Al Lorenz

There are new and better tools available all the time! One way your real estate agent earns your commission payment is to be familiar with and utilize these tools to help you get your home SOLD! This tool, with my geeky engineering side, tickles me.

Have a home to sell that needs the right furniture to be shown off better? There is a solution to generate great photos of your home for sale. Virtual Staging, or electronic staging, lets your home have much of the look of a professionally staged home without having to have a warehouse full of art, or a furniture design center.

You have to have your home, or at least the rooms you photograph vacant and get some great photographs. Then, you send off the photos to Virtually Staging Properties and they transform them into attractive, attention-getting pictures. The cost is three staged photos for $225, four for $280 or five for $325. Additional photos are $60 each.

The results on their web site are phenomenal. They create the warm, inviting look you want to have in your home for sale.

Virtual staging consists of scaling pictures of home furnishings to fit into the photo you provide; sofas, bedroom sets, drapes, artwork, dining tables, etc are re-sized to fit into the room. Potential buyers can envision themselves living in the furnished, decorated space, before they even enter it. Have a look at the before and after photos from Virtually Staging Properties.

So, Virtual Staging does cost a bunch less than actually staging the property. It is certainly better than having stark, empty rooms in your photographs. I would still want to stage your home to sell it so that the person who saw these great, inviting photos actually experiences the full wattage of the warmth your home can deliver when they are inside of it. Staging helps to sell your home for sale. If virtual staging can increase the traffic to your home's web site, actually staging it will increase the offers coming from the prospects who view it. So, I would still likely use this tool, but as an additional tool to virtually stage some of the less important rooms that our staging budget wouldn't stretch to accomodate. Check it out!

I got a kick out of the survey on the Most, and least, prestigious jobs in America. With Real Estate Agents coming in last of everybody, I think it gives some good food for reflection on why that is the case and what it might take to see that change, even just a little bit. Most people know some great real estate agents. Of course, they also feel like they know some they consider less than great.

According to the Best Article Every Day, Real Estate Agents have the least prestigious job in America. Their company in the bottom ten include athletes, business executives, journalists, union leaders, stockbrokers, entertainers, accountants, bankers and actors.

Coming in dead last on the list, with only 4% of Americans considering the job to have "very great prestige" and a heavy 34% considering the job to have "hardly any prestige at all." Though they may be viewed by the public as the least prestigious job in America, real estate agent and brokers are often hard worker, working late into the evenings and weekends and are usually on call to suit the needs of their clients. - The Best Article Every Day

Read the link for the most prestigious jobs in America!

I would venture that the public feels that real estate agents don't always work for their clients' best interests. Those feelings area easily confirmed when the National Association of Realtors prevents the google indexing of listings and even our local Lake Chelan Brokers that insist on keeping a closed MLS of 100 or so agents rather than joining a larger MLS where thousands of agents could view their clients' homes for sale. The practice of "dual agency" where a broker is supposedly acting in the best interests of clients on both sides of a transaction is a clear conflict of interest that is an accepted practice with most brokers.

There are honest, ethical and skilled real estate agents in Lake Chelan, and the rest of the country. Until real estate customers demand better behavior from the agents they decide to do business with, I don't expect the standards or prestige of real estate agents to improve much.

Last weekend, there was a big, well promoted real estate auction at Lake Chelan. On Saturday, the 8th of August, James G. Murphy Auctioneers held an auction for 15 condominiums at the Chelan Resort Suites. The auction was a very visible fixture in the Lake Chelan area the last month or so, with signage, open houses and lots of advertising. You have to give the folks at Murphy Auctioneers credit for doing a great job at being visible.

According to Ed Flannigan of James G. Murphy Auctioneers, they had been seeing 700 visitors per week to their web site on the Chelan Resort Suites. On auction day, there were about 40 attendees and 10 registered bidders. One suite had been pre-sold before the auction and 3 suites were sold at the auction. They are in negotiations with several of the registrants on additional sales and the sale is ongoing. To find out more about the available homes, post auction pricing and buyer specials at Chelan Resort Suites, you can contact Ed at (edflanigan@johnlscott.com) (206) 669-6302 who assures me that more sales will be happening in the next 30 days.

North Central Washington doesn't see many real estate auctions. On December 13, 2008, James G Murphy held an auction on condominiums in Leavenworth. At the Leavenworth auction, they sold 6 condos and 4 more sold in the next 30 days for a total of 10 out of 14. In June 2008, Northwest Auctions auctioned off several homes for a Wenatchee developer and I held an auction for development property in the Sunnyslope area.

With the surge in real estate sales in Lake Chelan in July, I thought that there might be a greater turnout at the Chelan Resort Suites auction. In the current market, at least in North Central Washington, auctions have not yet generated the quantity of hoped for bidders. However, strong interest has been generated from the marketing for the auctions and qualified buyers have been brought to the seller and sales have been generated. Auctions are a great way to sell real estate. As this market shifts back to a more typical market, I expect you will see more of them.

In the Lake Chelan area, we've been very fortunate and seen few foreclosures. But, we are seeing a trickle now and they are causing some disruption in the market. I have been talking with some folks who are worried about the ability to sell their homes with the competition from foreclosures.

Fear not! I wrote a post on my outside blog on just that issue:

Even in the most difficult markets, like Phoenix and Las Vegas, there are people getting their homes sold in short timeframes. In those markets, over half the sales are foreclosures! So, the first step is not to fear, it can be done.

Those sellers and agents that are getting the job done basically leave nothing to chance. The research the market and make sure that the buyer who may be in the market for their home is virtually compelled to buy it. They have a strategy, a comprehensive marketing strategy.

While the entire home marketing strategy has much more detail, its essence can be boiled down to: If a home is priced to the market, if it is repaired and staged to excellent condition and if it is promoted properly to the marketplace it will sell. Quickly and for the highest attainable price - to highly-qualified buyers. -PropertyChelan.com

Read the link for more details!

Beginning this fall, Chelan County PUD is planning to offer customers cash rebates for energy conservation steps such as adding home insulation and replacing old doors and windows.

The new program will replace a weatherization loan program that is almost 30 years old. Participation has been steadily decreasing in recent years, and costs for administering the loan program are about twice as high as expected for handling incentives.

Details are still being decided, but Mark Wiser, manager of the PUD's Conservation programs, said customers could get a rebate of around 25 cents per square foot of new insulation, and about $6 a square foot for new doors and windows, up to a limit of possibly $1,500. Customers would also be eligible for federal tax credits.

During the budgeting process each year, PUD commissioners would decide how much to make available for rebates.

For all the current information on what is happening with Lake Chelan Real Estate, go to www.chelanrealestateblog.com