Brian R Kelly

Category: For Sellers

  • One North Shore Condos in Chattanooga, TN is "Newer" Home Sales Leader

    Corner at 200 Manufacturer's Road
    Corner at 200 Manufacturer’s Road

    One North Shore condos in Chattanooga, TN 37405 at 200 Manufacturer’s Road is the number one selling neighborhood for homes built after 1999 in Hamilton County to date in 2013.  Twenty three condos have sold as of this post with the top price of $374,000 for a 2 bedroom 1,161 sqft seventh floor unit.  The homes sell for more than $220 per square foot.  Some of units overlook the Tennessee River, Chattanooga, river front parks and the downtown bridges.

    The amenities make the complex very popular.  One North Shore has a penthouse Club Room, resort style pool with Cabana, fitness facility and concierges services.  Lauren greeted me at the Concierges office as I waited for inspectors and contractors for a condo I recently sold.  She was coordinating helpers sending packages to owners and food and beverage preparation for a party at the pool Cabana.

    (Confession of an old real estate agent) The lack of imagination in the exterior design was a detraction for me.  What did impress me the most by helping buyers making a decision for downtown living at One North Shore is the owner’s care of building a community with common areas and good services.  The location adjacent to grocery, parks, commercial, and convenient to downtown is a great draw as well.

    Downtown Chattanooga is becoming a draw for home owners.  The second place sales winner goes to Black Creek Mountain in Lookout Valley.  They scored 14 sales so far in 2013.   Black Creek Mountain (former Cummings Cove) is less than 10 minutes from downtown.  Chattanooga is becoming a place to be after work and weekends.  Being close to the city as well as providing “newer”  homes gives the neighborhoods an edge over the competition.

    Kudos to Fletcher Bright and their management and sales team for trumping all Hamilton County neighborhoods for “young” home sales.  One North Shore is realizing it’s potential place in Chattanooga, TN real estate history.

  • Seven Easy Steps To Sell Your House

    Sell Your Home
    Sell Your Home

    Selling your house can be done in seven easy steps.  The hard part is there are 12,931 difficult and annoying things you have to do between the 7 easy ones.  Ok, so I made up the 12,931, there may be more.  Seriously though you can help yourself with these 7 following things:

    1.  Emotionally move.  The difficult part is emotion heart strings.  This is your home.  Your crib, your baby.  Your colors, your nest.  Stand in the front yard and look at your “baby” and emotionally move to your next home.  Imagine seeing your property as another house.  After all you will be the one that carries the memories of this place with you.  Your home is in your heart not in those walls.

    2.  Consider competition.  Size up your opponent.  It’s game time.  Who are you up against and what are their weaknesses and your strengths.  Try to objectively look at your competition as a buyer just moving to your area.  Yes, you have better neighbors and you planted tulips in the front bed, but your house is used and built in the late 80’s.

    3.  Clean.  Give your place a bath is the best thing.  Scrub walls, baseboards, pressure wash the walk and drive, windex the light fixtures, let’s get this place looking sharp!

    4.  De-Clutter.  You are moving anyway.  Rent a storage space, pay for a dumpster, time to donate clothes, furniture and items to charity.  Open up the floor plan!

    5.  Consider time.  While on a trip last week , I watched the Pawn Stars on cable TV.  People brought in items that they could have sold on their own with effort, but many sold for much less because it was easy and fast cash.  Many times the pawn store operators would not purchase a valuable item because they thought it would take too much time and floor space to sell.  Moving is ranked as one of the stressful events in someone’s life.  What is your expected time frame to get this done?

    6.  Advertise your property.  Trulia, Zillow, Craigslist, Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Newspaper, Open House, Flyers, Homes.com, YahooHomes.com, …. you get the idea.  Ted Turner said it best “early to bed, early to rise, work like hell and advertise”.

    7.  Put it in writing.  Got the buyer?  Great, put it in writing and call your nearest title attorney.  If you have a spare moment I encourage you to visit a court room near you that is working real estate transactions.  The judge asks for and only considers the “meeting of the minds” in agreement before him/her in “writing”.  All the ‘he said”, “she said” matters not in a court of law.   Protect your time and money and get the deal in black and white on paper.

