What Domino’s can teach us about real estate marketing.

No serious low-carb freak should do it but sometimes nothing but pizza will satisfy.  Since there is a Dominos between my home and my office I sometimes call and order a pizza and pick it up on the way home.

The last time I did this something weird happened.  As I was into my second slice and washing it down with a glass of cold milk my attention was drawn from the magazine article I was reading.  The pizza was really good!

Much better, in fact, than what I had come to expect.  What was going on? The personnel in the store were still the same mumbling and bleary eyed guys I’d seen before making pizzas and walking from the nearby convenience store drinking from paper bags.

Later I noticed that Dominos ads were admitting that there pizza wasn’t that good and were changing the recipe and putting in better ingredients. Then I saw a tiny article on a business page that Dominos’ business had improved since the changes had been made.

All this brought back memories of a particular time.  I was an English major and have no academic marketing background and a good part of my long marketing career in banking was in product development which really means a lot of project management and procedures writing.  When I took my last job in banking as the marketing director of a regional bank I had more responsibility for promotion and pricing than I had ever had before.

Some things are best learned by teaching.

During that time I was asked to teach a marketing course by the local chapter of the BAI or the Bank Administration Institute. This involved introducing marketing concepts to ambitious bank tellers and customer service reps and getting paid a little bit to do it. But it also meant educating myself  about the concept of “the marketing mix” and integrated marketing. The BAI text  book…which is still within reach of this desk… was my introduction to the concept of the 4 Ps of Marketing, Product, Price, Place, and Promotion.

Place, of course, really refers today to the distribution system for a company’s products.

At the time, Dominos was revolutionizing the pizza industry with a very distinct distribution strategy…rapid and reliable home delivery.  For a while they guaranteed delivery within 30 minutes which was a strong strategic commitment until it became abundantly clear that encouraging already hormone stoked, lead footed teenagers to try to beat the clock was not a good idea.

Still, for my students, most of whom assumed that “marketing” was synonymous with “advertising,” it provided a good example of how a company could build its marketing strategy around doing distribution better than anyone else. Dominos pizzas were OK and its prices…not including tips to the delivery guys…were about the same as the other pizza chains.  They probably spent no more than the other chains on advertising either and kept their costs down by not maintaining sit-down restaurants. This worked for years until gradually the other chains adapted and started adding delivery services.

So now things come full circle. A rival chain that promotes “better ingredients, better pizza” is forcing everyone else to adapt.   My experience with Dominos’ improved pizza is one indication that they are shifting to a heavy Product strategy. When I picked up that last pizza I noticed that they also now have sandwiches and “pasta bowls.” I haven’t tried any of this yet…I really like pizza when I veer off the low-carb freeway…but I may in a weak moment.

Does that mean that pizza tycoons have given up on distribution strategies? Not at all. In fact, another big trend in the industry in on-line ordering. You even see some smaller chains going back to sit down stores. Amazing.

I can imagine some product planner way back in the day making a pitch with overhead transparencies (this was way before PowerPoint) to corporate leadership at Dominos to undertake this risky “delivery” strategy.  Delivery of pizza was a Mom and Pop strategy when Sal and Angela’s  kid was home from school in the world of pizza places.

Dominos adopted a  strategy that was thinking outside the (pizza) box, so to speak at the time. Residential real estate is at one of those inflection points when the old models will be turned upside down just like the pizza business was then.

My gut continues to tell me that the large real estate franchise operations will be the last to adapt and that most change will come from small companies and individual agents.

Hobbs/Herder says  “Lesson 1: You are the product; Lesson 2: Market the Product.” Well, OK, you do have to market yourself.  And that may have sufficed before the bubble burst.  But the next parallel to Dominos in real estate will come from companies and/or individuals that realize that with fewer qualified buyers you also have to market real estate…homes, shelter, communities,  not just yourself.

The 4 P’s provide a good framework for taking each listing and developing a marketing plan that will work. Developing and promoting best practices for that is what we are about here.

Writing about food is hard work.  It’s making me hungry…is it lunch time yet?

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How would you write a movie review?

