Lucky House

Yesterday, while walking Karma to Taco Bell for lunch, I found a Monopoly house on the sidewalk. Is this just random or is a lucky sign of things to come? Is it a message from the All Mighty telling me to stop being suck a killjoy? I don't know. As soon as I am out of the "quiet period", I'll have some crazy-assed stories to tell about my latest adventures in real estate. Finding a Monopoly house yesterday is too weird to be a coincidence.

So Long Duke!

I have a confession to make. I have been cheating on my girl. Ever since I lost my job, I would wait until she fell asleep and then quietly sneak out of the house to love up the neighbor. Here is the object of my affair:



It's DUKE, the next door neighbor's boxer puppy dog! Duke lives at #3 Marc Plaza in Belmont. I think Karma knows of my infidelity. She smells the scent of another dog on me when I slink back into the house. Guilty, I give her an extra treat or love her up a bit more.



Although I love my dog, Duke is everything Karma isn't. While Karma most resembles a living anorexic teddy bear -- all furry and jumpy and soft, Duke is 6o pounds of raw strength and studliness. Duke has more muscles in his neck than Karma has in her whole body. Duke also has an expressive almost human face.

The differences between Man's Best Friend runs deeper than appearances. Karma is a trickster and a bit of a spoiled brat. She demands attention and knows no shame. Duke is a loyal and loving dog. Duke is visibly sad when you scold him and snorts appreciatively when you lavish him with praise.



So perhaps it is fortunate that I am relocating. Two timing Karma will come to no good. However as I am moving the very last of my stuff out of the Belmont house, I have been re-visting the neighbor's side yard to say goodbye to old Duke-y. He's a great dog and a good friend.

Real Estate Conversion Rates

Let us look at some of the numbers from our foray into real estate sales with #2 Marc Plaza.

• January 29th - our website goes live

• January 31st - we hit the MLS and receive 97 hits on the Main Exterior Photo.  About 40 people viewed more than one picture... 39 of those people could have been Rebecca.
  

• February 1st - Superbowl Sunday.  hits slump to 78.

• February 2nd - Our marketing pays off with an all time high of 657 hits on the main Exterior Photo. 200+ downloads of multiple secondary photos. Super Agent Ari Gold, errr... I mean Super Agent Michael Haywood announces our listing at the realtors' meeting.

• February 3rd - 226 exterior photo hits. Agency tour nets 40 agents, some with buyers.

• February 8th - Open house. 40 parties tour the house. 5 disclosure packages are downloaded

• February 9th - One offer with 24-hour expiration.  Attempts to leverage multiple offers fail.

• February 10th - Offer accepted.  Second Agency tour. 5 new agents drop cards.

• February 15th - Second open house. 10 parties tour. 1 disclosure downloaded. Website traffic for the second week drops to 20 hits per day.
  

In summary, here is the tale of the tape. Over 10 days, we received:

1,335 downloads -> 40 agent visits -> 40 buyer visits -> 5 disclosure downloads -> 1 offer

Those are some mean conversion rates.  We are looking at a tough buyers market my friends and neighbors. 

UPDATE !!!
By popular demand, here is the referring website traffic 

Our Direct Marking campaign (posting at EA, Oracle, Yahoo, VISA, Facebook, etc) seems to be the best lead gen. Yippie us!!!! go team.

Sold

We accepted an offer on the Belmont house last Tuesday night. With the buyer's contingencies expiring in an hour, hopefully its a done deal!

Overall, I think the transaction was a win-win. We priced the joint to sell and it was easily the best deal in Belmont. By all accounts (including our super spy Chris G.), the buyer was ecstatic about his purchase. He's going to get a sweet house in a primo neighborhood for less than a cool million.

On the flip-side of the coin, we received an incredibly clean As-Is offer at our asking price one day after the open house. We don't have to worry about declining real estate or that new low-ball listing on Lincoln Ave.

I would have liked multiple offers and a small bidding war, but I think one offer means we priced it right. Onward and upward. Selling in a bad market kind of sucks, but now we get to buy in the bad market.

Buy My House !

You may already know the future owner of my home. Imagine how cool that would be!!! You don't have to remember a new address. You know how to get there. Plus, you could say things like, "Yeah your furniture is nice, but I liked this room much better when it was painted green and blue and was filled with four pinball machines."

Plus you will be doing your friend a huge favor. We did all the legwork by painstakingly updating the joint with new carpets, floors, paint, fences, and yard work. We removed all the needless walls, cleaned the place from top to bottom, and even put new street numbers on the wall. Not only is my home move in ready, it is nicer than when I lived there. Then because everything is custom built in Belmont, we personally visited all the other houses for sale in Belmont and priced our home to kick the competition in the nuts.

You can make this dream a reality. All you have to do is tell all your friends about my house for sale and volunteer to post it on your internal corporate website. Just let me know and I'll send you a description and some pictures to upload. In the meantime, sit back, relax, and listen to the soothing cool jazz while taking a virtual tour of my house for sale.

Coming Soon

After much deliberation, we went with Francis' dude, Michael Haywood , to sell my house. Selecting an agent cleared my "go to market" logjam. Now everything is clicking into place and we should be on MLS next week.



Unfortunately this mean that I've been too busy to blog. Apologies to my four loyal return readers (yes, I did finally figure out how to monitor my traffic).