The Wilson Van Law Team

06/30/2023

This reveals a hard truth about real estate. No matter who's talking to you, you're going to be told your home will sell for top dollar. But those are just words, and usually, they're not true. The only way to not easily leave money on the table when you sell is to follow the best steps of sales, marketing, and negotiating. And these are not used in the majority of home sales.

It comes down to incentives. Agents and brokers have to work harder and longer for less money to get you that extra 30k, 70k or even 160k. And the chances of them doubling their profit on the same sale falls tremendously. Selling in one day, selling for over-asking, getting tons of offers - none of those mean you sold for top dollar. Not one.

The link to the article is in the comments.

06/21/2023

06/02/2023

Here's a link to that study:

https://www.nber.org/digest/mar05/do-real-estate-agents-exploit-their-information-advantage

The author? Steve Levitt, the William B. Ogden Distinguished Service Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago, where he directs the Becker Center on Chicago Price Theory.

Steve co-authored Freakonomics, which spent over 2 years on the New York Times Best Seller list and has sold more than 4 million copies worldwide.

Levitt received his BA from Harvard University in 1989 and his PhD from MIT in 1994. He has taught at Chicago since 1997.

In 2004, Levitt was awarded the John Bates Clark Medal, awarded to the most influential economist under the age of 40. In 2006, he was named one of Time magazine's “100 People Who Shape Our World.”

Consumers know very little about how to sell a home for top dollar, nor how the industry works.

If you're looking to sell your home for top dollar, no matter where you are, reach out. I'd be happy to help you.

If you're interested, the study that shows how to raise selling prices by 10% can be found here:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/264865477_First-Price_Sealed-Bid_Tender_versus_English_Open_Auction_Evidence_from_Land_Auctions
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05/05/2023

Here’s more proof that the way a home is sold will make or cost you money, usually a great deal of it, this time from a world-renowned economist and best-selling writer. (The link to the video is in the comments.)

More proof that selling in one day or too quickly will cost you money.

If you've worked with me or heard me talk about real estate, you know I sound different than most of what you'll typically hear from the industry.

That's because when I became a realtor, I did a deep dive into optimizing client outcomes, not just on optimizing my sales volume. I didn't focus on creating the perception of value, but on learning to provide real value. Because I knew that by focusing on my sales volume, I hurt my clients’ outcomes.

One of the things I’ve learned is that it's incredibly hard for people to get their heads around the fact the real estate industry isn't trying to sell their homes for top dollar, and based on how they're sold, most homes don't.

It’s incredibly hard for people to understand that many parts of even the “best” typical home sale cost them money - easily tens of thousands of dollars, and more commonly than you’d think possible, six figures (for homes under a million.)

It all comes down to incentives - aka money and time. Selling for top dollar takes more time and more skill. It can predictably make you, as a home seller, considerably more for your most valuable asset. But the profit on that increase is a tiny fraction of what an agent or broker can make by spending that time on another sale. And they can double their income by representing the seller and buyer, which means no one but the agent comes close to optimizing their outcome, at least in all but rare occasions.

When the industry says a home has sold for top dollar, they just mean "a lot” based on what it was purchased for, or by using some other metric that in no way means a home sold for top dollar. (Like selling in one day, or for over asking, or with a bunch of offers.). It does not mean the home sold for top dollar or even came close.

Among countless other things, I learned that actively negotiating multiple offers rather than using “best and final” will raise selling prices by as much as 11%. The authors didn’t explore this type of negotiating, and their numbers don’t reflect it. And they get the agent/broker percentages wrong. But the data about selling too quickly speaks for itself.

The video is from economist Steven Levitt from the University of Chicago, via Harvard and MIT, and Stephen Dubner, co-authors of four best-selling books in the Freakonomics series. If you don’t know the books or podcasts, they’re wonderful, and explore “the hidden side of everything", which is something I've spent my life trying to do. (Full disclosure, I sent Stephen my book proposal, and he loved it and sent it to his agent. He even said he could see it being for real estate what "What to Expect When You're Expecting" is to pregnancy. Ironically, I hadn't seen this video until this week.)

