RE: Real Estate Podcast

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (00:00)
I want to give the buyers room to negotiate. his response is,

Do you want to give them room to negotiate up or do you want to give them room to negotiate down? if you put it high, you might get one person and they're going to negotiate down. if you list at or below the market price

you're going to get a bunch of people interested you'll get multiple offers and negotiate the price up.

Welcome to another episode of the RE Real Estate Podcast. I'm your host, Clint Galliano along with the other host, Ben Harang Hey, Ben, how you doing?

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (00:49)
Clint, I'm doing terrific, man. Weather's nice. Life is lovely. How's things going in Houma?

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (00:56)
Houma is pretty good, man, pretty good. We finally got the light show running for Halloween. Still got a couple of things that I need to add to it, but we at least have it up and running every night from dark to about midnight.

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (01:09)
that's

that's good that's good so plug plug your lights in Bayou Blue what you call yourself

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (01:19)
Bayou Blue Dancing Lights. If you never heard of it, look for it on Facebook. We got videos and posts and all kinds of stuff.

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (01:22)
There you go.

and do a Halloween and Christmas displays, right? That's cool. That's cool. And it syncs with the music that you can listen to on your radio.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (01:31)
Yes, sir.

Yep, you can drive up, look at the sign, it'll tell you the radio station, which is 107.1 on the FM dial.

You tune your radio and your car to it and listen to the music and the lights async to the music.

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (01:53)
That is. All right.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (01:55)
Yes, indeed.

Hey, Ben, you know what? As we're recording this, this is episode 55 of the podcast.

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (01:59)
What's it?

whoa

we've been doing it for that long we've been doing this essentially once a week with one miss but we have multiple weeks where we have multiple episodes so you and I started talking about this about a year ago when I had a crazy idea and you were just as crazy and agreed to it and here we are a year later continuing to do it

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (02:08)
that long.

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (02:25)
still providing the content on a weekly basis so if you have 55 episodes you can go back and listen to watch and if you want to get a want to get a good laugh go watch the first one or two and then watch the last couple of them and and hopefully you'll see a difference in the quality in the video and audio and hosts and

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (02:42)
I hope.

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (02:46)
But we think we do, we say it all the time, but we think we bring you good content. So if you're interested, go back and take a look, take a listen, and see if you get anything out of it. So, all right.

right. Clint, what are we talking about today,

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (03:02)
Well, today we're talking about an interesting topic. So if you as a homeowner are thinking about selling, you probably ask yourself, is it a good time to sell? The answer almost always depends on one thing. Are we in a buyer's market or seller's market?

These terms get thrown around a lot. But what do they actually mean for your home sale right here in Louisiana? Today, we're going to define exactly what a buyer's and a seller's market is. We'll show you the three key signs to tell which one you're in. And most importantly, we'll give you the exact strategies you need to win in both and the critical mistakes to avoid. First,

Let's get the definitions out of the way. It's simple supply and demand. All right. Ben, let's talk about a seller's market. Why you give us your definition of a seller's market?

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (04:01)
All right, a seller's market is what we saw during a COVID time when we had 3 % interest rates. It's a low inventory and high buyer demand, home sell fast, often with multiple offers, and sellers have the most leverage. A buyer's market is the opposite.

high inventory and low buyer demand. Homes sit on the market longer and buyers have the power to be picky and to negotiate.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (04:32)
And boy do they.

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (04:34)
Yes, they do. And sometimes we can make a deal. Sometimes we can't. Sometimes buyers think we're in a buyer's market and sellers think we're in a seller's market. And neither one of them are probably right. And we can't meet in the middle somewhere. And we just move on and go find another one. We either go find another house or another buyer.

So how can you tell which market we're in right now? It's not just a feeling. Real estate professionals look at three key numbers. Number one, and this is the most important, is months of inventory. This just means if no new homes come on the market, how many months would it take to sell everything that's currently for sale? A balanced market is plus or minus six months.

Anything under four months is a seller's market. Anything over six to seven months is a buyer's market. So essentially three to five months is a balanced market. Below five is a seller's market. Above seven is a buyer's market. And ironically, we just did a

A market update and it seems like we have pockets where communities and subdivisions that are squarely in a seller's market, we have communities that are balanced and we have communities that are squarely in a buyer's market, depending where you are in Lafourche, Terrebonne St. Mary and Assumption Parishes. The second number is the days on market.

This is simply the average number of days a home is on the market before it goes under contract. If homes in your neighborhood are selling in 5 to 10 days, you're in a hot seller's market. If they're sitting for 45, 60, or 90 days, buyers are taking their time. And number three, sale to list price ratio. A home selling for the asking price or over if the average

Home is selling for 101 % of the list price. We're in a seller's market. If homes are consistently selling for 96, 97 % of their list price, means buyers are successfully negotiating down.

So that's how we define a buyer's market or a seller's market. And Clint's gonna take on a strategy for selling in the seller's market.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (07:05)
All right, somebody refers to this as the power mode, not me. I don't refer to it as that, but we're gonna go over it. All right, so we're gonna start with the easy one, seller's market. It feels like you can just stick a sign in a yard and get 10 offers, Not lately. But it's not that simple if you wanna get the best deal.

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (07:12)
the

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (07:25)
In seller's market, your goal isn't just to sell, it's to maximize your profit and get the best terms. Strategy has two parts. Don't just list, launch. All right, you got that? That's a marketing term, launch. Even in a hot market, presentation matters. Your home should be clean, decluttered, and staged. You want to create? I don't know.

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (07:46)
Sounds like somebody said that already.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (07:50)
The only thing

it's missing is depersonalized. And it would make it a 3D.

