I had a great day showing Port Angeles properties to a couple from the east coast.  If you’re a potential buyer of Sequim real estate or Port Angeles real estate, you might find this interesting.  We started in the morning meeting at a local gourmet coffee shop to discuss my client’s goals, to review their parameters for the ideal home or land and go over the properties we had selected for viewing.  They also wanted my thoughts on where the market was going in the months and years ahead.  Their primary concern was timing, in other words, is this a good time to buy a home here?

The reason we were looking at homes and land was because this couple had not yet made a final decision on whether to buy an existing home or have a Sequim or Port Angeles home builder build their retirement home.  Part of their decision making process is to see what is available right now and what homes and land are selling for in this area.   We had a great time, and one of the reasons I love what I do as a professional Realtor is that I get to meet and work with some of the most incredible people I’ve ever met.  I swear that the people who retire to Sequim or Port Angeles are the kind of good, hard working Americans with old fashioned values and strong character that you love almost immediately when you meet them.  This is true for me as I meet my clients from all over the U.S.

Here are a few highlights.  We looked at a beautiful spec home, a 2-story craftsman style home with a deck that wrapped around three sides of the home.  This home is almost 3,000 square feet and has a garage with 10 foot ceilings with a double door and a single door.  This was a custom home built as a spec home by a builder who got in trouble because he overbuilt.  This home was completed in 2007,  and the bank foreclosed on the builder.  Believe it or not, it’s been for sale since then and no one has ever lived in it.

Having worked with home builders intimately, I’ve learned how to estimate the cost of developing a lot and building a home like this.  The lot is almost two-thirds of an acre.  The cost to buy this lot today, develop it and bring utilities in, and get the house permitted and built would be about $400,000.  It’s a nice custom home with good quality materials, but it’s not a top of the line custom home with the best possible materials, flooring, and cabinets.  The listing price?  Try just under $300,000.  Wow!  There’s no doubt this house is a steal.  It’s in a neighborhood of beautiful custom built homes on large lots, and there’s a golf course visible through the trees across the street.  Nice.

We also looked at lots, and nice lots in this area with paved streets and utilities installed are $73,500 and up from there.  And then we also looked at a lot that is several acres with a gorgeous creek running through it and a lot of privacy.  That lot is $250,000.

So what did my clients do?  They are hardly going to sleep tonight.  They are thinking about how fast they can wrap things up back home and get moved.  Happy dreams tonight!

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Best Value – Port Angeles home for sale near a park $209,000:  Perfect if you like to take walks or walk your dog.  This is a 3 bedroom, 2 bath home with a very energy efficient 1,148 square feet, wood stove fireplace insert, in a great area, 1428 West 7th Avenue.  View this video tour, and for more detailed information and photographs, see Port Angeles Homes For Sale.

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Yesterday I showed houses to a client from California.   We had a great day.   The sun was shining brightly without a cloud in the sky in Sequim and Port Angeles, and I always have fun looking at houses with my clients.   We toured eight houses.   For those hunting for a home here, this might be especially entertaining.

Of course my client had been using my online MLS search, and he had narrowed his search from 800 homes to less than a dozen with specific parameters, such as three bedrooms, his geographic preference, 1,800 square feet or more, and the price not to exceed $270,000, but the age of the house and the condition of the house were not limited in our MLS search by my client’s choice.

We started with the older homes as a matter of convenience in mapping out our driving route.   The first home was built in the 1920′s, and just trying to figure out where the original kitchen was located and how many additions there had been in the past 80 years was itself quite entertaining.   Once we got through the spider webs in the old slab garage, we played the game of guessing when concrete floors were added and how old the decomposing wiring actually was.   Price:   North of $230,000

The second house was built in 1913.   Touring this house was like going back in time before WWI.   Walking across the floors was an exercise in maintaining balance, since one side of the living room must have been two or three inches higher than the opposite corner.   The windows of that era were small, which meant the house did not get a lot of natural sunlight.   Staircases were narrow and steep.   I cautioned my 12-year old daughter, who came along for the fun, against bumping her head on the way down the basement stairs (and she’s only 4’9″).   Closets and the crawl space “were scary” according to my daughter.   Price:   Above $170,000

The third house was built in 1964, and like the others, was vacant.   The 1960′s were an interesting time in architecture:   dark brown panelling, small kitchens, cheap fixtures, square rooms and narrow hallways.   On top of that, the driveway was so steep, it made me nervous thinking about my car rolling down and into the living room of the house across the street.   According to my daughter, “the bathroom sinks were gross.”   Price:   Over $200,000

The fourth house was tucked in the trees and we almost didn’t see the sign.   We felt a bit uneasy walking down the walkway, which obviously had not been maintained since 1942.   But that wasn’t our greatest excitement with this house.   As soon as we entered, we immediately began to feel nauseous.   Have you ever walked into a home with the strong pungent odor of cat urine?   No sale.   Price:   Over $160,000   (Good luck selling this one!)

