I was talking with a client about just this question the other day.  She was curious whether having a lockbox on her door was in the best interest of selling her home.  Before answering the question, though, we need some background information….  A lockbox is an apparatus that a listing agent can place on the door of a home (with the seller’s permission) that houses a key to the property inside the apparatus.  A buyer’s agent, who wants to show the property, can use an electronic device (or a code) to access the key.  It usually happens that if a lockbox is on the door of the property, the listing agent is not there to show the property.  And this means that the listing agent is also not there to meet the buyer, answer any of the buyer’s questions, give a history of the house, gauge the reaction of the buyer to the home, etc.  Lockboxes are used regularly in such towns as Natick, Framingham, Sudbury and Wayland, especially for homes with lower price points.

On the other hand, lockboxes are rarely used in the towns of Weston, Wellesley, Dover and Lincoln.  The practice in these towns is to show a home through accompanied showings.  As you might guess, an accompanied showing is when the listing broker is there at the home to take the buyer through the home.  This way, the listing agent can answer any questions the buyer may have, give the history of any renovations or upgrades to the home, meet the buyer, get a sense of him/her and then communicate all of this information plus more to the seller.

So going back to the question at hand – Should I use a lockbox when selling my home? – my answer is No. I feel strongly that it is in your best interest as a seller to have accompanied showings rather than to use a lock box on the front door.  When you put a lock box on the front door and the listing agent is not there to show your house, I believe that you lose a tremendous opportunity to learn about the profile of and feedback from the buyer, which is valuable information to have especially from a pricing and marketing perspective.  Additionally, without the listing agent giving the buyer a professional “tour” of the home and answering any questions, your house isn’t necessarily portrayed in the best light.  In other words, marketing your home also includes showing your home, and you should capitalize on the vital service that listing agents provide to their seller clients through accompanied showings.

There are some people who argue that a lockbox makes a home much more accessible to buyers and their agents, which in turn facilitates/increases the number of showings and foot traffic through your property.  But I don’t see it this way.  Even if there is a lockbox on the front door, the buyer’s agent still needs to make an appointment with the listing agent to show the house; otherwise it could turn into a free-for-all.  You then might ask, “What if the listing agent has a scheduling conflict and can’t be there to show the house when the buyer wants to see it?  In this case, it seems that the lockbox would come in very handy.”  But even in these instances, there are solutions.  Either the listing agent can find an associate to cover the showing or the two agents can find another mutually-agreeable time to show the property.  So in essence, the bottom line of having a lockbox on the front door of your home means the listing agent is not there to showcase your property and provide you with valuable and essential market information.  And this to me is a tremendous disservice to you as the seller.

But these are just my thoughts – what are yours?  Have you ever sold a home and used a lockbox?  Or did you opt for accompanied showings?  I can’t wait to hear….

I had a client ask me the other day, what is DOM?  And just as he asked me, he figured it out….  DOM is an acronym for Days on the Market, which is a very important indicator in the world of residential real estate.  It stands to reason that the more the DOM add up, it has an effect – and more times than not, a negative one – on the sale and price of the property on the market.  Just for reference, the average market time (also known as days on the market) for the 106 active single-family homes on the market in Weston right now, at this very minute, is 160 days (technically it’s 159.64 days) or more than 5 months.  And for the 162 active single-family homes on the market in Wellesley this very minute, the average market time is 138 days (technically it’s 138.10 days) or more than 4 1/2 months. But these homes have still not sold.  Which then begs the question – what about the solds?

So I decided to share with you some year-to-date sold data on Weston, Wellesley and a few of the other surrounding towns:

• Weston – for the 27 properties that have sold, the average DOM  is 171 days and the median price is $1,075,000.
• Wellesley – for the 75 properties that have sold, the average DOM is 188 days and the median price is $925,000.
• Wayland – for the 28 properties that have sold, the average DOM is 191 days and the median price is $454,900.
• Needham – for the 68 properties that have sold, the average DOM is 104 days and the median price is $649,700.
• Lincoln – for the 11 properties that have sold, the average DOM is 209 days and the median price is $1,079,000.
• Dover – for the 9 properties that have sold, the average DOM is 214 days and the median price is $1,025,000.

Pretty interesting information although you can’t necessarily draw a conclusion about the effect of the number of properties sold or the median price of the town/market on the days on the market.  When you look at Dover and Lincoln, which have the lowest amount of properties sold and the highest days on the market respectively, and then you look at the Weston market, which has the next lowest amount of properties sold, that trend does not continue as the days on the market is 171 days, which is the second lowest number.  And then you look at Needham, which has the lowest number of days on the market, but its median price is higher than that of Wayland, which also has the third highest number of days on the market.

Keep in mind that this data reflects an overall perspective.  When you start to look at various price points within a town/market, you see large fluctuations in the DOM depending on the “bread and butter” buyer and price point in that particular market.  And honestly, to accurately analyze and summarize the trends of DOM at various price points within specific towns/markets, I think another blog post is in order – so stay tuned for that in the future.  The bottom line is that DOM is an analytical tool, which should be taken into account, and yet from a general market perspective, it doesn’t necessarily correlate to size or median price of the market.  But interestingly, it can adversely affect the price of the home the higher it is.

Phew….  Anyway, it’s important to know that there can often be more to DOM than just its face value, so sometimes you need to look more closely.  For example, the days on the market will reset to zero if a slightly different property address is used (i.e., if a road with a two-word name such as “Knob Hill Road” becomes a single word name – “Knobhill Road”).  In addition, if a property is canceled or expires and sits off the market for 90 days, the DOM resets on the 91st day.  Often you will see sellers take their homes off the market for the slower holiday months and into the New Year, and then put them back on the market for the Spring months, which makes a lot of sense and has an added benefit of resetting the DOM to zero.  So just keep this in the back of your mind, though your savvy real estate agent will be on the lookout for this too.

