Selling Myrtle Beach Homes | Myrtle Beach Homes | Carolina Forest Homes

May 08 2018

Hiring A Pro Photographer When Selling Your Myrtle Beach Home

Alright so in this week’s video we are going to discuss the importance of hiring a professional photographer when you are selling your Myrtle Beach home. Most of the people who are looking to buy a home here in Myrtle Beach are not here locally. What I’ve seen from my 17 years in the business is that our biggest group of people buying a home in Myrtle Beach are from the northeast. That means that most of our buyers are starting the home search from a computer several hundreds of miles away, or they know what they are looking for and are just waiting for that property to come on the market and purchase. But since they are 500 miles away, they are not actively walking through a home here, they have an agent here locally set up a search to notify them when a property comes on the market.

I’ve got several clients that are like this. They might be interested in a gated home in Myrtle Beach, and so they get notified every time a new listing comes on the market. These buyers might receive several email notices a day as there are several communities in the area that are gated, and they cannot jump in the car and come every moment a new listing hits the market. So these types of clients have to rely on the images that the listing agent takes to determine whether they want to make a trip down and view the property.

While more and more agents in the area are starting to use a photographer to get images of their listings, some of the agents here in Myrtle Beach are not going to hire someone. They are either using their own cameras or even worse, maybe a cell phone to take your pictures for your house. When you list your home for sale, if you see the agent pull out their cell phone to take your photos, you need to question them and ask why they are not going to hire someone to give you the best images of your home to attract more potential buyers.

Up until about six or seven months ago I was taking all my photography myself. I have all the professional equipment, I use it to shoot my videos, and so for me it’s not a big deal to go into a listing and take my own images. I’ve spent thousands of dollars over the years on gear and really enjoyed doing the photos. However, I recently had a unit that was a little bit higher end property and so I thought, I should probably hire this out because I don’t have all the exact equipment to get these images the way they need to be. In order to get best photos, you sometimes need better equipment like lighting, wide angle lenses and much more. The better quality gear that you normally need to take this kind of photos can cost you several thousands per piece and well, while I’ve spent a bunch on gear, I also have three kids, so I can’t always purchase the top of the line stuff.

So I decided to reach out to a photographer, hire them, have them take the pictures of my listing. The results that I got were amazing. And it helped to get the property sold within the first week of it being on the market. This listing was in a neighborhood where there were several other homes for sale, and ours was on the higher end of the price scale. The thing that gave our property the competitive advantage over the competition was that we had professional images that the other listings didn’t have. That is why at that point, I decided that I was going to from now on hire a professional photographer for these things. Yes, it’s an expense to me as an agent, but, it allows me to focus on what I like doing most, selling your property.

When I used to take the photos for my listings I was spending anywhere from 4-8 hours taking the photos, editing them and getting everything ready for use. It was a major use of my time and took entirely too much away from other items I could do instead. By hiring the photographer, it freed me up to start other parts of the listing process and now allows me to get the home on the market and get it exposed out to my personal online network of over 40,000 in quicker time, hence getting properties viewed by more people sooner.

I recently had a listing that just went under contract this past week where I hired a professional photographer, to take the photos of this oceanview condo. The unit next door to us had an agent that listed it several months ago, they took the pictures themself, looks like they did it with their cell phone, they are not very good quality. This is a unit that is right by the ocean, so you would think an important to show off would be the ocean views. Well, they took the pictures at night, never went back took pictures to show the view that this unit has. So, instead of showcasing the ocean view, it had a black image on the deck showing a closet.

I listed my unit for sale, instantly had activity on the property. I have a contract on that property right now from a buyer who saw the images online, they’re up in New York, haven’t even been yet to see the unit, but they knew they didn’t want to miss out, so they wrote an offer sight unseen on this property. The agent told me your images were so beautiful, that’s what sold this person on it. Meanwhile, that other unit is still sitting on the market, and it probably will for a little while longer.

So, when you list your Myrtle Beach home for sale, make sure you ask your agent, if they are going to hire a professional photographer to take the pictures of your property. It’s a really important thing to help give you the competitive advantage today over everything else that is on the market. If you have somebody who is not using a professional photographer versus us who are, they are going to lose out on a regular basis. If you would like to get learn more tips on selling your Myrtle Beach home, feel free to call me at 843-222-9402 or simply contact me here.

Sep 19 2017

Professional Photography Now Added To Listing Services

When it comes to selling a Myrtle Beach Home, it’s important to hire an agent that can deliver the best chance of selling your home for the highest price in the quickest time possible. Statistics show that now more than 92% of all buyers & sellers go online to shop before ever contacting a Myrtle Beach REALTOR®. To help deliver even more value to my sellers, I have recently began hiring a professional photographer to help give my listings a huge advantage over the competition.

