Arch City Homes » Sellers

Search St. Louis Homes for Sale ~ School District Search

Karen Goodman — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 15:04:38 +0000

Watch our video tutorials to get tips on using the Home Search on Arch City Homes.

In this video, you will see how to find St. Louis area homes by school district.

You can also search for St. Louis, MO homes by:

map
MLS#
address
subdivision
zip code
city
county
open house

Homes that have an upcoming open house scheduled will be identified in the search results, so you can use the regular search options and still know if a home is scheduled to have an open house.

We can also set up a private tour of any St. Louis area homes at a time that is most convenient for you. If the house you want to see doesn’t have an open house scheduled that you can attend, or you would rather see it without the listing agent watching your every move, just contact us to set an appointment.

See our other tutorial videos:

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Search St. Louis Homes for Sale ~ Address or MLS # Search

Karen Goodman — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 15:45:51 +0000

Watch our video tutorials to get tips on using the Home Search on Arch City Homes.

In this video, you will see how to find St. Louis area homes by the address or MLS#.

You can also search for St. Louis, MO homes by:

map
school district
subdivision
zip code
city
county
open house

Homes that have an upcoming open house scheduled will be identified in the search results, so you can use the regular search options and still know if a home is scheduled to have an open house.

See our other tutorial videos:

Possibly Related Posts:

Search St. Louis Homes for Sale ~ Subdivision Search

Karen Goodman — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 15:31:22 +0000

Watch our video tutorials to get tips on using the Home Search on Arch City Homes.

In this video, you will see how to find St. Louis area homes by subdivision.

You can also search for St. Louis, MO homes by:

map
MLS#
address
school district
zip code
city
county
open house

Homes that have an upcoming open house scheduled will be identified in the search results, so you can use the regular search options and still know if a home is scheduled to have an open house.

See our other tutorial videos:

Possibly Related Posts:

Search St. Louis Homes for Sale ~ Zip Code or City Search

Karen Goodman — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 16:09:49 +0000

Watch our video tutorials to get tips on using the Home Search on Arch City Homes.

In this video, you will see how to find St. Louis area homes by zip code or city name.

You can also search for St. Louis, MO homes by:

map
MLS#
address
subdivision
school district
county
open house

Homes that have an upcoming open house scheduled will be identified in the search results, so you can use the regular search options and still know if a home is scheduled to have an open house.

See our other tutorial videos:

Search for St. Louis open houses

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What is Dual Agency?

Karen Goodman — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 14:38:52 +0000

What is Dual Agency?

Dual agency occurs when one agent represents both the seller and buyer in the same real estate transaction.

When a potential buyer sees the advertising for a home for sale and calls the listing agent, the listing agent has a choice to show the buyer the home but only represent the seller or to convince both parties to agree to dual agency.

Dual Agency is a Bad Idea:

The most important point for you to know about dual agency is that if your agent is also representing the other side, your agent cannot advocate for you in negotiations or give you advice on pricing. This means that when you hit a stumbling block in the negotiations, your agent can’t fight for your needs.

Let’s say that a buyer and seller are negotiating and they are $5,000 apart on purchase price. When we represent the buyer, our job is to convince the seller that our buyer will not pay more and that they should take our offer because it is the best they will do. As a seller’s agent, our job is to convince the buyer that the house is worth more than they are offering, and the seller won’t reduce the price any more.

Dual agents can’t take either of these positions.

All a dual agent can do is present to each client what the other side has responded, and ask if the offer on the table is acceptable or if they want to make a counteroffer.

Who Benefits from Dual Agency?

Buyers and sellers don’t benefit from dual agency.

The only person who benefits from dual agency is the agent.

Many agents are eager to act as dual agents because they get to keep the entire commission. When an agent is hired to sell a home, a portion of the commission paid to the listing agent is given to the buyer’s broker. If the agent represents both sides, then they get to keep the entire commission.

