Real Estate in the Valley ... My Personal Story This Year, Part 2

Image via CrunchBase

In my May 31st post I talked about my dismay in the lack of interest from potential buyers of my great Mountain View townhouse. Here was my conclusion ... "despite record low interest rates, and despite having excellent credit ratings in many cases, people are just not buying. Period. Thirty properties in my price range and general size have been listed in Mountain View in the last six months. Only three have sold. That's it. People just don't want to make the commitment - job uncertainty and a fear/hope that prices will drop further. There's no confidence."

Given that lack of interest the obvious next step was to rent it out and wait until a market recovery to sell. I have to say I faced that with some trepidation - what if people are just not interested in that either? So I carefully researched the market with agents and looking at other online listings, figured a reasonable asking price and then posted the unit via Postlets on Craigslist and a bunch of other sites - Google Homebase etc. Here's the listing.

I was swamped! Within a week I had more than 40 inquiries, a dozen or so people who came and looked (I just couldn't schedule any more), and serious interest from almost everyone. Well-qualified professionals, families, postgraduate students .... you name it.

I even had someone looking to relocate from New York want to take it without even seeing it in person and looking to send a deposit the same day (this was just a few hours after the posting). This latter was not bogus either - this individual had been here looking in person and found nothing at all that met his family's criteria - and he then flew out to see my place a couple of days later. He and his family are now my new tenants and are paying me - happily for all - more than my asking price!

So now what did I learn from this quite opposite experience?

• The demand for housing is still very strong in the Valley. So strong that I underpriced the unit despite my research
• While people are unwilling (or unable) to commit to buying in this environment they still want to live here. In fact, I had inquiries from Chicago and Germany as well as New York. I think this augurs very well still for the longer-term in the Valley and despite the economy is a still better than the net exodus we experienced after the dot-com implosion at the start of the decade
• Craigslist is it! 100% of my inquiries were from that posting. No other site created any interest whatsoever. None. And its still free!
• Postlets is great. I put the link to the posting above to show what can be done with this very sexy service. Ok, you have to take the pics and write the copy - but look at what you can do as a non-professional with a little effort. Its free for basic service and for just $5 I could add a boatload of additional pictures (pictures sell). By the way, this is how it shows up on Craigslist - very professional, don't you think?
• Well marketed product can still sell well.
• Newpapers are dead. Even the online services from some local papers just can't do what Postlets and Craigslist can do.

So I rented my home for more than my asking price for a little effort and a total cost of $5 listing and $30 for all the forms and lease documents (Nolo Press and California Association of Realtors). How cool is that??!!