Now, my clients that have hired me in the past have done so because of my ability to expose their home online to over 40,000 people within the first 24 hours of listing their home for sale. They like the fact that I have all the professional equipment needed to take professional photos, and to also create awesome videos like I did for the Waterbridge community. I have to admit, I really enjoy doing these sorts of things and find it a lot of fun to get in touch with my creative side and take the photos. I really enjoy spending the time editing the images, cropping, straightening them, and all the other fun tech side of taking photos. Honestly, I can do a pretty decent job with the photos too. Here’s one I recently took for a recent listing.

So, while ability isn’t the reason for me giving up taking my photos, what is the actual reason for me hiring someone? At the end of the day, I simply am getting to the point in my business that I do not have the time to spend doing these items. On average I was spending anywhere from 3-4 hours getting my gear together, going to the listing, taking the photos, and then editing them after. Instead, I need to focus that time & energy on finding prospective buyers for my listings and getting them under contract. So about 4 months ago, I started hiring a professional photographer to take images of my listings. While it is an expense to me as the listing agent to hire someone, I have found that I would rather focus my time on doing everything possible on exposing my listings to as many people as possible.

Since hiring a professional photographer to take images of my listings, I have been able to really focus on getting my listings under contract and sold for my sellers. In just the last two months I’ve been able to sell all of my listings but one. By hiring a professional real estate photographer, I’ve been able to free up several hours each month that gives me more time to work on reaching out to prospective buyers and find clients interested in purchasing my listings.

Not to mention, the professional photographers have even better equipment than I do. While I have a lot of gear, I don’t always have the proper gear for each situation and usually would have to improvise to get the right lighting by bringing along large work lights and reflector shields and all other types of equipment, whereas a pro will come with their camera on a tripod, and some external flashes to get the job done. I used to waste hours loading gear in and out of the car and and & out of the properties.

If you are thinking of selling a home in Myrtle Beach, contact me at 843-222-9402 and we can discuss in greater detail how my marketing plan can get your home exposed to my database of over 40,000 people online within the first 24 hours of listing your property for sale. We will discuss how to price your home properly to get it sold for the most amount of money in the quickest time possible.

Listing Update

Remember the property I mentioned in the video above being listed? Well, the photos turned out great, I shared with an agent in my office and we were able to put the property under contract in less than 24 hours with a cash offer site unseen. Professional photography works!

Jun 09 2017

Selling Your Myrtle Beach Home- Staging

Last week I wrote a rather lengthy article going through the importance of pricing your home properly when you are placing it on the market in Myrtle Beach. In the end of that post, I mentioned that I would be covering several other topics related to other important things to pay attention to when selling a home. Today, I want to discuss one of the most important areas that get the most amount of push back from sellers when we are discussing placing their home on the market, staging.

Now, when I mention staging, I am not talking about hiring a professional decorator to come into your home that is going to remove all your furniture and replace it with rental furniture to sell your home. Instead, what I mean when I say staging is making the necessary changes to get your home to sell for top dollar in quickest time possible. I’ll explain much more about this as we continue forward.

Declutter

When placing your home on the market, the first thing you can do to help your chances of selling for top dollar is to declutter the home. This is a simple step that doesn’t cost any money to do. It just takes some effort and time. Start by cleaning off all the furniture of papers, coins, and other items that are not vital for day to day living. We don’t need to let the tape dispenser & scissors sit out just in case you need to use them in the next few days.

By simply removing all the nick knacks from furniture surfaces, you are making your home look more organized and neat. Now, you might argue and say that you do not have a place to put those things. I would tend to argue that you do, but you just don’t want to place things into a spot that might not be as convenient to access. I share with sellers regularly that it is ok to start packing things up and placing boxes in the garage to declutter the main living area of the home. Buyers can look past boxes in the garage, but have a hard time seeing how spacious a home is when there is stuff out everywhere.

I like to walk through a home with the seller and point out things like this as well as any items that could cause injury or a bad experience to a potential buyer. Usually this includes moving small items sitting around the room that could cause a buyer to trip and sometimes it includes moving a piece of furniture to make a room look larger, or a walkway easier to navigate. If buyers have to turn sideways to go down a hallway, they will feel as though the rooms are smaller than they actually are just because of too much furniture. Sellers sometimes want to argue that those items aren’t in the way because they are used to walking around them and have even done so in the dark. Buyers that aren’t familiar with the home won’t feel the same way and it will have a negative impact on their thoughts of the home.

