Alan Wieder – Principal Broker
“The Catskills are experiencing a renaissance; it’s time for the real estate market to catch up.”
We are bringing a forward-thinking, market-driven and proactive approach to selling real estate in the Catskills.
Selling a Property
Selling a property is one of the largest financial transactions the average person will make in their lifetime. Therefore, it is only natural for a seller to strive for the highest possible sale price. Most brokers will promise to get you the highest price possible, but did you ever ask how they plan to achieve that? What will they do differently than all the other agents out there? Is it their local connections that will get you the best price? Their personality or negotiating skills? Maybe they take better pictures than other agents? Maybe they just have a magic wand.
I cut my teeth in the dog eat dog real estate market of New York City for 12 years before moving to Sullivan County and I have learned through experience that the only way to achieve top dollar is through proper marketing. Putting a sign in the yard, taking photos on a cell phone and posting the listing to the MLS is not marketing. That’s what I call “Post & Hope”. There needs to be a marketing plan, there needs to be an effort made by the agent to go out and promote the listing and there needs to be accountability and communication. The more you put in, the more you get out. The counties north of the city have been becoming more attractive to city buyers over the past few years and that has led to increased home values. My goal in starting Catskills Home Services is to transfer my expertise gained from my experience working real estate in NYC to Sullivan County, and the surrounding counties.
While every seller is hoping to sell at the highest possible price, it is the job of the agent representing them to make sure that happens. A potential buyer is more likely to be interested in visiting your property if the listing has high-resolution photos, floor plans with dimensions, and a detailed and well written description.
When you list your property with Catskills Home Services we come up with a comprehensive marketing plan to best suit your property type or personal situation. Together we will create an outline detailing the steps we will take from before we put the property on the market until the day it’s sold.
The Marketing Difference
If you have been thinking about selling your property, consider how the services we offer will help you attain the highest possible price.
Professional Photography
We hire a professional photographer so that the high-resolution photos will allow you to put your best foot forward in the first interaction buyers have with your property, which takes place online.
Taking pictures on a mobile device might have been acceptable years ago, but it is certainly not good enough now. All too often, a property will showcase photos that are blurry, sideways, or accidentally capture people or pets in them. These photos do not make a good impression on prospective buyers. Today’s buyers expect high-quality, wide-angle photographs that show off the best features of your property.
Professional Floorplans
We hire a professional to draft a floorplan of your property. A digital floorplan is a great tool. It makes your listing more attractive to prospective buyers as it makes it much easier for them to visualize how they can live in your space and know what furniture will fit in each room.
Drone Photography
Having drone photography allows potential buyers to get a different perspective of your property. It is especially helpful if your property offers picturesque views, is on or close to a lake/river, has a pond, offers nice landscaping etc., as many features are best viewed from above.
Video Walkthrough Tours
Whether a buyer wants a better understanding of your house’s layout before visiting or wants to refresh their memory after a tour, a video walkthrough is the perfect marketing tool for the job. This isn’t a shaky, make you dizzy kind of video taken by an agent walking around while narrating. This is a professional quality video with seamless transitions and pleasant music in the background.
3D Interactive Tours
This marketing tool has been getting more popular recently and is super cool. Our photographer uses a special 3D camera to capture a panorama of each room in the house. He then uses Matterport technology to create an interactive 3D tour. Buyers can literally click on strategically placed circles to “walk” through the house from their computer or mobile device, anywhere in the world! With our listings reaching buyers in other states and many different countries, this is an excellent feature to have.
Professional Website for Your Property
We make your listing stand out by having its own website! The website features all of the media (photos, floorplans, videos, 3D tour, etc.) as well as a description of the property and useful local information.
Professional Property Description
A well-written description is the best way to explain to a buyer what is special about your property. Buyers always look at the photos and read the description before deciding whether they want to visit a property. Don’t lose them before they even come by for a tour! The description needs to be thorough and interesting, in order to keep the reader engaged. It should be free of grammatical errors and it needs to be longer than just a few generic sentences.
High Quality Signage
Instead of small bandit signs that tend to get knocked down whenever its windy, we invest in large, high quality signs. The signs are strategically placed to ensure maximum visibility to passing vehicle traffic. We attach solar lights to our signs so that they are visible even at night. Additionally, we install a brochure box next to the sign, so that anyone passing by can grab one to quickly get all the pertinent information.
HIgh Quality Take-Away Pieces
Presentation is key. We give out property brochures and mortgage financing sheets (printed in color and on premium paper) during every tour. We also create a logo for each property, which can be used when creating or ordering promotional materials. When a buyer visits your property and gets something to take home with them, your property will stand out and they will remember it better than the others they visited that day.
Maximum Listing Exposure
It’s simple math – The more exposure your property gets, the quicker it will sell and the more money it will sell for. Getting as many eyes on the listing as possible is imperative.
We are members of OneKey MLS Listings and our listings are sent to websites far and wide, ensuring maximum exposure. Your listing will syndicate to over 100 real estate websites, including the most popular consumer facing sites such as Zillow, Trulia, Realtor.com and Homes.com. By law and in practice we act in the best interest of the property owner, so we never hold “pocket listings” and we are happy to co-broke with all agents on a 50-50 split. This gets brokers excited and brokers have buyers!
Featured Placement on our Website
In an effort to get more buyer leads or showcase more listings for additional content, most brokerages use an IDX service which feeds listings from the MLS directly to their website. As we are a listings-focused brokerage, we do not use an IDX. Instead of flooding our website with listings from the MLS, we proudly use the space on our website to feature our own exclusives, thereby adding value to our clients through extra exposure.
Targeted Mailers
Quite often, a neighbor will have a family member or friend that wants to move to the area, so it makes sense to showcase the property to them with a targeted advertisement. We send a high-quality “Just Listed” postcard out in the mail to the area around your property, offering your neighbors the chance to “choose their new neighbors”.
Cliché? Perhaps.
Effective? Most Definitely!
Committed to Serving You
We are committed to offering top notch services while maintaining its small-town identity. We understand that the agent’s role in a sale is more like a partner than a service provider. Therefore, we work hand in hand with the seller and provide consistent and regular communication and feedback.
We are a small company and plan to stay that way, in order to provide VIP service and be able to treat every client like they are our only client.
Give us a call to discuss how we can help you achieve your real estate goals. We are glad to offer a complimentary market analysis with no obligations.
References available upon request.
Timeline for Purchasing
Closing Cost Sheet