The Real Estate Team at DublinRanchLifestyle.com has done it again! The owner of 6145 Mabury Avenue in Orange, CA hired us after learning about our unique marketing philosophy at dublinranchlifestyle.com/our-philosophy.

Working with past clients is not only a lot of fun, but it’s also an honor to be re-hired by someone who recognizes the caliber of work we do to market homes and get them sold. A couple of years ago, I helped this client buy a home in Moraga after she moved from Orange County to the Bay Area for a new job. Out of the blue, this spring I got a call from her. That call went something like this:

“Hi Roger, I want to sell the house in Orange.”

“Okay, do you want me to refer you to an agent in Orange County that I trust?”

“No, I want you to do it.”

I wrinkled my eyebrows and said, “But, Janice, that house is 400 miles away! I can’t sell that house for you!”

“Why not?! I’d rather pay you to do it than some lazy Orange County Realtor!” (those were her words… not mine! It seems she was, at the time, a bit “disenchanted” with a local agent she had hired to be her property manager… Hah!)

So I thought about this for a moment. Last year, we were doing a lot of bank-owned work for Freddie Mac. Like this house, those homes were all vacant, and they were never in nearby “convenient” locations. We drove nearly 50K miles last year servicing listings from Gilroy to Vacaville, and from Richmond/San Pablo to Stockton/Manteca. I then asked...

“So, it’s vacant?”

“Yes.”

“And you’ll stage it?”

“Yes.”

I was quickly running out of reasons to turn this down! I told her I would do a pricing analysis and get back to her the next day. When I did, I found that there was over TEN MONTHS of inventory in the City of Orange. I let her know we needed to offer a superior product to the marketplace for an aggressive price. She agreed.

Soon, I was headed to Orange County with our Property Coordinator, Jason, to check the place over and develop a Damage Report. We hired a contractor to do the work, met with local stagers, and then headed home. Our second trip was after the repairs were made and the staging was installed to take photographs of the property with our Director of Marketing, Marquis. We also met with the local Realtor Association to coordinate listing the property on the local MLS. They re-programmed one of my lockboxes so Orange County Realtors could use it, and we came back to prepare our brochure and other marketing materials.

We put it on the market and I took one final trip by myself to host it on Broker’s Open. While I was there, I developed some great relationships with a few key agents in that market who were happy to help. After only three weeks we received two offers, and eventually sold the home for $620,000. That price was less than 1% lower than our list price -- an incredible feat considering the number of other homes on the market in that subdivision alone. While we were listed, we were the ONLY property to go under contract with a buyer. After we secured a buyer and were in contract, many of the homes started dropping their prices to try and compete.

We are proud, not only of the work we did in marketing the home, but also in our ability to time and beat the market; we truly got our client the MOST money possible in the LEAST amount of time in an EXTREME buyer’s market. Most importantly, Janice is happy with us all over again. She now has the money she needs to do the addition to her Moraga house that she wanted to do!

If you have a home in Dublin Ranch (or anywhere else in California, it would seem! Hah!) that you need to sell, ESPECIALLY if you owe more on your home than it is worth, take a moment to review Roger’s thoughts on marketing homes at dublinranchlifestyle.com/our-philosophy, and give us a call today at 925.230.8375.