by neil kearney | Feb 5, 2010 | For Buyers, For Sellers
I’m in the customer service business. Real estate is not a business of monopolies. I know that if I don’t provide my clients a great experience they can and will use someone else. At last count, there were over 1,200 Realtors in the Boulder area. I don’t take my business for granted and work hard at what I do. I strive to give my clients prompt, honest, intelligent and enthusiastic service.
The story below from Harvey Mackay gives a great example on the difference between poor service and extraordinary experience. 
Harvey Mackay tells a wonderful story about a cab driver that proved this point. He was waiting in line for a ride at the airport. When a cab pulled up, the first thing Harvey noticed was that the taxi was polished to a bright shine. Smartly dressed in a white shirt, black tie, and freshly pressed black slacks, the cab driver jumped out and rounded the car to open the back passenger door for Harvey. He handed my friend a laminated card and said: “I’m Wally, your driver. While I’m loading your bags in the trunk I’d like you to read my mission statement.”
Taken aback, Harvey read the card. It said: Wally’s Mission Statement: To get my customers to their destination in the quickest, safest and cheapest way possible in a friendly environment. This blew Harvey away. Especially when he noticed that the inside of the cab matched the outside. Spotlessly clean! As he slid behind the wheel, Wally said, “Would you like a cup of coffee? I have a thermos of regular and one of decaf.”
My friend said jokingly, “No, I’d prefer a soft drink.”
Wally smiled and said, “No problem. I have a cooler up front with regular and Diet Coke, water and orange juice.”
Almost stuttering, Harvey said, “I’ll take a Diet Coke.”
Handing him his drink, Wally said, “If you’d like something to read, I have The Wall Street Journal, Time, Sports Illustrated and USA Today.” As they were pulling away, Wally handed my friend another laminated card, “These are the stations I get and the music they play, if you’d like to listen to the radio.”
And as if that weren’t enough, Wally told Harvey that he had the air conditioning on and asked if the temperature was comfortable for him. Then he advised Harvey of the best route to his destination for that time of day. He also let him know that he’d be happy to chat and tell him about some of the sights or, if Harvey preferred, to leave him with his own thoughts.
“Tell me, Wally,” my amazed friend asked the driver, “have you always served customers like this?”
Wally smiled into the rear view mirror. “No, not always. In fact, it’s only been in the last two years. My first five years driving, I spent most of my time complaining like all the rest of the cabbies do. Then I heard on the radio one day that if you get up in the morning expecting to have a bad day, you’ll rarely disappoint yourself. He said, “Stop complaining! Differentiate yourself from your competition. Don’t be a duck. Be an eagle. Ducks quack and complain. Eagles soar above the crowd. That hit me right between the eyes,” said Wally. “That was really talking about me. I was always quacking and complaining, so I decided to change my attitude and become an eagle. I looked around at the other cabs and their drivers. The cabs were dirty, the drivers were unfriendly, and the customers were unhappy. So I decided to make some changes. I put in a few at a time. When my customers responded well, I did more.”
“I take it that has paid off for you,” Harvey said.
“It sure has,” Wally replied. “My first year as an eagle, I doubled my income from the previous year. This year I’ll probably quadruple it. You were lucky to get me today. I don’t sit at cabstands anymore. My customers call me for appointments on my cell phone or leave a message on my answering machine. If I can’t pick them up myself, I get a reliable cabbie friend to do it and I take a piece of the action.”
Wally was phenomenal. He was running a limo service out of a Yellow Cab. I’ve probably told that story to more than fifty cab drivers over the years, and only two took the idea and ran with it. Whenever I go to their cities, I give them a call. The rest of the drivers quacked like ducks and told me all the reasons they couldn’t do any of what I was suggesting. Wally the Cab Driver made a different choice. He decided to stop quacking like ducks and start soaring like eagles.
Just remember…Ducks Quack, Eagles Soar.
Do I quack or soar? hmm
by neil kearney | Jan 27, 2010 | For Buyers, For Sellers, General Real Estate Advice, Real Estate 101
A good negotiator is someone who always gets what they want. Right? I say, not always. Being a good negotiator to me is someone who can give themselves or their clients the best chance to achieve their goals. Giving you the best chance does not always mean you will get exactly what you want. In order to achieve sustained success, a negotiator must go for Win-Win, not Win-
Lose. A successful negotiation substantially meets the goals of all parties involved.
Right now in the Boulder area real estate market buyers have the perception that they may be able to get a great deal on a home. It is true that there is more inventory out there and a portion of those sellers are quite anxious to sell. I have seen lately many offers well below full price and it takes a delicate touch to try to meet somewhere in the middle. Here is what I try to do to give the offer the best chance to come together.
- Do our homework – find out what is reasonable. What have other houses actually been selling for? How much is the average negotiation off of full price?
- Establish goals – What would be an acceptable outcome. Begin with the end in mind and you have a much better chance to get there. Be realistic.
