Lisa Crowder

There are dozens of zip codes in Fulton and DeKalb county. If you'll go to Office Depot and buy an ADC street map book it will show you the boundaries of all the different zip codes in the Metro Atlanta area. These maps also color-coordinate areas that are incorporated, so, for instance, everything inside the City of Atlanta or City of Decatur is shaded a light yellow while the unincorporated areas just have a white background. It's probably the easiest way to get a feel for which parts of the county are unincorporated. Of course, some of the recently incorporated cities (Sandy Springs, Johns Creek, Dunwoody) may not yet appear in maps -- look for the most recent editions of maps that you can find. - Sun Nov 16 2008, 18:08

If it's listed for 85% less than it was, then the goal of the list price was to start a bidding war. If you've got a $500k home and you list it for $150k (or whatever), the reason behind it is to get a feeding frenzy started so that as many people as possible will get attached to it and bid on it. This, it is hoped, will ultimately bring in an offer for something approaching what the bank needs to make in order to avoid a huge loss. I've seen situations like this where literally dozens of offers have come in in the first 24 hours a property like this goes on the market. This is simply a pricing strategy that's used to make a house stand out from the competition in order to attract a lot of interest.

As far as the ball being the bank's court -- a bank can take weeks or even months to get back to you. Once they say "submit your highest and best offer" they generally mean just that. They get everyone to tell them how high they are willing to go and eventually they get back to whoever they decide has the winning offer. Short sales and foreclosures are not for the uninitiated or the faint of heart.

If this opportunity doesn't go your way, I'd advise you to research the process in the future and to hire your own dedicated buyer's agent -- one with a lot of experience in short sales and REOs -- who can guide you through the process.

Best of luck. :) - Sat Nov 15 2008, 08:22

Did you sign a buyer brokerage agreement with this agent, or did she simply help you fill out a purchase agreement for the property? - Fri Nov 14 2008, 17:43

I think you're doing a decent job with your FMLS listing. There are no captions under the photos, which is a big mistake in my opinion, but you've had professional pics taken and even though the lighting is slightly creepy in a few of them, the house is beautiful and shows well.

Bear in mind, that the higher priced homes have an increasingly small pool of buyers. In addition to being an agent, I own a virtual tour company. As it happens, I've shot tours for several listings in your area in just the past month that are extremely comparable. I'm afraid you've got significant competition, some of it quite desperate (I know at least one of them is likely to result in a short sale) with a very limited number of buyers. There doesn't appear to be anything about your home that makes it innately more desirable than other comparable homes. That means that you'll have to compete primarily based on price in this market if you want or need to sell quickly.

What other marketing are you doing in addition to listing it on the MLS services? Appealing directly to buyers is an increasingly important method of marketing homes, since so many buyers are searching the internet for themselves and then telling their agents which homes they want to view. - Wed Oct 22 2008, 14:28

Interesting. . . . Why limit yourself to "top" buyers agents? Don't you want any agent with a potential buyer to find out about it?

The reality is that agents have garbage flying at them from everywhere (e-mails, flyers, postcards, etc.). I get about 100 e-mails a day from other agents, builders, developers, and FSBOs. 99.9% of them are not even located in my local area. 100% of them are immediately deleted by me (and the vast majority of agents out there).

The most effective way to reach agents is actually through FMLS and GaMLS. That's how we research which listings suit our clients. Make sure your listing is enticing and has EXCELLENT pictures with descriptive captions to explain what is being shown. Make sure you are offering at least a 3% commission to the agent who brings the buyer (3.5% or 4% would be better since any agent is going to know that they're going to have to do a lot more work since you're not an agent and presumably don't know what you're doing). If your house suits their client, they may show it. But you have to recognize that we have about 3 years worth of inventory on the market right now and not only are there tons of homes for every potential buyer to look at -- there are increasingly fewer and fewer buyers out there. We're going into a traditionally slow time of year. Mortgages are increasingly difficult to secure. People are worried about the economy, the election, jobs and just about everything else in the world. It's entirely possible there simply is not a buyer out there right now for your home.

Even homes represented by agents are taking FOREVER to sell (not all of them -- really well-priced, great homes can still sell in 30 days but that's increasingly rare) and honestly, I pity anyone trying to sell by owner. If you're trying to climb Everest, you better make sure you've got an experienced Sherpa along to guide you. A market like this is a terrible time to sell FSBO unless you've got personal experience marketing homes.

Anyway, to answer your question. I'd say your best bet is to research which brokerages are located closest to you -- with a 1-2 mile radius. Talk to the brokers at each office and see if they will help you in any way (be prepared for a sales pitch and be prepared for them to say "No".) But if you are offering a 3% commission to the buyer's agent they might be willing to let you put flyers in their agents boxes (not that it will do any good since most agents toss these immediately), and if they're incredibly accommodating they might even be willing to pass out the flyers and mention the listing in their office sales meeting (slightly higher chance of people actually paying attention). If you tell them that, if you can't sell it FSBO you'll list it with an agent and will be happy to interview an agent they would recommend, they'll be more likely to help you (of course you should also be telling the truth when you say this).

If you do get to the point of hiring an agent, make sure you get specifics (including a timetable) about their marketing plan. Extensive marketing is crucial right now -- it's also extremely expensive so a lot of agents have had no choice but to cut back on marketing just when they most need to do it. It's also critical that the marketing is in place when the listing hits the market. For example, if you don't have professional-quality photos in the listing the first day, you'll lose out on a huge proportion of the traffic that you could have gotten. I've heard unofficial stats from FMLS that more than 50% of the traffic a listing ever gets happens in the first 48 hours it's online. So if you have an agent who says, "I'll get the pictures in within 7-10 days" recognize that that's just not good enough.

Good luck. - Wed Oct 22 2008, 12:57

Okay, brutal honesty here. You're not really making the most of the marketing you're already doing. A lot of your photos are "okay" at best. The house deserves better photography including a real virtual tour, not a do-it-yourself product that doesn't even include any descriptions of what the potential buyer is viewing. If the house is unique and impressive, then explain to potential buyers what is unique and impressive about it. You don't even have text descriptions on your FMLS listing that explain what the buyer is seeing! And what is the point of showing that photo of the tea service? With only 12 shots to cover a house of that size, you really don't have space for lifestyle shots. - Mon Sep 8 2008, 12:55