- Joined
- Oct 11, 2007
- Messages
- 85
Hi Everyone,
We got an option on a house in Priddis (expensive area south of Calgary) and did a Round Robin style auction based on the book "How to Sell a House in 5 Days" by Bill Effros 2 weekends ago. We could not find a buyer unfortunately, so we decided to share our lessons learned here and ask for some advice for next time.
The house was 16 yrs old, 1443 sq.ft, and on 5.8 acres with a nice big shop as well...without seeing the house or thoroughly looking into property values we agreed on an option price of $730,000 (we looked at listings before agreeing, then solds after). This was our first mistake, however, even when we got solds there was nothing good to compare to and we still thought we had a decent chance of selling around $730,000.
We marketed for 5 days prior to the Sat-Sun 12-4PM open house mainly through kijiji, but we also put an ad in the Western Wheel (Okotoks` local newspaper), and we got bang on the recommended 25 calls or emails by Fri night. We thought we were doing alright.
We also spend a TON of time building signs using a massive sheet of corrugated plastic from Home Depot ($20 made 6 realtorish sized signs plus a large banner sign for the owners fence on 22X. We will be ordering signs next time...the headache received from an afternoon spent with a very strong smelling sharpie pen was not worth it).
The open house sat and sun went well as far as interest, we had 35 parties come through, with about 6-8 groups being very interested, doing their homework, and some coming back twice. We had the book on display for people to read which has a section for buyers to read on how to bid strategically etc., which only a couple people took advantage of (unfortunately). We also had a property inspection, well report, and comparable listings available for people to check out.
As stated in the book, we put the minimum bid at the lower "magic number" of half of what we wanted, which wound up being $349,500. By Sun at 4PM the high bid on the initial bid sheet was $376,000...we started to get worried. The Round Robin started at 7 Sun night, and was a complete failure. We had 12 bidders, all who thought they could buy the house for under $500k (we were off on our value estimation, but not by that much...it`s probably worth between $650-700k). So over the course of 3 hours we had people bidding by $500-5000 at a time, and at 10PM we had 2 buyers left and the high bid was $482,000. We called the round robin process and told the 2 buyers they could put in offers if they wished, however, unfortunately neither was willing to offer more than $650,000, and the seller would take no less than $700k. We did get one serious buyer who dropped out of the Round Robin early but called first thing Monday morning to inquire whether it sold or not. She was going to place an offer in collaboration with another couple but things fell thru.
Major lessons learned for us:
- Order generic signs to point people in the right direction, ugly handmade signs with more detailed information attracted primarily looky-loos and nosy neighbors.
- List the starting bid price much higher than 50% (we`re thinking maybe 75-80%)???
- Encourage more people to read the buyers strategy section
- Change the round robin format from phone calls to something else (i`m thinking maybe a gotomeeting or conference call...something where everyone is there so you don`t have to worry about people not answering their phone and that will speed up the process...it took WAY too long!)
This was our experience, we do want to try it again on an easier house with more systematizing...but for those who have done lots of these we have a few questions:
- How do you do the Round Robin portion? Phone calls, conference call, gotomeeting, ebay...?
- What do you set the initial bid price at, and what are the increments of bidding ($500 or $1000 etc.)?
- What price range and area of house have you used this on?
- What percentage of market value do the houses sell for...higher or lower than what you would expect market value to be?
Hopefully this is of some help to others, and thank you in advance to anyone experienced who offers advice.
We got an option on a house in Priddis (expensive area south of Calgary) and did a Round Robin style auction based on the book "How to Sell a House in 5 Days" by Bill Effros 2 weekends ago. We could not find a buyer unfortunately, so we decided to share our lessons learned here and ask for some advice for next time.
The house was 16 yrs old, 1443 sq.ft, and on 5.8 acres with a nice big shop as well...without seeing the house or thoroughly looking into property values we agreed on an option price of $730,000 (we looked at listings before agreeing, then solds after). This was our first mistake, however, even when we got solds there was nothing good to compare to and we still thought we had a decent chance of selling around $730,000.
We marketed for 5 days prior to the Sat-Sun 12-4PM open house mainly through kijiji, but we also put an ad in the Western Wheel (Okotoks` local newspaper), and we got bang on the recommended 25 calls or emails by Fri night. We thought we were doing alright.
We also spend a TON of time building signs using a massive sheet of corrugated plastic from Home Depot ($20 made 6 realtorish sized signs plus a large banner sign for the owners fence on 22X. We will be ordering signs next time...the headache received from an afternoon spent with a very strong smelling sharpie pen was not worth it).
The open house sat and sun went well as far as interest, we had 35 parties come through, with about 6-8 groups being very interested, doing their homework, and some coming back twice. We had the book on display for people to read which has a section for buyers to read on how to bid strategically etc., which only a couple people took advantage of (unfortunately). We also had a property inspection, well report, and comparable listings available for people to check out.
As stated in the book, we put the minimum bid at the lower "magic number" of half of what we wanted, which wound up being $349,500. By Sun at 4PM the high bid on the initial bid sheet was $376,000...we started to get worried. The Round Robin started at 7 Sun night, and was a complete failure. We had 12 bidders, all who thought they could buy the house for under $500k (we were off on our value estimation, but not by that much...it`s probably worth between $650-700k). So over the course of 3 hours we had people bidding by $500-5000 at a time, and at 10PM we had 2 buyers left and the high bid was $482,000. We called the round robin process and told the 2 buyers they could put in offers if they wished, however, unfortunately neither was willing to offer more than $650,000, and the seller would take no less than $700k. We did get one serious buyer who dropped out of the Round Robin early but called first thing Monday morning to inquire whether it sold or not. She was going to place an offer in collaboration with another couple but things fell thru.
Major lessons learned for us:
- Order generic signs to point people in the right direction, ugly handmade signs with more detailed information attracted primarily looky-loos and nosy neighbors.
- List the starting bid price much higher than 50% (we`re thinking maybe 75-80%)???
- Encourage more people to read the buyers strategy section
- Change the round robin format from phone calls to something else (i`m thinking maybe a gotomeeting or conference call...something where everyone is there so you don`t have to worry about people not answering their phone and that will speed up the process...it took WAY too long!)
This was our experience, we do want to try it again on an easier house with more systematizing...but for those who have done lots of these we have a few questions:
- How do you do the Round Robin portion? Phone calls, conference call, gotomeeting, ebay...?
- What do you set the initial bid price at, and what are the increments of bidding ($500 or $1000 etc.)?
- What price range and area of house have you used this on?
- What percentage of market value do the houses sell for...higher or lower than what you would expect market value to be?
Hopefully this is of some help to others, and thank you in advance to anyone experienced who offers advice.