How do We Handle Dual Agency?

We don’t do dual agency except in rare situations.

We think it is a bad idea and not in our clients best interests.

If we have a listing and show the property to buyers without their own agent, we explain that we represent the seller. We let them know that they have 3 choices if they like the property and want to make an offer:

We can assist with the paperwork and the contract details just like a store salesperson can assist the people that are purchasing products from the store. We represent the seller and will encourage the buyer to accept the terms that the seller wants. By the way, this is exactly what new construction salespeople are doing when a buyer purchases a new home without a buyer’s agent.
We can refer them to another agent that can act as their buyer’s agent…an agent that can represent just their interests.
They can find a buyer’s agent on their own, and have that agent submit an offer on the house.

The next time you are in a market to buy, make sure you have your own agent.

If you discover a home through an ad or a yard sign, call an agent that will represent you and not try to sell you on dual agency. Rather than calling the agent working for the seller, contact me and I can arrange a private showing for properties anywhere in St. Louis, St. Charles or Jefferson County.

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Top 10 Tips for Staging a Home for Sale

Karen Goodman — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 14:15:42 +0000

You can never undo a bad first impression.

Buyers make a decision on whether they like a home in the first minute or two. If you want your home to be one that makes a buyer’s short list, you need to do everything you can to make it appealing from the moment that they walk through the door.

Once your home goes on the market, it stops being your ‘Home’ and becomes a ‘House’. Your goal is to present your home in a way that will make it as appealing as possible to the most buyers.

You need to highlight the best features of your home and de-emphasize its flaws.

It’s not about decorating, but actually turning your home into a model so that it will appeal to the broadest range of prospective buyers. The goal is to make people feel like they could live there, and the best way to do this is to “neutralize” the surroundings.

Top 10 Tips for Staging Your Home:

1. Clean out Closets and Clutter:

Give away or pack up toys, linens, and small kitchen appliances to store off site. Pack away the out of season clothing to make the master closet look less jam packed. Buyers are forgiving of storage boxes neatly tucked away in a garage or basement.

2. Focus on Rooms that have the Most Impact:

The kitchen, master bedroom, family room and finished basements have the most impact. Other rooms matter, but buyers will be more forgiving in secondary rooms.

3. Wait to Come on the Market until the Entire House Looks Good:

Even if you are in a rush to get your house sold, it is critical that you take the days or weeks (or even months) to have your home ready to make a great first impression on day one. Your very best traffic will be the buyers that have been watching and waiting for a new listing. Don’t lose them by not being ready.

4. Eliminate Items that Might make Buyers Uncomfortable:

Are you a hunter? Extremely religious? Have toys for your pets throughout the house?

Pack away the things that might just turn off that one buyer that would have made an offer. Family photos are fine, but pet pictures should be packed away. Deer heads and religious mementos should be packed away and saved for your next home.

5. Make your Home Look like a Display Home:

The marketing experts that work for new home builders and furniture stores have spent a lot of time researching what buyers want. Take advantage of their insights. Take note on how they arrange the books and nick knacks on the bookshelves. Pay attention to the little touches that they add to bathrooms, the lack of clutter and furniture arrangements that make rooms look large rather than cramped.

6. Remove Excess Furniture:

Just because you want a couch, love seat and two recliners in the family room, doesn’t mean that the furniture makes the room look flattering. Drag the excess pieces to the basement, or rent a storage pod until the house sells.

7. Remove Large Collections:

Collections just come across as clutter to people that don’t have the same passion as you for Mickey Mouse or frogs. Feel free to leave a few out, but the rest should be packed away.

Anything valuable should be out of sight and out of reach of toddler’s hands. Yes, some people will bring their children with them and children tend to touch things on low tables.

8. Kitchens Should be Spotless:

Kitchen counters should be completely empty other than a coffeepot and one or two small items.

