Seller Client Services
No approach is perfect, but over the years we’ve tailored our methods to make the selling process as effective, efficient & enjoyable as possible for our clients. Our aim is to keep adding to our following of thrilled clients, who are ready & willing to recommend our services, by being the finest, most highly skilled and professional brokers in our market.
Here’s our game plan for making this happen:
Basics
~ These are the state mandated requirements for a brokerage to represent you in the sale of your property. Bare bones minimum. ~
Present and explain “Maine Real Estate Commission Brokerage Relationships Form” to you. (link to page explaining this form)
Enter into a Listing Agreement. This is the legal document that authorizes a brokerage to begin the process of selling your property. This is usually when the initial listing price of a property is determined. How close the list price is to actual market value will impact the outcome of your selling efforts more than any other single component. Years of experience and market knowledge go into the seemingly simple process of applying an effective price tag. Many brokerages opt for the “buy a listing” approach, which is telling an owner a suggested, usually inflated, list price that they think will obtain them the listing. Then, over time, advise the owner to reduce the list price to eventually where it should have been from “Day 1”. This approach will often work to gain a listing, but most often does not create a happy client and definitely does not put a seller client in a strong selling position. Pricing accurately can be extremely difficult in Maine. Very few properties are alike enough to compare equally, especially so in Downeast Maine. If we can’t peg an accurate market value using available sales data and our market wisdom, we’ll tell you, and help to create a pricing strategy that meets your goals. What we won’t do is “buy” your listing by telling you a list price that sounds great, but stands little chance of being realized. Just not our style. Yes, we’ve lost a few listings because of this of the years, but gained far more.
Complete all necessary forms and state/federally required disclosures including Seller’s Property, Lead Paint and Arsenic Disclosures (if applicable). Though it’s labeled “Seller’s Property Disclosure”, it’s actually the real estate licensees’ responsibility to make sure that this disclosure is complete. It’s pretty shocking to see how loose some brokers are on this. Whether it’s handwriting that is impossible to read, or just straight up missing/wrong information on the Seller’s Property Disclosure, this important element to selling is a pretty low bar in our local market. Here’s an example what your Seller’s Property Disclosure should look like in aim to make the most of your sale, and keep buyer issues from surfacing in the future. (link to fully completed SPD) If your Seller’s Property Disclosure doesn’t look like this, your broker is not doing the job you hired them to do.
Typical
~ In addition to the Basics, this is what most brokerages will do in aim to net you a buyer. ~
Photograph your property. The level of skill & care dedicated to photography, marketing in general really, varies wildly in Maine. From downright comical (e.g. the token “photo shoot from car”, where you can clearly see a rear view mirror in marketing photos) to comprehensive and classy. As photos remain the #1 media that represents your property to the buying world, this listing service done well is essential to your selling success.
Submit your property to Maine’s MLS. Maine has one, statewide MLS, known in industry as MREIS (Maine Real Estate Information System). Not all real estate brokerages in Maine are MLS members, but most are. Like photography, the skill & care of how a listing is entered into MLS will directly correlate with the attention a listing receives from the buying world. And again, this service is provided by most brokerages, but done so with vastly differing levels of competence.
Place a yard sign on your property. Some look better than others. Some are maintained better than others. We always feel the sign on site is a direct reflection of the quality of the listing. No crooked, dirty or broken signs here. That’s not what we sell.
Local advertising. A lot of real estate brokerages advertise locally in The Ellsworth American and The Mount Desert Islander newspapers, as well as The Real Estate Book (this is the little, takeaway listing booklet you see sometimes at the grocery store). Year by year, print marketing for real estate is losing its effectiveness and brokerages are decreasing or eliminating their use of it. We were the 1st in our market to eliminate most print marketing way back in 2011. It was easy to see the writing on the wall. For effectiveness in selling a specific property, print ads are now pretty much at the bottom of the food chain. For brokerage or broker brand awareness, print is still somewhat effective. You won’t hear this said from most brokers, but reality is, print real estate ads are for the benefit of the brokerage or broker, not the listing or client. There are many more effective tools in the shop these days to benefit a listing. You’ll learn about these tools below. (consider including link to study showing current effectiveness of RE newspaper ads)
Conduct buyer viewings, counsel on pricing, help to negotiate offers received & coordinate the closing process. There are no state requirements for educational or experiential qualifications for these tasks. The amount of care and skill with which these important services are provided varies greatly from broker to broker. Sometimes these services are absent altogether. In many occasions, the effectiveness of the broker’s skill in this aspect will be the determining factor of whether or not you sell your property, let alone sell it for the best possible terms that the current market will afford. How you feel a broker will handle these affairs is a critical facet to consider when choosing your real estate professional.
Pemetic Purveyors
~ How we define “Finer Real Estate Services” ~
You have hired a team. When you hire Pemetic Purveyors, you are hiring two veteran real estate professionals for the price of one, not to mention their marketing design and home staging support staff. You will have two dedicated professionals available to field buyer inquiries on your property and attend to the many details involved in listing and selling your property the right way.
Credentials: When it comes to professional accreditation and designations, we’re stacked deep.
Of the 5,200+/- real estate licensees in Maine, there are only 108+/- with the coveted CRS designation. Less than 3% of Realtors nationwide have the education and experience to become CRS designees. A CRS designation is similar to a Realtor master’s degree. Additionally, both are licensed as “Brokers”, the highest level of real estate licensing in the State of Maine.
