Diane Laney Fitzpatrick

writer, blogger, author and internet socialite

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Social Media Tips for Realtors

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How much has changed for real estate professionals since print newspaper ads? Pretty much everything. In the space of a few years, real estate went from buyers suddenly having access to homes for sale on the internet, to now having available homes dropped right into their laps via social media.

According to Sprout Social and the National Association of Realtors, social has become crucial to scoring clients and closing deals across the industry. Here are some of the report’s findings:

  • 77 percent of realtors use social media for real estate in some way, shape or form.
  • 47 percent of real estate businesses note that social media result in the higher quality leads versus other sources.
  • 99 percent of millennials and 90 percent of baby boomer begin heir home each online, as opposed to in-person referrals.

So real estate agents who use social media – and use it well – have the advantage of fast and productive communication with their clients and potential clients. How to use social media well as a real estate agent? Here are some tips from the pros. [Read more…] about Social Media Tips for Realtors

Houses That Fantasies Are Made Of

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My husband, Bobby Sherman, and I plan to fix this place up

 

I’m getting a little weary of looking at houses. Normally this is my favorite part of moving. You get to walk through people’s houses, look through all their stuff and not get arrested. It’s cool how the law works that way. Not only are you allowed, you’re supposed to do it.

When I was young I used to draw floor plans of my dream house. Whenever I would visit someone who had a mansion (that is, anything bigger than a double-wide) I would go home and draw out the floor plan so I wouldn’t forget it. I had floor plans for my houses in every situation of whatever fantasy I had at the time – the Hollywood home I shared with my husband, Davy Jones of the Monkees (we had horses, because if he wasn’t a former jockey, he was short enough to have been), the cute n’ cozy three bedroom ranch with the tuff finished basement I shared with my Asian doctor husband, the old giant mansion from Rebecca that I lived in with my older, millionaire widowed husband and creepy housekeeper, and the big colonial with the pool out back and the white picket fence in front that my seventh grade crush I and our seven children had in Boardman.

I had those houses decorated, knew every piece of furniture and the fabric in every drape and curtain, and knew what was in each kitchen cabinet and drawer. Most of the houses were furnished from the JCPenney catalog, and they all – including the house from Rebecca – had the barrel table and chairs in the kitchen and a brown leather couch in the living room with those big metal studs along the armrests.

I always thought it would be fun to get a Realtor’s license just so I could do the Tuesday tour of homes. Maybe it’s a matter of the carpet is always whiter on the other side of the neighborhood, but I just love other people’s houses. They just open up so many new possibilities for pretending it’s all mine.

I don’t know why this time is different. Maybe I’m older and more tired. Maybe I’ve maxed out on seeing great rooms, parlors, foyers, lofts, sunrooms and other rooms that should have quotation marks around them.  (Like, what’s a ‘media room’ anyway?) My husband is sending me houses on the Internet to look at and I’m going through them like I’m itemizing expenses on a tax form.  They’re all very nice houses. They’re big, have very nice kitchens, they have enough bedrooms and bathrooms, they have pools and lanais and more luxuries than I deserve – hell, more than Davy Jones’ real wife deserves.

But they’re just not tripping my trigger. I tried to look at pictures of one kitchen and pretend my stuff was in there. “Where are you going to put the wine accessories?” I asked myself, hoping to spark some kind of excitement.  Living in Florida . . . havin’ some wine . . . there’s music playing . . . we’re entertaining Tiger and the Woodses on our patio . . . Tiger’s wife is sitting at the barrel table . . . I’m wearing something really pretty and flowery and flowing . . . Nothing. I got nothing.

I actually considered having my husband buy a house without me seeing it first. He called and said he saw something nice and wants me to see it. I’ll have to make arrangements for the kids, get a flight, sit in airports, clear my calendar and do all that traveling just to see a house. I seriously thought about just saying, “I’m sure it’s fine. If you like it I’ll like it.”

But I caught myself in time. What was I thinking? I have to go see the house. How will I know if the studded leather couch will fit in the living room?

Showing Off the House

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I was doing pretty well being New Diane, especially selling our house this time around. But today Old Diane came back for a surprise visit. She didn’t bring any luggage, so she didn’t stay long, but for a little while today, there she was, in my car eating pudding with her hands, smelling like broiled fish and talking to the dog.

We had a showing today. Our house has been on the market for nearly three months now, just long enough to hit a nice groove, become comfortable with the fact that strangers are going to come into my house when I’m not here, and not freak out anymore.

That’s good in some ways, because you can’t possibly live with yourself when you’re in the early stages of house selling. The stage where everything has to be perfect all the time and you eat dinner over the garbage can at the curb, just in case you get a call for a last-minute showing.

That can’t last. Old Diane would have let things go to pot, and taken a Lil Laney philosophy of I’ll Worry About it Later. When Later came rolling around, that is, when the realtor calls and says they want to show the house, Old Diane would look around at the pigsty that her house had become and start throwing things into large leaf and lawn bags, tossing them in the car and hiding in there during the showing.

