This week a bunch of us from Perry Wellington Realty attended the Realtor Rally in Washington DC on Thursday this week.  We were well represented with five of us from Pdubs in attendance – Lora Larimer, Ted Manna, George Pisanick, Lisa Lynn and I.  I think we had more from any office locally attend.  We rode down on the bus with the group from Johnstown as we were unable to have enough support from the folks in Altoona to get enough people on a bus so we combined with the Johnstown folks.

I have included a number of pictures of the rally – we were right under the shadow of the Washington monument.  It was pretty cool to see nearly 15,000 of our Realtors attend.

I wish there were more.

There are roughly 1 million Realtors in the U.S.  Clearly there needs to be more participation among the group to support the cause of protecting the American Dream.  This needs to start with the brokers.  The bus we had from Johnstown had roughly 40 people on it.  Some were affiliates (ad people, bank people), some were family, and there were but 3 brokers, me included, on the bus.

It’s about leadership.  Leadership from the National Association, state organization and the local organization.   Leadership from the local brokers.  Not to go on a rant here, but the local monthly Allegheny Highlands meetings have about 30 Realtor members attend.  There is just no participation.  It is rare to see more than 3 brokers at these meetings (me included).  There are 265 members of this group.

These numbers are not good.

Perry Wellington belongs to 4 MLS’s and Boards of Realtors now (Huntingdon, State College, Johnstown and Altoona areas)  Among them there are roughly 800 Realtors.

If we are going to effect change and support our causes, we have to show up.  In numbers.

This is a call to action for Realtors, and for the public.  If we care about something we need to show up.

What do you care about?  If you are a Realtor, I think you need to care about your organization and the clients you serve.  It’s time to show up, participate and be the leaders our clients and communities expect us to be.

Pictures courtesy of Lisa Lynn at Perry Wellington Realty.

Adam Conrad, a licensed broker in PA and MD, is the broker/owner of Perry Wellington Realty, a regional 5 location real estate brokerage.  Adam is the Director of Education for Advance Academy, a real estate school.  Adam is a part time lecturer at Pennsylvania State University and part time faculty for Saint Francis University.  You can reach him via email here or at Advance Academy.

Today I take a break from Real Estate.  No mention, no tie-ins.  Just straight up fatherly pride.

Today our son Jordan Conrad graduates the second time from Saint Francis University.  His graduation with a Master’s Degree as a Physician Assistant is the celebration of many years of hard work.  Now he will spend the next month preparing to take his boards to be a licensed Physician Assistant.  In another couple of months he will be traveling to Connecticut to attend Yale University as a resident in a year long surgical residency program.

We couldn’t be more proud.

My wife Deb and I have been fortunate to have two great kids who have been very successful with their schooling.  Our daughter Danielle has a Master’s in Counseling Psychology and is a school counselor in the Harrisburg School district.  She has one of, if not the most widely read blogs on school counseling.

Jordan didn’t always take to school.  Early on he got frustrated easily and didn’t like to read.  That changed along the way and he became a very hard working, determined student.  He graduated Magna Cum Laude in his Bachelor’s program and Magna Cum Laude in his Master’s program.

Fatherly advice heard around the Conrad residence ‘Conrad’s aren’t geniuses, you might be bright, but you have to work hard, often harder than others to be successful’.

Not exactly something you see on a Hallmark card.

Something I realized a long time ago and found that if I was diligent and worked hard, that I could get ahead.

We started out with nothing, maybe even less than nothing.  You can read the whole thing here, when I wrote a blog for Danielle as a guest blogger for Father’s day.  The best advice I could ever give is to focus, work hard and enjoy it while it lasts.  Life is short.  I tell my kids (and anybody else who listens) that they should be completing as many items in their ‘bucket list’ as soon as they can.  I make sure they have a ‘bucket list’.

I have to share one quick story.  Jordan and I rode 4-wheelers together.  He loved riding his 4 wheeler.  We started out with used quads and eventually we bought him a brand new one.  He might have had it for all of two days when the neighbor kids goaded him to do a hill climb with it.  That did not end well.  He didn’t get hurt, but his brand new, shiny red Honda 4 wheeler rolled down the hill.  It was all scratched up and the handlebars were bent.

