Bad Market and Bad Press

A great little tip I picked up at the last Prudential manager's conference.  It has everything to do with combating some the bad press that seems to be relentlessly distributed in regards to the state of the market.

As stated in some of my past blogs, our local Ulster County Real Estate market enjoys a significant boost to our second home market.  This boost comes about because of the unique combination of our proximity to New York City and the value of the home buying dollar in our area as compared to other "get away" destinations within 2 hours of Manhattan.  The result of this boost  levels off our market when other markets maybe suffering from a downfall.

What I found out yesterday, it that there are many markets throughout the east coast that fair better than the national average because of some unique economic driver.

The Bad News

The bad news is that because our unique economic driver comes from one of the biggest media markets in the world (NYC),  the bad press about the real estate market is spoon fed to a lot of our second home buyers.  The woes of the National Market is broad-casted throughout our pool of second home buyers.  Does this slow down the amount of buyers coming out of New York City?  Absolutely not.  It brings them upstate in groves.  So what is your problem Lou you got buyers and lots of inventory?  The problem is that these buyers think all markets are in the dumper and that they are going to get a home in Upstate NY for a song.  So with the rest of the country in a buyers market, we are in a hybrid market.  Half of our sellers (those not concerned with days on market) will not reduce the price of the homes because they think they will get somebody from New York City with a dump truck full of cash to come upstate and over pay for home.  This puts us at somewhat of a stale mate.

So what do you do?

Now I said only half of our sellers here are holding on to high priced listings.  The other half understand that they need to meet the buyers price and are making the proper price reductions.  The old school Realtor will read this and simply say the answer is to document the trend and adjust your CMA to demonstrate the success of the realistic home sellers by showing them the list to sold price and days on market.  They would be right, you absolutely make the adjustment to your CMA.

We knew all this, what is the tip?

The tip is to adjust your print advertising as well as your CMAs.  Most real estate companies advertise in the local real estate rag(s) looking to solicate to buyers.  What many may not know is that sellers are picking these publications up too.  In some cases this is bad because the seller will do their own comparisons of their home to the other UNSOLD homes that are being advertised in the real estate publication.  As most of us know, this is bad, bad, bad.

What else can we do?

Advertise SOLD listings that include the days on market in the sold banner that goes across the ad.  This will demonstrate to the other, non-realistic sellers, that good pricing gets results.  It also combats the slew of bad press that says the market is failing.  This is especially good if you are in one of the niche markets that are in status quo and are not actually failing.

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