- Understand the situation – Try to understand what situation your counterpart is in. Understanding is power. With every contact, I try to learn a bit more about where the other people are coming from. Many times, after making an offer, it is the first counter that gives you the most information.
- Keep the lines of communication open – As a Realtor I need to represent my clients to the best of my ability, but I have found that being adversarial to the other side doesn’t get you anywhere. I try to keep on very good terms with the other agent. I find that this helps in coming to a successful closing. If we become adversarial along the way it is very hard solve all of those little details that come up between contract and closing. I try to treat other Realtors well, so the next time we are working together they can tell their clients I am easy to work with and to expect a smooth transaction.
- Remember that every situation is different – You never know what other people are thinking. You can guess someone’s motivations but you never know what are the true motives. Don’t try to guess, try to learn, understand and adapt.
- Anticipate – I find that I am really able to help my clients by anticipating what may happen during a certain transaction. If we can talk about different scenarios before they happen they are easier to solve when they come up.
by neil kearney | Jan 19, 2010 | For Sellers
When one hires a Realtor, one would expect that person to market their property in its best light. Right? I would assume and expect the same thing. Unfortunately, this is not always the case. If one looks very long at real estate listings on the internet you will find, like I have, many photos that are real head-scratchers.
My MLS system (IRES, one of the nations best) allows 18 photos to be entered for each listing. But I only enter all 18 if there is a compelling reason to include each photo. I take a ton of photos at my listings and then spend more time weeding through the list. If you could hear me, I sound like an optomitrist, better? better?… I then take the best photos and make sure that the brightness and contrast are optimized. Basically, I take the time and effort needed to make my listings look as good as possible.
Unfortunately, not every agent takes the same view. lovelylisting.com/ is a popular website that posts a strange or bad real estate listing photo every day from around the globe. It’s my promise to you that if you list from me, photos of your house will be found all over the internet, but not on lovelylisting.com/.
Here are a few doozies I found while recently trolling for listings. Don’t let this happen to you!
I wonder if the painting will survive the nuclear winter? 
This turbo fan is awesome!
No skinny toilets in this house
I’m really getting a feel for this place.
Interested in any of these places? I didn’t think so.
by neil kearney | Jan 5, 2010 | For Sellers
In my hometown, Boulder Colorado, total real estate sales were down roughly 15% in 2009. This was
on top of a 17% decline in 2008. Obviously, buying and selling real estate wasn’t such a good idea in the minds of many people over the past few years. The reasons varied from financial distress, to difficulty in obtaining credit, to paralysis by uncertainty. Whatever the reason, many people put off the age old decision to leave the old nest and strike out for something new.
What has been largely ignored by the majority is that despite the slower market and difficult credit conditions, right now is a great time to buy. Affordability is way up. Affordability is the measure of the percentage of take home pay required to buy a home. In short it is the ability to afford. When interest rates are low and prices are subdued, affordability is high.
Affordability is elusive. It is only for those who dare to stick their necks out a bit to take advantage for the long term. House prices been fairly stable and I don’t predict a huge change in values in 2010 (at least in Boulder County), but there is a very good chance that interest rates could increase substantially before we sing Auld Lang Syne at the end of 2010.
Here is what an increase in interest rates could do to the payment of your next home if you decide to wait. If interest rates increase from 5% to 6.5% on a $417,000 loan (the conventional loan limit), the principle and interest would raise 17% or $397. On a more practical level, a buyer would more likely not pay (or qualify) for the increase in payment and be forced to buy a less expensive home for the same money. Using our example; if the interest rates increased from 5% to 6.5% a buyer would have to purchase a home $73,000 less to keep their payment the same.
Sometimes it pays to take a sacrifice on the front end to reap the long term benefits. If you are waiting for the prospects of selling your home to get better don’t wait too long. By the time you get the price you want on your house the interest rates and home prices will rise and you will be stuck in your second (or third) choice home.
by neil kearney | Nov 10, 2009 | For Sellers, Uncategorized
In order for a house to sell in today’s market it must have a lot going for it. The competition is intense and a successful seller is one who competes and wins on many different fronts. This article will provide the prospective seller tips, ideas and best practices that will help you sell your home, not just list it.
Curb Appeal
No matter how beautiful your home is on the inside, the first impression will always be made by how the house looks from the street. Many times if the house does not look up-to-snuff on the outside buyers will chose to not go inside. You don’t get a second chance to make a first impression. Here are some tips to make the exterior of your house look its best:
- Cut the grass,
- Trim the hedges.
- Rake the leaves.
- Sweep or shovel the sidewalks.
- If you have rocks around your house make sure it’s not 1 part rock and 2 parts old leaves and sticks.
- Trim and remove any dead flowers, or shrubs. Dead and dormant are not good buyer thoughts as they wait for their Realtor to open the door.