He was crushed.  He was really upset.  He was more afraid to tell me.  When he told me, I simply asked him if he felt bad about it (I was sure he felt bad).  ’Ok’ I said, ‘no sense me yelling at you about it when you already feel terrible about it, just don’t let your friends talk you into stupid stuff again’.

Formative moments.  It’s all how you react to a situation that creates those lasting impressions.

So I will make this short.  Today is a day to spend in celebration and not to sit around blogging about it.

Adam Conrad, is the proud father of Jordan Conrad a licensed broker in PA and MD, is the broker/owner of Perry Wellington Realty, a regional 4 location real estate brokerage.  Adam is the Director of Education for Advance Academy, a real estate school.  Adam is a part time lecturer at Pennsylvania State University and part time faculty for Saint Francis University.  You can reach him via email here or at Advance Academy.

A few days ago one of my favorite authors, Seth Godin wrote a blog about lowering prices.  To summarize, he said you can either mark things down or develop a new lower pricing strategy by building a business process around offering a lower price.  Obviously the first way is simple, but if a company is able to offer the lower price, why wouldn’t they have offered it in the first place?

Competitive pressure is the reason they have changed their price.  If a business has been around for years and all of a sudden just drops their price, is that a good thing?  I would say no.  If they haven’t developed a plan around how they are able to deliver the same or better quality service while reducing their cost of delivery I would say this is a very bad idea.

Yet it is happening.  Right here.  In real estate.

Early on, when we met with homeowners who were listing their homes, one of the questions we heard is ‘how do you make money offering this much lower price?’  And, ‘how long will you be in business offering a price that is so much lower than the competition?’ (Remember, all commissions are negotiable and there is no set fee.) The answer is that we built our business from the ground up to be less expensive to operate.  We weren’t discounting a previous rate.  We set our rate based on our cost structure and business plan.  4.5% is our rate, we adopted this rate based on how we are able to manage the real estate transaction successfully and maintain one of the strongest marketing campaigns for your property.

Dropping prices when you previously charged more has got to make clients mad.  I don’t know about you, but when I buy something and see it on sale a week later, I am not happy.  Imagine if you listed your house for 6.5% and found out the same brokerage is now charging other clients 5%?  Brokerages in our area today appear to be charging different clients different rates.  (Again, all commissions are negotiable).  I will speak for myself, but I would be no less than ticked off to find out my neighbor got a significantly lower rate using the same brokerage.  Until we came on the scene, I don’t recall any brokerages advertising their listing rate.

We advertise our rate, no asterisks, no small print – it’s simple.

Photo credit Mykl Roventine on flickr.com

Adam Conrad, a licensed broker in PA and MD, is the broker/owner of Perry Wellington Realty, a regional 4 location real estate brokerage.  Adam is the Director of Education for Advance Academy, a real estate school.  Adam is a part time lecturer at Pennsylvania State University and part time faculty for Saint Francis University.  You can reach him via email here or at Advance Academy.

We have an intern, Michael Koontz who has just knocked the ball out of the park.  He got a nickname along the way – not quite sure how he got it – Mikey ‘G’.  He has been quite a superstar for us over the semester.

Friday I went to Penn State in downtown Altoona and watched Michael do his internship presentation.

I was blown away.  I was also blushing a bit.  Mike learned a lot.  He was pretty excited about it too.  He was gushing, glowing, ebullient.  You get the idea. He was really excited about his experience working with us.  Specifically he worked closely with Lora Larimer.  She was really responsible for his mentoring.  Lora and Mike connected right away and they work together as a team.  Lora worked for 6 years at Coldwell Banker and has been very successful working with us at Perry Wellington Realty.  She has more listings and more activity with us than she has ever had in the past.  It was great having Mike on board to help Lora and it worked well for both of them.

