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Hometown Happenings
About Hometown Happenings Podcast
Welcome to Hometown Happenings, the ultimate podcast where we bring the heart and soul of North Arkansas straight to your ears! Hosted by a lively set of friends (Angela and Drea!) who know and love their community, we explore the unique stories, events, and happenings that make our hometown special.
What You Can Expect:
🏡 Local Stories: From hilarious realtor horror stories to touching tales of community spirit, we uncover the fascinating narratives behind the people and places that define our town.
🎉 Event Highlights: Stay in the loop with the latest and greatest events in North Arkansas. Whether it's a bustling new business opening, a must-attend festival, or a charity event making a difference, we've got you covered.
👩👩👧👦 Community Focus: We shine a spotlight on the incredible individuals and organizations working to make North Arkansas a better place. Hear from local entrepreneurs, community leaders, and everyday heroes who inspire us.
🌟 Fun and Engaging Conversations: Our episodes are packed with laughter, lively discussions, and plenty of surprises. We keep it real, relatable, and always entertaining.
Why Listen to Hometown Happenings?
- Stay Connected: Whether you're a longtime resident or new to the area, our podcast keeps you informed and connected to your community.
- Feel Good Stories: Enjoy heartwarming and humorous stories that showcase the best of small-town life.
- Exclusive Insights: Get insider tips on the best spots to visit, upcoming events, and hidden gems in North Arkansas.
- Join the Conversation: We love hearing from our listeners! Share your own stories, suggest topics, or just say hello – we're all about building a vibrant community together.
Tune in every other week for a fresh dose of hometown pride and discover why North Arkansas is such a special place to call home. Don’t forget to subscribe, so you never miss an episode of Hometown Happenings!
Hometown Happenings
The Home Seller's Guide to Creating Buyer Buzz
Ever wondered how a few simple tweaks to your home could significantly boost its sale potential? Angela and Drea have the scoop, and we're excited to share our tried-and-true strategies for making your house the belle of the ball in the real estate market. From enhancing curb appeal to the subtle art of staging, we discuss how clearing out the clutter and depersonalizing your space allows potential buyers to picture their future in your home. Plus, we get into the nitty-gritty of minor repairs that pack a major punch, giving you insider knowledge on how to polish your property to perfection and potentially amp up its value.
But that's just the beginning! Strap in as we navigate the bustling intersection of real estate marketing and innovative technology. We're talking about the game-changing Matterport, which allows for immersive 3D tours of homes, and can be a key player in planning renovations. Angela and I also share our enthusiasm for blending online and traditional marketing - from eye-catching just-listed cards to the undeniable charm of open houses. We'll even bust some common myths about the best times to list your property, proving that there's no need to wait until the spring bloom or the holiday fade—the market buzzes with activity all year round, and we're here to guide you through every season.
The Home Team
Angela Ballard & Drea Rogers
870-577-6754 | 870-577-0276
Weichert Market Edge
https://aundrea-rogers.weichertmarketedge.com
www.angelaballardrealtor.com
Welcome to this week's episode of Hometown Happenings. I'm Andrea Rogers. She's nobody. I'm.
Speaker 2:Angela Ballard and look at this what are these overalls? I'm in my overalls. I who says those are overalls? I it's my overalls era.
Speaker 1:Now I don't know how you can judge me with what you're wearing, hey this is Christmas time and you're supposed to wear your Christmas sweaters. The dog's wearing a purse necklace. I don't know, that's terrible. I think it's adorable. So don't say anything about my overalls. What? I have extra storage. Look, I have chocolate in my overalls.
Speaker 2:Only Okay so funny story. Today I fed her kid cinnamon roll and a brownie and then he got a candy bar.
Speaker 1:All in the span of like an hour and a half.
Speaker 2:All in at least a two hour span. He's gonna be hyped up all night long, thanks to me.
Speaker 2:So I took him to my mother so we could record the night, yeah. So sorry, sorry mom, sorry Mamie, bye-bye, but so today we have some really good information for you guys. We're gonna talk about steps to selling a house, things you should do to help get your house ready to sell, because I know that you guys are gonna be thinking this spring about getting your house on the market to sell and so having the tips in your head or writing them down or whatever, but knowing the things you need to know ahead of time so that you can start working on them Spring comes in, get your house on the market to sell. We're gonna give you some tips.