Depersonalize

I have to admit, this one might be the hardest for me to do if I was selling my home. When selling a home, it is crucial to remove all the personal items. I’ve seen it way too many times where a buyer enters a property and within moments sees a family photo, a trophy, or something else that distracts them from focusing on the home and whether or not they want to purchase this home.

For me, this would probably be where I’d end up spending the most amount of time if my wife & I were selling. We are super proud of our three kids and all the amazing things they accomplish throughout the year. Our refrigerator barely has 1 square inch of clean space on it as we have decorated the entire thing with layers of class projects, good grades on quizzes, and schedules for all of their extra curricular activities. The counters are littered with projects that they have done at camps and church. I’m serious when I say that I could easily fill several large bins with all their papers and achievements.

Depersonalize goes further than just my kids pictures on the walls and projects on the refrigerator. Any and all medicines need to be put away in a safe location. Bottles many times has your confidential information on them and can be a temptation to people visiting your property. While we do our best to try & qualify buyers before they enter your property, there are still some that can have ulterior motives when looking at homes. Remember, buyers are going to be opening closets, looking in your kitchen cabinets, and much more, so put away your medicines.

Another thing that I find too often are homes where sellers have left piles of mail sitting around. That mail includes all your private information that someone would need to steal your identity, and use your good credit to make purchases on your behalf. Some may include your social security number or birthday too. Take the mail and any credit cards and lock them up somewhere safe so that you do not become a victim while selling your home.

Neutralize

The biggest segment of potential buyers these days are millennial buyers who are looking in our market as well as the baby boomers who are searching for their retirement home in Myrtle Beach. The millennial buyers are looking for a property that is ready for them to move in. They cannot visualize what a home could be nor do they want to have to do work to make it look right. Buyers who are moving to Myrtle Beach to retire are also not wanting a project that they will have to handle when moving. They do not want to have to spend time painting, replacing flooring, and cleaning up landscape around the home.

I recently went on a listing appointment where the seller said they didn’t really care to do a bunch of fixing up to the property before selling and would prefer to place the home on the market “as is” instead of getting the carpets cleaned, freshening up the landscape with new mulch and painting the entire inside of the home one single color and remove all the very personal preference wallpaper throughout the home. I then went on to share with them the difference in price in their market for home in top condition versus homes being sold as is.

In their neighborhood, the difference was almost $30,000 between the two price points. To do all of the necessary fixes would cost at most $4,000. Also, the time on market went down almost two months if the fixes were done. It doesn’t take rocket science in this case to see the value in fixing things up.

In the past year I’ve had more and more sellers take this approach when selling their home. It has resulted in two of my last listings going under contract in less than two days and one selling for list price, the other selling for 98% of list price. In comparison, one of the properties I listed for sale within the last year was on the market for six months, had over 65 showings and no offers. Almost all of the feedback received on the property was similar to this: “Buyers liked the home, but found something they liked more that didn’t have as much work needed.” My seller had painted every room in the home a different color to their preference, and did not want to neutralize the property. It ultimately kept the home from selling.

Wrap Up

In closing, let me leave you with this thought. If you look at any home furnishings magazine these days you will see the things mentioned above happening. Whether it’s IKEA, Pottery Barn, or some other home furnishing catalogue, you will see simplistic designs, neutral colors, and clean designs. This is what is in front of consumers eyes every day, so when they begin to shop homes, they are going to want the same thing in the home they purchase. Spend the time making these changes and getting your home ready for sale so that it will sell as quick is possible for the most amount possible. Doing a little bit of extra work can be the difference between a buyer saying let’s see the next home and let’s write an offer. It will pay off in huge dividends when you see your bottom line at the closing table!

Call me today at 843-222-9402 if you are thinking of selling your Myrtle Beach home and would like to learn more about what we can do to get your home sold or contact me here via email.

photos by: illustir & Vitamin C9000

Jun 02 2017

Pricing Your Myrtle Beach Home To Sell

I’ve shared a lot of content over the past few months on tips for selling your Myrtle Beach home and ways that you can increase the price of your property when selling it. Today, I want to discuss in detail pricing and the importance of getting the pricing right for a quick sale and while getting you the most amount possible. I am going to actually walk you through the process I use to figure out the value for a home that I am about to list.

Pre-Meeting Work

Before taking a trip to the home to discuss what we can do to sell her home for the most amount of money in the quickest time possible, I go onto our online system and pull up some data on current homes for sale in her neighborhood as well as what has sold in the neighborhood over the past few months. I take time and study all the details of the various properties to make sure I know as much as I could to most accurately price the home for sale. I am not known for pricing my listings too high or too low.