The hard and crazy truth is, most of what most of us think about real estate is wrong, and costs most of us a huge amount of money, let alone time, hassle, and pain.

None of that's necessary. You just need to know how and why it happens.

Yes, I’m in sales. And I would love to help you sell your home for top dollar, or buy as wisely and well as possible. I know how to do both, and love doing so. It’s both rewarding and a lot of fun.

03/08/2023

To have success when buying or selling you need an expert who has your back - which is much harder to find that most people know!

03/08/2023

Step 1 to finding your home is learning what you can actually afford. There's no upside to waiting!

03/07/2023

03/06/2023

Here’s a real estate market report for Long Island, as of yesterday, March 5th.

As of today, things are different. 🤷‍♂️ For example, this morning, newly released data showed that the median price in the Three Village school district was up in February by more than 21% year over year. The data I had yesterday was only for January, and things were only up 1.23%.

News about the real estate market is usually national and designed to get people's attention. But there is no one market, only thousands and thousands of little ones. And while prices in many markets have and are going down, many haven’t.

The only way to know what’s up in yours is to dig deep and go hyper-local and look for trends. Not just your town and school district, but the market for homes very similar to yours in size, features, location, and lot size.

Only then can you find the answers you need. And if you want to sell, you can then price your home properly to sell it for top dollar. (Keep in mind that pricing to sell and pricing to sell for top dollar can be two very different things.)

If you have questions about selling for top dollar, or buying as wisely and well as possible, I’ll be here. 😀

02/12/2023

𝗕𝗼𝗼𝗸 𝗨𝗽𝗱𝗮𝘁𝗲: 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗕𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗥𝗲𝗮𝗹 𝗘𝘀𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗕𝗼𝗼𝗸 𝗘𝘃𝗲𝗿: 𝗛𝗼𝘄 𝘁𝗼 𝗕𝘂𝘆 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗦𝗲𝗹𝗹 𝗮 𝗛𝗼𝗺𝗲 𝗪𝗶𝘁𝗵𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗟𝗼𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗬𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗠𝗶𝗻𝗱, 𝗼𝗿 𝗬𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗦𝗵𝗶𝗿𝘁

The responses to the book idea have been uniformly positive. Which is incredibly affirming, and for which I’m really grateful.

I’ve worked harder and longer on becoming expert at consumer-centric real estate, then writing the book and starting the YouTube Channel, than anything I’ve ever worked on.

The great thing about writing is that to write clearly, you have to think clearly. Since real estate is so poorly understood, and in fact quite complicated, learning how to describe it in simple and clear language was, and is, a huge challenge.

Most consumers think whatever method they choose to buy or sell a home is the best one. They also have almost countless beliefs that prevent them from having the best outcomes. Which often costs them a tremendous amount of money.

That’s a lot to take in. And as we know, confirmation bias is a real and powerful thing.

My first videos gave people the basics of what they need to know to have the best outcomes. Those that got through them 😂😭 learned a ton. But they were too long and too full of information for most people. That was a great lesson. And super helpful when editing the book and then writing the proposal.

The book needs to be easy to use, fun to read, and highly informative. My bent is deep diving and analysis - it’s just how my brain works. It revs high and has a need to understand things. But a deep dive is not what most people are looking for, and the book is for them, not me.

So I had to think of ways to convey what consumers need to know in small, digestible, and easily understandable ways, ways that are also fun to read, while also providing all the information they need to make the best decisions.

It’s incredibly hard - maybe harder than anything I’ve ever done. But it’s allowed me to clarify my thinking, and find ways to share what consumers need to know faster and more simply.

