Buyer Specific Homes

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Last Tuesday, I saw a great house in Woodley Park.  It had a renovated kitchen, pretty floors, lots of bedrooms and baths, and it was on a beautifully landscaped lot that backed onto the parklike campus of one of the areas private schools.  The gracious living room led to a patio that would be perfect for summer entertaining.  There was only one little thing.  It had no basement and very little storage space.

In real estate, we call this "buyer specific".  These are homes that really don’t work for most people, but they work extremely well for a few. 

When we are out touring the new listings, there’s a lot of opportunity for discussing the houses we see with the listing agents.  And in this case, I was really impressed with the agent’s approach.  Mary White (with Washington Fine Properties) was asking for feedback.  I felt the house was priced on the nose (although it’s quite above it’s "Zestimate" but then, you know how I feel about Zillow).  I also felt that Mary was right  about how the lack of a basement or storage would shrink the buyer pool. 

And that wasn’t really her focus. 

She was busy working to get ideas about who would buy the place – like maybe foreign service or World Bank people who move so often they don’t tend to carry around a lot of excess stuff.

Buyer specific houses tend to take a little longer to sell than your cliche center hall colonial with the just renovated county kitchen and new granite counters.  And many agents with buyer specific listings begin to hound their sellers to lower their price if it doesn’t go under contract within a week. 

But guess what?  Price is usually not the issue! 

I think that Mary White’s approach is better.  Price it right at the beginning, then figure out who your probable buyer is and how to find them. 

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