Refrigerator magnets and your children’s art needs to be removed. Remember the display house…go take a look at Home Depot’s kitchen displays. Buyers want to see lots of counter space, and the best way to do this is to remove everything you can from the counters. The less in the room, the bigger everything looks.

9. Clean Clean Clean:

As hard as it may be, the house should be ready for a showing every time you walk out the door.

Make all of the beds (including in the teenager’s rooms!) every day. Do the dishes or at least throw them into the dishwasher. Vacuum on a regular basis, wipe down kitchen counters and make sure the dirty clothes end up in a hamper.

10. Open the Blinds:

Sunlight makes a world of difference in making a home inviting. Add extra lamps in dark rooms or corners, and make sure that there is a lamp near the door or on a switched outlet if there isn’t an overhead light.

The best thing you can do is bring in another set of eyes. Your real estate agent should walk through every room with you and give you detailed suggestions on how to make the house show better. If you are selling on your own, bring in a friend or neighbor and ask them to be brutally honest.

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Real Estate Marketing ~ Is Your Marketing Working?

Karen Goodman — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 16:56:34 +0000

I just sent out marketing reports to all of our seller clients. The goal is to show them that the marketing we are doing IS getting seen by people.

So many real estate agents tell their clients all about the great things that they will do in the name of marketing, but I doubt most of them even know how to find out if the marketing is getting viewed.

Having a home featured on a website doesn’t matter at all if no one visits the website.

Buyers preview homes on the internet. If they don’t follow up by scheduling an appointment to see the home, they are sending a message that the price isn’t right. They are saying they think that can do better for the money.

So often we hear sellers say they’ll consider dropping the price AFTER some people come see it and say they don’t like it.

Guess what…tons of hits on the internet without showings is the same as having all of those people say “it’s not good enough”.

Here’s the report from our listing that has been on the market the longest. After critically evaluating what has been selling and the price drops that our competition has made, we did get the seller to adjust the price to an aggressive price which should get it sold. Showings (and interest) has picked up dramatically in the last few weeks and we are confident it won’t be long now before we have a contract.

In comparison, the report below is for a home that got a contract quickly. Unfortunately, the buyer ended up terminating the contract. Less than a week later, we received another contract offer and hope to have it accepted in the next 24 hours.

As you can see, if a home is priced right for what it offers, it doesn’t take a huge number of online visits to the marketing to get a home sold.

If you have your home on the market and are surprised that it hasn’t sold yet, ask your agent for their marketing statistics. If they don’t know how to find these numbers, then maybe they don’t really know how to market homes on the internet either.

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ACH Facebook Page Adds New Features

Karen Goodman — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 21:09:24 +0000

In the last few months, I have finally gotten around to completing some projects that I’ve wanted to do for months.

I’ve known that I needed to get my websites optimized for smartphones for awhile, and came home for my last Keller Williams Realty conference committed to making it happen.

That was last year.

I finally dedicated a weekend to the project last month, creating a new mobile version of this website along with my other websites U City Homes and Consider KW.

I also finally put on paper the reason why we are in real estate. I was inspired to do this over a year ago when I stumbled on a video on one of the blogs I read. Way overdue, we’ve got a new Meet Our Team page that helps you understand what it will be like if you decide to work with us.

Today, I finally accomplished another project on the long-term To Do list.

I’ve been hearing for a couple of years that a business’ Facebook page should have a custom landing page to help new visitors understand what they will find if they decide to explore the page. Simply landing on the page’s wall just isn’t good enough if you want to grow the number of fans on your page. New visitors will probably scan the last couple of posts, and then will bounce back to whatever they were doing.

ACH’s New Facebook Page Tabs:

We have a number of new pages on the ACH Facebook page.

