Admittedly, I blushed a little bit after receiving an alert for this glowing online review left by Shelley, a recent seller-client. She and her husband Dave put their home on the market in December. As you know, it’s common perception that winter is one of the worst times of the year to try and sell.
Nothing short of spectacular.
Their home set a new record for sales price, compared similar homes in their neighborhood. This just further proves the point that you that when you take a value-driven investment approach to selling real estate, you can often throw conventional wisdom out the window.
I’ll get into the details about how we did it in a second but first, let me rewind the tape a little bit ...
I met Dave way back in the spring of 2010. At the time of our introduction, Dave had recently relocated from Florida to Austin. He was project manager for a commercial construction company and had about five months remaining on a short-term apartment lease.
A really nice guy and pretty unassuming, Dave and I hit it off quickly.
With limited knowledge of Austin and the local real estate market, Dave was looking to me as his guide, to steer him in the right direction. We discussed some potential neighborhoods, namely the Circle C area in Southwest Austin.
Dave’s search began in earnest later that summer, while he still had plenty of time on his lease. It was 2010. Remember those days when homes stayed on the market for longer than 48 hours? Without the added pressure of a here-today-gone-tomorrow scenario, I’d venture to guess that we looked at about 20 homes over a two to three week span.
He finally scored a great deal on a limestone single story with nice greenbelt views. It was less than two years old, in a community that was still being built out, at the time. The seller was having difficulty competing with the buyer incentives offered from the existing homebuilders.
We were able to negotiate a purchase price that was less than what the owner bought it for just 20 months prior. Dave was thrilled, to say the least.
Fast-forward almost five years and one morning an email came through.
The subject read: Getting Back in Touch
". . . it’s been a great house but my job is going to be relocating me back to Florida again early next year. I’m wondering if you are interested in sitting down and chatting about the options for getting my house on the market. Let me know when you are available next week."
When I show up to consult with a client on their listing and they meet me at the front door with a smile and a spiral notebook, I take that as a good sign they are ready to “go to work.”
And that’s important.
That’s exactly how Shelley greeted me the first time we met at the house. She and Dave married a few years after he arrived in Austin and I hadn’t yet had the opportunity to greet her in person.
They caught me up on the details surrounding their need to move. Both were originally from Florida and still had a lot of close family in Florida. So naturally, when the opportunity presented itself for Dave to transfer back to the sunshine state, it was a no brainer for both of them.
Dave was officially starting work there in February but they both agreed that the sooner they were able to wrap things up in Austin, the more freedom and flexibility they would have to find the right house in Florida.
In today’s market, especially in an area like Southwest Austin, we could have simply taken a “just throw the sign in the front yard” approach and they still would have made a nice little profit. That said, I’m yet to find a seller who, once educated on our approach, prefers to do the bare minimum and leave a good chunk of money on the table.