"Palos Verdes Resident since 1947"

September 2017 Newsletter

                                                                                                                                                   September, 2017

Dear Neighbor:

The number of homes for sale in Palos Verdes has been gradually climbing.  This may be because some homeowners want to take advantage of the all-time high current prices for them, tho I’m sure those high prices also eliminate some of the buyers (the market has slowed somewhat).   For perspective, however, bear in mind that “inventory” levels have been near all-time lows in the past year or so, so they’re only up compared to that.  It remains true that realistically priced homes get a ton of activity and generally sell quickly, even tho those same prices would have guaranteed that the property sat on the market only a few years ago.  The message?  It’s still a good time to sell if you’re considering it.

When you’re thinking of selling your house, one of the first major decisions you must make is the agent you employ to handle the transaction.  Selling a house has become much more complicated even since I got into this business 33 years ago, when the contract was one 8 ½ x 11 piece of paper.  It’s now 10 pages of fine print with roughly 35 pages of disclosures you as seller must make to the buyer; and this isn’t counting inspections, appraisals, escrow paperwork, and an unlimited variety of issues that can arise that potentially threaten the sale.  So who do you pick to guide you thru this maze?  Obviously it ought to be someone you like and trust, and clearly an agent who does enough business to be conversant with the process; but is the agent who does the most advertising or claims to be #1 the best choice?  Maybe not.  First of all, those glossy ads you see are written primarily to obtain new business for the agent, not to sell the house featured.  Secondly, most of the top agents are like little companies with assistants, sub-agents, transaction coordinators, etc, working for them, who handle most of the day to day “routine” tasks.  The personal involvement of the “name” agent is necessarily less because he simply can’t be everywhere at once.  Assistants almost never have the depth of experience that the agent does, even if they have a real estate license.  This can result in things “slipping thru the cracks” and escrows falling out due to the relative inexperience of the assistant handling it (often including inability to spot problems on the horizon while they are still solvable), while the agent is out signing up new listings.  The fundamental idea is that if enough homes are put into escrow, the agent will make a good living even if 20% or more of them fall out of escrow or don’t sell.  This is not to be critical – it’s their business model but is also something you, as a seller, should be aware of.

If you read my stuff, you know that I got into this business to be the kind of agent I could not find in 1980 when I bought a house in PVE.  While much has changed since then, I also saw a lot of what I describe above.  I left a very good career in the stereo business (Bose and JBL) committed to being the kind of agent I could not find – one whose goal was not to be the #1 agent, but rather to focus my personal attention on every transaction (no assistant, sub-agent, transaction coordinator, or anyone else) so that the totality of my experience could be directed to each and every sale – in a word, to treat each sale as if it were my own house.  This has resulted in my being in the Top 10 agents in Palos Verdes in listings sold (#6 last year) out of literally thousands.  I could be #1, but to do it I’d have to be like the others, and I will not compromise my pledge to be the agent I wished I’d found back in 1980.

Visit my website (www.DanaGraham.com) for a lot of interesting information about Palos Verdes (both history and current) and current articles on real estate.  Feel  free to call me at 310 613-1076 or email at [email protected], for a face to face discussion about how the above can benefit you.  I look forward to hearing from you.                                                                                                                                                                               

                                                                                                                                         Sincerely,

                                                                                                                                         Dana H Graham

                                                                                                                                         DRE 00877973

                                                                                                                                                                                               

Comments are closed.