Our advice, practices, and processes don’t come out of thin air; they’re forged and developed through experiences in the field.  These stories highlight why inexperienced and over-burdened brokers don’t compare to Canopy Real Estate.

His mom was selling her home out west, and her local real estate agent told her, “You don’t need to stage in this market, nobody is staging.” He told her, “Mom you have to stage the property, it doesn’t matter what everyone else is doing, it’ll make you property look its best.” So, she insisted to her local realtor, pushing past advice not to stage. When the property was staged, the local realtor said, “Wow, it looks great in here, it looks so much bigger than before.” By the end of the first weekend, his mom had received 22 offers and a price that surprised everyone. Nobody likes to spend money up front, but staging is one of the few expenses that typically has a positive return on investment when selling a home.

The property was about to go live, and we received the email: "I thought you would appreciate some intel." The realtor friend was sharing some invaluable market intel, but it wasn't good news. He and his buyer client just put an identical property, and I do mean identical, under contract for much less than we were planning to list the property for. This is one of those moments - you've been there before - where you can either play it conservative OR dig deep, summon the courage, and use your experience and intuition to buck the conservative advice. Do we keep the list price as planned or drop it?

...We dug deep, and kept the higher list price! It's not always the right choice, but having the experience to read the market and understand the power - and limits - of a robust marketing platform informs decisions like this. We sold for $25,000 higher than the identical property. My clients had just gotten married 10 days before settlement. A nice wedding gift, indeed!

What would you do with an extra $25,000?

My seller clients were moving to the next chapter of their lives. Excitement and anticipation were high as the property went live on the market. The property was prepped, painted, and marketed. The marketing machine went to work. The open house plan was executed flawlessly: lots of traffic with excited buyers and neighbors. Offers began to come in and the first two offers were attractive: they were $30,000 and $40,000 above list price with minimal contingencies. Then it came: the offer that changed everything. The buyer’s agent didn’t ask any questions, except when offers were due. Just after the last open house wrapped up at the end of the first weekend on the market, the buyer’s agent sent over the offer: it was $100,000 over the next highest offer, had minimal contingencies, and didn’t include an escalation clause to mitigate the risk of overpaying! Why did he do this? In short, he was overburdened, didn’t have a team to support him, and wasn’t focused on his clients needs. He didn’t give the one piece of advice that would have saved them $100,000. The buyers were young too, so this $100,000 could grow to more than $750,000 by the time they retired if invested in low cost broad market ETFs at the stock market’s historical average return. The worst part: his buyer clients don’t even know they lost $100,000. They probably feel grateful for the “guidance.”

Zillow's CEO, Spencer Rascoff, had a home in Seattle, WA. The Zillow automated estimate, or Zestimate, showed a value of $1.7 million at the time, but when he put it on the market it only sold for $1.1 million. When asked about this, Rascoff's reply was telling: "This particular house was located on a major arterial street, a fact that wasn’t baked into the Zestimate." He went on to explain that an agent is so important, "To determine a more accurate opinion of a home’s value you should hire a real-estate agent." It makes you wonder: What else is wrong with their algorithm and model?