Unfortunately, many Realtors® also fall for these marketing messages and then pass their ‘awesome photography skills’ along to their clients. As the Seller, you sign the listing agreement, and the agent whips out their iPhone, snaps a few shots of your home and voila, you’re live in the MLS and your home is officially on the market before you know it! Great…except your images…well, they’re not so great, and in many cases, they’re downright terrible. Need some proof? Just Google ‘bad real estate photos’ and sit back and enjoy some truly awful marketing. Want some real-world examples? Take a quick visit over to www.TerribleRealEstateAgentPhotos.com or www.BadMLSPhotos.com. Terrible lighting, awkward angles, over-exposed windows, blurry images, the infamous ‘agent trying to hide from the bathroom mirror but they still got caught in the photo’, fingers over the lens – the list goes on and on.

While some of these images are downright hilarious, the sad reality is that these images are likely costing you (the Seller) a small fortune because prospective Buyers and their agents are the ones viewing these horrible images online. With today’s technology, the first ‘showing’ of your home is done online via a cell phone, tablet, laptop, etc. Buyers and their agents are deciding to see if your home is worth ‘seeing’ in person simply based on the images they view online. I tell my Sellers that when a Buyer shows up to their home, it is actually their ‘2^nd showing’ as they are coming by in person to verify what they saw online. The fewer the Buyers that show up to your home, the fewer the offers, the less competition and all of that leads to a lower sales price on your home.

I cannot stress enough how vital image quality is to the successful marketing and ultimate sale of your home. So many agents bypass this critical first step in marketing a property. They end up doing a huge disservice to their clients by fumbling the marketing job at the very beginning by having unprofessional photos, or worse yet, they try to save themselves some money and take the images themselves.

I enjoy photography as a hobby and even took a black-and-white photography course in college where the professor was a student of Ansel Adams. I learned a ton in that course, but I also learned to stay in my lane – I’m a professional Realtor® and not a professional photographer. Let the pros stick to what they do best. I’ll do a great job of selling your home in the Tampa Bay market, but I know that I also need to hire only the best professional real estate photographers to take amazing photos of your home. That formula, along with my other marketing resources, allows me to get you top dollar for your home!

The post Image Matters, iPhones Don’t appeared first on Jeff Berg Realtor.

For example, say you have a given community that has 100 homes for sale and the current pace of home sales in that area is 50 homes per month. That would give you an MSI of 2 months (100 homes available divided by 50 homes sold each month = 2 months until all of the homes are sold). By comparison, if you have the same community and the same 100 homes for sale, but the current pace of home sales is only 20 homes per month, then your MSI would be 5 months (100 homes divided by 20 per month = 5 months). If only 10 homes sold per month, the MSI increases further to 10 months. The lower the MSI, the more favorable market is for Sellers. The higher the MSI, the more favorable the market is for Buyers. A 6-month supply of homes or MSI is generally accepted as a neutral market, i.e. not favoring the buyers or sellers.

To think about it in another way, if you walk into a community that has 10 homes for sale but only 2 potential buyers, those 10 homes are going to have to compete against each other in order to earn the attention (and purchase contract) of those 2 buyers. So in order to do that, those 10 homes are going to have to lower their prices, thus creating a ‘Buyer’s Market’. With only 2 available Buyers, the Sellers know that 8 out of 10 of those homes are not going to sell, so if they want to be 1 of the 2 homes that actually does sell, they’re going to have to attract that Buyer’s attention through a good deal or low price. Alternatively, if there’s the same 10 homes for sale, but now there’s 100 buyers interested in that community, those Sellers get to raise the prices of their home and let the Buyers compete against each other. Since 90 out of those 100 Buyers won’t end up with a home, the 10 lucky ones that do will have to make very competitive offers on those 10 available homes (i.e. pay more), thus creating a ‘Seller’s Market’.

It’s the basic law of supply and demand. Low supply and high demand yields higher prices, whereas high supply and low demand yields lower prices. What is true of cars, PS5’s, that hot toy your kid wants for Christmas, etc. is also true when it comes to housing.