    Selling your house is easy, if you can follow some of the suggestions above.  My observation is we under value our time and we are very emotional creatures.  If you can put yourself in the buyers shoes then you will be well on your way to letting go and selling your house with ease.

  • 7 Home Selling Secrets Your Real Estate Agent May Not Tell You

    4 Hour Open House
    4 Hour Open House

    Seven home selling secrets that your real estate agent may not share with you are as follows:

    1. Open Houses Work.  The half truth is that your house will probably not sell to a person that comes to your open house.  What is true is that your house will most likely get an offer soon after or before an open house because of “fear of loss”.  I wrote an offer  two weeks ago with a buyer.  She knew that the house was scheduled to be open during the upcoming weekend.  She said “I hope that the Open House does not generate another buyer that I will be competing with.”  She wrote a good offer and we are scheduled to close soon.  She never attended the open house event.   Activity, Promotion, Work – Always Good!

    2. Color magazines and newspaper ads are for future listing agreements.  Much of traditional marketing for agents who sell houses is for them personally.  They know that people who are thinking about selling will pick up the latest color magazine at the grocery store to see who is promoting houses like their own.  Buyers are generally attached to agents by referral.  Buyers do not buy homes from a single small street picture.  They start looking on a smart phone app or online.  So, you may be proud to see that your agent is spending money to put a picture in the latest color newspaper ad or color magazine.  The truth is that the money would have been better spent encouraging other agents to take a look at the special features of your house, agent open house, or sending ads (more than one street shot) to specific potential buyers.

    3. Most homes do NOT sell!!   What??  Yes, check your local stats, roughly only 50% of “listings” actually sell.  You may see yard signs come and go in your area, but moving trucks show up far less often.  Why?  Most people do not “have to” sell, or sadly in the current market (they owe the bank more money than the home is worth).  They are testing the market. If they can get more than their house is actually worth, then they will sell and move. Selling a house is hard work.  So evaluate your reason and be honest with yourself.

    4.  Social and Mobile Media Work.  The average age of successful real estate agents is a generation or two “out front” of the average buyer.  Changes in advertising have come fast and furious in the last three years.  I am writing this in 2013.  I have been in real estate industry 23 years.  A few years ago I was not concerned how my listing was being presented in a Zillow app or Facebook.  Social media requires time and education.  The real estate “industry” as current day real estate agents know it is changing FAST!  The truth is that social media scares real estate agents because they are making decent money without doing it, and is the work and education worth the effort?  Successful agents are plenty busy already, and they never had to worry about Twitter to make a living in the past.

    5. Another agent will most likely bring the buyer.  The odds are against the listing agent selling their own listing.  So, a good listing agent works hard to get fellow agents good information so that they will present your house to their qualified buyers for an income event for all involved.

    6. Staging for emotional pull is important.   Buying a home is emotional.  We are a wealthy country and we have numerous “home lifestyle” options.  How someone feels about your house as they step out of the car in the driveway to the walk to the front door is important.  Are there projects to be done?  Cleaning, weeding, chipping paint, light bulb out?  Very few buyers are getting excited about paying a high price for future projects.  Involve the buyers senses and imagination as they take time to consider your house.  Retail stores spend millions to figure out what causes people to buy.  Have you been in a store selling clothes to teens at the mall lately?

    7. Getting a contract to purchase is the start of another adventure.  Congratulations, you have offers and chosen one to become a contract.  You SOLD your house!  Not so fast.  What about the buyer’s inspection, pest and mold inspection, low appraisal because of the foreclosure down the road, survey showing your driveway on the neighbors property, FEMA flood map moved your house into a flood zone, and not to be out done the sweet loan underwriter looking for the buyer’s changing credit report a week before closing.

    Now you know the seven home selling secrets that your real estate agent may be keeping from you.  Let’s just keep it between us.  Go informed, sell and live big!