Life happens in six-week blocks. We all know that.
And Labor Day is six weeks from today. So you have to start wondering, what are you going to accomplish in the next 42 days?
My own priorities are clear. I need to sell two houses. They are fix and flip properties that I bought, respectively, five months and two months ago. The older one has been listed for sale for 95 days. The newer one went on the market last week.
Both are beautifully renovated, and I think, attractively priced. One is a great starter home for a couple, a family with kids, or a smart, single person who is tired of throwing away money on rent. The other is a three-bed, two-bath in one of Denver’s hottest up-and-coming neighborhoods. Great for a family or a yuppie couple, close to downtown.
(The addresses are 1820 Jay Street in Lakewood; and 2924 Columbine Street in Denver. Potential buyers can contact me or a trusted real estate broker for pricing and a showing.)
It is crunch time on the selling calendar. I don’t what seven-day period of the year statistically represents the “peak week,” in terms most contracts signed. But it’s got to be right around this one—the last stretch of July. Six weeks ‘til Labor Day. Families are making decisions about school. Buyers are making commitments.
I need to make the most of this period. Which is why today I am launching “42 Ways to Sell a Home.” Every day, on average, I will dream up and execute an idea for selling a home. Each idea will be listed below on this page.
Note that I’m not promising to post “daily.” I hope to add an idea per day, but you know how that goes. Life gets in the way. I’ll commit only to 42 ideas in that many days. I will commit to seven ideas each week. That way, there’s no getting too far behind. There may be a lot of catch-up work on Sundays.
And I’m not calling them “new” ideas. Many—perhaps most—will be established, well-known, and non-original approaches to home
selling. Like posting a listing on Facebook. Everybody does that. The point is simply to do something each time
that I haven’t done before. In that sense, each one is new.
Other methods, off the top of my head, may include phone calls to prospects, door-knocking, or using Google Ad Words. Again, I make no claims about originality.
My second objective is to end up with something worth reading. A collection of ideas that other sellers will find useful and interesting.
Perhaps I’ll rearrange them in a step-by-step fashion rather than present them in order or occurrence.
So consider this Day 1. Below is Idea 1, to be followed by 41 more before Labor Day.
Idea 1: List about 42 distinctly different home-selling ideas. Make a commitment to them in writing for the world to see.
Idea 2: Call a bunch of people. Metrolist identifies more than 100 brokers with prospective buyers for my Columbine Street property. On Monday, the the first day of this post, I cold-called 10 of them. Not one was unappreciative. One claimed to have a real buyer. I spoke to some great people.
Idea 3: Yesterday, near my Lakewood home for sale, I walked into a well-known education institution. My plan was to post a flyer advertising the property. A big bulletin board beckoned, but my flyer would have been too conspicuous. An unapproved piece like mine, I think, would have been rapidly removed. My “idea” is to create a less conspicuous ad, maybe 3 by 5 inches, to post at local businesses, grocery stores, etc. While exiting the school, I noticed a nearby government facility big enough to employ a couple hundred people. The rest of this idea is to find a dozen well-populated sites and post a print piece at each one.
Idea 4: Maybe kind of a cheap one here–I’m pressed for time. Hire someone to create and post a virtual tour like this one.
Idea 5: This one is legitimate as an “idea,” though not necessarily a formula for great success. Maybe it needs tweaking. A couple of months ago, I posted this property description. Rather than pitch the house, however, I focused on one bank’s special financing program available in that home’s geographic area. The program offers 100 percent financing, even to buyers with relatively low credit. Buying this home, my post said, was a good alternative to renting an apartment—especially with rents rising so dramatically. The “idea” here is to direct a sales pitch at one targeted audience.
Idea 6: Craigslist posting is pretty de rigeur among property advertisers. But before you go there, go to Postlets.com. You can create a much nicer-looking ad than Craigslist software permits. Then follow some simple instructions, and you can post that pretty “postlet” over at Craig’s place. And it gets blasted out to a lot of other sites of your choosing.
Idea 7: Open houses, what can you say. I staged one today, a week into my 42 Ideas Campaign. And I staged one a week ago, a day before the campaign. A few thoughts: Use a Craigslist/Postlets announcement on the morning of the event. On site, for better or worses, my style is very low-maintenance. Let ‘em walk around, don’t be a helicopter. I left a “sign-in” sheet on the table. It worked better the first time, when I peppered it with a few dummy signatures. Nobody wants to be first, I guess.