Here’s a snapshot of the MSI for single family homes in Tampa over the past few years:

With the exception of April and May of 2020 (right after Covid started), we’ve been in a ‘Seller’s Market’ in Tampa as our MSI has been well below a 6-month supply. And from late 2021 through mid-2022, we were in an extremely low supply of inventory (below 2 months) or a very strong Seller’s Market. This triggered multiple offers, with numerous sales closing well over the list price due to bidding wars. As interest rates started to climb, late summer of 2022, buyer activity slowed and our MSI increased to around a 4-month supply.

As a professional Realtor® that monitors my local market, I’ll keep you informed of how the local market is trending and how to position yourself accurately on the market – as either a Buyer or Seller. I can even provide these stats for your local zip code and specific property type (i.e. single family home, townhome or condo) to help you with making an informed real estate decision.

The post What is MSI and how does it affect me? appeared first on Jeff Berg Realtor.

So the simple answer to this question is “Yes, it is a good time to sell your home.”  But let’s spend a bit of time explaining a few reasons as to why it is a good time to sell your home.

Florida is popular.  Or should I say more popular…or populated to be precise.  In 2014, Florida overtook New York as the 3rd most populated state in the US with currently around 21.8 million residents compared to New York’s 19.8 million residents.  The only more populated states in the US are California at 38 million and Texas at 28 million.  Florida is currently seeing about 1,000 new residents move here every single day.  All of these new residents need a place to call home and your home might be the perfect destination for them to put down some roots in the Sunshine State.

With all these new residents arriving daily, we need housing for them and quite simply, we don’t have enough available inventory for them.  While our housing inventory was incredibly scarce 6 months ago, it has improved but we are still facing on an ongoing housing inventory shortage in the Tampa Bay market.  Anything less than a 6 month supply is considered a ‘Seller’s Market’ and most communities throughout Tampa Bay only have a 3-4 month supply of housing currently available.  Lots of buyers and not enough houses translates into simple rules of supply and demand – high demand and low supply equals higher prices.   You have to go all the way back to January of 2015 just to find a 6 month supply of residential housing in the Tampa Bay region so this seller’s market is nothing new to us.  Granted, it’s been red-hot the past 2 years with several areas literally having inventory supplies measured in days and weeks, not months, but we are still well below an even ‘neutral’ market of a 6 month supply.  

Historical data also shows us that November/December/January are typically a bit slower in terms of available housing inventory than other times of the year.  This is partially attributed to homeowners shifting their focus to celebrating the holiday season with friends and family.  Homeowners don’t want to prepare for an open house and constantly keep their home looking like a model home just awaiting that next showing request to come through on their listing.  Listing your home now will mean that you’ll face less competition from other homes on the market.  Less competing homes for sale means higher prices.  Likewise, buyers don’t want to be house shopping during the holiday season – they’d rather be celebrating with friends and family too.  So the buyers that are shopping are doing so because they have to move, and that makes them motivated buyers.  There’s fewer of them out there this time of the year, but the ones that are out there are serious buyers and they need to buy now.

When we get into the Spring months, we historically see an increase in residential housing listings, especially in single family homes and even more so in larger homes or properties with swimming pools.  Why?  Families prefer to move over the summer months if they have the option and flexibility to do so.  Kids are out of school for the summer, and they can transfer to new schools or districts easier during the summer break rather than mid-year.  So if you want to move over the summer months, you work the calendar backwards and that means putting your home on the market in the spring.  March/April/May listings translate into May/June/July closings.  

So to recap, yes, it’s a great time to sell your home now.  Plenty of buyers continue to move to Florida every day.  There are not enough houses available for these families to purchase.  Listing your home now means you’ll face less competition from other homes on the market at the same time.  Of course, aligning yourself with a full-time, professional Realtor® will help you take advantage of these selling conditions and get you top dollar for your home.  Reach out to me today and let me show you how my marketing strategies and market data analytics will benefit you!

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