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (07:53)
That's The

3D.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (07:59)
You want to create a frenzy that first weekend. And you want to price it at or just below market. This is the pro move. Don't get greedy. Don't overprice. Price competitively moves more buyers, which is what creates a bidding war. Bidding war will often drive the price higher than if you had just listed it high to begin with. So.

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (08:01)
Mm-hmm.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (08:23)
I'm going to give a shout out to another podcast, the Millionaire Real Estate Agent podcast. It's named after the Millionaire Real Estate Agent book that Gary Keller and J. Papasan and rest in peace, Dave Jenks wrote a number of years ago. But Jason Abrams interviews top performers.

about how they operate their business. And he was interviewing James Shaw. And they were talking about pricing for listings. And he says, how do you handle the buyer, I'm sorry, the seller that wants to list overmarket price? Because they say, well, I want to give the buyers room to negotiate. And so he says his response is,

Do you want to give them room to negotiate up or do you want to give them room to negotiate down? It says, because if you put it high, you might get one person that's interested enough in the house to come view it and write an offer and they're going to negotiate down. But if you list that just at or below the market price for it,

you're going to get a bunch of people interested in the house, and there's a good chance that you'll get multiple offers and negotiate the price up. So which one do you want to do? And so that's kind of reflected here. Price at or below the market price, because there's a better chance of getting more interest and potentially generating a bunch of offers.

All right, critical mistake. Biggest mistake sellers make when they know that they have the upper hand.

They overpriced the home on day one. Here we go. They want to negotiate down, I guess. Or they want the buyers to negotiate down. Assuming someone will pay anything, or they'll just list it as is and refuse to fix anything. As is doesn't mean as is. That's one of my pet peeves.

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (10:19)
It means as is as of the date of sale.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (10:21)
Yep. All right, so here's the truth. Even in the hottest market, a home that's overpriced or has a long list of problems will still sit. And the longer it sits, the more buyers start to wonder, what's wrong with that one? You lose all your leverage. People will look at it and say, oh, it's a nice house, but it's been for sale for four years.

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (10:44)
Probably not, probably not. Okay.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (10:46)
I don't think I want to even go look at that one.

All right, then why

don't you tackle strategies for selling in a buyer's market?

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (10:56)
How about the competition mode, the challenge and the strategy. Okay, now for the flip side. Buyers market, inventory is high, buyers are picky, and your home is just one of many options. How do you possibly stand out? In a buyer's market, you have to win on two things, price and presentation. First, price.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (10:58)
Mmm.

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (11:20)
you must be priced correctly from day one. This isn't the time to test the market and hope for a higher offer. You need to be one of the best value homes in your category just to get people in the front door.

Second presentation, your home must be in move-in ready condition. Fix a leaky faucet, paint the scuffed walls, replace the stained carpet. If a buyer walks in and sees a to-do list, they're just gonna walk out and go to the next house, which is ready to move in.

Critical mistake. What's the most common trap sellers fall into in this market? Chasing the market down and We see it time and time again. That's when you over price the home It gets no showing so you do a price reduction But by then the market may have dropped again, so your price reduction is still above the market and Then you do another price reduction

and the market changed again and you're still behind the market. So you're never catching up with the market if you don't price it right out of the gate.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (12:37)
they call that,

trying to catch a falling knife.

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (12:40)
Good luck with that. You have to get ahead of the market with an aggressive price from the very beginning. You also have to be flexible. Be ready for last minute showings and be prepared to offer incentives. Maybe you pay for a home warranty for the buyer, offer to cover the cost of some of their closing costs. That can make your home the one they choose. So you can...

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (12:44)
.

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (13:08)
We do sell houses in a buyer's market. The pricing is as critical as, is more critical than any other market to get it right going in, because you don't want to be chasing that price in a buyer's market. So, all right, Clint, go ahead and recap it for us.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (13:27)
Well,

all right. So I'll say a common theme to both strategies for both markets is pricing it right, which is something we harp on. So recap, seller's market is high demand. Price is right to start a bidding war and don't get greedy. Buyer's market means high competition. And you're going to win on price and presentation from day one.

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (13:38)
Mm-hmm.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (13:53)
So what market are we in right now? Truth is, it can be different by neighborhood and even by price point.

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (14:01)
Give me your address and I'll tell you what market you're in.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (14:05)
And so like we said, you go back to actually the October 22nd episode, episode 53, we released a September update talking about it. And we go over kind of the general market for the Bayou Board of Realtors area. And then also discuss inventory in Houma and Thibodaux So that kind of gives you a rough idea. We do that on a monthly basis.

release an episode, it's off cycle, so it's released at some point during the week. If you're interested in keeping up with that. you know, mentioned price point, know, homes under $300,000, those move pretty well. You start creeping above that and it takes a lot longer to get them sold. And we see that across the board. It just, it's...

People that are buying in that price point, there's not as many of them that are buying at below the $300,000, $350,000 level. So it's a slower market.

So that's why understanding your specific local slice of the market is the only way to build a winning strategy. So appreciate you all tuning in to the RE: Real Estate Podcast This episode helped you all subscribe, like, comment, share. You can do that at RErealestatepodcast.com. We've got a link to our videos on YouTube. You've got a link to Ben and I's agent websites. You can also ask a question.

If you want answers, you can also reach out directly to us. You can also subscribe with your favorite podcast app or listen to the episodes directly on our website. So I think this is another one in the can.

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (15:52)
All right, Clint, good job. Enjoyed it, man. Have a good one.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (15:56)
Alright, you too