I usually spend a good hour or two on this analyzing each of the sold and active properties to learn about the features of each property that will be current competition as well as learning what features might have helped a home sell for top dollar or for the lowest price. I also normally try to make a trip by the property the day or two before our meeting to familiarize myself even more about the subject property. When I come to visit your home and we begin the discussion on price, I am as prepared as possible.

Where Do You Rank Your Home?

One of the first questions I try to ask on every listing appointment is how do you rank your home on a scale of 1-10. A home ranked 10 is going to be like new with all the upgrades possible, freshly painted, new flooring and appliances. A 1 home is a property that probably needs to basically be torn down. I ask this question so that I can learn where the seller feels their home should be valued.

When we start discussing price on the home, it helps sellers to remember where they said their home ranks. Too many times I have someone who wants to list their home at top dollar even when they know it is an average home. When they do say that, I remind them that they said their home was only a 5-6 so it should be priced in that same range.

Upgrades vs. Maintenance

This is an area that causes some of the biggest disagreements when trying to figure out pricing of a home between a seller and a real estate agent. The seller argues that they just spent $10,000 for a new roof on the home or $5,000 for a new air conditioning system in the house, so they should be able to get that money back in the sale. Unfortunately, these type of expenses cannot be categorized as upgrades, but need to be looked at as maintenance. If you didn’t sell your home, you would still need to fix the leaky roof and cooling system in order to continue living in the home. They do not add value to the home, just help preserve the value of a home.

The other common misconception regarding upgrades is that if a seller puts top of the line upgrades into their home, they are going to get all of that money out. I remember one home I recently went on a listing appointment had upgraded all of their lighting fixtures and spent over $75,000 doing so. They thought that they would be able to recoup all of this money which isn’t accurate. While the upgraded lights might see the fixtures and love the way they look, at the end of the day they see a light and are not normally willing to spend extra just because you did. When making upgrades, think about the options you choose to make the home as appealing as possible to the largest group of buyers without spending too much on these upgrades.

Pricing in Fantasyland

When it comes to setting the listing price, it’s really important to not start too high. If you price your home too high, it is not going to sell and even if you are lucky enough to get a contract on your home while priced too high, it is not going to appraise for the proper amount. I did a video on this before sharing your options here: Once the appraisal comes in for less than the contract, what do you do? You’ve got a only a few options when this happens, you can either reduce the price to appraised value, ask the buyer to bring the difference in appraised value and contract price to the table in addition to their down payment for the loan, or the final option is for the buyer to walk away and you lose the contract.

In most situations though, the home is not going to end up selling, but instead falling apart and losing the buyer unless you are willing to take the lesser amount. One of the largest culprits of homes being listed for too much money is people looking at their competitions of other homes currently on the market. Almost every time I have a seller wanting to list their home for a much higher price than it actually should be, I hear this statement: “But my neighbor down the street just put their home on the market for $xxxxxxxx price, mine is much nicer, so I should be able to get more than that.” Unfortunately, listed prices don’t determine market value. I call the listing price of homes on the market Fantasyland.

Fantasyland prices are what people hope & wish their home will actually sell for. But at the end of the day, it doesn’t determine what a home is actually worth. We can wish & hope all day long, but at the end of the day, sold data will determine the house value.

The other common statement I hear regarding price when we list a home for sale is this: “Well, we want to try things out and then we will reduce later.” This is a REALLY bad idea. When I list your home for sale, the first 30 days is the prime time to get your home exposed out to new potential buyers who might be interested in your home. During the first 30 days, your home get sent out to over 700 different websites where buyers have registered, set up alerts & notifications when something new comes on the market that might fit their needs. If your home is worth $245,000 but you want to test the market at $260,000, that buyer never sees your home since their alert cuts off homes at $250,000.

By the time we reduce the price to the correct range, that buyer has probably already found a home or they see a home that has been on for a long time and then they want to get a deal. Ultimately, you end up losing more in the long run.

Pricing Fail Zone

The one area that no seller wants to end up in is the fail zone. These are the homes that have been on the market for a period of time but did not sell and have expired. Sometimes this is caused by listing the property with an agent that doesn’t market the home properly so it doesn’t get the exposure it deserves. Some is caused by bad images of the property, or a bad write up, or not enough information. But the main reason properties end up in the fail zone is caused by homes being listed for too much money. Just because you have an old appraisal that said the home was worth a certain amount, or when you bought the home you paid a certain amount & then added $30,000 in upgrades, it doesn’t automatically make the home worth that much more. Ultimately, the market determines the value of a home.