To bring you up to speed on interns, we have partnered with Pennsylvania State University in their business program to offer internships.  We have created a program where business students can get the education required to sit for the real estate exam and then, once they are licensed, can become real estate agents and earn commission while they are going to school.  The internships are part of their curriculum and required for graduation.

Sitting through the other presentations, it was evident that the students all learn quite a bit as interns and they all appear to really like the real life experience out in the field.  Mike’s parents own a business, so he has had quite a bit of experience learning from his parents in the family business.  This experience gave him another point of view of running a business on a day to day basis.  Mike has also gotten to see up close, the growth of a business as we have added agents – now 24 of them in total.

Mike got to work on our weekly advertisements, he went on listing appointments, hosted open houses, stopped by and talked to homeowners as he canvassed neighborhoods and worked on sales agreements for clients purchasing homes.

He got to do it all.  He started 2 weeks before Christmas and he held down a full college courseload at the same time.

After the presentation I talked to his internship adviser, Cynthia Wood and she was very impressed with what Michael learned over the semester.

Here are some excerpts from his presentation:

Overview

At Perry Wellington Realty, LLC, we are significantly impacting the local real estate industry.  Currently we have 5 offices, 23 real estate agents, and we have only been open for approximately one year.  Also, we have begun to change the way people think about real estate through effective advertising, sponsorship programs, and word of mouth.  The evidence is clear if you are around me for more than 30 minutes, you will begin to see how frequently people are calling the offices for a Perry Wellington agent.  Not only are we changing the way people think about real estate, but we are also changing the way other Realtors® view our company.  Many Realtors® are beginning to realize the advantages that are offered at Perry Wellington Realty, and they are beginning to join our team.  Through my internship experience I have been involved in many aspects of Perry Wellington Realty that have attributed to its success.  Also, I will be able to translate the abundance of knowledge I have gained to my future.

The Highlight of My Experience

My main goal during the internship was to learn something that wasn’t in a text book and that my father and other peers hadn’t taught me yet.  The more I was around my broker, Adam Conrad the more tricks and tips I picked up on.  I cannot say that there was jut one main highlight, but I can say that Adam demonstrated superb leadership, teambuilding, motivation, and diligence like I have never seen in an employer.  I will never forget these skills that Adam demonstrated while running Perry Wellington Realty, LLC and I will be doing my best to translate everything I have learned form this incredible opportunity to my family’s business.

Key Takeaways

In such a complex experience I learned much more than I expected.  I was able to take away from this experience more than I can describe to you, it is just something that you have to experience for yourself to fully understand.  Personally, I matured and learned an abundance of information that will significantly impact my future including; sales, marketing, recruiting, leadership, teambuilding, motivation, communication, diligence, and most importantly I developed a drive to constantly improve on myself.  Without having this miraculous opportunity to be a part of Perry Wellington Realty, LLC, I strongly believe that I wouldn’t have developed into the person that I am and will continue to be.

Well said.  Well done.  Thanks Mike.

Photo credit Dr. Tulay Girard

Adam Conrad, a licensed broker in PA and MD, is the broker/owner of Perry Wellington Realty, a regional 4 location real estate brokerage.  Adam is the Director of Education for Advance Academy, a real estate school.  Adam is a part time lecturer at Pennsylvania State University and part time faculty for Saint Francis University.  You can reach him via email here or at Advance Academy.

Competition is good.  Competition makes your blood flow.  Competition keeps you on your game.

Our 4.5% rate has certainly gotten everybody’s attention.  I knew it was only a matter of time before some broker decided to jump into the fray and offer a more competitive rate.  We now have a broker who is offering at 4% commission rate.  Yep, saw it in the paper on Sunday.   The days of 6% are coming to an end.

The best news about this is that we don’t look crazy anymore (well, ok that’s debatable).  The fact that another brokerage can and will sell your home for a rate within 1/2 percent of our rate validates our rate.  When we started offering a rate of 4.5% when many brokerages were charging 6% (keep in mind, all commissions are negotiable and there is NO set rate) many sellers just couldn’t believe we were so much lower.

