Podcast - 10/13/23

You're welcome to drop your jokes. I'm in it.

I'm Tom.

And Christina.

Christina Day of Jay Day and the Day Home Team of Real Estate Teams. Member of the day home team, actually, she runs it from the back. Thank you so much for being here, Christina. Alright, so I've been with Jay for all these years, but I've worked with you in the past. What should somebody look for when looking for a real estate agent?

Well, there's a lot of things I think that would come into play when you're trying to find the right agent.

Hygiene. Hygiene?

Hygiene is a good one.

Cleanliness.

Yes, yes. You want to make sure they smell good.

Well that helps. That will help right off the bat. I mean, that's a good first impression.

But the funny thing it is that you brought that up, right? So I belong to a lot of real estate groups and things like that, and you'll hear people talk about, oh, you should dress for success and you should wear a suit and this and that and the other.

Hey, Jay will show up with cutoffs and an ancient 1926 Oriole T-shirt on, but he'll get the home sold for you.

Exactly. So I would say let's not judge your agent necessarily on attire. We are a more casual bunch. You'll see us in hoodies, polos, jeans.

That's because you're working, man. You guys are working at 24/7, man.

And you never know where you're going to show up. You might need those hiking boots on.

You got to have ponchos and boots with you all the time.

That's right. So a couple things though, I would say the first thing is no gimmicks. Just find somebody who's going to shoot you straight. You don't need a song and dance and what do they call it? A dog and pony show.

There are some gimmicks out there.

You don't need gimmicks. You need somebody who's going to shoot you straight. And so one of the things that I find, especially in this shifting market, and I know a lot of people don't understand that the market is shifting necessarily, but it is, it's definitely shifting and there's a lot of things that go into that. But you need an agent who has experience and experience is not just in years experience is also in how many homes have they sold and how many markets have they been through? So I have agents who work with us on our team who've been in the market for three or four years. They have a very strong knowledge of how to sell a house, how to navigate a sale. But when you're talking about agents who have been in the business for a couple years, the difference between selling 20 or 30 homes a year is a different level of experience than selling 2, 3, 6 or 10 a year. So every house you sell, you learn something new. So you want an agent who has a lot of experience and not just specifically years, but how many homes have they actually sold. Marketing? What are they going to do? Jay was on an appointment the other day and the seller had been listed with somebody else. And when they had talked to their agent with frustration, they said, well, what is your marketing plan? And shockingly enough, the agent actually said, I don't have one. Now, our job as agents is to market your home.

It's to market your home. Now I have a high standard, I've been working with you and Jay now for 10 plus years. I cannot imagine somebody saying something like this. No, no. Yeah, I know, I know.

So you got to have a marketing plan, right? Because you don't want the best kept secret on the market. You want everybody and their brother to have exposure to seeing your house. And so that's one of the great things about our partnership with you guys and this podcast, for example, the House of the Week that we do at the end of these podcasts, that not only gets exposure to the 5,000 plus followers we have on Jay Day and the Day Home Team, but it also gets exposure to the 32,000 plus followers you guys have on WFRE.

Not everybody's not doing that.

No, not everybody's doing that. But, you know, the other thing is you have to invest time and money in marketing. You have to be creative, you have to create demand. And so that's one of the things with the marketing, you want to make sure that there's a genuine marketing plan, putting a sign in the yard, putting it in the mls, that is not marketing, that is the basics.

And so that would be a question you would ask right away,

Absolutely.

Interviewing a real estate agent.

Absolutely. You want to talk through what the marketing plan is, and not every home or every property is going to have the same marketing plan. Different things are going to be required for different homes. And so you really need a personalized strategy that's going to work for your type of home. The other one is somebody who tells you the truth. So one of the things that we find and we see, especially with homes that didn't sell with somebody else, is you need somebody who's going to come in and tell you the truth about what you need to do to your house to make it look right, what the home should actually be priced at and who can really, not butter your buns to get your business, but tell you the truth and set good expectations for you so you know what you're truly walking into. Otherwise you're just going to be frustrated later.

Price in the home is the big one. That's pretty much the biggest one of all.

It is. 

Because somebody can give you some kind of pipe dream and make you really heady over something that's not going to happen.

Exactly. And it's something that is hard to pinpoint sometimes because not all homes fall into a cookie cutter. And so you have to really get into the analytics of it and you have to have a plan A and a plan B. If we go out at this number and this doesn't happen, what is our plan? Are we just going to sit there and wait? Where do we think that this could land? And often it's a range. We give you a window of pricing that we think that you're going to fall within. And the last thing I think that is really important about choosing an agent is are they passionate about what they do? You can't create passion out of nothing. You have to truly love what you do and you have to be willing to do it all the time because real estate doesn't take a break.

I agree. And you're in Jay's passion and friendship over the past three years really convinced me because you guys landed me right where I wanted to be. And I can tell you all care 100%. And you guys have relationships, family with your clients because what convinces me, Christina, is all the repeat clients, if you had a bad deal, they wouldn't call you back.

Yeah. We do actually have a fair amount of people we've worked with 2, 3, 4 times.

And nobody's ever come at me about talking about you all for 10 years and that I've been waiting for that. It's never happened. Not even close.

And I mean, you can't make everybody happy all the time. A hundred percent of the time there are going to be people who you didn't see eye to eye with or it didn't work out. And that's okay. Not everybody is going to be 110%, but you can start each day with a love for what you do and go at it with that love and that passion and that enthusiasm. And that's all you can do.

And I can also say that if you call Jay Day the Day Home Team of Real Estate Teams, any of these agents, you get Jay, any of these agents, you get Christina.

Yeah.

You get this standard with any of 'em. They're all good people. They've all been trained. We wouldn't be talking about 'em on this podcast if it wasn't the real deal.

Yeah.

Got a home of the week?

I do. I'm super excited about this house. Fantastic property. So this is 6019 Boyers Mill Road. It is listed at 1.575 and it is a massive 5,585 square feet above grade plus an additional finished lower level, making it almost 8,000 square feet. This house is massive. It also sits on a nice large lot and it has an in-ground pool. Not only is it on 2.24 acres, it backs up to protected Audubon Society land. Love that. You know what that means, birds, wildlife.

Sure. Absolutely. Audubon Society. John Jay Audubon. I'm familiar.

Yes. So we are five bedrooms, five baths. We have a beautiful floor plan, upper end, high grade finishes. Nice big deck. And like I said, beautiful in-ground pool has an automatic cover on it so it's easy to open and close. It's a spectacular property.

I'm Tom.

And Christina.

Of Jay Day and the Day Home Team of Real Estate Teams. Christina Day. Thank you so much for listening to our real estate podcast. No, thank you for coming in. Much prettier smell. Much better than Jay. Thank you for listening to your friends, all about it.