I needed to became expert at residential real estate to be an agent. Even though the industry doesn’t need or value experts - it values salespeople - I felt I owed it to myself and my clients. I’ve accomplished that. That in itself feels very good.

I continue to focus on the inputs. I’m trying very hard to build something special. Something that helps people first and foremost, and eventually allows me to do more than work really, really hard.

Special thanks to sjd.

02/11/2023

𝐇𝐨𝐰 𝐭𝐨 𝐋𝐞𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐌𝐚𝐧𝐲, 𝐌𝐚𝐧𝐲 𝐓𝐞𝐧𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐓𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐬𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐃𝐨𝐥𝐥𝐚𝐫𝐬 𝐨𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐓𝐚𝐛𝐥𝐞 𝐖𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐘𝐨𝐮 𝐒𝐞𝐥𝐥 𝐘𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐇𝐨𝐦𝐞… 𝐀𝐥𝐥 𝐖𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐞 𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐈𝐭’𝐬 𝐚 𝐖𝐢𝐧.

Here’s an example from this week. And it’s a doozy. Based on how the home was sold, the seller could and likely will miss out on a relative boatload of money. I say “could” because of math. A .00001 possibility to sell for top dollar is still a possibility. Someone always wins Powerball, right?

Strike 1. The way the sale was negotiated will likely cost the seller many tens of thousands of dollars. This has to be brief, but a home sale is an auction, and if you get multiple offers, the way they’re handled can make or cost you as much as 9.6% of your selling price. Crazy, right? And true. This has been shown in Ph.D.-level tests in a branch of economics called auction theory. The truth is, best and final (which is actually something called a sealed bid auction) stinks for dealing with multiple offers, and for a lot of reasons. The method that’s better - which I always use - raised a best and final offer by 10.93% in my own test. (If you want a link to the study, reach out in a DM.)

Strike 2. The home wasn’t shown until the open house, and the open house lasted for an hour and a half. Then the offers poured in. This is bad in so many ways. A home sale isn’t a race. It’s an auction, and the people who get to see the home are the people who are going to buy it. If you sold it in a store, would you want that store to be open for an hour and a half? At least if your goal is selling for top dollar? Of course not. Why? Math. People are busy and marketing takes time to work.

Strike 3. If you were an experienced agent or broker, you’d know the difference between offers - without negotiating - can be huge. In the high tens of thousands, and on into six figures as home prices reach a million. Those offers can’t come in when you only show a home for a few hours, or even a day.

Strike 4 (it’s a long inning…) The listing price was way too low. The closest comp sold for $60,000 higher - but it wasn’t nearly as nice. The new listing was pristine - fully HGTV ready - meaning the renovations were expensive (conservatively, $50,000 worth of upgrades) and buyers love them.
Proof of that is that more than 65 parties went to the open house. In a market like this with interest rates where they are, when that many people go to an open house, it’s because they think the home is a bargain.

Why’s it matter? Even when a listing price is low - which happens more often than you’d think - buyers still think it has meaning. And when they make offers, those offers are tied to the listing price. And they’re kept lower because of it. Even if an offer is low compared to a home’s reasonable market value - if it’s above the listing price, buyers still think they’re offering a ton.
This likely cost the seller many tens of thousands of dollars.

Strike 5. The seller will almost certainly think all of this was a win. The house sold, it sold quickly, with lots of offers, and for over asking. That’s a win, right? No.

Selling isn’t the same as selling for top dollar. Not even close.

When it’s time to sell your home, reach out. Selling for top dollar feels like the best typical sale to you, and is in many ways easier. And it’s the only way to know you won’t leave money on the table.

02/10/2023

There is only one way to know a home sold for top dollar. Just one.

Even if you as a seller don't do your part - most of which is not hard - the way your home is sold will make or cost you money. Often quite a lot of it.

And if what's in this video isn't followed, you cannot know that you haven't left even a substantial amount of money on the table.
You likely don't know how big a deal this is. But you really should.