Get Ready for Thursday Tour (Thursday??)

You Read it Here First

In the course of helping clients find a rental property the last 2 weeks, it's become abundantly clear that the rental market is much more fragmented and chaotic than the For Sale market.

And pricing is much sloppier (what you get for, say, $2,500/mth runs the gamut from properties worth high $300k's to low $600k's).

While Craig's List seems to dominate, there are another 6-8 sites that have rental properties that aren't listed elsewhere.

And coming this week, rental properties will now be on MLS.

Step 2

Once you've defined the appropriate universe of rental candidates for your client, step #2 is to go look at them.

Some owners and rental brokers are quite responsive, and showings are easy to set up.

However, others take repeated efforts to reach, and have very little time available for showings ("How about after work next Monday?").

For Realtors generally accustomed to getting access during business hours, with a few hours notice, that doesn't cut it.

Proposal: Rental Tour

Once upon at time, For Sale properties suffered from a similar lack of exposure.

At least in the Twin Cities, the solution was to hold open houses every Tuesday, between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m., when Realtors can see all the new inventory.

Here's betting $100 that there'll be something similar for rental properties within the next year (at least ones whose rent justifies the marketing effort).

P.S.: my proposed time is 1 to 3 p.m Thursdays.

Getting Something Read Into the (Real Estate) Record

"Funny, I Didn't See Him at the Meeting"

Politico's know that a Congressman who never actually delivered a speech in the Senate or House chambers can nevertheless have their remarks "written into the record," or transcript, of that body's deliberations.

Real estate has something similar.

After each local real estate office holds its weekly Tuesday meeting, the Office Administrator ("OA") assembles and circulates a list of their office's Pre-List's, Price Reductions, Buyer Needs, etc.

Can't make the meeting (because you're prepping for Tuesday tour)?

Just email the OA.

What Happens at 3:01 P.M.??

Define, "On Tour"

Readers will recall my post last Tuesday lamenting (kind of) the dwindling number of free lunches at Broker open houses ("No More Free Lunch -- Really").

As I noted then, Tuesday tour is when Realtors view, often by "caravan," all the new listings on the market.

By convention, the time window is almost always 11 a.m to 1 p.m.

So the following blurb, from today's tour sheet, caught my eye:

On Tour 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Easy View with Electronic lockbox on the front door inside the porch.

In other words . . . Realtors can let themselves in with their electronic key -- pretty much like they can every other day of the week (minus, I suppose, the showing request and confirmation).

I'd file this one in the "nice try" category.

Deceptive Advertising

"Auction Today"? Not Exactly

I spent a good chunk of today's broker tour going through a 90 unit condo project in St. Louis Park. (If you didn't know, Realtors spend a part of each Tuesday looking at all the new properties on the market, in a ritual called "Broker Tour.")

The condo complex caught my eye because a unit in the building looked like a good fit for one of my clients.

However, once I got to the building, all I saw were very big, very conspicuous signs announcing "Auction Today." It seemed odd: the building was empty, there were no cars in the parking lot, and yet there was supposed to be an auction?

It turns out, the company's Web site is:

wwww.AuctionToday.com

Be honest -- did you notice the "www" and the ".com"? And yes, all that signage did get me to look at the condo's that are going be auctioned (bidding's an entirely different matter -- but that's the subject of another post).

It reminds me of a Mad magazine cartoon, vintage 1968, where a would-be playboy goes around trying to entice women with the line, "I named my new yacht after you." Sure enough, the last frame of the cartoon cuts away to the name plate on the boat: "After You."