And one last thing for sellers to think about…. When you are selling home, and you accept an offer on it, the property can be red flagged designating an Accepted Offer or it can go Under Agreement (UAG) in MLS.   If you choose to red flag your property, the DOM will continue to accrue, and buyers can still see your property (though this is highly unlikely as buyers prefer to see homes that are “available”).   Most times the red-flagged designation will remain this way through the home inspection process and until the purchase and sale agreement is signed – usually an additional 14 days.  Alternatively, if you choose to have your property go UAG, it no longer accrues DOM but buyers no longer see the property as an active listing.  So depending on which designation you prefer, it has a different effect on the DOM and whether your property is “active” or not.  Finally, if the offer falls apart, and you have red flagged your property, the red flag just disappears.  Whereas if your property is UAG, it will come appear as BOM (back on the market), which is much more of a signal to potential buyers and other agents about the change of your property’s status.

I think that’s just about everything on DOM, and I’m guessing you never knew there was so much information about and subtleties to this subject?  Do you have any stories about hidden DOM and/or how the DOM influenced the sale or purchase of your home?  I can’t wait to hear….

At 2:20 p.m. today, it’s officially school vacation week for the public school systems of Weston, Wellesley, Wayland and the other surrounding towns. The kids will be off all next week, and then they’ll be back in school on Monday, February 28 – a day before we enter the month of March, which finally signals that winter may be coming to an end. I thankfully am taking the kids to Florida to visit my family, and I can’t wait. The weather has been sunny and in the mid-high 70s. This is fabulous.

The real estate market is typically slow during school vacation week as many travel to warm places or to ski destinations. Even if sellers are ready to put their houses on the market, they usually decide to wait a week until the masses are back from vacation. That being said, I remember last year’s February school vacation week when a home in Weston came on the market at an extremely competitive price, and it went in a matter of days. Anything can happen, but most of the time, school vacation week is a slower week in the Spring market of real estate.

If you are going away, have fun and enjoy. Are you going someplace warm or cold? I can’t wait to hear…..  And I’ll be blogging from Florida so please tune in as I’m hoping to have some interesting tales to tell…..

Town of Needham, MA

If you had to do it all over again, would you choose to live in the same town that you currently do?  I have spent the last few days with clients who are relocating and want to live in a town west of Boston.  We have discussed, looked at and/or explored options in Needham, Dedham, Wellesley, Weston, Wayland, Dover, Lincoln, Sudbury and Concord.  And so as I venture through the various towns with my clients, I have been pondering this question myself.  Would I choose Weston if I had to do it all over again?  And the answer is yes, but I certainly do see great attributes and appealing characteristics of these other towns as well.

Continuing down this path brings the next question – which factors would be most important to you?  Would it be the town’s school system? Proximity to Boston? Lot/yard size?  Size of the town’s commercial center?  And we can’t forget bang for the buck, i.e. which towns would allow you to get a bit more for the money?  There are so many factors to weigh and consider, and this fact leads me to my recommendation of approaching the “which town” question similarly to the “which home” question…. Make a list of priorities, rank them and then rate each town based on those ranked priorities.  And then you need to consider the houses in the various towns as well.  Sometimes love for a particular home can trump the town list.  In other words, if you think that you want to be in the town of Wellesley for all of the great things it offers, but you fall in love with a house in Needham, often the house in Needham will win out especially if Needham was high on the ranked town list.

The amount and appeal of the inventory can also play a role in this….  Needham and Wellesley have much more of a turnover in inventory (listings coming on and off the market) than Weston and Dover, for example.  And so if you decide that you want to be in Weston (#1 on your town list), but there aren’t any homes that appeal to you – nor have there been for some time – you might choose to be in Wellesley (#2 on your town list) instead from a mere inventory/home option perspective.

The bottom line is that this question is complicated.  What are your thoughts?  Which town factors are most important to you?  And would you choose to live in the same town again?

Finally, in an effort to provide you with some useful town information and as another consideration in answering the question, “Which Town Would You Pick,” click 2011 tax rates for the new 2011 tax rates in Weston, Wellesley, Wayland, Needham, Dover and more….

One of my favorite home sale stories happened many years ago when I was first in the real estate business.  A friend of mine referred some clients to me – let’s call them Sally and John for purposes of the story.  Sally had grown up in Massachusetts, but John was originally from the south.  They wanted to look in Weston and Wayland, MA.  So I began to drive them around to familiarize them with both towns and show them houses in both communities.  Often times, John was working so just Sally and I would tour homes.  And on several of our days of showings, we would end up talking and talking…about our kids, friends, families, jobs – you name it, we talked about it.  We realized we had so much in common, and we began to form a friendship.  

Sally and John ultimately decided to buy in Weston, and once they closed on the house, Sally would call me with questions…. “What is the fastest way to get to Shoppers World from our house?”  ”Do you know the library hours?”  What days of the week is the dump open?”  And every time she had a question, we would start a conversation about a variety of subjects…our kids, friends, families, jobs and tons more…..

I bet you’ve probably already guessed why this is one of my favorite home sale stories.  Because to this day, Sally is one of my closest girl friends in Weston.  And that is one of the biggest reasons why I love my job – because through my work as a real estate agent, I am able to meet dynamic, considerate, caring, fabulous men and women and build rewarding relationships and friendships with them.  And I am helping them to find a home in which they will build happy memories for years to come.  It’s win-win on all counts. 

I’m wondering if you’ve built friendships through your work experiences too?  I can’t wait to hear…..

P.S. What do you think of the “Snow Falling on my Blog?” I think it’s fun – do you?!