Letter to Potential Home Seller in Scottsdale Arizona December 27, 2015

Thank you for contacting me and giving me the opportunity to help market and sell your home. Please see below for copies from the MLS of my productivity. You can see at the bottom of the report it names the agents.

Please see what other past clients have written about us on Zillow. The great thing about Zillow is they have a very tight security system and All of my reviews are from past clients.

As you can see below, I currently have 2 active listings, 4 Pending and 22 Closed YTD. My homes sell for an average of 99% of list price and in an average of 54 days on market. 13 of my 22 sales have sold in less than 30 days. This is due to marketing and pricing.

2 of my listings cancelled this year without selling. Both were a function of the market changing at the beginning of the year. One, decided to take the home off the market as he did not want to sell at today’s value. The second was one I had a difficult time with. We listed in January based on a sale in November, but the market moved further. Right away the lack of showings told me the market moved. The seller refused to listen. By the time they would lower the price our relationship had soured. I released them. They listed with another agent at the new price I had suggested for some time an it sold in 2 weeks.

I have a small team of 4 people, 3 licensed agents. My wife, Lisa Cameron, organizes and runs our office. She is the listing coordinator and transaction coordinator. Nora Marquez assists Lisa, she organizes and posts documents, enters many of our marketing steps into other web sites, posts weekly blog advertisements and SEO for our websites. Hope Beneteau is our Buyer Agent, but does listings too. She had 4 this year and they are not counted in the numbers above. I focus on clients, mostly sellers, but buyers too. I set the planning and marketing for the team, negotiate offers and meet with clients.

Regarding comps for your home. I have been working with 2 buyers in the area and we have seen several newer tile roof homes with a pool priced between $300 and $335k. Those are homes they have rejected as not a value.

I would like to explain the market real quick. I have been using these same numbers with clients and they are not relative to your home. Here is how it goes. In late 2011, the market bounced, inventory was at a low not seen since early 2005. Into 2012, the market had bounced and a home selling for $225k the previous summer was at $250k. The market went quiet in the 4th quarter and prices flattened, until April 2013. At that time we saw another bounce and by June that same home was selling for $275k. Here is what KILLED our market. All the new sellers priced their similar home at $300k and would not budge. (I want to be clear this is just an average price I used, it happened with higher and lower priced homes similarly)

After facing bidding wars through early 2013, buyers pulled back in the summer and kept looking but stopped buying. In general of course. Sales dropped and inventory grew. By January of 2014 we had grown from 9,000 single family home for sale to well over 21,000. This is valley wide, but Scottsdale grew by the same percent.

Here is the Killer mistake that sellers and their agents didn’t realize they were doing. They brain washed buyers the market was dropping. How did they do this? By over pricing homes and then lowering them too slowly.

If you were a serious buyer in our market, regardless of where you lived. (ie here or Chicago) You were set up on a Portal by a Realtor. You can log in daily and look at the homes that meet your parameters. You can mark the homes and watch them all the way to closing. You see what they sell for and if they just don’t sell and cancel. Also, you get an email every time there is a new listing or a price reduction. In most cases, buyers were getting 5+ emails a week with new listings, but most importantly Price Reductions. What happens when you get 5 or more emails per week showing price reductions? You believe the market is going down.

Now these price reductions were those $275k homes reducing from $300k. And worse, some agents lower their price by $100 each week to bring their listing up on the emails. If they only knew what they were doing to the market. Many lowered their price by $3-5k. It could take between 5 and 10 reductions to get to their proper price. By the time they got there, if they actually did it, some sold, but others didn’t because the buyers were brain washed the market was going down and it became a self serving prophesy.

Currently, your home is on the market for Investors only. Owner occupants want to close and move into a home. They also want to see it on-line. As a matter of fact, today’s buyers only personally view homes they think they want to buy. They don’t tour homes they don’t want.

Let’s say the market value of a home is $275k. In most cases, that true market value to an owner occupant is what we express as the value, $275k. Most investors would only buy the home if they got a “deal” like at $250k. Are these the buyers you want to be restricted to?