There are other posts here about copy writing in real estate but there are a lot of points that bear repeating and expansion.  Recently I wrote a post for another blog that focuses on luxury real estate. The basic theme was that what you are trying to do when you write copy is not sell as much as tease.

This is based on the premise that very few properties are sold…speculative investors notwithstanding…without a showing. The goal then of most real estate copy writing is to get showings scheduled for qualified buyers.

Another contributor to that luxury site is Karen Crystal who is a successful luxury property marketer in Southern California. Karen provided a comment to my post that took the idea to another level. She likened good real estate copy writing to a good movie preview. Of course!

My immediate reaction was “Why didn’t I think of that?” Like Karen,  I enjoy the 20 minutes or so of previews that usually precede the main attraction in movie theaters around here. I’ll also watch the “trailers” of any movie that I’m considering online.  Some movies I can quickly eliminate this way but I also often find myself considering movies of a different genre than those I normally gravitate to.

Home buyers are no more rational than other consumers in this way.

We are often barely aware of the emotions that make us fall in love with a movie, a person,  a place or a home. Too much information…even pictures… especially without any emotional content, can often provide the reason not to go see a home. In a buyers’ market with lots of choices, this happens more often than you would expect.

In writing copy for your listings become the “director” and think of the preview or trailer you would create for the home and adjust your copy accordingly. Listen to  your own emotional antennae to pick up clues on what might work.  Look for the clues that you can convey that will not only attract more showings but the right showings.

A couple of weeks ago I showed a home that my buyer clients had identified because of its proximity to where they both work.  It wasn’t their cup of tea, but I loved it. It was built in the 50’s and hadn’t really had much done to it since then except to turn a large garage into an awkward master bedroom.

My feedback to the listing agents  got a laugh out of them because I described how I could imagine my first car…a 1955 turquoise and creme Chevrolet Bel Air in the circular driveway with Wally and Beaver Cleaver shooting baskets behind it.

In fact, it reminded me of the home of some very good childhood friends, right down to the swimming pool,  backyard greenhouse and large rooms all on one level.  Come to think of it, my folks actually bought that Chevy for my brother and I from those friends.  If cars could tell stories…

My clients were probably too young to relate to any of this but there are buyers out there who would.   To be honest the place needed a lot of work. An accurate and more detailed description would have left anyone cold.  Let the nostalgia flow.  There are few homes that you will list that don’t have some characteristic that can provide an emotional hook to get those showings from the right buyers.

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Surfing through the waters of real estate marketing advice you encounter a lot of hype.

Some of the stuff is downright comical.  As I’ve argued many times on this and my other sites, most of it is about agents marketing themselves and not about marketing their listings.

Last week I came across this video that met all those criteria but is worth sharing because it inadvertently makes a point I’ve been struggling with. What the narrator, Jay Kinder, is proposing is that you should never do another CMA or Competitive Market Analysis for a listing client.

The hype is right up front; he calls it a “ninja move,” the “competition crusher” and the “finishing move” of his listing appointment.   Kinder is a young guy, very energetic and according to his own account has been in the business for 10 years and has been very successful. I don’t doubt it. Even as he stumbles over the pronunciation of “differentiation”  he is nonplussed and comes across as likable and enthusiastic.

CMA as the rear view mirror.

The differentiation he is focusing on is that he doesn’t do CMA’s because they are looking into a rear view mirror for pricing help.  To his credit he advises that before you do your pitch you need to have all the market data,  and more,  that would lead to a CMA.  So he’s not advising you to take some shortcut and avoid the work that normally goes into one.

As he points out, and my own experience confirms, just having some data and a few charts is usually enough to convince people that you know what you’re talking about, whether you really do or not.

If you’re like me you struggled with every CMA that you’ve ever done, choosing the right comps and making adjustments trying to be as scientific as you can but always with the nagging feeling that it may all be crap.

Recently, I’ve been using software that is as sophisticated as anything I have ever seen especially showing the consequences of overpricing and documenting historical appreciation.  But how good can it be in an environment with so many short sales, foreclosures and a downward slope in prices?

