All Forum Posts by: Traver Freeman

@Jaysen Medhurst It's certainly got other houses around it, though we are smack in the middle of two apartment complexes on either side of us, but across the street is an HOA community of homes, and two streets down is your normal house outside of a community just on a city street.

Most of those houses are all 3-4 bedroom and run $500-600k. I am just concerned about being the only house on our road that's 3-bedroom.

The biggest issue with adding a third bedroom is going to be repositioning the windows, as we'd need to move two over, add a third, and all the labor and repair that comes with that to make the outside look like the rest of the house.

But the actual internal work shouldn't be more difficult than moving a few walls.

I just don't want to put in the time, effort, and expenses if I can't increase the value of my home anyway because no one is going to pay $475k when the house next door sold for $385k. If that's not really an issue because it's a totally different type of house now, then I won't be concerned.

Thanks for your advice. Much appreciated.

Hello,

I'm not really sure if this is an appropriate place to post. About 6 months ago I bought a 2 bedroom, 1 1/2 bath, two-story home with 1100 sqft.

Both of the bedrooms are fairly large and the "master" has two large closets. This is my home, not an investment property or anything, but I'm still thinking about resale value down the line. Personally, we don't even use one of the closets and both rooms are almost too large as we have a lot of empty open space that feels somewhat awkward, though it is nice not to feel cramped, don't get me wrong.

I've thought about taking out one of the closest and eating into the space of both bedrooms to add a third bedroom. Thoughts?

To give you some more info, we live down a dead-end alley of sorts that has 6 homes on it, all the same style and layout. Our home is the nicest and most expensive home on the strip already (bought it for $400,000, the home next to ours sold for $385,000 three months later). The higher value is mainly due to the fact that we're the only home with a fenced in yard and we have a significantly larger patio area than the others.

The point is, all of the other 5 homes are 2 bedroom, 1 1/2 bath. Is it a bad idea to even think about adding a 3rd bedroom because it will make the home that much more different than its comps and considering we're already the highest value?

Or would adding a third bedroom still be a good move considering three bedroom houses sell better?

The feedback that I seem to be getting is to focus on the photography aspect and not the design. Not fully abandoning design, as it can be packaged in, but rather design alone just isn't worth an agent's time.

To kickstart the photography aspect will take a little bit of cash as my camera is pretty out-dated and I could use some real estate specific lenses. My 300mm telephoto isn't going to help me much. I'll probably have to drop about $2,000 to get the equipment I need, and that's being conservative.

Does anyone know of any good real estate photographers that are here on BP you could refer to me so I can contact them seeking advice about how to get started? @Dawn Brenengen @Jeff Valentino @Kevin Fox

Specifically Kevin, I wonder if you could refer me to a good photographer here in SD that you like to use. I'll PM you.

@Dawn Brenengen, that's a really good point about the state of the market. I didn't think of that. Houses are flying off the market here, that's for sure. I'm looking around for a personal residence and every time I find one in our price range and location, when I contact an agent about it, it's already had an accepted offer and the listing has only been posted for around 2-3 days.

Should I mainly be targeting newer agents who are trying to make a name for themselves? I'm sure the more seasoned agents are operating mostly on referrals at this point. Whereas a newer agent needs to show potential sellers why you'd want to use them over an agent with a track record. I would think this type of agent would be more in need of good marketing materials to make them stand out, not only from the top agents, but from other agents just getting started.

@Joel Owens, great idea, I'll have to look into agent meetings. For right now, I've been walking around neighborhoods, taking a look at properties with poor to moderate flyers, redesigning the flyers, and emailing the agents with a redesign and an offer to create another flyer for their next listing for free. I haven't got any bites yet, but I've also only contacted 4 agents over the last few days. I'm sure my response rate will be about as equivalent to most marketing campaigns. About 10% response with about 3-4% being actionable.

Getting started is the hardest part, I'm sure. I might have more success if I started out with the photography aspect because that's something that it's higher demand it seems. I think agents understand the important of great photos more so than design. You could have great design, but terrible photos, and there's nothing you can do to dress it up. I'd just need to purchase all the necessary equipment to get that started whereas I have everything I need for design right now. Though it might be something to consider if I can't get it off the ground on only flyers.

@Jeff Morelock, thanks for your input!

@Joel Owens I certainly understand your concerns, but it is not my intention to charge "mucho bucks" for a flyer. Part of the purposes of my post is to discover how much the average agent would be willing to pay for a good flyer. So let me pose the question to you, how much would you pay for a professionally designed flyer, if you could name your price? (be reasonable and fair)

My business plan looks a little more developed than just flyer design, though. I am also a photographer and I work for a print company. So I could offer several packages that include photography, design, and printing. They could be offered individually, or all together depending on the needs of the agent. I'm also planning on offering their first design from me completely free as a trial/sample of my design abilities.

To address the comment you made about most Americans being poor. I completely agree with you. Whether someone makes $30,000 a year or $100,000, the majority of Americans are barely scraping by because of how they live their lives. People tend to blow all the money that they have and charge what they can't afford.