How Prices Are Determined

When it comes to figuring out how to price a Myrtle Beach home for sale, there is no exact science. Pricing depends on a lot of variables, but at the end of the day, I should be able to accurately give a range to my seller and be within an acceptable range of $5,000-$10,000 normally. Here’s how I go about figuring out how a home should be priced for sale which I think is somewhat similar to how professional appraisers do it.

First, thing I do is collect all data on what homes have actually sold for in a neighborhood. With the way our market is right now, I normally only need to go back 90 days to find enough properties that have sold in a specific area or subdivision. If I do not get enough properties to provide a sufficient amount of comparable properties, I will then go back another three months or as long as needed. See an example below:

On this report, it shows you several things, but the main items I pay attention to is the sold price column & the price per square foot column. At the bottom of the spreadsheet, it then also gives me an average, median, minimum, and maximum price per square foot. Then, I simply measure out the home and this should give me a base range to start with pricing on.

Of course, this doesn’t take into account all variables like an oversized garage, swimming pool, etc, those items have to get factored in separately. This is where studying all the properties comes in handy. If I see you have granite in your property where most other don’t I can then look at the other properties which sold with granite and can figure out how much would need to be added or deducted for features you might have or don’t have.

I then can tell the seller the ranges for average, median, and max for their area on properties that sold. That’s basically the extent of how pricing comes about. Usually after we finish this discussion we are ready to then discuss terms of the agreement and get the home listed on the market.

Bonus Tip

Here’s one bonus tip when it comes to pricing your home for sale that gets overlooked too often. Too many sellers and agents try to adopt a sales technique when pricing a home that ultimately hurts their search greatly. Remember when I mentioned earlier that there are over 700 websites out there with thousands of buyers who have searches set up to send them new properties when they come on the market that meet their criteria? Well, depending how you price your property can cause a huge group to miss out.

Think about when you purchased the home you currently live in. When you began speaking with your real estate agent, you gave them all the specifications for the home you wanted to purchase. When the agent asked what you wanted to spend, you more than likely gave them a range in an even number. In our market, it’s normally in $25,000 ranges. So you might say, $125,000-$150,000. Now if you list your property for sale at $124,900, you are going to miss all of the buyers out there that are willing to purchase your home for $100. The same is true for the seller that tries to be cute with the price of their home and lists it for $151,515. Think in round numbers and get more eyes on your home.

Wrap-Up

I hope that this article sheds some light on the process of how a real estate agent goes about pricing a home for sale and can give some insight to anyone who is thinking of selling their home in the near future. In the next few weeks I will go into several aspects of selling a home including how a real estate agents markets properties to get them sold, what you should do to get your home in selling condition, and what documents you will sign when selling a home.

If you are considering selling your home, do not hesitate to either call me at 843-222-9402 or simply contact me here and we can discuss how we should price your Myrtle Beach property and get it from For Sale to SOLD!

photos by: Tax Credits & aturkus, pheezy

Mar 02 2016

Selling a Myrtle Beach Home- Last Minute Showings

When selling a Myrtle Beach home, one of the common issues that can arise is when an agent calls at the last minute to show your home while in the neighborhood and seeing the yard sign. While the buyers may not have previewed your home on the MLS & said they wanted to see it, once they drove through the neighborhood & saw your awesome back yard & pool,, and think your home might be “the one.”

So what should you do when selling and these last minute calls come in? You haven’t had time to vacuum the carpets and the kids didn’t make their bed this morning before heading off to school! Should I cancel the showing because the home isn’t in perfect condition? NO! Don’t cancel! Here’s the thing I always tell to my clients when we have their home listed for sale:

[tweetthis]”Never cancel a last minute showing because the home isn’t in show perfect condition.”[/tweetthis]

People realize that you weren’t expecting a showing right this moment and they also know that you still have to live in your house each and every day. The new potential buyers can look past dishes in the sink or an unmade bed when you only have minutes to prepare for a showing.

What you don’t want to do is decline a potential showing of your home because it is last minute. Your home will never sell if it can’t be viewed by potential buyers.

[tweetthis]”Your home will never sell if it can’t be viewed by potential buyers”[/tweetthis]

So when those last minute calls come in requesting a showing, take a deep breath and say yes to the buyer’s agent. If you can get the dishes into the dishwasher or pull up the sheets, then do it, but don’t go crazy if it isn’t all perfect when your doorbell rings. Relax and know it will all be fine, the new homeowners could be entering into your home.

If you are considering selling your home, contact me to learn more about how my online marketing plan can get your home exposed to over 37,000 people in the first 24 hours of your home hitting the market.