“Three years ago in Phoenix, you could put a for sale sign on the front of a cardboard box and you could sell it,” says real estate broker Jay Thompson of Thompson’s Realty in Phoenix, Arizona.
Today, of course, things are a little different, both in Phoenix and the rest of the real estate world. However, the phoenix is going to rise from the ashes eventually. And Thompson is one courageous survivor, with good reason. He opened his brokerage in 2008 during the last days of the real estate bubble. As soon as he hung his first shingle, the industry hung itself. But Thompson saw it coming.
“What goes up, comes down,” he says, “and we came down hard. But I think we’re just hitting the bottom. The question is how long do we keep hitting the bottom.” ?
“We had home values that were appreciating 50-60% a year. That’s unsustainable. You can’t do that for long. I can tell you dozens of stories. They used to turn it around and sell it – sell a lot – the house wasn’t even built yet – and make thirty to forty thousand dollars in two months. Anyone with half an eye saw it coming. You knew it had to pop.
The pace may be a little slower these days, but Thompson keeps his doors open by keeping his cool and remembering the old-school rules.
“After all, people still buy houses,” he says, “every day.”
He has survived through all the drama just fine. How?
“There are three things that sell a house,” says Thompson. “It’s price, location and position. You can’t do anything about location. The house is where it is. That gives the seller two levers: position and price.
“You have to price the house aggressively. But you have to be realistic and you have to come out of the ‘my house is the best house in the neighborhood’ mindset. Everyone thinks he has the best house in the neighborhood. They Not all neighborhoods can have the best homes, so you have to price it right.
“Condition, at least in our market, has to be as perfect as it can be. It can be the little things: Wash the windows. Clean the carpet. De-clutter. All those old standbys are really important in this market.
“A lot of it is old school, at least in the Phoenix market. We have a lot of inventory, and a lot of foreclosures and short sales. And whether you want to admit it or not, you’re competing with your next-door neighbor.” is doing, whose house has been lying vacant for six months as it was foreclosed on.
“So something as small as the curb appeal is huge. Curb appeal has always been important. These days, with 47,000 listings on the Phoenix market, your home has to stand out. And she has curb appeal: status.
The advice may sound simple, but the vast majority of sellers ignore it and end up losing the game before they even get started.
“It’s all about education,” Thompson says, and he stresses the importance of learning, especially for first-time home buyers. “It’s everything you need to understand about how real estate works. I don’t care what market you’re in.
“There are a lot of people I know who don’t do the process. By process I mean the steps you go through when you buy a home, get a loan and buy a home. They have to understand the dynamics of the market. They have to understand that Must be that their house from the terrace is not going to appreciate on its own.
On the other hand there is a challenge in front of him is the unreal seller. They say, “We’ll do a listing presentation, and [seller] will say, ‘A year ago, my neighbor sold his house for $X!’ And I say, ‘Well, that’s a year ago, $X doesn’t matter. What happened a year ago does not matter now. You have to see today.
“Sellers find it difficult to realistically understand what their home is worth in this market. It’s getting a little better because there’s so much press and media about the market, but people still don’t want to believe it. [their actual home value], When it comes to selling, perhaps the most difficult thing is to convince people of the true market value of their home.”
For real estate professionals, he strongly recommends the power of the Internet and the critical importance of social media in maximizing sales and communication. Young agents know this through osmosis, but some of the more seasoned pros have trouble warming up to this strange new digital world. Thompson discovered the Internet early, while most of the industry was still thumbing through hard-cover listing directories.
“Before real estate, I was in semi-conductor manufacturing, which is a very technical industry,” he says of his life at the dawn of the digital age. “I transferred several times, and I was very disappointed by what I could not find on the internet [real estate listings]Because I was an Internet guy.
“So when I got transferred, I would say, ‘Okay, let’s find a house. Let’s find an agent.’ I lived in Austin and we were about to move to Phoenix. I was surprised at how little I could find on the internet.
“Then came the severe downturn in the semi-conductor manufacturing industry. I was in human resources and I was just laying off people and closing factories, knowing it was only a matter of time before I myself was fired. That’s when I decided, ‘I’m done with corporate America. I’m tired of working for man. I will get my real estate sales license. And I’m going to be internet based.’
“I said it from day one because I knew there was a need out there for it. And it wasn’t like there wasn’t real estate on the Internet. There was, but it just made sense to me. I’ve done a lot in real estate.” I talked to people who were knocking on doors and cold calling and mailing postcards and newsletters and I thought, That’s not efficient at all. So before I even got a license, I started building my first website. I taught myself HTML. I’m not a coder or developer by any stretch of the imagination, but I basically taught myself how to work on a template, and built this.
“Then, five and a half years ago, I started my blog. That was partly because I’ve always loved writing, and I needed a writing outlet. I thought, well a blog is perfect for that. I will only blog about real estate. In 2005, there weren’t many real estate blogs out there; Some, but not much. You really have to look to find real estate blogs. And maybe a year after I started it, it just started. By taking off, I mean I started getting leads and contacts and prospects from it. [The Phoenix Real Estate Guy]
The result was an adventure in real estate that includes a little bit of everything Phoenix has to offer.
“We can sell anything in this market,” he says. “It’s all residential resale. My wife and I used to trade a lot of land but [now] The land is dead here. So it’s typically resale, and we’ll sell anything from $40,000 condos to $700,000 homes. and everything in between.
For more information about Jay Thompson and his brokerage, visit Thompson’s Realty, follow him on Twitter @phxreguyOr check it out here on BigerPockets.
Note by BigPockets: These are the views expressed by the author and do not necessarily represent the views of BigPockets.