It’s over a year ago now we introduced our 4.5% rate.  Our rate today?  Still 4.5%.  Many thought we would use this as a way to get attention and recruit agents and then we would raise the rate.  Nope.  Not going to do that.  We built a lean, marketing machine that gets your house sold by some of the best agents in the business, and we do this for our low 4.5% rate.  Check out our post here for all of the reasons you use us.

What this really does is focus on the actual task of selling your home.  No longer do you feel like you ‘have to pay 6% to get it on the MLS’ or ‘pay 6% because XYZ brokerage has the buyers’.  Our rate has exposed to the consumers what I learned long ago – you need to rely on the strong marketing approach of the brokerage you are using to get your home sold.  We think we have one of the best approaches to marketing your home and we’d be happy to explain in detail the Perry Wellington Realty difference in our marketing plan.

What this also does is take the focus away from the ‘top agent’ syndrome.  What I mean by this is that there are many agents who list homes, who really don’t sell those homes.  You see the sign, listed by ‘Joe Agent’ and when it goes pending, everybody assumes they sold it.  Not the case.  Actually if you have been reading our blogs, you better hope that’s not the case!  It probably got sold by a cooperating agent, and likely at a different brokerage in many cases.

One thing to keep an eye on when brokerages start dropping their ‘rate’.  Make sure you understand the ‘splits’.  In our case of 4.5% we typically keep 2% and give 2.5% to the brokerage who brings the buyer (buyer’s agent).   This is a very competitive rate for agents representing buyers.  Sometimes we will split 2.25/2.25 but generally we like to give more than we keep.  When brokerages (again all negotiable, you must check when you list) split a lower rate they will typically go to 2.25% on the cooperating side.  So a 5% listing rate might mean a LOWER rate for the agent who brings the buyer.

It is important to make sure that your property is marketed properly – website, print media, email and flyers, and certainly open houses.

Oh yeah, and that sign out in front of your house?  I have seem some really bad signs in front of some really awesome homes.  Time to step it up!

Competition is good.

Picture courtesy imdan at flickr.com

Adam Conrad, a licensed broker in PA and MD, is the broker/owner of Perry Wellington Realty, a regional 4 location real estate brokerage.  Adam is the Director of Education for Advance Academy, a real estate school.  Adam is a part time lecturer at Pennsylvania State University and part time faculty for Saint Francis University.  You can reach him via email here or at Advance Academy.

There are lots of reasons why you should use Perry Wellington Realty to list and sell your home.  Since we started, there have been lots of folks who have listed their homes and found that we deliver.  We sell houses.  Sometimes we sell them really fast.

MLS.  Because we are part of the Multiple Listing Service (actually 3 of them, more than any other local broker) many times we sell the house through another broker.  Your buyer is out there, you just need to get your home listed where buyers look – that’s right – get it on the MLS and get the most exposure.

Advertising.  So now we are advertising in 4 newspapers, and on TV.  We feature homes in regional publications like the Real Estate Book and the Altoona Mirror’s Tour of Homes.

Exposure.  You get exposure in print when you use us.  But the buyers aren’t looking at the print ads so much.  They are on the internet searching.  I talk to buyers and find that they are checking many times PER DAY to see if their dream home has come on the market.

Buyers.  When that buyer sees the dream home on the internet, do they care who listed it?  Do they care if the brokerage has sold more homes over the last 2, 10, 20 or 50 years?  Not a bit.  Do they care who the agent is who listed it?  If that agent has the most billboards or works for a franchise or independent broker?  No again.  Actually buyers don’t really care a bit about anything other than getting the home they want.  Oh, and they want it for the best price.

Website.  So when you list a home, one of the things you need to look for is a strong internet web site, with lots of properties listed which is easy to navigate.  We started off with a very good website and we have added to it and improved it over time.  Want to find a home in Tyrone?  You can find all the active Tyrone properties in one place on our website with ALL the photos.  There is no local website which offers our coverage.  We have over 25,000 page views per month (and growing) on our website – there’s a reason for you.  Buyers are on our site.  As a seller interviewing brokers to list your home, wouldn’t this be one of the most important things to check?  We think so.

