Yesterday, I should’ve been making the rounds viewing new listings on our Sisters’ Broker Tour. Every two weeks, 20 to 30 area agents gather at the community room at Ray’s Food Place at 8:30 in the morning and caravan to a handful of properties to get our first peek at what’s new on the market (we’re a small town, so every new listing counts!). During the peak season, we might tour as many as a dozen or so properties over a three-hour period. In the winter months, we often go a month or more without a tour.
Now that spring’s here — bringing with it the beginning of our primary home-selling season — you’d think that our tour would be picking up speed. Alas, you’d be wrong. We didn’t have a tour yesterday because there weren’t enough new listings to warrant one (only two agents signed up; we don’t hold a tour unless there are at least four).
I was shocked, and more than a little bummed, that this was the case. Right now, I — like most of the agents in my office — are working with a number of folks who would like to buy property in Sisters. There is, no question, a heightened degree of buyer activity in our market. However, we don’t have a ton of options to offer buyers. Our inventory is quite low — especially in the lower end of the price spectrum (under $300,00). So I was looking forward to calling several buyers yesterday afternoon to discuss the new options I had just seen. No such luck.
But the problem isn’t just that there aren’t enough new listings. Since I was concerned about the dearth of new listings on tour, I researched the Active listings bracket a little further. Turns out that 23 Sisters homes were listed on the MLS between April 1 and April 22 (the tour cut-off date) that have not been on tour. And that’s a real shame.
You’d think that everyone here would realize the benefits of the broker tour (especially for a home on acreage), but apparently that isn’t the case. Perhaps these sellers didn’t consider their homes ready to tour (if that’s so, I would ask them, why are you listed?). Or maybe the listing agent didn’t consider the tour a priority. I do.
Final thoughts: If you’re considering selling your home in Sisters (especially if it’s under $400,000), this would be a great time to do so. There are buyers who want to move here! And if perchance you did recently list your property, I recommend that you instruct your agent to schedule your property for the Sisters broker tour as soon as possible. It’s a great marketing tool — especially now that we have so many active buyers. The more familiar that local agents are with your property, the easier it is for them is to sell it.
About the Author
Lisa Broadwater, GRI, CDPE, is a Central Oregon-based real estate professional who specializes in listing and selling homes, especially in Sisters, Tumalo, Bend and Redmond.
If you’d like to discuss listing your home with Lisa, call 541-480-0987.
Lisa, I am seeing the same thing in La Pine, Three Rivers South and even Bend – there are more buyers than properties and many of the new listings do not seem to be getting the attention they deserve.
Thesa, What I see is Sisters is that the listing agents who aren’t based here rarely put a home on tour, while listing agents of bank-owned properties rarely do any marketing at all.
Lisa, I agree! Inventory is drying up, there aren’t enough listings to send to buyers. We have listings here but over priced, over a year old listings aren’t going to do it. If people are thinking of selling NOW is a good time to list!
Dena
Dena — Yes, the next topic I need to address is the overpriced stale listing. We have more than our share of sellers who still haven’t adjusted to the new world we live in (40-50 percent depreciation since 2007 in our region).