Fun Features Found In Foreclosures – Showcasing The Best Of Mid Century Modern Las Vegas Homes
A reader commented the other day, complaining that I don’t give the addresses of the properties that I find and feature in the Fun Features Found In Foreclosures.
He said:
Why don’t you ever include the addresses or other directly identifying information when you mention these houses? All it does is make us have to spend 10-20 minutes digging through zillow, realtor.com and sometimes google maps in order to find the houses you mention.
A cynic would say that you are practicing information hoarding, hoping to force people to contact you and thus generate sales leads. But of course any salesman worth his salt knows that making customers jump through hoops does not endear you to them; that the only way to win long term business is to demonstrate that you best understand their needs and thus can provide better value than the competition.
Except for the MLS SEARCH feature (which has an IDX sharing arrangement when it’s used in an approved search program like the one I use)…..I have to get explicit written permission of the listing agent in order to be allowed to give the address or make it look like my own listing.
That’s why all I’m doing is showing interesting features, instead of presenting the whole property as if I had the right to promote it. I’d never thought to give a link to the listing, so I’m thanking our reader for the the suggestion.
I’ve never thought of it as “information hoarding” since all anyone ever had to do was ask for an address. I am trying to generate sales leads, and it’s worked pretty successfully as I’ve sold many of the homes that I’ve featured in the FFFF posts. Predominantly, what we have for inventory these days is foreclosures. Most of them are in need of lots of love and care. Many of them are just plain old “old” houses. Those that have great fireplaces, patios, kitchens, colorful bathrooms, etc are worthy of my attention as well as a homebuyer who has the time energy and money to fix them up.
Most of the buyers who choose to work with me, do so because they know I’m just about the only agent in Las Vegas who’s out looking at the inventory everyday, and has a handle on what they’re looking for. I’ve heard the story a thousand times, if once, that “the other agent I talked to looked at me like I was an idiot”.
On the other hand, I have a large readership that could care less about the address, as they just like to see the fun Mid Century Modern features.
So….If you want to know where any given house is, you can spend 20 minutes searching the web to see if you can figure it out. It might not give good results, since most of the listings don’t even show the features that I think ought to be highlighted. Or you could call or email me and I’ll tell you the address. And from now on, I’ll give you a link to the listing. You get info…I stay out of trouble.
The pictures from this post, for example, are from a “CASH ONLY” listing in Rancho Vista. It’s a pretty beat up house, but certainly well worth someones time and energy. . Here’s a link to it on Realtor.com I don’t think that having now seen the pictures that I’ve published here that you’d recognize it at all from the actual listing. (BTW, the front posts should have been featured in the “Pillars and Posts and Columns” series that we did last year)