We received our first offer. Finally! The person found out about our property through one of our metropolitan area newspaper advertisements. The property was originally listed for $2.375 million. The offer came in at $2.1 million. This was an 11.6% discount from list. What would you do? Read the rest of this entry »
We were nearing completion on the property and still hadn’t received an offer. This had us worried. The monthly carrying costs were approaching $11,000 per month! This was the highest priced lake home ever done on speculation on this lake. It was time to re-evaluate the asking price of $2.375 million dollars. If we had to “fire sale” this thing to get out from under the carry costs, what was the minimum we could take and still break even? Read the rest of this entry »
If you remember from a previous post, we were marketing the property ourselves. We wanted the sales team at the development to represent the property. However, they wouldn’t budge from the 6% sales commission. On a multi-million property, this was a significant amount of money. In addition, they didn’t really have any marketing plan whatsoever other than show the place to drive in traffic. We thought we could do much better with our own marketing plan and also save the commission. Unfortunately although we had some response, we were still not satisfied.
My partner’s wife decided to get her own real estate license. We would benefit in a number of ways:
My partner found a semi-retired broker in charge, formed a LLC and we were in business. No more 6% commissions. Again we still needed to sell the place, but at least we didn’t feel as if we were being taken advantage.
Here’s some shots of the project in the final completion stages:
Finished Dock
Fireplace at Upper Deck Read the rest of this entry »
If you remember from a previous post, we had decided to not have the development’s agents represent our property because of their unwillingness to negotiate on the 6% commission. We were going to sell the property ourselves. We developed our own marketing plan that consisted of:
The typical construction project starts off slow, goes like crazy for awhile and then slows back down to a crawl as you are trying to get the project done. Finishing the last 10% of a project is tougher than doing the middle 30%. You are dealing with all the little finish details and items that didn’t quite work right that were put off until the end. The coordination of the various types of work and the large number of subcontractors all make the final 10% of completion a real challenge. So how do you manage it? There is no easy answer. You just have to dig in and push every day. It is well worth your time to do so. Without actively managing the completion of a project, you could lose a month or two. In interest carry alone, think of what that does to your potential profit. When you add up all the costs, management time and missed opportunities, the cost of not completing well can be staggering. Read the rest of this entry »
