determine if it will be easier or harder to find buyers for SW Florida homes for sale in Election Year 2016, it seems more logical to look for factors that directly affect the buyers—such as today’s historically low mortgage interest rates. When buyers do the arithmetic showing how low monthly payments have become, I’m willing to bet that overshadows errant thoughts about who the next Governor is going to be.

How Do SW Florida Homes for Sale Fare in Election Years? If you are readying to buy or sell a SW Florida home, you probably don’t really need to worry about who will occupy the Statehouse as much as who will be helping you navigate the market. I hope you’ll elect me for the job!

You are the Ultimate SW Florida Real Estate Agent Recruiter

You are the Ultimate SW Florida Real Estate Agent Recruiter. A sizeable portion of the recruiting business has gone online, and a lot of small and medium-sized businesses are using them. We hear a lot of ads for them—promising job hunters an efficient way to distribute their resumes; promising business managers an efficient way to attract new talent.

Busy SW Florida business managers are assured they’ll snag quality candidates to fill their open positions by simply filling out an online form describing their job vacancies. Some even promise to deliver the resumes of dozens of candidates almost overnight (if not actually overnight!) using their online job-hunting database systems. What is left unsaid is what personnel professionals know to be the most important next step in the recruiting process: the interview.

If you are wondering what this has to do with you and SW Florida real estate, the answer is just about everything! If you are selling your home or condo (and are among the nearly 90% of people who team up with a real estate agent to help get it done), your choice of agents makes you a personnel manager. You are the CEO of your own home selling enterprise; you’re the boss. And all experienced business owners will verify that just collecting resumes and leafing through them is not good enough. Not when you’re looking for top talent.

It takes some winnowing; some qualifying; the willingness to make judgment calls. There are books written about effective approaches to interviewing, but you don’t have to have a business or psychology degree to select a SW Florida real estate agent you can have confidence in. And you don’t have to devote days to the process, either. There are a couple of pointers about the interview, and a shortcut to the whole process:

First, once you have picked out the names of a few SW Florida real estate agents whose qualifications seem to fit the bill, give them a call. Be clear and honest about where you are in the process, and let them know you are pre-interviewing. You can do this over the phone. Let them present their qualifications briefly—and then get down to business.

• Ask them for the names and phone numbers of two former clients and two current clients.
• Then call the clients (be sure to thank them for their time at the end of the calls).

You’ll find out as much (probably more) this way than you would through hours-long conversations with the real estate agents themselves. By the time you have their clients’ feedback on how well they provide marketing materials, handle buyers, and stay in touch, you’ll be a local expert on SW Florida’s real estate agents.

You are the Ultimate SW Florida Real Estate Agent Recruiter. Once you determine which ones have the ‘A’ ratings, it will be time to sit down and have a couple of in-depth interviews—the kind that tell you how well you mesh on the extremely important personal level. By then, you’ll have the satisfaction of having done a professional job of selecting your agent who (I hope) is me!

When a SW Florida Listing Goes Nowhere, Two Action Guidelines

When a SW Florida Listing Goes Nowhere, Two Action Guidelines. Suppose you had done everything right: interviewed several SW Florida real estate agents and compared what they told you; prepped your property to near-perfection before the professional photographer’s arrival; confirmed all the descriptive details before they appeared in the SW Florida listings…yet six months later, the place still hadn’t sold.

Your agent had done a reasonable job, it seemed—yet the results were disappointing. Not nearly enough showings for one thing. And even though the marketing materials seemed sufficient, the response had been, in the end, weak. What do you do now?

There are several guidelines to follow that will increase the likelihood of a timely sale. Of them, two are absolute must. One of them is well known­­—mentioned in every credible source of residential real estate knowledge. The other is seldom mentioned.

That first one is the obvious, universally recognized action item: double–check your asking price! If that amount is out of line, almost anything else you can do is likely to be wasted effort. If you require any future buyer to fall in love with your home to the extent that they will ignore better values that are on display elsewhere in the SW Florida listings, you are probably living in, as the English like to say, “cloud cuckoo land.” The wished-for result could happen—but it’s probably not going to happen to you.

The rock-solid evidence points in only one direction: people who seriously comb the SW Florida listings are planning to spend a large sum—so they will be noting and comparing prices. If your proposed number is far out of whack, they’re unlikely to waste a lot of time investigating the details. If they show up at all, it’s very likely to be out of curiosity (“what in the world are these people thinking?”). The agents who bring them, will probably have warned their clients about the asking price. This is not how to sell your house.

The second guideline is equally important, but seldom mentioned. It is to continue to use common sense. Do not, in other words, take leave of your senses. Don’t dummy-up all of a sudden. Do not abandon everything you ever learned about doing any kind of business.

The reason that this important guideline is seldom mentioned is because you would not think it’s necessary to put it into words. That’s not always the case when your home has not sold, because of what happens next. After a listing in the SW Florida MLS has expired, a homeowner is likely to receive multiple solicitation letters that GUARANTEE that the sender’s company will be able to sell the property! They might as well write, “Take Leave of Your Senses! Sign here!”  

The reason that such solicitation promises exist is the frustration level their authors impute to the recipient homeowners. That, plus the fact that they can actually promise to sell the property…but there’s a catch. It’s associated with the first guideline. Yes, they can sell anyone’s house…for an asking price that’s well below its market value. (So could anyone else). But that’s not what any homeowner, frustrated or not, is looking for when they list with a SW Florida agent.

The cool, collected way to proceed is to decide whether the asking price is in line with the SW Florida competition—then seek an agent who will bring new energy and integrity into play. This should definitely not be someone who guarantees anything that common sense tells you cannot be guaranteed. Or whose introduction is misleading.

When a SW Florida Listing Goes Nowhere, Two Action Guidelines. If you find yourself in the process of re-evaluating your home’s selling strategy, I hope you’ll consider giving me a call to discuss a new, more promising plan of attack! Please Call Me TODAY!