In the past, I’ve never been a real fan of virtual tours for most properties. My thought process was that plenty of well lit photos from the homeowner will do the job and give the viewer what they are looking for. 2 things are changing my stance on this. The first is that the overall quality of virtual tour production is going up. I must admit, these tours are starting to consistently look really really good. 2nd, sellers occassionally take and submit awful photos. 

I’ve gotten to the point where if a seller doesn’t own a quality digital camera or they have difficulty emailing photos, I almost always recommend a virtual tour. The advantage here is not just the virtual tour itself, but also the photographer will take your still shots for you and email them to us for uploading to the MLS.  The difference in a listing with quality well lit photos and dim grainy photos is night and day. Many times you can talk the photographer into taking addtl photos for you or even tip them a few bucks and ask them to take a plethora of extra shots.

These models can be useful for following trends in your area, however, they very rarely provide accurate valuations for specific properties. Anyone who has done a search on zillow has noticed this. A quick Zillow search will yield properties with “Zestimates” hundreds of thousands of dollars above and below actual market value. NAR is developing a tool for home valuation based upon MLS data from all over the country. The problem is that not everyone has to participate. Any agent or homeowner can choose to opt out of this, thus substantially affecting the end result data. It only takes a few agents within a subdivision to opt out to throw off the data greatly.

In the end, rely upon your own research through the county records, as well as credible appraisers.

It’s really you up to you, however, finding a tenant through the rental section of the MLS is easily attainable by posting your MLS listing in the rental section of the MLS. Many agents work with potential tenants and search the MLS daily for rentals… sim to what they do for a prospective buyer.  Our flat fee program works in the same fashion for both rental listings and for sale listings. The MLS is a much more valueable tool for locating a tenant than newspapers, craigslist, etc… because your property is reaching a much wider audience.  In addition, most MLS’s feed their rental listings over to Realtor.com, just as they do with the for sale listings.

If this is you, call us or email us and ask us to review your listing and look for reasons why your listing may not be generating the number of showings you are hoping for. Typically, we can look at your listing, look at your competing listings, and then give you a very accurate reason for your traffic count. There are plenty of buyers out there, as a seller, you need to understand your property is competing with the other properties in your area for buyers. Increased traffic doesn’t come by accident, it comes from pricing your property correctly and making your property available to show.  If you are wanting to increase your traffic, feel free to call us anytime for a listing review.

We have joined the Real Comp MLS in Michigan and will be adding the forms to our list now feature this week. We are thrilled to be entering the Detroit metro area. We have also updated our homepage with our first video testimonial and hope everyone checks this out. We will have more video testimonials uploaded shortly.

The answer varies by which MLS your property is placed in. For a definitive answer in you area, give us a call and we can tell you exactly based upon your city. Most MLS’s still allow an owner to publish a lockbox code in the private remarks of the MLS. In addition, those that did away with LB codes in the past are now starting to come around again. Austin, TX  for example had banned codes in the MLS  for years, but now allows the code to uploaded via an attachment to the MLS listing. NWMLS  in WA State previously banned Mechanical lockboxes all together but now allows for a variance with written permission from the MLS prior to use.

In short, when in question, just call us and ask.

What does this mean to me… the seller?
If an MLS will not let you publish your code in the listing, you can always include something like…”Seller available at xyz phone #. Please call for lockbox code”.

I recently had the pleasure of sitting through a Luncheon with about 60 other central TX Realtors(R) and I thought I would pass along some of the tidbits I picked up. During the discussion, other Realtors(R) voiced their likes and dislikes of showing properties. The one constant concerned directions. Multiple individuals expressed displeasure with incomplete MLS directions. Another pet peave noted by other Realtors(R) were listings with no photos. On the flip side, Realtors(R) raved about the attachment feature MLXchange offers and recommended that everyone take advantage of this.

Our sellers could take advantage of this by uploading surveys and disclosures to their listings through this attachment feature. There is no cost for this. The easiest way to do this is to simply email the attachments in PDF format to info@congressrealty.com and ask us to upload these to your existing MLS listing. It’s that easy.

Overall, the luncheon was quite informative and affirmed our belief that the MLS is the single most important tool available in selling your home. Countless times I heard Realtors(R) reference this very same fact during the luncheon. Not a single minute of the luncheon was spent on any other form of advertising other than the MLS. This 2 hour meeting was open for any topic the Realtors(R) wished to discuss……. they spent every minute on issues concerning the MLS.

Why is this important to note? I listened to 60 full service Realtors(R) re-affirm the viewpoint of Congress Realty…. the MLS is the vehicle that sells properties, not the Realtor(R), not the fancy magazines, not the open houses…… it’s the MLS.

Check out our new designs and new lower prices through our purchase signs icon from the homepage.

NAR is reporting that they still expect sales to rise in 2010 compared to 2009. Currently, an expected rise of 4.3% is anticipated. While this doesn’t match the original forecast of 6.5%, it does confirm recorded sales are up in most parts of the country.

NAR is forecasting home price increases to rise 2.5% this year and 3.7% in 2011.

Most importantly, NAR announced its pending home sales index rose 21% in April compared to last year. What does this tell us? A lot of offers were written prior to the tax credit expiration.

When a property goes active with Congress Realty, we create a PDF screenshot of the detailed MLS listing and post this in our private client area. The seller then receives an email with a login and password to the private client area. When the seller logs in, at the top of the screen they will see, “click here to download copy of listing”. After viewing the listing, the seller can use this same interface to make changes to the listing, download blank purchase contracts, disclosures, etc.. and even add additional services if needed. Anytime the seller would like a new copy of their MLS listing to view, they can request this by emailing admin@congressrealty.com and we will send this right over.