Ken Montville -- the MD Suburbs of DC

I just came away from two customer service experiences that were so positive I just had to blog about them. It just served as a reminder that, done right, great customer service makes me feel so warm and fuzzy and with such positive feelings toward the provider that I will gladly become a raving fan, screaming advocate or whatever the buzzword du jour is for someone spreading good word-of-mouth.

The first experience was with Medco which is the Federal Government's current mail-order pharmacy. My wife is a Fed (thank God) which means I get to take advantage of her health insurance. I needed a refill and the Feds recently changed their pharmacy provider. I was having a bit of trouble registering on their website so I called the toll free number.

I had to punch a couple of buttons ("punch this for that" and "punch that for this" sayeth the recorded voice) but I got through to a live person fairly easily and the experience was perfect. He helped me through the registration process on the website, took my refill order and about 3 minutes later I was done. I was a happy camper.

The second experience had to do with my coffee addiction. A while back I got one of those cute machines that make coffee one cup at a time with those cute little K-cups. At first I was ordering refills of the coffee from the website as I needed but then I got the solicitation to automate the whole process and save some bucks if I allowed them to ship on a regular schedule. I'm thinking, "why not?". I drink the coffee.

Well, I was a little off on how much and how fast I went through the stuff so when I went to the website to change my order and ran into a little snag. Back to the phone and the toll free # at Green Mountain Coffee. This time the customer service rep had the technology to know who I was without even needing to ask my name (a little scary maybe) and then proceeded to do what I wanted (move my order up a few weeks so I could get my coffee fix) and suggested a way I could get free shipping in the future.

Now, the free shipping thing involved buying more coffee at one time but I could space it out over a longer period so the net effect was the same amount of coffee without the shipping costs. Again, I was a happy camper. The whole process might have taken 5 minutes.

Again, I have nothing but warm positive feelings about the experience and about Green Mountain Coffee.

These two examples shine in stark contrast to other [recent] experiences where I had to beg, cajole, and generally take the type of action one shouldn't need to take. They also serve to remind me, as a Realtor, dedicated to serving my clients, that I need to keep them and their interests at the top of my mind and constantly work to make sure they're going to turn into raving fans and screaming advocates.

I just finished watching a show on CNBC called The Millionaire Inside: Debt Makeover and I was astonished at the real estate advice the Money Mentors were offering.

Granted. The debtors (two couples and two singles) were in deep debt and had pretty poor credit scores as a result. However, there seemed to be pretty consistent counsel to sell their home in a "short sale" as part of the plan to get out of debt. In fact, the Money Mentors made this suggestion so quickly that it made me wonder if they realized that "short sales" weren't that easy and would effectively prohibit the debtors from ever buying another house.

A "short sale" is what people do when they're one step away from foreclosure. The concept is that if you're able to sell your house before the actual, formal foreclosure you will be able to salvage a little bit of your credit so that you can try again at some point in the future.

The term itself refers to the fact that the home seller is a little "short" of what they actually owe on their mortgage. They can't sell their house for what it would cost to pay it off. The catch to this arrangement is that the bank or mortgage holder needs to agree to take the loss. Think about it. If you loaned me $400,000 and two years go by and I ask if it's OK if $300,000 will make us even, would you say "No problem."? Probably not. Or, at least, probably not without giving me a lot of hassle and making sure my life would be miserable for the foreseeable future.

That's the same way with the banks. They don't want to take the loss but if they have to they're going to make darn sure you feel some pain as well. They do this by putting you and whoever wants to buy your house at the lower price through hell and then destroy your credit rating, to boot.

There is a common misconception that banks or mortgage holders would rather take a little loss in the beginning rather than foreclose and take a bigger loss later. The problem is that there are lots more of these types of delinquencies and more people are coming to the mortgage companies asking for a way out. Unfortunately, the mortgage people don't know the real hard luck cases from the people who are just running into a little snag and can continue to pay the mortgage if they were "scared" into it by hard-nosed negotiating tactics.

Thus, you have lenders (more than you would think) that don't negotiate with you until you're between a rock and a hard place. They basically force you into a situation where your credit is already destroyed by the time they come around to agreeing to take a loss. Some will provide a little forbearance for you if you can document like crazy that your situation is temporary and you'll get yourself back on track. Don't ask them to cut you slack, though, when it comes to selling your home.

There's a reason why you sign over your home to the bank when you sit down at the settlement table. The banks may not really want to own your house but they sure as heck aren't in business to give money away.

Here are the housing statistics for December 2007 in the City of College Park and Town of Berywn Heights, MD. As you can tell, it's a little better than Prince George's County as a whole but still not a pretty picture with the number of sales significantly down and the Days on Market significantly higher.

It ain't pretty.

In my previous posts about getting your home ready for sale I emphasized the importance of --

1. Being Priced Competitively

2. The Benefits of Location

3. The Overall Condition of Your Home

4. Curb Appeal

5. Making Repairs and de-cluttering and

6. How Long it Might Take Your Home to Sell

Now, it's time to put the finishing touches on your home so that when prospective buyers come by to visit, the first thing they'll think is, "WOW!".

In many cases, a home has been updated over the years and current owners have a great kitchen, fabulous baths and clean,open spaces for family rooms, living rooms and bedrooms. In other cases, the owner hasn't done a thing to the house since it was built in the mid-60's or earlier...and it shows - Avocado Green or Harvest Gold appliances, pastel pinks and blues in the bathrooms and old parquet floors - are just some of the features that shout "Help!".

Even so, these older homes with little or no updating can be made to look pretty darn good. And if you've done some updating and sprucing up, your home can be made to look like a picture from a magazine.

It involves a relatively new concept in the real estate world called Home Staging. There is a whole industry that has grown around the idea that if you bring a person in who has never lived in your home but has a sense of flair and proportion they can create a visual and emotional experience that will help your home sell faster and for a higher price.

I've had personal experience with this. So I know it works.

Here's the drill: You do as much as you can to get your home ready for market and then call in the pros. These folks will provide you with a menu of options to choose from -- a detailed plan so you can do-it-yourself to bringing in accessories or furniture (in the case of vacant homes) and basically re-decorating your home for maximum impact.

The result is amazing. I've had clients that have actually had second thoughts about selling their house becuase of the transformation. More importantly, any prospective buyer walking through your front door will be WOWed by the beauty and space in your home.

There are numerous professionals who have dedicated themselves to this work and quite a few Realtors that have taken Home Staging courses to earn the Accredited Staging Professional designation.

For my money, I prefer to work with a professional stager that is not also involved in active real estate sales. It just gives me a feeling that they will provide their full attention to creating the perfect environment without the distraction of dealing with all the other aspects of real estate sales (negotiating offers, coordinating the details of multiple transactions, etc.).

The bottom line is that it's worth the few extra bucks to have someone come in and arrange your home so that it really stands out. Prospective buyers will look at lots of homes, especially in today's market, and the one's that are memorable (in a good way) will be the one's that sell.

Our local Multiple Listing Service (known as MRIS) provides a ton more in services than just listing your home. It also provides accurate data regarding housing sales. Below is a general overview of the situation in Prince George's County. It ain't pretty.