As the New York area real estate market slows, brokers are putting a lot more effort, money and time into selling properties.
Take William Stoecker, senior vice president of the Corcoran Group in East Hampton: On two successive weeks in May, he placed advertisements in the East Hampton Star to promote an upcoming extra-long open house.
The ads didn’t feature photos of the four-bedroom, four-bath home’s vaulted ceilings, granite countertops and contemporary décor; at the time, the house was being renovated. Instead, Stoecker pointed his camera toward the little things that he felt made the house special, such as its bathroom floors made of river stones — and the boardwalk leading to the beach.
“I thought, ‘how can I do this to get some attention and create some excitement?'” said Stoecker, “because the market is not as busy as it was last year.”
Along with the pictures, Stoecker waxed poetically about what it would be like to live in the house: “So many bathrooms to choose from, but I must take a steam [bath] and I must be surrounded by all the wonderful natural materials that Mother Earth has offered up to this temple of exquisite taste.”
If it seems like Stoecker went to a lot of trouble, he’s not alone. From the Hamptons to Hell’s Kitchen, brokers are marketing product more aggressively as interest rates rise, the number of homes on the market pile up and prices come down.
Staging a home to look more attractive to potential sellers has become so important that Pamela Abrahams, senior architecture and home building editor at Country Living magazine, has started prepping homes for sale for a fee.
“I edit these rooms to make them look less cluttered and read well for the camera,” Abrahams says about her work getting homes ready for magazine shoots. “This is exactly what you need to do to sell a house. It has to be inviting.”
Sometimes all it takes is adding a vase of wildflowers to a table, a colorful throw to the sofa, or putting a bowl of oranges in the kitchen to create the feeling that “people actually live there and that you would want to live there,” Abrahams said.
In more complicated cases, Abrahams said she’ll borrow art or furnishings to create the right look or suggest changes like a fresh coat of paint. “They’ve been doing this in California for a long time, it’s very accepted out there,” she said.
Still, some sellers are hesitant to spend the money, she admits. Abrahams says she charges about $250 for the first two hours to de-clutter, move furniture and suggest paint colors for a Manhattan apartment.
Open houses for brokers have also become more important. Inducements such as grab-bag gifts or drawings for a bottle of champagne or a dinner for two at a local restaurant are offered, said Corcoran senior vice president Diane Saatchi, who also works in the company’s East Hampton office.
Stoecker noted that agents are working harder for the seller “in terms of having open houses for both the public and for brokers.”
Advertising is up as well. Brokers, who in recent years came to rely on Internet ads, are now taking out more quarter- and half-page advertisements in newspapers, Stoecker said.
“We have to spend more to keep and sell the listing at the time when brokers have the least amount of money to spend,” Saatchi said.
Even though his $2.295 million listing on Long Island’s South Fork is still on the market, Stoecker considers his ad a success. In a market where a busy open house gets 15 to 20 visitors, about 80 people attended Stoecker’s four-hour event, he said.
Another angle of attack for brokers is to convince the seller to agree upon a lower asking price.
“The idea is getting buyers to the apartment,” said Phyllis Pezenik, director of sales at DJK Residential in Manhattan. “Pricing too high is a mistake in this market. It’s important to explain to an owner why it would be a mistake.”
Sometimes pricing a property just a little bit below market rates will create enough excitement, but if not, agents need to spend time getting to know buyers and shepherding them through the process.
“It’s constant contact with the potential buyer,” Pezenik said. “Constantly giving them articles about the market, mortgage information — keeping them informed so they feel secure that they are on top of the market and they are secure that you have their best interests in mind. I encourage that and I feel that the brokers that are the most successful follow those directions.”
Having been in the business long enough to remember when three to six months on the market before a sale was considered normal, Roberta Axelrod, director of sales and rentals at Time Equities, acknowledges that the market has shifted.
“Units are taking a little longer to sell,” Axelrod said. “Customers are seeing more apartments to make a decision. Last year, it was not atypical to sell an apartment within a month. Today, it would be more typical to sell it in three months. I would consider this a strong, stable market, but not as hot as it was last year.”
Because Time Equities develops properties, Axelrod uses feedback from potential buyers to make units more attractive to them. If potential buyers are asking for wine coolers in the units, for example, they can be added. “We’re hearing what people like and don’t like,” Axelrod said.
Her staff is also double-checking marketing materials to make sure that everything is correct and properly conveys a property’s features, she says.
Still, Axelrod is up against many of the challenges that other brokers face. There is more co-broking compared to last year, because brokers want more exposure for their listings in a market with fewer buyers, so it’s more important to make sure that brokers are aware of the properties on the market, she said.
On the financial front, rising interest rates are threatening to make mortgage payments rise between offer and closing, Axelrod said.
Like Pezenik, she is encouraging her sales team to spend more time explaining mortgage options and, if necessary, holding first-time buyers’ hands through the process.
“We suggested that he get a lock [on the interest rate],” Axelrod said about the situation with one buyer. “He was a first-time purchaser, and he wasn’t aware that he could get a lock before purchasing.”
The shift in the market also means making a bigger effort to stay in touch with potential buyers.
“You always want to follow up, but in a hot market, they’re tracking you down. In a not-so-hot market, you want to make sure that you’re tracking them down,” Axelrod said.
“You have to work a little harder,” she added. “You can’t take the attitude that there’s another person coming through the door.”