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Business & Tech

Healdsburg Open House Guide

What season is this?

$301,900. 206 Bouquet Circle, Windsor, 3Bdrm, 2Bth, Century 21 Healdsburg

$399,500. 2325 So. Fitch Mtn. Rd, Healdsburg, 1Bdrm, 1Bth, Coldwell Banker

$625,000. 314 Tucker St, Healdsburg, 3Bdrm, 3Bth, CPS Realty Sunday 12-3 M

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$749,000. 2321 So. Fitch Mtn. Rd, Healdsburg, 2Bdrm, 2Bth + 1/1 Coldwell Banker

$349,000. 330 Prune Tree Dr. Healdsburg,  2Bdrm, 2Bth Coldwell Banker Healdsburg, Saturday 1-3

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What Season Is This?

It is clearly the holiday season, but with this great weather it is still real estate season. In a rainy year,we usually see a drop off in real estate business from about Thanksgiving until the Super Bowl. This year, I am seeing the best winter real estate season in years.

There is a lot of optimism and it does not appear to be tied to the recent good jobs reports. It is coming from the fact that prices of un-distressed homes have been stable for almost a year. I have heard from about a half dozen people that prices are continuing to spiral down. WRONG!  It is true that distressed properties are coming on the market at lower prices than non-distressed but please be clear that these are two distinctly different categories of real estate.  If those good jobs reports continue until the Super Bowl we will see a real estate surge in the spring.

Every economic recovery has one thing in common. They have been bigger and faster than ANY analyst had predicted. I am seeing a lot of evidence that the same may be ahead for us. Unemployment numbers are down and the analysts did not see that coming. It is winter and those numbers should be down, not up. Interest rates are still at record lows.

There are new rules in place as of Dec. 1 that force the banks to do more for us in regards to home loan modifications. If anything creates a sense of urgency in the market we will see an even bigger surge in spring. I believe that we are camped just outside the Promised Land!

The number one thing that I can suggest for anyone involved in real estate, either consumers or professionals, is to have a success plan and to embrace it.

Here are some tips that will help you:

 --If your home is currently on the market for ninety days or more take it off the market as soon as the rains begin. Keep it off the market for 45 to 60 days. Get a fresh start in the spring time.

--While it is off the market, prepare the home to sell it this time. Hire a professional home stager to help you prepare the home.  I know there is a lot of resistance to doing this. I know because I felt the same way. Boy was I wrong. Stagers do a great job. Would you like your home to look like the homes in the fancy magazines? Those are staged homes.

--Take a lot of pictures and do so every month. The pictures should be professional quality not just a point and shoot type of photo. A picture really is “worth a thousand words”. For fun try night photography.  You absolutely have to have a minimum of twenty five pictures on the MLS at all times.  I will not go into why but trust me it is the biggest mistake I see in real estate marketing.

--Video is now mandatory to get good ranking results on the internet. You do not even need a video camera to do this. There are free tools on the internet that produce great video from photos and Google loves video. The video has to be uploaded to You Tube and have a unique name to get results. The name should match the name of the website for your home.

--Have an individual website for your home. It has to have a unique and hyper local name to it. An individual property website that uses the address of the home as the name is just about worthless. Do the research and come up with a good name. The property website has to have a lot of local information on it. School information, walk scores, weather, local links and local history have to be there. Google can see the planet but they cannot see your neighborhood. They are relying on you for that and in return they will give you priceless internet ranking.

--PRINT ADVERTISING IS NOT DEAD! We still run a full page ad in the Press Democrat every Sunday and the phone does ring from it.

--Do open houses and market the heck out of them. Every week I receive about a half dozen thank you emails from my fellow Realtors because of the traffic that they get at their open houses due this column. It is free and just takes a little effort but is well worth it.

For more information visit www.HealdsburgRealEstate.com

Happy Holidays

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