Palos Verdes Real Estate

May 2025 Newsletter

Dear Neighbor:

I know I’ve discussed this before, but it bears repeating:  succinctly, the Number One agent may not be the best agent to sell your house; in fact, the odds are against it.  Speaking as someone in the business, some things are more obvious to me than they may be from the outside, and this is one of them.  The biggest agents, generally those who sell the most houses and who do all the advertising, more often than not, are actually multiple agents who run the business thru the one whose name is advertised — or they have lots of “assistants”, which is kind of the same thing.  So you interview agents and hire one of the biggest, only to find yourself shunted off to one of the assistants, sub-agents or, as is now popular, transaction coordinators.  The advantage of this to the agent is obvious:  it frees him/her up to chase after new business, freed of the “drudgery” of getting your house into escrow, overseeing the multitude of issues that come up during the escrow period, and making sure your escrow closes.  As you understand, the sub agent/assistant is almost never as experienced as the agent you called and thought you were hiring along with his/her experience.  The beauty of this system is that it allows the agent to go to Bali or Ibiza and collect the commission on your house if it closes.

Then there’s me.  I got into this business 40 years ago to be the antithesis of that.  I had the novel thought that you should get the agent you thought you were hiring.  I have no sub-agents, assistants, transaction coordinators, or any of that.  This is why I’m in the office at the crack of dawn applying 40 years of experience and many hundreds of sales (I’ve got to count them one of these days) to your sale.  As any agent will tell you, there is a countless number of things that can make your sale go off the rails, most of which are foreseeable, some of which are not.  You need an agent of sufficient experience and paying sufficient attention to your sale to avoid the issues that are predictable, and solve the ones that show up out of the blue and couldn’t have been foreseen.  Experience is the only thing that teaches this, but the agent with the experience has to be paying attention.

Back to current events:  as happens pretty much every Spring, a flurry of properties have come on the market, which has had the effect of making it look like the market has slowed more than it has; ie, some of those are just too high but the seller doesn’t realize it yet, the buyers have more to choose from, etc, etc.

I’ve got a really lovely, rare, and spectacular (no hyperbole) new listing in Valmonte – 4116 Via Solano.  The architect was the famous Walter Swindell Davis who also designed La Venta Inn and the old General Store (now Yellow Vase) in Malaga Cove Plaza.  Not only is this house on a great street, but it’s also on a 16,300 square foot flat lot, and has charm and character that are off the scale.  I’ve included a flyer on it.  Give me a call if you’re interested.

As always, feel free to call or text any time after 5:30 am – 310 613-1076, or visit my website:   www.DanaGraham.com.  Or if it’s 3 am and you just can’t wait, my email is [email protected].

 

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 20th, 2025 at 7:37 am and is filed under Buyers, Everything I've Written, Newsletters, Palos Verdes Information, Real Estate General Info, Sellers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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