When we list a home for sale, we have a 25 step marketing process. All are important, but the top 5 marketing items would be: Pricing to market, Prepping the home to sale, Great photos and video, Proper On-Line exposure and a Great agent to help the buyer agents bring in an offer.

Open house is on our list of 25 and we will do it for a seller at request. However, we are honest with our sellers. An Open House is for us to find new leads(buyers and sellers) for other homes.

How do I know this?

Easy answer is I am an experience 20 year veteran with over 1,200 sales. I am successful because of my honesty to my clients and insistence to spend my time on marketing that helps sell my listings, verses marketing that makes the seller think I am working.

Once we Launch our listings to the buyers out there, now we get busy monitoring what happens next. We track every showing, get feedback from the agents and update our sellers. Then we respond to those actions.

When a seller gets no showings at their home launch, and its not Christmas week, the home is either over priced or not accessible to the the buyers. Not accessible is for example: not listed in the MLS, no lockbox or presented improperly.

When a seller gets little to few showings. The same is true as above. We act differently in different markets. When a market is going up, we discuss waiting, but look at the fact they may pay more for the next home. When a market is drifting lower, the quicker to the value the higher the sales price.

When a home gets many showings and positive feedback, it sells within 30 days.

The average list price to sales price is 98%. Buyers wait for homes to be appropriately priced to write an offer. I was at a home inspection yesterday. My buyer paid 99% of list price. Why?They had just made a 5% price reduction and it was now priced at market.

Regarding comps. As you mentioned, I have not seen the home. I have sent the most recent homes in north Scottsdale based on the following: 3 bed, 2 bath, 2 car garage, built before 1987, no full tile roof, and no pool.

I have sent you those comps and ask you the following questions:

How does your home compare to on Sunny side, which has over 1/4 acre lot?

How about the available home on Clinton?

Looking at the Closed homes:

The home on Gray is completely remodeled, kitchen, cabs, floors baths etc..

Poinsettia is nice, but not as nice as Gray. No new cabinets, not as much in the baths and thus the $15k difference.

Kalil, Mercer and 103rd are in great condition and have some nice upgrades. Especially Mercer with new cabinets and stone like counters.

I look forward to hearing from you! Jeff

My Listings Sold in 2014 CMA, I will send you the list from the MLS.

Statistical Market Analysis

Status	# Listings	List Volume	Sold Volume		List Price	Sold Price	Sale/List Price	Approx SQFT	List Price Per Approx SQFT	Sold Price Per Approx SQFT	Agent Days On Market	Cumulative Days On Market
Active	2	1,525,000	0	Low Avg High	325,000 762,500 1,200,000	0 0 0	0.00 0.00 0.00	2,091 3,916 5,741	155.43 182.23 209.02	0.00 0.00 0.00	26 69 112	25 68 112
Pending	4	1,367,000	0	Low Avg High	175,000 341,750 647,000	0 0 0	0.00 0.00 0.00	1,398 2,462 4,794	80.94 147.98 197.19	0.00 0.00 0.00	20 100 198	19 99 197
Closed	22	8,180,400	8,077,573	Low Avg High	108,000 371,836 750,000	101,750 367,162 720,000	0.94 0.99 1.07	943 2,147 5,019	100.75 172.58 253.21	99.95 170.12 254.22	1 54 171	1 55 171
Overall	28	11,072,400	8,077,573	Low Avg High	108,000 395,443 1,200,000	101,750 367,162 720,000	0.94 0.99 1.07	943 2,319 5,741	80.94 169.75 253.21	99.95 170.12 254.22	1 62 198	1 62 197

Selection Criteria for Comparable Properties

Specified listings from the following search: Property type Residential; Listing, Co-Listing Member of Jeff Cameron; Status of ‘Active’, ‘Closed’, ‘Pending’,’UCB (Under Contract-Backups)’; Close of Escrow Date between ‘1/1/2014′ and ’12/20/2024’.