Author name: John Schink

As a Realtor who lists property for sale in St. Louis and the surrounding counties on a regular basis, there are usually a few reasons a house isn’t selling. Asking price is too high.  Oftentimes, sellers worry about listing their house at too low of an asking price.  The rationale is that they can always […]

One of the sales techniques I’ve seen used in listing presentations is to ask the clients if they are using a “full time” real estate agent.  The logic goes that the full time agent is more dedicated to their work and therefore more professional.  As a real estate broker that works with agents all the

When sellers go to list their home with a real estate agent, they will usually get reports with the average DOM in their area.  DOM, short for Days on Market, is a simple metric.  The Days on Market is the time between the house going active for sale and the time that there is an

Just imagine, you’ve made the decision to pick a particular buyer’s agent that someone recommended to you and you are ready to buy your first house.  The agent sends you 500 listings and asks you to pick 3 houses you want to see.  You choose a sunny Saturday afternoon, and you walk through each house. 

If you know any real estate agents, it seems we are always in our cars rushing from place to place.  This is true even in the age of electronic signatures.  This is part of the joy of being a real estate broker in St. Louis and I suspect elsewhere.  It’s been said that no one

There’s an old saying in real estate, “buyers are liars and sellers are yellers”.  I’m not sure there’s any way to quantify it, but I seem to have seen at least much lying on the seller side as I’ve seen on the buying side. Because I’m in the business, I’m not sure what people are

Before I started my real estate career, I would look at Zillow, Realtor.com, etc. and see all the houses for sale and think, “this is great, I can buy a house without even leaving my couch!”  After all, there were all these great pictures, the ad copy was sharp, and there were even graphs on

Real estate agents are told early and often that they need to “follow up aggressively” with a lead.  Some experts call for “bulldogging” a lead…calling them over and over and over until someone picks up the phone.  After all, someone has paid for the marketing, and the brokerage or agent is entitled to a return. 

This was a fascinating question I was asked once by a buyer who was looking to move to Kirkwood.  I really didn’t know how to answer, as no one knows the future.  We do know that there are always trends.  For example, you see new homes enter the marketplace primarily due to demand.  After all,

Sometimes, the real estate market gets really hot.  That was certainly the case the last two summers.  If you had a listing as a real estate agent, and you priced it right, you were likely to see multiple offers within the first day.  It was an all-out war, and it started to get out of