Besides trends that you can grasp of from all that data, Kinder notes five factors that might have affected the prices of the comps that make them less useful. These factors are:

1. Market conditions at the time of the sale. (Was it an active spring market or a slow winter market?)

2. What were the motivations of the sellers? Desperate sellers lower their prices.

3. What were the conditions of the comps?  Well staged? In great repair?

4. Who did the pricing? An agent looking for a quick sale who didn’t want to do hard marketing work?

5.  Was the seller’s agent a good negotiator? Or did he just cave for a quick sale?

Kinder’s points are accurate but because most agents still have the boom mentality, he left out what may be the most important factor in the price a seller actually gets for a home…the marketing ability of the listing agent.

Some how, some way you have to come up with a price to put in MLS.

Even if you are a firm believer in variable pricing you have to establish a range.  But the real price is not what goes into MLS.  Everyone recognizes that that is nothing but a point where negotiations start.

So, how do we take Kinder’s insights one step beyond how to get the listing to how to sell the listing? If a CMA tells you what a “typical” listing would sell for, how to you create value to do better than typical?

A 4 P’s marketing plan is not about setting a price but getting a price that maximizes the seller’s net.

As Kinder alludes, a home in good condition and well staged will command a better price.

In assessing the motivation of a seller, the tendency is to think of a seller willing to take a low price. A better alternative is a seller that is willing to work with her listing agent/marketing director to prepare the home for market and make showings convenient.  Is the seller willing to absorb marketing costs upfront? A seller with skin in the game, is more likely to be motivated.

How do you prepare to out negotiate the buyer agent? The answer is to have all that trend info that you didn’t use for the CMA and absolutely WOW the potential buyers during showings.

If you watch Kinder’s video you will see that he focuses on selling technique… selling himself that is…but a careful analysis of his tactics also reveals how good marketing sells the home in a tough environment.

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How one real estate agent has been coping with the market

Recently I was in the local big box hardware store looking for some plumbing fittings when a friendly and familiar voice startled me, “Can I help you Sir?” I turned and there in the neon apron of the store employees was my friend and fellow real estate agent, Homer. After chatting for a moment I had an idea and asked him if I could interview him about his career transition. He agreed eagerly, so I flipped over my parts list and started taking notes.

Me: Have you given up on real estate as a career?

Homer: Not at all. I’m working harder than ever at it. But a little steady cash flow and health insurance mean a lot. I’m part time here.

Me: Doesn’t it feel a little odd wearing jeans to work? Did you have to make any adjustments?

Homer: This is my first ever job in retail so it’s been an interesting experience. I think maybe I’m  a blue collar type after all. Being on your feet for 6 or 7 hours takes its toll but I’ve gotten used to it. The people that work here come from all kinds of backgrounds, which surprised me. But they’re a great bunch and if I ever got too busy again with real estate to stay here, I’d miss them.

Me: What else has surprised you?

Homer: I’ve also been surprised how much stuff gets stolen. Doesn’t say much for the human race. In this department its parts. People will open boxes take parts and then close the box back up. I could tell you a lot of stories.

Me: That’s pretty negative.

Homer: Yeah, but I was one of those guys in school that wouldn’t cheat even when everybody else was doing it. It creates a lot of extra work for us here and affects profits. I may be a moral relativist on some things but not stealing. Don’t get me wrong, most of the customers are great and it’s really nice to be able to help them.

Me: Were you a plumber in a previous life?

Homer: Lord no. I’ve done a fair amount of fix-it stuff. In fact, I got into real estate doing a couple of renovations.  I thought I knew a lot about plumbing before I started this but I know a whole lot more now. I’ve been amazed at how many big confident looking guys or business men in expensive suits have no idea how a toilet works. It’s funny to see them spend twenty minutes mulling over a choice for a replacement handle for a broken one on the tank. On the other hand, occasionally you’ll get a dainty little lady who’s nonplussed about replacing the whole thing by herself.

Me: Do you think people should know how to fix their own stuff?

