Sunday, March 25, 2018

Crossing T's and Dotting I's

A portion of another excellent Cocoa Beach mural on the north wall of Coconut's Fish Market.

Those tired of reading about bad listing agent behavior may want to skip this one.

Browsing my hotsheet one morning this week I notice a price reduction on a three quarter of a million dollar luxury oceanfront condo unit that's been on the market a little more than a month. I browse the photos to refresh my memory of the unit and to see if it really should command the still-high $350 per square foot price. It might, considering the remodel job, the fact that it's a corner unit and is being offered fully furnished. Problem is, I can't really tell from the listing photos because they appear to have been shot with a Kodak Brownie with Vaseline smeared on the lens. I know the listing agent would like to get a check for selling this listing but she's hampered the process with poor photos. Friction.

On the same hotsheet is another unit, same building that is more aggressively priced that has been on the market for 94 days and that has a newly accepted contract. It might have sold sooner had the listing agent bothered to put the condo name in the listing. Anyone doing a search for listings in this particular complex over the last 94 days wouldn't have found this one because it had no name entered. Friction.

In this day of universal access to the MLS and the syndication of listings to Zillow et al,  non-MLS marketing has become far less effective at selling specific listings. A marketing effort made by a listing agent in non-MLS media is good for every other comparable listing including those that do nothing but exist on the MLS. A buyer attracted to a Cocoa Beach condo by a slick ad in the Dubai Gulf News will almost certainly check the easily browsed comparable listings before making an offer. Knowing that, it is imperative that MLS listings be complete and with accurate descriptions and good photos. I cringe to think of the buyers who declined to view the first listing mentioned above because the photos made the unit look so dark and small or who missed the second because the absent condo name made it invisible in a search for that building.

Takeaway: Sellers should be concerned more with how their listing appears on the MLS than by fancy extra marketing efforts. A Wall Street Journal classified for a Cocoa Beach condo is less effective than good photos in the MLS. The appearance and content of a seller's MLS listing should take precedence over all other marketing efforts. Those who settle for crummy photos or bad descriptions are not taking full advantage of the current robust market.

"Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall." __Ronald Reagan