judyo's Blog: General Real Estate

I have been giving home staging advice before it was called "staging."  One of my fondest memories was the appointment I went on for a Burbank IL real estate listing.  It was a basic split level style home with 3 bedrooms, formal living room, kitchen and down a few steps was a family room. 

A family of 7 lived here and it was time to move on as they were very cramped.  I walked through the home and we went over things that I felt the house needed in order to sell at the price the sellers wanted to get.  There were some repairs that were needed but the first thing that I told them was that they had to clean up the family room.

This room must not have been used for its purpose in years.  It was stacked from wall to wall and top to bottom with furniture,…

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It was late last night when I first went to Zillow.com.  That was part of my problem.  As a REALTOR® I thought it might be a good idea to add my profile to the popular website.  Kind of "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" mentality.  OK, I did it to see if I got a backlink.  No, really, such a popular site might actually bring some traffic.

As I entered my profile I saw the "add a listing" feature.  I decided to try it with one listing I have where my sellers have a contingent contract on another property and need to sell.  I'm trying to do whatever I can to market their place.

It was easy enough to enter and I pressed the Publish link.  To my horror I saw the list price of $349,900 followed by the zestimate of $262,733! 

Today, I tried removing…

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I know many buyers and sellers realize that real estate agents have a networking system where they can refer a client to an out-of-town, out-of state or out of country agent.  Yet few buyers or sellers take advantage of this and try to go to the area they're moving to or selling from and try to locate their own agent.

While it's not a terrible thing to do it that way, a prospect might be better served by going through a local agent to give them a referral of an agent from the area they are thinking of moving to or selling from.   I am located in Chicago, IL, but can find an agent in any other state, or a different country almost anywhere in the world.

What is the benefit for you?  You don't have to do any searching and interviewing.  That can take a… Read Full Post

This is my final post on the subject – until something else breaks.  The first two posts are here and here.

Again, these things all happened within the same week which was stressful enough without these failures.  But this one brought my blood pressure up the highest. 

I was meeting first-time buyers for their LaGrange home inspection.  I grabbed my Supra key off the holder just in case the seller wasn’t going to be home.  The cradle is supposed to do an automatic update but mine doesn’t for some reason.  I don’t think it ever did.

I tried doing a manual e-sync but it wouldn’t take and I was running late so I thought I would just get the update code over the phone, which is an option.  The key seemed to be working fine, just needed the daily… Read Full Post

I have a headache from working on a new listing plug-in for my Orland Park real estate website that will show nice, professional listings with thumbnail photos and other features.  I’ve been working with the designer for two days but we just can’t get it to work on my blog/site.  That reminded me of this series I’m writing about and I need to take a breather from that.

To refresh your memory, I had a very busy couple of weeks where I needed everything to work smoothly.  Of course, that’s when things start falling apart.  My first problem has already been written about; my bad Internet connection.

I had written several contracts and received several on my listings which needed to be faxed back and forth.  I have been using Winfax which is on my… Read Full Post

I guess you can call me a real estate dinosaur since I’ve been licensed since 1983.  Find out all about me here. 

When I first started in real estate there were no computers.  We had this little fax-like machine for MLS access with the paper that turned black when sitting in your car with the heat and sun.  No photos – how did we sell anything?!

Speaking of fax machines, nope, we didn’t have one.  Thank goodness we had a copier, but I still always carried a supply of carbon paper around.  What a mess.

My first “cell” phone was bigger than my purse.  But anyone who carried their bag phone around was considered pretty advanced (and cool).  I wish I had saved mine instead of selling it to some kid at a garage sale.

Oh, and the pagers.  For some reason…

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