A recent study of more than 22,000 homeowners who bought their homes within the last nine years found that current homeowners plan to be “more practical” in their next purchase, focusing on livable space rather than unnecessary upgrades.   An article in Los Angeles Times give us some insight:

• Many of the luxury amenities once considered necessities among home buyers, such as community clubhouses, dog parks, golf courses, and 24-hour security, are no longer priorities, according to the survey. Repeat buyers also said a swimming pool isn’t a must, but a children’s playground with walking paths are essential.

• One of the takeaways from the survey, according to an architect firm, is that buyers nowadays should rethink space. For example, buyers should look for kitchen cabinets that go all the way to the ceiling for added space and efficiency. They also should pass on high-priced focal stairways, opting instead of steps that are tucked away and out of sight.

• Home buyers also should be on the lookout for dead space. If the dining room or media room is eliminated, at least some of the square footage should be dedicated to secondary bedrooms. The once-standard 10-by-10 bedroom no longer is acceptable to most buyers.

• The survey also found that many buyers have transitioned toward green features, such as high-efficiency appliances, insulation, and windows that are not large areas of glass. However, many buyers did not report the use of recycled materials as a necessity.

• Other findings from the survey show that large kitchens, with islands, are desirable, as are main-floor master bedrooms, and two-car garages.

Additional Reading:

Does home staging really work?

Does your Pasadena home have curb appeal?

What can you expect from a great real estate agent?

Sell Your Home in 30 days or less

Part 2 of Sell Your Home in 30 days or less

How to create a great home selling brochure

PasadenaViews Real Estate Team

Real Estate Agents

445 South Fair Oaks Avenue

Pasadena, CA 91105

Irina at PasadenaViews.com

(626)629-VIEW (8439)

I have always wondered why in todays day and age of technology and digital cameras, there are still Pasadena homes listed for sale every day without a single photo. Digital cameras are inexpensive. They allow real estate agents to take a ton of home photos and then pick the best ones.

So, whats the problem? There is absolutely no excuse for not having a photo listed in the Pasadena Multiple Listing Service.
Pasadena home sellers, please make sure that you see your Pasadena Real Estate Agent snapping away photos after you have prepared your Pasadena home for sale.

Heres why?

1. A photograph is almost always the first element that connects the buyer with your Pasadena home. It is the handshake, the first impression, the thing that cuts through the clutter to create an emotional connection with the buyer.
2. Multiple photographs of your Pasadena home are needed for Multiple Listing Service (MLS) input, internet marketing, property brochures, flash presentations and print advertising. There is no way to avoid taking photographs to property market your Pasadena home.
3. Many times, the buyer will decide whether or not to visit your home and the agent will decide whether or not to show your home based on the quality and presentation of the photos.

The California Association of Realtors findings show that ˜Multiple photographs/Slideshows continue to be the online feature with the highest rating among all online features, followed by ˜Map/Directions.

Point2 conducted a study monitoring listings over a 30 day period and found that properties listed with only 1 photo generated 5 views while listings with 21 or more photos generate over 77 views. Thats quite a difference!

Another study compares the number of photos to the number of Days on Market (DOM). The findings show that listings with more photos sold faster. The findings are fascinating:

1 photo = 70 Days on the Market
6 photos = 40 Days on the Market
16 to 19 photos = 36 Days on the Market
20 photos = 32 Days on the Market

Also a fascinating find: listings with fewer photos sold for less.

1 Photo = 91.2% of Original Price
6+ Photos = 95% of Original Price

According to these findings, a $600,000 home, sporting only one photo, could sell for as much as 3.8% LESS or a loss of over $22,000, just because there was only one photo accompanying the listing. More amazing is the fact that only 12% of real estate agents posted the maximum 20 photos.

Pretty powerful statistics!

Multiple Listing Services are cracking down on real estate agents who do not post home photos when they list their properties into the MLS. Unfortunately, Pasadenas and Arcadias MLS services (ITEC and IMRMLS) do not have this policy yet.

So what can you do to ensure that your Pasadena home is presented in the best light?

* When interviewing your Pasadena Real Estate Agent, ask how many photos they usually take and use to market their listings.
* Ask to see samples of photos both in flyers and on-line. See how their home listings are presented. Look for quality photos focusing on best features on the house. Photos that create emotion!
* Request to review the photos of your Pasadena home before they are added to the Multiple Listing Service.
* Insist on the maximum number of photos that the MLS allows.

The Internet is the most powerful tool you can use when buying and/or selling your Pasadena home. According to results, photography does sell real estate. And when you choose to have high quality professional images for your marketing tools, you stand to gain by:

- Generating more interest for your Pasadena home
- Attracting more viewers/leads
- Entertaining higher offers/selling price
- Enjoying a faster sale of your Pasadena home

This all translates into less stress and a smoother transition to your new home!