Agents. Probably much more important that many of the other factors is agents.  Agents who hold open houses, who work weekends, who answer the phone 7 days a week and often late into the evening.  Agents make the difference.  As I write this, we have 23 of them.  Agents keep joining our brokerage because of the opportunity we create for them.  Clients love our listing rate of 4.5%.  Buyers love our advocacy for them and the opportunity to get a rebate in certain cases.  Agents like working with us because the agents help each other.  They also like having a full time, very involved broker and a cadre of associate brokers who are very experienced.  People do business with people.  We have great people.

Technology.  We have a battery of technologies we have implemented with more to come.  We use electronic documents, we scan and email you your agreements, we are very connected over email and text messages.  QR codes – check, we use those too on our signs to give buyers more information about your home.  We talked about website, that’s big.  Single property websites?  Yep, we do those too.  Something new comes out?  Yeah, we’ll probably try that and see how it works.  We are not afraid to try the new stuff.

Offices.  We have 4 of them.  We are regional, but we are intensely local.  We have your local area covered with knowledgeable full time agents.  We have the region covered with a regional brokerage locally managed under one umbrella.  Have a house in Ebensburg you are selling to move to State College?  We can help.  We can list your Ebensburg home in the Cambria/Somerset MLS and help you find a home in State College using the Centre County MLS.  Our offices are not big expenses for us, we are minimalist in our offices.  Big offices mean big expense for you the client.  Someone has to pay.  Agents do 99% of their work in the field anyway.  If they have a laptop and a cell phone, they can work just about anywhere.

Advocacy and no dual agency.   Our agents won’t be dual agents – they will only represent one side of the transaction.  This really matters to get you your best net price.  More on this here.

Innovative and fresh.  We have had a number of people who just like our approach.  Saving clients money and not doing things the ‘same old way’.  We appreciate that.  We appreciate your endorsement of our model.

Community Involvement.  You will see us out there, participating in our community.  We give back, we help, we are involved.

Skill, knowledge and education.  I started a Real Estate school to help educate real estate agents.  This gives us a real edge by getting agents the most education and developing the best talent.  We expect all of our agents to take twice the required educational requirement.

Photo credit the real reason squirrels are jittery by greenkayak73 – on flickr.com

Adam Conrad, a licensed broker in PA and MD, is the broker/owner of Perry Wellington Realty, a regional 4 location real estate brokerage.  Adam is the Director of Education for Advance Academy, a real estate school.  Adam is a part time lecturer at Pennsylvania State University and part time faculty for Saint Francis University.  You can reach him via email here or at Advance Academy.

Perry Wellington Realty is rooted in the communities we serve.  We are quick to join, to participate and help where we can.  We have been a part of community events and charities since we started.  It’s part of what we do and who we are.

We have sponsored soccer teams, basketball teams, softball teams and we have worked to help with project winter warmth and with the Children’s Miracle Network.

This weekend we will have a bunch of us (I think at least 10-15) of us walking in the MSWalk in Hollidaysburg.

Come walk with us.  Get involved.

Well, the correct term used in real estate is ‘Dual Agent’, and we’ll have none of it at Perry Wellington Realty.

You shouldn’t either.

Who does your agent represent?

Pick a side.

We think dual agency is evil.  It is illegal in many states including Maryland just across the state border from our Bedford office.  It is a terribly bad idea in our opinion to use the same agent to list your home and have that same individual represent the buyer as well.  This is known specifically as ‘single agent-dual agency’.

Officially, from here on, there will be no instances of single agent-dual agency where your agent represents both sides.  It has been our unofficial policy and something we discouraged since we started, but it is time to just put it out there and declare it.

No dual agency.

This is radical for our area.  This is already causing a ruckus.  In practice, we have been discouraging dual agency and educating sellers and buyers from the start.  As we have recruited new agents to our growing brokerage, one of the first things we discuss is that we don’t practice dual agency.  This is different for seasoned agents in many cases.  For others, it is what they believe and what they practice.