Cut The Clutter
People tend to accumulate things. The mail arrives and we make a pile. Grandma gives you a chair and we squeeze it in. After a few years, what is imperceptible to the owners is a maze of furniture, junk and accessories. You have to cut the clutter! Buyers will love to see Sally’s photo montage from kindergarten to marriage but they will remember Sally’s dress and her husbands blue tux and won’t remember that this is the house with the beautiful wood floors. Remove 7/8ths of the personal photos. I realize it is still your house but buyers have a hard time picturing themselves in “your” house. The rooms will look bare and not “homey” to the seller but believe me, this is how buyers like to see a house. They want to be able to picture their stuff in the house.
Staging
Once you cut the clutter it is time to think about staging each room. The idea is to make each space pleasing to the eye. Work from the perspective of a buyer at the entrance to each room. There should be a balance to the room in terms of weight of the furniture (you don’t want everything piled in one corner) and hardness. By hardness I mean that there should be a balance of hard and soft surfaces. If a room has hardwood flooring there should be a rug to soften it up a bit. If there is a couch, a love seat and a lazy-boy the room is probably too soft and you will need to add a coffee table or replace the lazy-boy with a harder chair (think Windsor). I am not a staging expert but I know people who are and even if you have plenty of your own furniture it is worth a couple of hundred dollars to have an expert come over to put it in the right place. Beware, sometimes the right place for some of your stuff is at the curb. In order to get it right you sometimes have to hear what you don’t want to.
Clean Like You Have Never Cleaned Before
Buyer’s look at your house differently than you do; they are comparing it to all of the others out there. Not only are they looking for the facts of a house (number of bedrooms, square footage, etc.) they are waiting for an emotional connection with a house. It is hard to get emotionally attached to a house that has flies in the window tracks, a dusty top of the refrigerator (just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean a buyer can’t see it) or a ring around the toilet. It takes near constant vigilance to keep a house in pristine showing condition. The idea is to have the buyer ask if someone actually lives there. Before you put your house on the market it’s time to wash all of the baseboards, clean the silver in the hutch and wash the windows. It’s also time to clean the window wells, dust the light fixtures and shine the sink. Your going to love your house so much you are going to hate to leave. But then again, it’s hard work selling your house and you will be relieved when that offer gets accepted.
This is not an exhaustive list but it will get you thinking along the right lines. Time and time again I hear from my clients who get the highest and quickest offers that this happens to them each time they sell. Why does this happen? Are these people lucky? No, these people have the knowledge, planning and persistence to put their house in great showing condition. Call me whenever you need an extra pair of eyes to check over the progress.
by neil kearney | Sep 25, 2009 | For Buyers, For Sellers
I write a monthly article for the Boulder Area Realtor Association . I thought I would post it here as well.
We are living in the information age. Some of the information comes to us unsolicited and some we 
actively seek out. We get information via email, websites, newspapers, friends, family, television; the list goes on and on. The problem isn’t enough information, it’s too much information. Many times the information conflicts with other input we have received, and it is up to us to sort through, digest, decide and react to it all.
This syndrome is especially true for information on the real estate market. The consumer is bombarded with a variety of “sources”; national news, their neighbor who has their house on the market and HGTV are just a few examples of how market perceptions are formed. An individual forms their opinion based upon the aggregation of all of this information. Lately the overall opinion has been, well, negative. Let’s be honest, we haven’t had the strongest market lately; sales are down, foreclosures are up, short sales are in the news and consumers have shut down on making large purchases. So what’s wrong, the message matches the reality, right? Wrong!
The myth is that the market has disappeared with the economy and that there are no buyers out there. The myth is that you can get a house for 20% off the list price in Boulder County. The reality is that there is still a market for homes that are very well priced. The reality is that a home needs to be in good condition in order to compete. The reality is that the market is strong for homes that are in areas and price ranges targeted by first-time homeowners. The reality is that there are quick offers and multiple offers out there for homes of sellers who understand and have reacted to the market we are in. The reality is that we are in a market where smart buyers can make a good investment. The reality is that there are many people who would like to move but feel like it is a bad time to do so. The reality is that our prices have been very resilient. The reality is that the real estate market is cyclical and you cannot panic at the bottom or get overly exuberant at the top.
So, what about the statistics? Numbers don’t lie but they do only look one way, backwards. If you focus too much on the fact that sales were down 19% in August from a year ago you lose sight of the fact that there are opportunities in every market. A smart Realtor is the one who sees opportunities in the market and communicates those opportunities to everyone they meet. The market in Bend, OR was a boom town until, all-of-the sudden, prices fell 20%. Now Realtors are super busy helping buyers who love the idea of buying a house at a discount. Everyone needs a place to live, we are not selling widgets. The market for shelter cannot disappear. The numbers are ugly, but that doesn’t mean that the future will follow. Yes, we have some challenges yet to overcome and some hard work ahead, but let’s make sure our personal message to the public includes some of the positive realities of the local market.