In the previous post, How to Sell My Pasadena Home, we discussed the basic formula for selling your home. There are three parts to your selling success:

1. Preparing your Pasadena home for sale.
2. Determining a price for your home.
3. Deciding how to market your Pasadena home.

Today, I wanted to go into a bit more detail on the type of marketing and advertisement methods that are available in today’s Pasadena real estate market.

We talked about the importance of bringing “eye balls” to see your home. Exposure is of utmost importance in getting the highest possible price for your home and selling it in record time. The more people that see your home, the more opportunity you have in selling it well.

To fully market your home today, it is imperative that you put the power of the internet to work for you. Internet, not only, exposes your home to the immediate real estate market consumers, but it also is an extemely powerful tool which will bring buyers that are thinking of relocating to Pasadena.

We already know that we need to have your home listed in the local Multiple Listing Service. Please note, that in Pasadena there are several Multiple Listing Services (MLS). We have ITEC which is part of Pasadena Foothill Association. And, there is IMRMLS, which is part of Arcadia Realtors Association. Please make sure that your Pasadena home is listed in one of these MLS services. If it’s listed in one, it’s listed in both through the magic of new computer programming that was recently implemented.

If you have a realtor friend who is working out of the area, who will be listing your home for you. Not the best idea, but that’s a different post. Please ensure that your real estate agent contacts one of these MLS services and enters your home there.

MLS Listings are very different. How do you make your Pasadena home stand out?

• Make sure that you have a wonderful, detailed and honest description of your home. You want people to read the description and want to visit your home to see if it’s the right home for them. You need to create the emotion of really, really wanting to see your home.

READ ALSO: Words that Sell Your Home

• Use lots of photos. Now… when I say lots of photos, let me clarify. Use GOOD photos. Please do not place photos that are out of focus, or show messy rooms, or are crooked, or show a ton of ceiling, or showcase your furniture. Remember, you are trying to sell your home. MLS services allow anywhere from 25 to 30 photos per listing. Put up as many photos as the service allows. Buyers love to be able to see photos of homes, especially buyers that are thinking of relocating to Pasadena.

Photography Tip: Use a wide-angle camera! It’s very difficult to photograph a house without one.

• • Front of the house photo
  • Back yard
  • Entry
  • Bedrooms
  • Living Room (preferably several views)
  • Kitchen (preferably several shots from different angles)
  • Bathrooms
  • Pool & Spa (if you have one)
  • Garden
  • View of the surrounding area (street, etc)
  • Special features of the house (think what made you buy this house, photograph it and put it up on the MLS)

READ ALSO: Pictures are Worth a Thousand Words

• Videotape your home. Yes… you heard me, video your house. Not only should you video the home, you should narrate the video and talk about what made you buy your house, what you loved about living in your home, what did you love about living in Pasadena, why the buyers would want to purchase your Pasadena home, etc. Trust me on this… it works!

Place your video on www.YouTube.com . I video tape my clients’ homes all the time. Out of town buyers love that! Even the buyer down the street will love it. There are other services that I use to upload your video to. The more the merrier.

• Create a Flash Presentation or a Virtual Tour. Companies like www.RealEstateShows.com do a wonderful job of hosting these presentations and distributing them to additional search engines.

In my next post, we’ll talk about creating a real estate home brochure and other ideas to help you in selling your house. In the meantime, please do not hesitate to call me if you have any questions. I can be reached at 626-204-3340 or via email at Irina@Irina4RealEstate.com

Yes… you can use the services of a Pasadena Real Estate Agent. Or, you can choose to sell your Pasadena home by yourself. Either way, Pasadena home sellers have to follow a home selling process.

Prepare your Pasadena Home for sale:

Before you consider advertising or marketing your Pasadena home, you need to make sure that it’s in market ready condition. That involves several steps:

• Go through each room of your house and be honest with yourself about the items that need to be repaired or replaced. Come on… you know what I mean…
• Order a pre-inspection by a California licensed real estate home inspector. You can get a list of Inspectors from CREIA , California Real Estate Inspection Association or just give me a call and I’ll recommend a few. Buyers will do it the moment they open escrow. Why be surprised later or give the buyers and additional negotiating power, especially in today’s real estate market.

READ MORE: Save Thousands of Dollars with Home Inspections.