Homer: Simple stuff, sure. Everyone has to know their limits. Replacing a faucet is not that difficult and if you get a plumber to do it, you could double your cost…easily. A lot of people don’t realized that they aren’t paying plumbers by the difficulty of the task. You’re paying for their time. A good handyman is a better option for smaller things than bringing in a plumber with a truck full of expensive tools and equipped for anything.

Me: How do you keep track of all this stuff?

Homer: Ha! That is a challenge. The store has great systems but you probably want to know how I can remember where everything is. I’ve heard all kinds of numbers about how many different things there are to buy here in the store…it’s in the tens of thousands…at least. There is a perverse logic to how things are arranged.

Me: So you can find anything in the store?

Homer: Pretty much. It took a while to get there but when I’m stumped I just press the button on the radio and ask the universe and somebody usually gets back with the answer. What I’ve realized is that the better I get at this job, more of what I’m doing is educating, which, as you know, is a lot of what being a real estate agent is. If you think explaining agency is tough, try explaining how to change a fill valve to someone who doesn’t speak English.  But sometimes you’re just reassuring somebody that what they’ve already figured out is correct.

Me: Is that the only way it relates to real estate?

Homer: Oh no. There are lots of real estate lessons I’ve learned here.

Me: What else?

Homer: Well, here’s one. It’s not unusual to get customers who are getting a house ready to put it on the market. For example, they’ll be replacing a kitchen faucet.  More than once I’ll see them later and they’ll say something like…”Gosh, I wish I’d done that sooner. It looks so much better. If I’d have done it a year ago I could have enjoyed it for a while myself.” I think many homeowners get a little myopic about their own homes and don’t see what looks dated or just unattractive…another reason they need us!

Me: Amen.  After you get comfortable in a place and accumulate some fond memories you don’t see it the same way other people will see it when it goes on the market.  Hey, Homer. You wouldn’t be interested in doing this again sometime, would you?

Homer: Sure. It’s been fun. In fact, if I think of something I’ll join Alberta and do a guest post if you want. You have to introduce me to her though.

Me: You’ve been to my site?

Homer: Oh yeah. It’s going to be one of the best real estate blogs on the web.  The funny thing is it has a lot in common with the store here.

Me: How’s that?

Homer: The king of the four P’s…Product.  This whole store is about fixing up your home…except occasionally you get some dufus trying to fix a car with plumbing parts…and then you got the college students building bongs.

Me:  Well, alright! You’re on. I’ll set you up as a contributor and you can have your own byline.

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College athletics will never be reformed because the would be reformers have it all wrong.

I graduated from Notre Dame in the sixties with a degree in English Lit and some swag to remind me that I was a small part of a National Championship football team. I now live in Durham North Carolina and follow the Duke football team almost as closely as I do my old alma mater. In fact, in the forty plus years since I graduated I’ve seen way more Duke games in person than Notre Dame games.

The two schools that are the objects of my fandom have a number of things in common.  They are both relatively small for universities competing in the highest level of college football, they both have sound academic reputations and both are perennial leaders in graduating their football players.  Both also just finished seasons that started with promise but ultimately disappointed.

Notre Dame dismissed its coach.  For Duke it was one more losing season in several decades of futility.

The low points in Duke athletics in the last few years have surfaced a debate that simmers within the University about the emphasis on athletics.  One of the more vocal proponents for “reform” on the Duke campus is a cultural anthropology professor by the name of Orin Starn.

During the notorious scandal involving Duke’s lacrosse team in 2006,  Starn took the opportunity to write in the local papers and lay out an argument for a more Ivy League approach to athletics  that I’m sure is held by many in the academic community. This argument hasn’t really changed since the days I spent shivering during practices in the icy winds  of northern Indiana.

Starn’s target back in 2006 was Duke’s basketball coach, Mike Krzyzewski, whose earnings and influence were apparently hard to stomach among the circle of faculty members Starn represented.  Targeting Krzyzewski seemed odd because the basketball program had nothing to do with the lacrosse team and Coach K’s players  graduate at high levels including a number of outstanding citizens…think  Grant Hill and Shane Battier.

As the real story behind the charges leveled at the lacrosse players unfolded and the hoax was revealed it looked more and more like Starn had been the clever Brer Rabbit waling away at a tar baby set in the road by Brer Fox.

