A Picture Ain’t Always Worth 1,000 Words.

While recently researching potential properties for some buyer clients of mine, I came across a listing with the above photo attached. Good area, decent price and it seemed to have several of the features my buyers were looking for. Although MLS allows agents to upload 30+ photos for each listing, this was the only photo attached to this listing. Seeing the remnants of snow on the roof , and knowing we hadn’t had any yet this season, I took a look at the listing history of this property. This property has been on the market for 626 days. It originally listed back on March 1, 2006. We probably had some snow back then. Seeing a listing like this iritates me for several reasons:

There’s OIL in them there tanks, partner! Isn’t there?

Note to any Realtors working in sub-human winter conditions like the Northeast. If you have any listings of properties that are vacant and heated by oil, check the oil tank today and if it needs filling, get the oilman out there ASAP. It’s easy to forget about these types of things when no one is actually living there. And the worst way to be reminded about the lack of oil in the tank is a fresh set of frozen pipes. Realtors in the south and west, please ignore this post and have yourself a very Green Christmas, you warm-blooded bastards. 37 and dropping here in Boston.

VRM Doesn’t Work in a Buyer’s Market

I’m amazed at the amount of VRM, or Value Range Marketing, listings I continue to see in our area despite the indisputable buyer’s market we are currently in. VRM is where a listing agent sets a “value range” for the price of the listing. My favorite is something like this…”Seller will entertain offers between $420,000 and $460,000″. Usually this is a listing that has been on the market for about 180 (or more) days and started off way back when at around $500,000. The truth is the sellers will “entertain” a warm body showing some interest in their OPT (Over-Priced Turkey). Unless you have buyers fist fighting each other and walking over fallen bodies to get their offers in first (remember those days???) VRM simply says “we want SOME KIND OF OFFER and it would be really great if it was AT LEAST $420,000….pretty, pretty please.”