However, this doesn't detract from the fact that if you want to grow your business and be successful you have put a little time and effort into your visual image and this is no different for real estate agents. If you can't do this yourself, then you need to hire it out.

Good design helps draw attention, enhance recall, and ultimately sell you as an agent. There are plenty of agents in San Diego that utilize and pay for good design. I know, I see their stuff come through my office for printing every week. So when I see terrible flyers at a $2,000,000 property, I don't know how these agents could afford NOT to have good design.

Most of top agents in this market have great design and marketing materials. And let's be fair, if you can sell a $2,000,000 home, I'm sure you can afford a $15-$20 flyer. The commission on that is what $40,000-$100,000 depending on your cut? The lowest end of that is more than I make in a year. And even if that's the only house you sell all year, you can still live comfortably.

What I want to do is help these agents by giving them good design that builds the confidence of home buyers in that agent's professionalism and ability to sell their home. If the agent isn't willing to spend a few extra dollars to do everything in their ability to market this person's home, then why would they use that agent? I wouldn't want an agent selling my house that isn't going do everything they can to sell my house.

How would you feel if the listing for your house had crummy photos and the flyer looked half-baked at best? Would you hire a painter who's only going to paint half of your house, or only put one coat on and hope it makes your house look okay? Personally, I would rather hire an agent that cares about their image and the image of my home.

But you're absolutely right, if people won't pay for it, it's not a matter of whether they should or not, it would probably be a waste of my time to try get them to pay for design. So my questions go a little deeper than just "how much would you pay" to also "How do I convince an agent they 'need' to pay?" Not because I want them to, but because how successful their business becomes depends on it. 

@Brett Synicky

Actually I'm a graphic designer. I've kicked around the idea of becoming an agent, but I'd really like to start somewhere I'm confident I know well, which is design. So I'd like to design specifically for real estate agents. And I'm just trying to get a feel for whether or not people actually pay or even consider paying for flyer design, or if they'd rather just do what they can themselves and are satisfied even if the results are sub-par.

What started me on this line of thinking is a luxury area near me with multi-million dollar homes with flyers that look like they were for $30,000 dumps. I would think a luxury house would demand a higher quality set of marketing tools.

Do you think I'd be able to make something of this, or is there not really a market for it and would I just be wasting my time?

No, but I'd like to. Just can't afford to. Unless you can put up a large down payment, you'll be hard pressed to even get the 1% rule, let alone 2%. I've been looking at multi families for about 6 months and I can't find anything that will cash flow if I live in one unit and I can't afford to put 20% down for me NOT to live in one unit. So if you're in a similar scenario as me, the options are rather limited. But you might be able to find something a few hours away if you look hard enough.

Do you pay for flyer design? Why or why not? If you do, how much do you typically pay per flyer? Do quality flyer designs help properties sell faster? Are there any other benefits?

Also, where do you get your flyers printed? How many do you typically buy? 100, 500,  1,000? How much is reasonable to expect to pay? And is it better to pay a few extra dollar for quality paper stock, or do you prefer just regular old standard copy paper?

Sorry it's a ton of questions, answer one, some or all. Any help appreciated.

Is there are market out there for flyer design? If I wanted to get started in the realm real estate, would it be realistic to think that I could expect to find agents or investors who would be willing to pay for professional flyer design? If so, what would be a reasonable expectation of cost to charge per flyer?

If you pay for design services, how much are you paying per hour or per flyer?

Does professional flyer design help the property sell faster or for more money? Or does it not really make a difference?

I started down this path of thinking when walking in a luxury area near to be where all the houses are easily over a million and the flyers I've seen are really lame. My line of thinking is if a house costs close to $2,000,000, then then promotional materials ought at least reflect the value of the property.

Take for example the flyer below

I took the same photos and information brightened them up a bit (they're still bad photos, can't do anything about that at this point), rearranged them, and produced the flyer below.

Do you think I could get people to pay for my design services? Or would I be wasting my time pursuing this?

I went around yesterday and collected about 12 real estate flyers on about 5 streets. Should I redesign these flyers and pitch them to the agents, or would that, too, be a waste of my time?

Any thoughts or advise is much appreciated!

There's a property I've had my eye on in my neighborhood in Southern California that's been on the market for a little while. It hasn't sold in at least the two months I've been watching it. I'm in a pretty competitive area so that makes me slightly hesitant. Why hasn't someone else picked it up already?

However, there's another property that was just listed about a week ago for $359,000. Another house in this same area sold for a similar number about four months ago. The new listing is a 4 bed 2 bath 1350 square foot with a pool. The other was a 3 bed 2 bath. No pool but quieter. I don't remember the square footage.

The property I've been watching is also a 4 bed 2 bath 1600 square foot with a pool. The one major difference in the one that hasn't sold is it's right up against an interstate where as the one above for 359k has about three other houses and a street between it and the interstate.

Without me giving any other details. Assuming it was move in ready (it's not). What would be an estimated ARV and how much less would a house go for just due to noise alone?

The next question is, assuming it's a total dump (I know the pool is green). What would you offer if you were going to flip it?

Rough estimates are really all I'm looking for. Thanks.