Rather than cook and eat him,  Starn was thrown back into the academic briar patch where he was raised up.  Now it seems he’s picked the tar from his fur and is back sassing what he hopes is a more vulnerable target, the football coach, David Cutcliffe.

My guess is that he has probably misjudged the situation again.  Coach David Cutcliffe is extremely popular and even though Duke didn’t have a winning season they played well against tough opponents,  were vastly improved and fun to watch.  I predict that Starn’s argument will win no one over any more than it did the last time.

Starn and I have vastly different opinions about how college athletics should be reformed.  He’s for de-emphasis. I’m for elevating the sports and awarding degrees in football, basketball, track, etc., maybe even award masters degrees for national championships.

I’ll make that argument, in great detail too, to anyone willing to buy me a beer. Neither of us is going to get our way, however, because college athletics works just the way it is on many levels.

Ok, you’re wondering what this has to do with real estate.  Quite a bit I think. College athletics is often criticized by its academic critics like Starn of being a business, as if this somehow robs the institution (with a renowned business school, no less) of its purity and prevents student-athletes from getting a well rounded education…blah, blah, blah.

Coach K would argue that a top notch athletic program provides an exceptional experience for the athletes and is an enriching feature of the overall college experience for all students.

I would argue that this benefit extends to the community.  Duke athletics is not what has put Durham on the map, but it draws a lot of attention to it. More than that,  the athletic programs help create a real sense of place.  Go anywhere  in the country during basketball season and tell someone that you’re from Durham and you’re likely to hear “How ’bout them Devils.”

It’s hard to imagine South Bend as a community without Notre Dame football weekends. Economically and culturally,  successful teams have a broad unifying appeal in the school and the community.

Paradoxically, an area like the Triangle, blessed with three major research universities with big time sports programs,  is not really divided. The rivalries bring us together in gut ways even the finest museums,  business enterprises, and yes, academic programs,  could never do.

So, if you’re an agent and were writing copy for your listing in Duke Forest, a neighborhood originally developed by the University to attract faculty and staff,  would you mention that you were in walking distance of Wallace Wade Stadium?

Can you paint a picture of a beautiful fall day with the pennants flying and parents walking towards the stadium with kids in tow past happy tailgaters cheering and jeering each other merrily?

Because communities sell houses, good listing agents sell the community.  In a community like Durham we can only hope that Orin Starn gets out of the briar patch…er… library occasionally and enjoys the excitement football brings to the campus and the community.

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Thanksgiving is often seen in the industry as the end of the fall season for selling homes and the beginning of the “dead season” during the winter months.

It’s not true.

I’ve often wondered whether this myth was purposely advanced by successful agents so that they could either 1) Take a little break themselves for the holidays or 2) trick their competitors into taking off the holidays so they could have an advantage soliciting listings.

There may also be a bit of self-fulfilling prophecy here as agents advise potential sellers to “not risk looking stale in the spring by marketing a home during the winter.”  There are lots of other excuses…it gets dark too early for after work showings, the holidays are just too chaotic , there’s too much Christmas advertising going on to get noticed, yada, yada, yada.

In my market the numbers do confirm that there is a sharp drop off during the colder months, on average for the last four years about 40%.  That four year period includes two pretty good years and the last two not-so-good years .But that means that there are still a number of homes sold during the winter months and the market is anything but dead.

When is the best time to put a home on the market?

The conventional wisdom is that the buyers come out in the spring. But if so many people wait  for the spring to list their homes then it simply means there is more competition among sellers during the spring. The more you dwell on the pros on cons of the different seasons the more you conclude that there are lots of exceptions to the rule.

The best time to put a home on the market is when the seller needs or wants to and when the home is ready to be marketed.

Being ready for the market is more important than timing. Apple didn’t launch the IPhone before they had crossed all the t’s and dotted all the i’s in their product development cycle.  That included hardware (really cool), software (even cooler), distribution (AT&T -not so cool), pricing (make the early adopters pay heavily before lowering the price for the masses) and promotion (start a buzz at MacWorld with Steve Jobs’ presentation and let word-of-mouth take over.)