I have written quite a bit about dual agency and how it is very difficult to advocate for both sides.  We think it is impossible.  (One caveat to dual agency is that if the brokerage has both sides of the transaction using different agents, this is broker dual agency which is commonplace and is considered acceptable.)

Defenders of dual agency support their argument by using examples of how they have ‘brought buyers and sellers together’ to help ‘broker the deal’ or ‘get the deal done’.  We just don’t see it that way.  While permitted by law in PA, we just don’t think it is ethical to take a listing, being hired as an agent for the seller, and then turning around and representing the buyer.

Someone is going to feel taken advantage of in this scenario.  I will bet BOTH the buyer and seller will feel that way in the end – certainly in many cases.

Why on earth would an agent, having signed an agreement with the seller to sell their home, having a fiduciary responsibility to their seller (they are the seller, as their seller’s agent) then represent the buyer?  I think it most often comes down to money, as the agent now has the ability to double their commission.

“Hogging” is the affectionate term used in real estate circles to refer to those who grab both sides of the commission.  I know that the defenders of dual agency will find this offensive, but it is what it is.

Today, with the MLS and the fact that someone will bring a buyer for the home, it doesn’t make practical sense to rely on the listing agent to sell the home.   In fact, this also makes a really good case for not selling your home by yourself as a ‘fizbo’- FSBO.

Other brokerages and agents have formed ‘teams’ to handle this situation.  The team ‘captain’ is an agent who is really good at listing properties and then has a few team members who work with buyers as buyer’s agents.  This is a good practice.  The broker however is still the dual agent in these scenarios since agents will be representing sellers and buyers.

The other method to maintain advocacy is to have a Designated Agent.  In this case, if you approach the seller’s agent (listing agent), that agent or their broker will refer the buyer to another agent in their firm.  We do this, and it works really well.  It keeps us focused on getting the best deal for our sellers and buyers.

In any case, if you followed all of this, you can see that we are once again, looking out for YOUR best interest.  That’s right, we think that looking out for our clients and customers is the key to our success.  Short term, we don’t get to ‘hog up’ the commission on the sale of your home, but we bet that when you are more than satisfied with our service and advocacy you will refer your friends and family to us.

That’s long term thinking.

Photo credit Arlette on flickr.com

Adam Conrad, a licensed broker in PA and MD, is the broker/owner of Perry Wellington Realty, a regional 4 location real estate brokerage.  Adam is the Director of Education for Advance Academy, a real estate school.  Adam is a part time lecturer at Pennsylvania State University and part time faculty for Saint Francis University.  You can reach him via email here or at Advance Academy.

Thinking of selling your home by yourself?  You will be known among real estate agents as a “Fizbo”.  FSBO.  For sale by owner.

Many agents lament the FSBO.  We embrace you.  We get you.  We understand where you are coming from.  You want to save money.  We want to save you money.  We agree.

Some of you have expressed your concern about agents.  You don’t want to work with a real estate agent.  Maybe you had a bad experience with an agent in the past.

We would like to suggest you call or write us.  See how we are VERY different than the ‘traditional agent’ you may have met in the past.  We are powered by technology, rooted in local knowledge and skilled in the art of negotiation.  We are tech savvy, always available and very involved.  And we are successful.  Look at the houses we are listing.  Look at the houses we sell.  Look at our explosive growth across 4 offices and over 20 agents – in one year.

People are paying attention.  Here is how we can help the FSBO.

To be successful selling your home, you need to be exposed to the maximum number of buyers in the market.  As a FSBO, you will not have access to the MLS (Multiple Listing Service) where a majority of the buyers are looking.  You need a Realtor® for that.  More on that later.

To get the next most buyers to look at your home, you post a sign in the yard and advertise in the local paper.  That costs about $150/week for a very small ad, buried in the classifieds.  You also need to list on craigslist to get more exposure.  If you are good on the computer, that is free and a good idea to help promote the property.