The fifth, sixth, and seventh houses are too boring to write about here.

The eighth house was a 1970′s style with add-ons and a makeshift apartment.   There were rooms and doors in odd places.   Apparently for someone this was the ideal home.   That someone would not be my client.   My daughter had no opinion at all on this home.   That concerned me.

At long last we arrived at a brand new home.   It was a spec home built by a builder who had kept building long after the recession started.   Everyone wondered what he was doing, building houses like it was 2005, but he had a line of credit at his bank, so he kept building.

It was a relief to walk through a home with a modern floor plan with the fresh smell of new wood and carpet.   While this home was what I would call “mid-level” quality in materials and construction, it was definitely much easier to imagine this one as home, rolling on the floors with the kids and dog, or relaxing in the bath tub off the master bedroom.   Finally, my daughter gave her nod of approaval.   How did my client feel?   This could be home.   Price:   South of $270,000.

Have you had any good entertainment lately?   Tour anyone?

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When homes don’t sell quickly like they did in 2005, many salespeople in the real estate industry resort to gimmicks.   Some homeowners have picked up on these gimmicks thinking that they must work.   Gimmicks don’t sell homes, but real estate agents can testify that gimmicks do get homeowners to sign listing agreements.

Some gimmicks are just plain silly (not to mention expensive), and other gimmicks seem to have some potential, but closer insight by experienced professionals will tell you otherwise.

One of the more ludicrous gimmicks that has spread to a couple of places across the country is the offer of a luxury car to the buyer of an expensive home.   A Phoenix developer mistakenly took the counsel of his real estate advisor and offered a brand new $200,000 Bentley to anyone who purchased one of his multi-million dollar homes.

One of the homes, described as the “Old World European Villa,” is priced just under $5 million and is about 7,800 square feet.   The other, which is called “Tuscan Estate,” is under $4 million and is about 7,500 square feet.   [Read Real Estate Gimmicks to Sell Homes.]

This same idea was picked up again recently by a homeowner in Orlando, Florida.   Jim Benson is offering the buyer of his $699,000 home a vintage 1967 Rolls Royce.   Such gimmicks have never worked, and professional salesmen with experience under their belts will all share that.   Of course, someone will pipe up, “Well, it does get the guy some exposure and that’s promoting the home, right?”   Wrong.   Exposure without a sale is just wasted energy, right?

The goal is to sell the home, not to have gimmicks that the public finds entertaining for a few minutes in the news.   There are some gimmicks, however, that seem to have some promise.   Real estate brokers and agents around the country are coming up with new gimmicks to get listings.

It’s been a tough year for real estate brokers around the country as they struggle to explain (repeatedly) to their listing clients why their homes have not sold.   What many agents are thinking now is that they just need more and more listings.   It used to be that “listings was the name of the game,” and you could list homes and let other agents sell them.   Well, we got away from that, but many agents are thinking that if they have a lot of listings, just maybe some of them will get sold, and the agent can survive in this market to live and sell another day.

One of the gimmicks some agents use around the country is to “bid for listings.”   Homeowners who want to sell and get the highest possible price will most often list with the agent who promises them the highest listing price.   Not very smart of the homeowner (ignorance of the truth is no excuse), but it is especially not very ethical or professional on the part of the agent.   For some agents, the rule is:   Anything to get a listing.

Another gimmick large brokerage companies are toying with (remember, toys are for children), is to call expired listings or FSBO’s, and give them the latest hot sales pitch.   It goes something like this:

Hi, my name is [agent's name] and I’m a real estate consultant (a nice catchy new phrase) and Realtor.   I notice your home listing recently expired, and I’d like to tell you about an exciting new program we at [brokerage name] are offering absolutely free of charge to homeowners like you.   May I tell you about it?   [What homeowner won't say yes at that point.   Nothing to lose, right?]

Great.   We have a very powerful new program to help homeowners like you figure out what you can do to sell your home in this market in a very short time.   It works like this.   We bring six to twelve of our agents to your neighborhood and to your home.   We spend time looking it over and then we discuss it among ourselves–with you present, of course–right there at your home.   We discuss the value of your home, what you have been doing to sell it and at what price.   We discuss the state of the market, what is selling and where and for how much.   We talk about marketing and the latest and most effective techniques to sell a lovely home like yours.   We answer any questions that you have, and then we leave.   No obligation at all.   Of course, I would love to list your home and sell it for you in the next 30 to 90 days, but that would be entirely your decision, and there’s no obligation at all. Does this sound like something you might find helpful?