A seller shouldn’t put a home on the market until the same level of preparation is accomplished. It’s a little different when the product is a home but the process deserves the appropriate analysis, planning and preparation. This winter too there are significant buyer incentives available from the government for both first time homebuyers and those “moving up” after 5 years in their existing home.

Winter is not a dead time in real estate. It can be very lively for those sellers who have a tightly integrated marketing plan for their home.

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One of the blogs that I subscribe to is Larry Lohrman’s Photography for Real Estate. Frankly, many of his posts are pretty technical and way over my head but he also writes about the business of RE photography and sometimes shares feedback from others in the business.

On November 11th he shared  something one of his subscribers, Rusty Freeman in LA, had forwarded to him. In an effort to generate some business Rusty had done a search of the local MLS that had yielded over a 1000 homes priced over $2M.  By his estimation, about 40 of these homes actually had had professional photography done.  I don’t know how he knew this but he related that some of the photos were cell phone quality.

After contacting about 10 of the agents for these homes, he got tired of the rejection and gave up.  The agents that he contacted said that they just weren’t spending any money.

Larry offered some interesting perspective on this situation in the post but there are a few other points that I think are important for the real estate industry.

First of all, this situation doesn’t surprise me at all. I’ve described in another post an easy to duplicate experiment you can conduct any time you want . I think it’s best to do in a market that you’re not familiar with in order to get the perspective of someone moving to a new community. Simply do a search for high end properties and look at the information from a marketer’s point of view.

Rusty was focusing on the photography. I was focusing on the copywriting. They were both found lacking.

Larry seems to draw the conclusion that this is a cyclical thing. I tend to think it’s more of a lack of marketing sophistication on the part of agents that have never had to market in a buyers’ market. That’s the point of this whole effort to promote 4 P’s RE, that is, to promote best marketing practices in Real Estate…not to generate leads…but to sell homes.

The other factor that holds us back is the current traditional compensation structure. It’s hard to blame agents for not wanting to spend money when there is no guarantee that the home will ever be sold and the agent compensated. As Rusty recounted many of the homes in his experiment had been on the market well over a year.

However, there is absolutely no reason why a professional marketing plan shouldn’t or couldn’t be funded by the seller.  Especially in the high end market the costs are relatively low.  Rusty’s packages start at $130. Try to get a plumber to even show up at your door for less than $150.

If you somehow equate a home listed at $2M with a business with the same revenues…which, by the way, is way more than most small businesses,  I absolutely promise you that most of them got to those revenue levels with significant marketing efforts.

This opens up the whole compensation can of worms, however, an owner with skin in the game is much more likely to price the listing realistically and cooperate with a well crafted marketing plan.

A downturn is not the time to cut back on marketing. To be competitive that’s when it is needed most.

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Dear Alberta,
I’m so disappointed. We found our dream home, brand new, in a beautiful new neighborhood. About two weeks ago I started decorating for Halloween. Ira and I carved jack-o-lanterns for the front porch and I have a jangly plastic skeleton that I hang on the door and phony spider webs. On Saturday night I dressed up like a witch and Ira as a pirate. Nothing scary…just playful.

We had a big bowl of the best candy and were all ready to enjoy greeting all the children in their costumes. Alberta, nobody came. Not one ghost, zombie, nurse, cowboy, or pint sized football player! It was so sad. Then I realized nobody else had done any decorating. I don’t know many of the neighbors yet but I’ve seen kids riding around in the minivans that seem to be everywhere. Now I’m afraid we made a big faux pas at least or maybe we just got in the wrong neighborhood.   – Myrtle

Dear Myrtle, I bet you moved from a neighborhood where you had lived a long time and many of your neighbors had raised their kids there and most of you knew each other pretty well. Over the years the neighborhood customs kind of happen and you get all teary eyed about them.