Lastly, you sign up to one of the websites – forsalebyowner.com or owners.com or another.  Pay them $300-$500 to get your house listed and get you some more exposure.  Good idea if you are trying to avoid commission.

Last and probably the most important step – offer to any agent who brings a buyer to pay 2.25-3% commission for bringing the buyer.  This way the agents who visit your home get paid if they bring their buyer.  Otherwise, they are going to have to get paid directly from the buyer for their services and it just might wind up having them sell a house on the MLS and get paid there.  That is your competition, you have to compete for those buyers.

Add this all up and you are paying 3% plus hundreds if not thousands to promote your property and you STILL DON’T HAVE THE HOUSE ON THE MLS.

Here’s where we come in as the FSBO Killer – list with us at 4.5%

For roughly 1.5% more, you get the benefit of being on the MLS, getting the benefit of our effective marketing and most beneficial – having a knowledgeable professional represent you in the transaction.

Talk to us, we have plenty of examples and references where we have sold a property and gotten the best price for our sellers and buyers.

Oh, and one footnote.  If an agent comes along and tells you ‘they have a buyer, list with me’ you should beware.  If they have a buyer, let them know you are happy to sell your home as it is ‘on the market’ and tell them you will pay their buyer’s agent fee.  There is no good reason they should be a dual agent and represent you and the buyer.  After all, they have a buyer they already represent.

Photo credit Mr. Kimberly on flickr.com

Adam Conrad is the broker/owner of Perry Wellington Realty, a regional 4 location real estate brokerage.  Adam is the Director of Education for Advance Academy, a real estate school.  Adam is a part time lecturer at Pennsylvania State University and part time faculty for Saint Francis University.  You can reach him via email here or at Advance Academy.

Ok, you are excited, you ‘Sold’ your house.  Well, you put it ‘under contract’ or ‘pending’ or ‘in escrow’ depending on the term of phrase used in your locale.

But the deal isn’t done just yet.  There is much work to be done.  This is where Realtor’s really shine.  We are the coordinators and the facilitators of the process.  And it is a process.

Inspections must be scheduled.  Closing at the Title Company or Attorney’s office needs to be arranged.  The mortgage needs to be finalized and committed.  The title needs to be searched, the deed needs to be prepared.

And the things on your mind – the new place to live, the move, the packing.  We are just scratching the surface here folks.

And many of these things can cause your ‘Sale’ to veer off course.  I wrote about Radon, the killer of deals in another post.  That is but one inspection which can cause a deal to melt down.

Every Realtor can tell you about a buyer who simply ‘changed their mind’.  We saw a deal melt down the day before closing when the buyer’s credit took a dive.  The reason?  They went out and bought a new pickup truck a few days before closing.  Deal killed.

But you want your sale to go through.  Here is what we recommend.

Backups.

And to get backups, you have to keep showing the property in many cases.   A buyer who views the property before or after it has ‘gone pending’ may still offer to purchase the property.  That offer is known as a “Backup Offer”.

I like Backup Offers.  As a seller, you should too.

If your buyer falls through for some reason, you can go to your backup offer and they can proceed through the ‘closing escrow’ process.

It’s a great strategy.  It takes more work, but ultimately we think it is worth it.  We think a backup offer keeps the pressure on the buyer who has the agreement to purchase.  Ultimately, they have to want this deal to go through, it sure helps alot.

One thing to keep in mind.  Your agreement with the listing broker typically says that they no longer have to market or solicit offers on your property once it has a contract on it.  Many brokerages will work with you on backup offers and continue to show – as you might expect, we all just want to sell houses.  As an informed consumer, this would be a question I would add to the list when you interview agents who want to list your home for sale.

Photo credit Ed Yourdon on flickr.com

Adam Conrad is the broker/owner of Perry Wellington Realty, a regional 4 location real estate brokerage.  Adam is the Director of Education for Advance Academy, a real estate school.  Adam is a part time lecturer at Pennsylvania State University and part time faculty for Saint Francis University.  You can reach him via email here or at Advance Academy.