Wow!   I just drafted that script off the top of my head, but it sounds so good, I might just use it myself.   No, just kidding.   It’s nothing but a gimmick, and you have to think it through to realize that.

Imagine this.   Imagine a nice brokerage company with lots of agents.   The agents are individually struggling, because their listings are not selling in this slow market, the phones are not ringing like they were in 2005, and buyers are not exactly stampeding into the office lately.   To make matters worse, print advertising in newspapers and magazines is not selling real estate either, but it sure is expensive.

As a homeowner you wouldn’t really jump up and down with excitement to hire one of these traditional agents with no ideas and a 20-year old business model that is not all that exciting anymore. So here’s the big question.

Why would you think that putting six to twelve of these same agents in the same room is somehow going to be the catalyst of extraordinarily new and exciting techniques to sell you home?   A group think tank only works if the individuals in the group have something to offer.

Watch this.   Many homeowners who are desperate to sell and have not read this article will list with agents who read this script.   They don’t know it’s just a gimmick, and they’re desperate to try something.

Are homes selling with these gimmicks? The answer is no.   Gimmicks don’t sell homes.   Good marketing and connecting with the right buyer is what sells homes.   That’s why I’ve built the largest Internet brokerage in Sequim and Port Angeles.   The Internet is the single most effective way to sell homes.   Period.   But there is much more to the story about how to effectively price and market a home.

The answer is not group think.   If you have a home in Sequim or Port Angeles you want to sell, call me on my cell at 360-775-5424.   My name is Chuck Marunde.

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Today we ask a real estate agent who has been through 30 years of market ups and downs, a real estate attorney of 20 years, and an advisor to real estate investors for two decades this question, “If you were advising a buyer thinking about buying a home in this market today, what would be the three most important tips you would share?”   The answer is full of rock solid knowledge, experience, and wisdom.

Steve:   Chuck, we know the market has slowed down, but we also know that there are a number of people who are still shopping for a home in Sequim or in Port Angeles.   We are seeing sales of homes here every month, even during the slowest months of the winter.   Many people are not confident that they know exactly how to find a home in this market, and when they find it, they’re not necessarily certain they know how to negotiate right now.   So, the question is, “If you were advising a buyer thinking about buying a home in this market today, what would be the three most important tips you would share?”

Chuck:   This is a very good question.   I learned as a lawyer that the answers you get are only as good as the questions you ask.   Here is what I see as the three most important tips in this market.   Use these three tips, and you are substantially increasing the likelihood that you will find the right home at the right price and that you will get the best possible deal.

I’m going to assume that our buyer (husband and wife) know what they want (for example, three bedrooms, 2 baths, an attached 2-car garage, at least 1,800 square feet, a newer home, at least one acre, Sequim school district).   You could consider this a pre-tip:   know what you are shopping for, otherwise we are all wasting our time chasing the wind.

The first key tip I would share is this:   Do your due diligence and find a knowledgeable, experienced, and trustworthy Buyer’s Agent.   Listen, this is not an effort to sell myself right now.   Sure I’d like buyers to work with me so I can make commissions, but there is much more to this recommendation.   As a real estate lawyer I made some pretty good money because many buyers and sellers tried to do their “own thing” without sufficient knowledge or experience.   (Why do you think there are so many rich lawyers?)   A year and a half of litigation, a small wheel barrel full of money, and a lot of stress later and my clients proved to me over and over again the incredible wisdom in finding the best and most experienced professional out there.   He or she does NOT cost any more than the totally inexperienced or incompetent licensee who smiles nicely and smells good.   In fact, when I represent a buyer as their buyer’s agent I cost them nothing, yet I bring them a lifetime of experience.   How cool is that?   So I strongly recommend that people take advantage of the experience and negotiating power a good Realtor can bring to the table.

The second key tip I would share is this:   When you narrow your search of homes down to one home, know precisely what to analyze and what to research on that home.   I’m reminded here of something many men can identify with.   If you’ve ever shopped for a used car, and if you know something about cars, when you find a model with the features and year that is a good possibility, you kick your due diligence into high gear by doing several things.   For example, when you test drive it, you are looking for any signs of problems, like the front end pulling to one side when you brake hard, any shaking or vibrating, signs that the transmission may have problems with jerky shifting or any clunking noises.   You may stick your head under the hood while it idles and while you rev the engine and listen to any pinging noises or any rough idling.   When you buy a house, you should also know what to look for.   There’s a lengthy list of things to examine, and some of these items are deal killers because the cost of installation or replacement is just too prohibitive, and some existing home designs (or heating and air circulation systems) simply cannot be changed without major construction.   There are foundation and concrete issues, framing and roofing issues, electrical, heating, and cooling issues, drainage issues,   potential mold issues, septic issues, water well issues, easement issues, and much more.   Of course, if you make an offer on a home, you’ll want a professional home inspection, but a home inspector is not your adviser on buying and cannot and will not advise you on all the issues you should be thinking about.   A buyer’s agent can, if they know.