My daughter, Crystal…God love her, but she’s too much like her mother…told me the story about when she and Chunky (not his real name) her husband moved to a new suburb in Atlanta when he got a job with a bank down there. He ended up picking out the house in October while she stayed behind for her kids to finish the school semester. When they got there for the Christmas holidays, one of her neighbors clued her in to “that one” down the street who had the audacity to string red lights along the edge of the roof, phony icicles from the gutters, wreathes on all the windows and parked a life sized Santa with a sled and all his reindeer lit up on the front lawn.

It seems a gaggle of the local trendsetters had decided that white electric candles in the windows and a wreath on the door where the only acceptable outside Christmas decorations. Well, we never lived in a neighborhood like that and Crystal ended up teaming up with the pariah and a refugee from Cleveland and had an unofficial annual contest to see who could come up with the gaudiest Christmas decorations. The hilarious part is that the biggest rebel became Chunky, and he’s a Jew! It was tense for a year or so  but as people got to know each other it all became a joke and the neighborhood turned into a delightful place to live.

All is not lost, dears, just because nobody’s got the Halloween spirit in your brand new neighborhood. You are obviously generous people and the world will never have enough generous people. Christmas is coming up and somewhere in that town or even in the neighborhood, there are kids that will need a little extra love to get them through. Find them and share.

Mr. Z reminded me that this is a real estate blog and wants me to make the point that neighborhoods are not just a collection of houses with shopping and schools nearby. They all have their own character…and characters.

Well, duh, no kidding. He fancies himself enlightened, but even he doesn’t appreciate how difficult it is to know what you’re going to run into in a new neighborhood. Some of these agent types, especially the ones that are so into the internet, don’t appreciate what they take for granted. They might even live in a neighborhood, but if something doesn’t fit into one of the fields in the almighty MLS, they have no clue how to communicate it to you. (OK, Mr. Z, you try.)

If you can’t drag it out of them, check things out yourself. My IBM husband used to talk about “analysis paralysis” so don’t overdo it. Sometimes you have to move quickly or let somebody else do the research like Crystal had to do with Chunky.  But if you keep your eyes and ears open…you can usually tell.  If not…I think I’ve said this before…it’s usually easier to change houses than it is change spouses and that happens all the time.

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(Alberta helps me out with questions occasionally with her unique point of view – Jay)

Dear Alberta…I love your old fashioned common sense and your sense of humor so I’m sure you’ll understand my dilemma.  It’ s time to sell our house. The kids are scattered around the country and we heard about deals on condos in Florida. All the agents we talk to want us to “stage” the house. What is this, a Broadway play?  We’ve collected stuff from around the world…good stuff too…and pictures of all  the kids and grandkids and aunts and uncles. Miss Broadway designer lady wants us to box all this stuff up an store it somewhere along with half our furniture. We just want a fair price for the house. Doesn’t anybody have any imagination anymore?

Martha and John in Hoboken

Dear Martha…Isn’t Hoboken where they buried the missing link? If my common sense is old fashioned,  yours should have been buried with the linkster over there.  One of the biggest mistakes I ever made was when one of the grandkids gave me one of those Precious Moments figurines before she could even talk.

Of course, I cooed all over her and the next thing you know, that’s what everybody gives grandma for her birthday…and Christmas…and Hanukkah…and Columbus Day. I was overrun by the creepy little things.

When I couldn’t stand it anymore I told the family they were stolen in a break-in (wasn’t I lucky they didn’t take the big screen) but I really gave them to my cleaning lady who seemed to like them but I found out later her son was selling them on ebay for her.

When the kids started trying to replace them I had to tell them that no, no my heart was broken and that I didn’t want to be reminded of the trauma of losing them.

Enough with the sentimentality! My advice is don’t store the stuff, throw it out or give it to the urchins and let them deal with the guilt when they throw it out. What are you going to do…decorate your slick condo with 50 year old overstuffed furniture. You wouldn’t be the first, but come on! Turn the page, brush up on your canasta and learn to play shuffle board.

Nobody coming to see your stuff. They want to imagine what they would do with their stuff.  Make it easy for them. That’s what staging is all about. Really good stagers can go beyond that. When I was looking for a townhouse down here, Mr. Z took me to see some new one’s where the model homes had been professionally staged.