Ryan is also a
In 2016, Ryan was inducted into the RE/MAX Hall of Fame.
All these designations require extensive education and documented experience in the real estate industry. Ryan also volunteers on the local Realtors Grievance Committee, helping to resolve complaints that arise amongst area Realtors.
Our reputation. With our successful real estate sales record, many years of professional business interactions and extensive community involvement, we have established a high caliber reputation for integrity and excellence. The recognition we have earned from our peers and their ensuing enthusiasm to work with us allows us to more efficiently and effectively achieve your real estate goals.
Extensive knowledge. Our combined education and experience offer an unparalleled level of expertise at your disposal. Extensive real estate education, many designations and prior occupations in several different aspects of the real estate industry enable us to provide you exceptional real estate services.
Hand hewn marketing. Every element of your property’s marketing campaign will be crafted by us, with our in house design team. Most offices hand off raw property data to an admin person, who is completely unfamiliar with the property, expecting them to produce effective marketing. This admin is often part time and always works “9-5”. Simply put, we do the opposite. Our “high touch” approach ensures that your property is optimally positioned from the beginning to the end for prime exposure & appeal to just the right buyer demographic.
Create a custom website for your property. We will create and maintain a dynamic custom website for your property, then place it on numerous real estate sites to help bump up your exposure to buyers. Your property will have its very own custom home on the web. Example: www.YourHome.info All of the information, photos, video & documents that a buyer may want will be on your property’s website. This is a fair amount of time & resources for us to allocate, but has proven very effective over the years. Because of the high level of resources this tool requires and the competitive brokerage fees we strive to offer, we are only able to offer this specific service to listings that are marketed at $300,000 or higher. Exceptions will be made at our discretion.
Custom Listing Portfolio. Our unique, custom designed, Listing Portfolios stand out in a crowded field. Your portfolio will include extensive pro photography, beautiful design, mapping, surveys, legal information, area highlights, narrative write ups and required disclosures. Anything that we have available to help a buyer remember and appreciate your property is artfully included. This full-color portfolio will be available in hard copy at buyer viewings and via e-mail (PDF format) for online inquiries. It’s also downloadable on your property’s website, and on our website if your property does not have a custom site. Our Listing Portfolios have found new purpose in educating appraisers so that they will credit your property for what it is really worth. After viewing 11 listings in a day, well after they have all begun to blend together in the buyer’s memory, your property is the only one that the buyer comes away with holding more info than a standard MLS synopsis print out and a property disclosure. Which listing do you think they will remember the most?
Custom photography & video. It is an established fact that the quantity and quality of photography and video directly correlates with level of buyer interest received and final purchase price obtained. To this, our marketing media is second to none. Shots will include, but are not limited to, multiple exterior angles, professionally lit interiors, detail images highlighting special design & garden features and panoramic viewshed shots. Have an incredible sunset view? We’ll be there to capture it. Low tide and high tide photography take time to obtain, but are key to telling a complete story, and without question, all of our photos are taken only under the sunny, blue skies of Maine. If you were to hire a pro photographer to capture and produce the typical amount of media we offer our seller clients, it would cost in the neighborhood of $2,500-3,000. Most photo pros would actually not accept the assignment, as most are simply not willing to come to a property at the key times necessary to capture magnificent images. Photos are taken using a Nikon DSLR camera with top of the market lens and then professionally processed using Adobe Photoshop CS software. When effective, attractive label overlays are designed and applied to photos to help convey the content of the image to the online viewer. Another “1st in our market”. These overlays help to not only inform, but impress, as they help tie together a consistent and appealing campaign. Videos are narrated by Ryan and will include exterior property and neighborhood highlights and views, should they apply. We were the 1st in our market to produce true video tours of our listings way back in 2007. We’ve only stepped up our game since 2007 and continue embrace video as a valuable marketing tool. Several buyers have placed our listings under contract sight unseen, based solely on viewing our marketing media.
Aerial and drone photography. For suitable properties, we engage private pilot services to capture unique bird’s eye perspectives of your property and its surroundings and also utilize drone photography for a similar result. Our drone photography is all in house, allowing us to be there when it counts and capture images that are time or situational sensitive. It is uncommon for a hired photography, especially for drone work, to visit a property more than once. It’s highly unlikely that even the very best real estate photographer in a single site visit could capture all of the media needed to tell a complete and compelling story for a dynamic listing. Our dedication to your success and built-in skill sets provide us the ability to bring it all together.
Descriptive copy. Ask anyone working on Madison Avenue: “The more you tell, the more you sell.” We spend the time needed to create unique and engaging copy to describe your property’s features and attributes. This effort consistently ranks among the highest compliments we receive from buyers for our marketing. What have you loved about your property? Let us know! We’ll take your input, and blend it with our observations and know how to craft an accurate, appealing and informing body of text to help you sell.
Prepare a Staging Report for your home. For certain listings and clients, our staging service is hands down the highest value service we provide. Let our experience working with buyers in the Maine market guide you in what changes make sense at your property in order to make the most of your sale. Often, a seller can attend to a few small details prior to showings that will make the difference between a timely sale and months on the market. Ryan holds the AHS (Accredited Home-Staging Specialist) designation and has years of successful staging under his belt. Once you list with us, we will spend several hours viewing your home and creating a comprehensive “Staging Report”. This report is a full on blue print for how to best prepare your property for success. We’ll then follow through with any questions you have and line you up with any and all service providers needed to put a fine polish on the staging process.
