Have you received a post card or mailing from a Realtor?

If it is a Watson Realty Maitland/Orlando agent who sent the card, chances are good it's journey started here.

Direct mail is an important feature of an agents marketing plan. A professionally created card that announces a new listing, or a new sale or provides information about the neighborhood or market conditions is often times the tool that connects our agents to consumers who are thinking of buying or selling their home.

We believe in the benefits of a direct mail campaign and strive to provide our agents with the tools that they need to accomplish their marketing goals. From our office alone, we average over 14,000 pieces of bulk mail monthly. Our agents love this free business tool we provide them and our sellers love the exposure.

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Positioning ourselves for real estate success in the years ahead

- Greg Staker - Watson Realty Corp. - 407-304-0255

MLS marketing remarks can assist you with selling your home

The public comments section in the MLS, which includes Orlando homes for sale, is a listing agent's opportunity to speak directly to a potential buyer. This space is normally used to describe the great features the home offers. It might also be used to make your case for why a qualified buyer should consider this listing as compared to the thousands of other listings available to them.

With the market as challenging as it is, you might be able to make a case for using the word "please" in the public comments. For instance, how about "please look a this home if you plan to look at any home in a million mile radius" or "please do not let the cat out unless you are planning on making an offer, we can always get a new cat. " : )

Most mothers will tell you that you have a better chance of getting something you ask for, if you simply say please.

So with the market in its current condition, you would think please would be running amok in the public comments section. Please make an offer. Please view my home. Please ask questions. Please ask me about concessions. Please show. Please tell me why you did not make an offer. Please tell me how we can increase our chances of selling the home.

Think again.

Of the 69,210 listings being reported as active in the Mid-Florida MLS, please was only used 502 times, or 0.725% of the time.

I am going to suggest to my agents at the next sales meeting that if they run out of great things to say about the home they have listed, why not try finding a way to insert a please. Could it hurt?

Oh by the way, I also checked thank you. It was used only 29 times.


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- Greg Staker - Watson Realty Corp. - 407-304-0255

Using a twenty dollar bill to explain the importance of pricing a home correctly

Proper pricing when listing homes is the name of the game from this point forward at our Orlando Watson Realty office. With a record number of homes on the market and a limited amount of buyers it is extremely important to advise sellers on the real market value of their home, both at the listing appointment and during the listing contract period.

To drive home the importance of listing a home at its real value I brought to our sales meeting a twenty-dollar bill. At the beginning of the meeting I announced that a friend has asked me to sell the bill for him at today's meeting. I placed it on the dry erase board and wrote the offering price my imaginary friend asked me to sell his $20.00 for. I received a few chuckles when I wrote down the $50.00 list price. I further explained that any agent at the meeting that wishes to purchase the bill must have the cash with them at the meeting. The point being that there would be a few in my meeting not qualified to buy much like buyers we meet in our day to day business. Then I asked if there were any interested agents wishing to purchase my $20 for $50 and of course I had no takers.

Continuing on with the meeting for the next 15 minutes, we discussed several other important real estate topics.

After 15 minutes, I turned my attention back to the $20. With still no offers, I suggested that maybe I am not advertising it properly and enough. So I took out a colored dry erase marker and wrote a big “for sale” over the $20 with an arrow pointing to the bill. This advertisement guaranteed that every potential buyer in the room saw the $20 for sale at $50 and yet...still no offers.

30 minutes into our meeting, I reduced the price by $5.00. No offers

5 minutes later I offered a $5.00 selling bonus to the agent who would give me $40.00 for my $20.00. Even with this agent bonus, no offers.

I lowered the price yet again to $30.00 and told my agents that my friend had someone else look at this $20.00 and it was definitely worth every bit of his asking price. This tactic did not sway anyone to make an offer.

I then informed my group of agents that if I sell this $20.00 for my imaginary friend, he promised that I could sell other $20's for him in the future. Still, no offers.

Before further reducing the price of my $20, I made sure that the agents knew that my friend needed to realize a certain amount of money so he could buy the 100 dollar bill he had his eyes on. This admission netted the same result, no offers.

Finally I made sure that they understood that at $30.00, this was the lowest priced 20-dollar bill being offered for sale at this meeting. That too, produced no offers

With just a few minutes left in the meeting a quick thinking agent made an offer of 15 dollars cash, then seconds later another agent offered 17 dollars and I sold my 20-dollar bill.

What were the lessons learned?

Value is determined by a set of facts as they exist at the time a seller is trying to sell. You cannot get more than a property is worth by increasing the advertisement, you cannot get more than a property is worth by offering special incentives, and a property’s value is not determined by a seller’s need or opinion of value. You could fly an airplane directly above an over priced listing 24 hours a day with a big banner flying behind advertising the home and if the home is over priced, even with this type of advertisement, it will not sell. Property is worth what the market determines it to be worth. In this case, the $20 sold for less than real value.

Possibly because it was over priced to begin with?

With a limited number of qualified buyers searching the market for the best use of their hard earned dollars and an ever increasing listing inventory, our agents are advising sellers to carefully consider our market opinions and list their homes within our suggested price point range.

The twenty-dollar bill experiment gives them more confidence in their ability to advise their seller’s correctly about value and pricing.


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- Greg Staker Watson Realty Corp. 407-304-0255