It was a gloomy day. When I walked into the big master bedroom, all the paint was neutral, there was colorful art on the walls, the lighting was perfect, the bed was turned down and in this beautiful chaise was an equally beautiful shawl and an open copy of House Beautiful.  I thought I’d accidentally walked into Jackie Kennedy’s bedroom in her secret hideaway on Nantucket.  I felt like pulling off my shoes and settling in with that magazine and a Manhatten right then.

I bought one of those units the next day and live there now and probably paid too much. That’s how people buy houses. They fall in love. Nobody will fall in love with your old stuff.  Do what your agent says and get on down to Florida while you can still enjoy it.

By the way, Sweetums,  I’m afraid I don’t have  any more of a sense of humor than I have old fashioned common sense. The only joke I can remember is one I heard on NPR. Do you know why there are always only 239 beans in every bowl of Boston bean soup? Because one more bean would be too farty.

Two forty with a Boston accent…get it?

Yours Truly,

Alberta

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Alberta helps me out with questions occasionally with her unique point of view – Jay)

Dear Alberta…my husband and I are finally ready to buy a new home. We’ve been driving around looking at neighborhoods and we can’t seem to agree on anything. We’ve been camping out in his dumpy old townhouse since before we got married and it was never an issue because we knew we would  be getting our own place together. But now, I’m beginning to think he just wants to duplicate his “man cave”…but bigger. Is this what marriage is all about?

Oh Sweetie… Do you have a lot to learn! Men are animals.  For men a home is a roof over their heads. Until they’re domesticated a little bit they just don’t care what your mother or your girlfriend thinks about him or how he lives. That’s why they need us so much. Homes aren’t just shelter. They tell the world who you are and what kind of person you are.

You can chop liver on an old beat up formica countertop  just as well as granite but..eeuu…it says you’re still living in the sixties. Here are some little tips from old Aunt Alberta that will bring him around without faking a headache every night…which is no fun for anyone including you, my dear.

Most men are really as ditzy as a drunk kitten but they think they’re logical. Use this internet thingy to box him in on a few of the more important niceties.  Mr. Z here has one of the more interesting ways to search for a home right here on the website.

It might remind you at first of the directions your dad used to try to put together your bicycle that Christmas when you were 10 years old…you know…the ones that were a bad translation from the Japanese.

Have him rate how important different things are…you know, like close to good schools. Of course, he’s going to say “Oh, very important dear!” even though it had never occurred to him til you brought it up. Or a bedroom on another floor for your mother’s visits.

Think it through, darling, and plan it carefully. Before you know it he’ll be thinking about home buying like the domestic partner you knew he could be and not a frat house refugee.

Believe me Hon, it’s easier to move him a little bit on each feature than demand the house of your dreams right away.  Talk sweetly and guide him gently in the right direction and the search results you want will pop up at the top of the list. And the best part is he’ll think it’s all because he was so logical about it.

Once you have a some good choices grab Mr. Z and go see a few of the top ten. Oh, that Leno guy is so funny…or is it Letterman? Who cares!

Now that you’ve got your guy thinking about it he’ll play the game and…best of all…he’ll believe he really wants that double oven in turquoise.

But keep and open mind! Mr. Z will tell you that “buyers are liars.”  Not on purpose, of course, but no matter how careful they are. most people don’t know what they really want until they see it.

All of a sudden they can ignore sagging floors and leaky pipes and the cars on cinder blocks in the next yard and fall in love with a home. Mr. Z will tell you, a couple will walk across a threshold, look each other in the eyes and know that this is where they want to have kids. It’s magic, but it happens all the time.

Last but not least…if your guy is bringing home at least half the dough…or even less…let him have a man cave. Maybe it’s a basement or the garage or a bonus room or a den, but let him do what he wants with it.

It will drive you nuts for a while but get over it. There will be times…believe me honey, I know…when you will hope he doesn’t come out of that cave for days.  Everybody needs a little space.

And don’t fret. Shop for your home carefully but but go with your heart and if it doesn’t work out, just remember, houses are easier to change than husbands and not nearly as expensive.

Yours Truly, Alberta

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