The third key tip I would share is this:   Negotiate like an expert, and believe me there are levels of negotiating skill.   Negotiating a $300,000 or $750,000 deal is not exactly like getting a bargain at a garage sale, and it’s definitely not for beginners.   I love going up against an inexperienced or poor negotiator, because it’s such a great victory for my clients, not only in the money they save, but in the management of the stress throughout the process.   There is so much to negotiating effectively, and this isn’t the time or place to go on and on about how to negotiate like an expert, but let me make the point this way.   Negotiating effectively can mean $20,000 to $80,000 in your pocket.   Does that have your attention?

There’s more to putting together all the details of a good purchase, but these are the three tips I would emphasize as the most important.   I could go on, but if anyone has questions they can always email me.

Steve:   Chuck, I know your readers will appreciate what you’ve shared here, and let me add something for our readers.   When Chuck answers questions like this, he really doesn’t hold anything back.   What he shares is his heartfelt opinion and as he says a lifetime of valuable experience.   Thank you Chuck for sharing.

Chuck:   My pleasure.

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Port Angeles Homes For Sale and Sequim Homes For Sale:   The whole business is changing.   How people buy and sell real estate has been dramatically evolving, and recently the momentum of this evolution has been accelerating.   There are three ways this change is obvious.

1.   When you want to sell your home, it’s no longer simply a matter of listing it with a Realtor and having your Realtor post your listing in the MLS.   That’s still important, but the MLS is no longer the powerful monopoly it once was.   Realtors no longer have a monopoly on the real estate databases, and the flow of information has been blown wide open on the Internet.   And those newspaper advertisement to sell your home?   They don’t work like they used to.

2.   When you want to buy a home you are no longer forced into calling a salesman or going to their office.   Now you can search the Internet and even search the MLS entirely on your own without any annoying sales people pressuring you to work with them.   In fact, the Internet is the only good way to find your next home, because the newspapers only have a handful of listings advertised.   Your ideal home is almost certainly not advertised in the newspaper when you happen to read it that Sunday.   Remember, the goal of advertising homes for sale in the newspaper is not to sell those homes, because any experienced Realtor will tell you they don’t, but to get you to call that Realtor so they can sell you another house (which you could have simply found on the Internet).   I’m sorry if these truths seem a bit harsh, but wouldn’t you as a buyer or seller like to know how things really work?

3.   Marketing and advertising real estate has really changed of late.   Advertising listings in newspapers has become so ineffective that Realtors all around the country have either substantially reduced their advertising, or in the case of many I know, they no longer waste money advertising listings in the newspapers.   Why?   They aren’t getting calls from those ads.   It doesn’t work like it used to, and it’s expensive.   Over 80% of all home buyers start their search on the Internet now.   For areas like Sequim and Port Angeles where a majority of our buyers come from out of the area, especially California, Arizona, Nevada, and Texas, these buyers are not even reading the local newspaper or the local real estate magazines.   They use the Internet.   But using the Internet to sell homes is not for the uninitiated.   It has gotten extremely competitive, technologically very complicated, and requires a multitude of skills.   (Sure, anyone can post a listing on a FSBO service or on Craigslits, but that is not even close to effective Internet marketing and search engine optimization.   There is much much more to effective Internet marketing.   Much more.)

As a professional in real estate for 30 years (real estate lawyer and Realtor), I can say without any doubt that the evolution of the technology (with all the economic changes, too) of buying and selling real estate today has not reduced the need for a professional Realtor–it has increased the need.   But most buyers and sellers don’t know this.   The game hasn’t gotten simpler: it has changed.

What the Internet and the all changes in how real estate is bought and sold has done is provide new tools and efficient ways to buy and sell, but this has not eliminated the need for the knowledge and experience to use these tools to help buyers negotiate the best price and terms and to help sellers efficiently market and sell their homes in the least amount of time for the best price.   As I have said elsewhere, there are many traps for the unwary.   (Like the dangerous trap shown above in the photo which I took at Crystal Mountain Ski Resort.)

Read more of my articles on this blog on marketing, sales, prices, negotiating like an expert, for sale by owners, listing, legal issues, and more.   Go to:   SequimRealEstateNews.com.   You can use the search feature to find what you are looking for, and that will help you filter through the hundreds of articles.

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