• Get rid of clutter. Clutter is translated to thousands of lost sale dollars. Trust me on this. I’ve seen it time after time.
• Take down most if not all of your family photos. Buyers want to picture themselves in the house, not YOU, the seller.
• Take a look at the outside of your house. Does it need paint? How is the landscaping? Will buyers be able to get to your front door without tripping over tree roots or toys left outside. Is the front door painted and welcoming? Are there cobwebs covering the entry?
• CLEAN, CLEAN, CLEAN – now that you’ve made the necessary repairs, start cleaning furiously – windows, floors, carpeting, BATHROOMS (yes… go to the extremes – take a q-tip and run it around the base of your toilet – what do you find?) Make your home SPARKLE! As you clean, just tell yourself that you’re cleaning for $s!
• Hire a Stager. When I sold my own house last year, I hired Nicki Rothwell of GetStaged2Sell to stage my house. Staging is absolutely critical in today’s real estate environment. If your house is staged it will sell faster and for more money – guaranteed!

READ MORE: What is Staging

READ MORE: Make a Great First Impression

Determine a Price for your Pasadena Home:

After preparing your Pasadena home for sale, pricing is the most critical part of the selling formula. If your Pasadena home is overpriced, it will just sit on the market. Let me repeat this, it WILL sit on the market! The longer your home is on the market without offers, the less negotiating power you will have, the less you will sell your home for. Simple, isn’t it?

Pricing is not easy. It takes a lot of data, experience and knowledge of the market.

• Start out by pullilng the comparables for your area for a minimum of the last three months, but you really need the last 6 months or so. When I say “your area”, I don’t mean the whole city of Pasadena. Look at a quarter mile radius of real estate activity around your home and at the zip code of your home and only then at how Pasadena real estate market is doing in genera.
• Identify real estate market trends. What is the absorption rate for your area? How long has it taken other Pasadena homes to sell? What is the going price per square foot? Are Pasadena homes selling close to asking? What is the inventory volumes are like? What is the buyer’s index for the area. I think you get what I’m getting to. Know your numbers inside and out. Your potential buyers will! I have free market report tools on this website that you can subscribe to. Whether you sell your home yourself or choose to have a Real Estate agent help you with this process, please use them. Be informed!

READ MORE: Pasadena Market Real Estate Report

• Know your competition! How many homes are available for sale in Pasadena right now? Go see each and every one of them. What do these homes have that yours don’t? How are these Pasadena homes priced? How do they compare to yours? Ask yourself, if you were looking to a buy a house in your Pasadena neighborhood right now, which house would you buy given the going price YOURS or someone elses?

• Revisit real estate market trends weekly! We are in a changing real estate market. You need to be on top of the real estate activity and trends.

Decide how you will market your Pasadena Home

You’ve done the hard work – your Pasadena home looks great. It’s been staged. You know you priced it correctly. Now… how will you market your home?

Create a budget, especially if you are selling your home yourself.

• Newspaper Marketing – one of the most expensive marketing methods to date in the real estate community. Also, not very effective. Even Los Angeles Times decided to pull their Real Estate Marketing section out of LA TIMES. Although, there could be some local papers or publications in your specific area that are more budget friendly and make sense to use.
• Internet Marketing – now that is where the action is. Effective means of advertising that has a very wide reach. Here are just some of the websites that you should be utilizing. I have a list of hundreds of websites that my Pasadena Home Listings are entered into.
  • Realtor.com
  • Trulia.com
  • Craigslist.com
  • WSJ.com
  • LATimes.com
  • PFAR.org
  • IMRMLS.com
  • RealEstateShows.com
  • Zillow.com
  • Localism.com
  • Postlets.com
• Market to the Real Estate Agent community. It is imperative to let the local real estate professionals know about your Pasadena home for sale. Whether you sell your home yourself of not, the chances of a real estate agent representing the buyer are overwhelming. Remember exposure to buyers is key. The more eye-balls you get on your home, the faster it will sell. Think of how you will marke to these agents. Will you deliver flyers to local real estate offices? Will you email to them? Of course, if you use the services of a professional real estate agent, they will do this for you. Interview your agent first and specifically ask them how they intend to market your home to other real estate brokers.
• Market your home to the people that already live in your neighborhood. You’d be surprised to how many of your neighbors know someone that wants to live next to them. Friends? Family members? The possibilities are endless. Don’t take your neighbors for granted. Her’re a couple of ideas:
  • You might want to have a special Neighbors Only Preview Open House
  • Create a CD presentation to distribute to your neighbors. Just in case they are busy and can’t visit the Open House
  • Send out letters to them letting them know that you’re selling.

I hope the formula for a successful home sale above will help you understand the process of selling your Pasadena home. This should also help you determine whether or not selling your home by yourself is a good, viable option for you. Stay tuned for more in this series focusing on additional necessities like completing disclosure paperwork, drafting and reviewing real estate contracts, creating a flyer, etc.