Welcome – this page explains what you will find if you explore the ACH page, and encourages visitors to Like the page so they can get regular updates delivered directly to their Facebook newsfeed
MLS Home Search – this page allows our Facebook visitors to search all of the St. Louis homes for sale without leaving Facebook (it does open a new window for the home search since you need a wider page than is available in Facebook to search comfortably)
Featured Listings – here we have pictures, basic information and links to all of the ACH listings
Summer Concert List – this FANS ONLY private page makes it easy for our friends to see our most popular feature, our annual free summer concert list
Client Reviews – we are a big believer in 3rd party review sites and want to make it easy for our clients to leave reviews for us, and for potential customers to get an unbiased opinion of our services

Why Does it Matter How Many Facebook Fans We Have?

For most of you, it really doesn’t matter if we have 1 fan or 10,000.

For you, all that matters is that we are offering information you want to see in your newsfeed rather than cluttering it up with annoying status updates. Offering useful content such as the Home Search and the Free Summer Concert List is our thank you for your support.

However, the way that we pay our bills is by having people decide to hire us.

Some of them hire us when they are ready to buy a home. With so many people spending a lot of time on Facebook, we want to make it as easy as possible for them to access our home search.

Other people hire us when they are need to sell their home. They expect us to get the word out about their home, exposing it to as many people as possible. The new Featured Listings page on Facebook directs potential buyers to pictures and video which highlight the best features of each property. The more fans we have, the more potential buyers will see the listings.

If you haven’t already, we hope you will hit that Like button on our page!

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NEW Mobile Version of Arch City Homes Website

Karen Goodman — Mon, 23 May 2011 13:38:11 +0000

Scan to visit our new mobile website

When I attended a Keller Williams Realty tech conference 18 months ago, I walked away with my #1 goal to set up a mobile version of this website.

Today, I finally set it up.

Why Is a Mobile Website So Important?

I’ve seen reports that suggest that mobile web browsing will overtake desktop/laptop browsing by 2013. Whether that is true or not, there is no doubt that the number of people who access the internet on their smartphone (iPhone, Android or Blackberry) is increasing quickly.

Plus, the iPad opened the door to a slew of tablets that will be hitting the marketing throughout 2011. As someone who doesn’t consider myself a technology early adopter, I bought an Android Xoom tablet a few months ago so we could do listing presentations in people’s homes and show our videos and pro photography.

While I was resistant to purchasing the tablet initially, thinking it was just another toy, I can see it becoming my device of choice quickly.

NEW Mobile Version of Arch City Homes Website:

Following the advice of Brent Nordquist, a blogger out of Seattle who offers social media and website consulting services, I’ve found the tool I needed to convert this website from the custom site that was put together by Rowboat Media into something that automatically adjusts when it recognizes you are viewing the site on a mobile phone or small tablet.

Home Page

Featured Listings with map of all listings

Blog posts by category

As technology continues to change, we are committed to changing too. After all, our seller clients hire us to make sure their homes get the best possible marketing. This new mobile website is one more step in that direction.

Photo credits: Jason Wagner

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How Does Twitter Help Sell Homes?

Karen Goodman — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 20:45:16 +0000

I know a lot of people probably think I am wasting my time making connections with people on Twitter.

Though I have made many new friends and connected with other real estate professionals both locally and nationally, a big part of why I am an active Twitter user is to draw attention to my real estate business.

I want to make sure that people in St. Louis who are looking for homes know about our listings. And, I want to make sure that people who need an agent know about the Arch City Homes Team.

Today I updated the free WiFi list that I published here last year and posted it to Twitter. I had a couple of twitter followers respond, giving me more information for the free WiFi list. The St. Louis Post Dispatch Weatherbird even forwarded the information to all of his followers.

Someone seeing the tweets about the free WiFi list clicked on the link to take a look, and then went on to view our home listings before checking out the full MLS search.

Click on the image to see a full-size picture
Image taken from our real time Clicky website analytics account (affiliate link).

Will this person buy one of our home listings? Maybe, maybe not.

But our clients hire us to get their homes for sale in front of as many people as possible.

Twitter helps me live up to that promise.

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