How We Sold St. Tropez #802 In 70 Days Of Market Time

Back in May, I was contacted by the owner of St. Tropez at Pelican Bay #802. He was in search of the best agent who could take over his soon to be expired Pelican Bay condo listing and sell it. As he briefly explained his predicament, I could hear the frustration in his voice. He gave me the address and we set a time to get together.

Before the meeting, I took a peek at his property online. I already knew St. Tropez at Pelican Bay offered some of the most amazing Gulf of Mexico views and the building had recently had an enormous array of improvements so why didn’t it sell?

Cell Phone Photos Are NOT For Real Estate

Do you know how many buyers start their real estate search online? According to the National Association of REALTORS 44%!

That’s more than double any other source! Why do so many owners choose agents who still depend on their cell phones to market Pelican Bay properties?

What’s wrong with it?

We all want to know! It’s the

first question many buyers ask. After reviewing the numbers it seemed the unit was priced well despite the terrible photos. Sure it wasn’t in brand new pristine condition but it wasn’t priced that way either. On paper, it looked like one of the best deals in Pelican Bay. Maybe it didn’t sell because there had been accessibility issues.

What’s the biggest downfall of properly priced listings?

Accessibility! Most people want to actually see what they’re buying and while we can sell site

unseen properties, an overwhelming majority of buyers want to see the property for themselves before they buy. In many cases, they want to see it more than once.

If you don’t have a showing clause in your lease, your property may be very difficult to sell.

Think twice before you rent if your real goal is to sell. If renting is your only option, put a clause in the listing agreement that allows showings. You’re required by law to allow two hours notice. Not all renters are agreeable though so hash that out before you hit the market.

If you’re too busy to allow showings, your property could be very difficult to sell.

If you’ve scheduled 52 guests this Winter and don’t want to show the property four and half months out of the season, don’t list it. That will just create a black hole of market time for you and your property and eventually, your property will garner the reputation of not being able to be shown. If it’s just one big weekend bash, go for it.

If your agent is too busy to accommodate your showing, you can expect defeat.

Believe it or not, listing agents are the biggest culprit of denying showings due to personal schedules.

“I’m already showing property that day.”
“That’s my day off.”
“I’m sick”
“I play Pickleball on Thursday.”

We hear it all and we sold none of those properties because of it.

I don’t know about you but if I found out my agent denied a

showing on my property because of their Pickleball game especially when the market is depreciating, I would lose my sh…mind.

We met our client who mentioned he was also interviewing a few others just to make sure he was making the most right decision. During our meeting, he asked,

“What Do You Think About Open Houses?”

Us: We love them! We’ve sold quite a few properties from open houses. Why do you ask?

Him: One agent said they don’t believe in them and they’ve never sold anything off of one so I just find it weird you say you do them all the time and you have sold properties off of them.

Us: We get it. Not every agent can offer any sort of a personality or additional content to entice a buyer to buy during an open house. But when you properly prepare for

one, have your facts and the ability to share them, they’re successful.

We discussed our other strategies on how we could market the property. Including commanding top placement on sites like Zillow and true analytic analysis on how his property was being received by ready, willing and able consumers and things we could do to accentuate the success of drawing people into his unit.

What About Property Condition?

He then asked our thoughts about his property condition. He made it clear he wasn’t really interested in doing any big remodeling and truthfully there was only one thing I saw that could gravely distract a buyer from buying.

Somewhere along the line, somebody had put some sort of window tint on these terrific sliders and it was really starting to distort and bubble. It was almost to a point you couldn’t see that amazing view. We asked him to have it removed.

There were also some personal effects he planned on keeping we asked to have removed so nobody else would ask for them during negotiations. I told him I would handle everything else.

We Got The Job! Yaaay!

We ordered photography and went to work on writing our content, creating fact sheets, preparing our positions in our different publications etc.

The owner called to tell us the window tint removal company was going to charge him outrageous money to

remove the tint AND they couldn’t get to it for another week. No bueno! Our photoshoot is in 2 days and that tint’s coming off. Hahaha.

I stopped by the unit and assessed the situation. Within a few hours, we had the window tint problem handled.

We shot the Matterport Tour and photos two days later with sparkling clean windows. My photographer is amazing! He is generous by talking with me through shots and letting me peek

before shooting just in case I need to remove, arrange or change anything in the frame. The stuff I can’t change in real life, I can change digitally.

While we’re talking about photos it’s uncanny how some of the most jarring outdated components in a room can make the biggest statement in photos. For example, there were several rugs located throughout this unit that never should’ve made the frame. This time they didn’t but the property had been marketed for 579 days before featuring these terrible items. Those terrible things can prevent sales. I can make them go away or at least minimize them.

Sometimes professional photography isn’t enough.

We embellished the aesthetic appeal to accentuate the property. For example, St. Tropez is in the process of having their building painted gray. That’s a big difference from yellow and will likely appeal to a bigger audience so we made the change.

Every time we accentuated our photos the number of views and showings increased a TON. I posted a few of them here…but here’s the catch. The first shot is our professional photographers’ photo. If you want to see the original listing photos, you have to reach out to me directly. I can’t share those online.

Here’s a micro list of other activities we performed:

Fielded online questions.

Answered phone calls.

Accompanied every showing.

Held 20 open houses in 70 days.

For a full list of all of our activities, contact me directly!

While we had excellent showing traffic, results from feedback concluded we were going to be most successful by making a nominal concession. We dropped the price $26,000 or 4% 38 days into the listing.

25 days later, we showed it to the lady who bought it. SHE SAW IT FIRST ONLINE!

While our negotiation was not easy, we got it done when some thought our chances of success were extraordinarily slim.

We handled all open permitting issues, inspection items and all of the necessary paperwork in time to have a smooth closing.

The owners had over 6,000 choices when they chose their listing agent. They chose us.

The buyer had a choice of 189 Pelican Bay listings. They chose ours.

We are eternally grateful and we’re ready for our next gig. Are you ready?

Stay tuned for my Bay Colony Naples, Florida 2019-2020 forecast coming up next!

Best Regards,

Shannon Lefevre, PA
Your Naples Smart Girl
239-595-6223

How We Sold St. Tropez #802 In 70 Days Of Market Time