New Diane is selling this house, so things have so far been a little bit different. Every morning I’ve been getting the house half ready to show. I make the beds, clear off my bathroom counter, and take everything out of the shower with me (I’ve had good practice with this type of life, since I lived in the dorm in college).  I wash the dishes right after dinner, put clean clothes away shortly after they’re folded, and I even put the TV remote on the shelf next to the TV, a spot that is as attractive as it is impractical.

So that was going along pretty well until today. I knew as of 10 p.m. last night that I had a showing at noon today. I figured I’d spend the morning getting the house ready, but, you know, it was Easter just the other day and I had leftovers that weren’t fitting well in the frig, a thin layer of Easter grass covering the downstairs, candy that wouldn’t fit anywhere and too many leaves in the dining room table. So it took me a little longer than I expected to clean up.

Time began to run out on me. I found myself running through the house with a vacuum hose in one hand, a lawn and leaf bag in the other, and a bottle Windex hooked to my waistband, paper towels scrunched into my pocket. Fifteen minutes to go and I opened the oven to discover a broiler pan from the salmon I made for Easter dinner, which I had forgotten about. The smell of fish poured out of the oven into the house. I grabbed the pan and threw it in the car, along with the garbage bag full of Easter candy, some eggs, yesterday’s mail and some dishes that had to be returned to other people. Back in the house, I did a quick trot with the can of Lysol, much like I was carrying the Olympic torch, to inaugurate the fish cooking games. Back to the car with the Grace the dog, her dish, my purse, an extra phone I couldn’t find a dock for, some throw rugs and the tea kettle. That’s when I saw the half pan of butterscotch pudding dessert. Into the front seat it goes, one level above the fish-encrusted broiler pan.

That’s how Grace and I spent the next two hours (the house lookers were late getting there). I took her on a walk and then ran some errands, being careful not to be gone too long. It was only going to be a matter of time before Grace discovered that the fish and whipped cream smell was coming from the front seat. We had to spend the last half hour around the corner from our house, with me peering between two trees to see the house lookers’ car, so I would know when to go back home. The pudding was looking sooo good . . . I didn’t have a fork . . .

What would Old Diane have done . . .  Who am I kidding? Old Diane wouldn’t have any pudding left two days later.

Clutter-Upper For Sale

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I’m selling a house again. At the risk of sounding braggy, this house is really nice.

Especially now that we’ve cleaned it up, cleared all the crap off the kitchen counter, touched up the paint and wiped away any trace of anyone actually living here.

Whenever I get a house ready to show, I clean it so well, I’m forced to look around and wonder, “Why didn’t I do this for me?”  When we were selling our house in Cleveland, I borrowed my sister Kathy’s good sweeper, the one with enough vacuum power to suck a Wizard of Oz collectible figurine out from under the bed. It had all kinds of attachments, including one that could get years of dust and grime out of the woodwork. For the first time since we moved into that house, it was vacuumed like it was supposed to be.

“Was this carpet always white?” my husband asked when I was finished.

“Apparently, yes, it was. We’re going to have to change the listing description.”

Right now, Day 4 of selling our house in Lexington, my shower doesn’t have any shampoo in it. There are no perfume bottles, hand cream or makeup on my dresser. The laundry room doesn’t have any clothes baskets in it, let alone clothes. Even the dog dish has been relegated to the garage. You might think that robots lived here or we’d been recently robbed.

For some unexplained reason, this helps to sell a house.

Home buyers are like brain damaged puppies. And I’m allowed to say this because as a home seller, I, too, am a home buyer. The two go together unless you’re selling your house to be homeless.

A home buyer can look at a kitchen that’s too small, a bathroom that doesn’t have a shower, and a bedroom that won’t fit your queen-sized bed, and as long as things are neat and tidy, they’ll fall in love with the house and pay any price.

Do we think the house will stay clean if we buy it? Do we somehow believe that the cleanliness comes with the house? “Clutter-free counters convey” isn’t written anywhere, but we feel so darn good about a house that isn’t being taken over by backpacks, stacks of junk mail and small appliances, that we must own it.

The same is true for all the cool stuff in a house you’re looking at. You’re a smart person, you know the Appalachian weavings in shadow boxes on the living room wall are not going to stay in the house if you buy it. You have half a brain, you know they’re not going to forget them. But it’s things like that which make you say to your subconscious “If this house is good enough for cool, trendy, artsy people like them, it’s certainly good enough for tacky old me.”

So I’ve cleared all signs of my drab, kitschy life out of my house (many of them are in garbage bags in my car) and I’ve left out only the cool stuff. Unfortunately, that’s not a lot, so we’ve got a lot of bare surfaces.

If you come to see my house with your Realtor, you won’t smell chocolate chip cookies, you won’t see champagne next to the tub, you won’t see a fresh flower centerpiece on the dining room table. But wallow a while over by the kitchen desk, which doesn’t have one piece of mail on it, no school forms to fill out, buttons to be sewn on, or birthday cards to mail.

I’ll be here, sitting in the empty family room, waiting for your offer.