Speaker 1:Okay, I have no idea what your tips are. How many are they? Like? Five or six? Okay, what's number one? Kerberfield? Yeah, my house would not make it. On that whole, I didn't realize how important Kerberfield was. Most people think I would have thought you just went like a blank slate. Don't worry about nothing, the buyer will make it their own someday. But it doesn't seem to be the buyer.
Speaker 2:No. So you have to realize that your home's first impression, which we all care about, first impressions. People say the first impression is the lasting impression.
Speaker 2:That's why we take professional photos. So exactly why we take professional photos. But the first impression of your home when it goes up for sale is the Kerberfield what people see when they pull in the driveway, or the first photo that they see of your home On the listing. That's your Kerberfield. And so if it's just kind of blah, sometimes when you have a more expensive home and you don't have much Kerberfield, that can make it look very much less appealing.
Speaker 1:So well, the other flip side of that coin isn't just landscaping as much as it is like my house has random kids things all in my yard. So, I gotta clean it up a little bit.
Speaker 2:Yes. So you know you don't want clutter out in your front yard. If you're out in the country where that doesn't really matter, you know in town that doesn't seem to be an issue. Also, you know you might need to touch up with some paint or you might have a gutter that's hanging or a little bit of soft fascia deterioration that happens over time. Those things really are important. A lot of loans don't like to see peeling paint.
Speaker 1:I know I just had one of those. Yeah, we had to have it scraped and repainted.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that is something that is minor and inexpensive but can really help you get more money out of your home if you give it that little bit of a wow factor, right out of the gate, right out of the gate, and you don't have to spend much money on it.
Speaker 1:Okay, kerberfield, put that on the checklist.
Speaker 2:Number two staging. Oh yeah, this is a big one. So sometimes when you live in a home, I know for me like we live there. So we.
Speaker 1:It looks like we live there.
Speaker 2:Right, your house looks like that. Sometimes we put shelves up and we use that as our pantry. But then when you have a buyer potential buyer coming to look at the house, in their mind they think, oh, there's not enough food storage in this house. If they can't store their food properly, how am I gonna store my food properly?
Speaker 2:Or if you have, you know, overwhelming amounts of clothes, it's gonna make your closets look like they're not big enough and with yeah, and that may not necessarily be the case for those people, but that's what they see from you. So packing stuff up, making it less cluttered, also depersonalizing. So taking away your kids' photos, things like that, where they can make it feel like their own.
Speaker 1:A lot of agents that really go the extra mile. They ask me, as a real estate photographer, to take photos off the wall or use Photoshop to hang a new photograph that's not of their child on the wall, and that's a pricier option when you could just take it down, right? So just be thinking ahead that, hey, there's gonna be random strangers in my house. Maybe I don't need the picture of my daughter hanging on the wall, but by place.
Speaker 2:And sometimes you do. You know it doesn't suffice to just take it down, because then you have a big empty space on the wall. But maybe you can find an inexpensive piece of art to hang there instead or rotate some of your artwork from other areas of the house around, Because you don't necessarily have to have every room staged perfectly. So if you had a nice piece of art maybe in a guest bedroom, you could move that to the living room or something like that, and it wouldn't be as big a deal in the guest bedroom to have no decor or something.
Speaker 1:It's to be more minimal.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:So that's something that a real estate professional can help you with too. So if you are concerned when you're deciding to sell and calling an agent, that's something you can ask them. Hey, what are your thoughts on some of the staging tips that I can do?
Speaker 1:Well, I know we have checklists and stuff that really help walk through that process.
Speaker 2:Yes, we have checklists we give our sellers to help them know exactly what they should do and should not do. Thirdly is pricing, so pricing of the home is very important.
Speaker 1:Right, and we don't roll up to people's houses and just ask them what they want to list it for. That's right. There's a lot of work that goes into that on our end.
Speaker 2:There is so one thing that Draya and I really pride ourselves on is the fact that we don't price a house without putting two feet on the ground in the house and looking at it with our own eyes. That we don't rely on.
Speaker 1:And I know that can be really frustrating for a seller who's let's hurry up and get this house on the market. Let's get the ball rolling? Well, we will, but we need to go about it the right way. So we have to lay eyes on the property.
Speaker 2:And then-.
Speaker 1:We're giving you a disservice if we don't Right and as a photographer I know that how deceiving pictures can be.
Speaker 2:Exactly so. We will come out to your house, we'll look at your house and we will then go back and we look at close comps and we don't just look at the MLS. We look at data scout, which is tax records and things like that, to come up with a price. We're Using comparable property. We're using comparable things that are similar to how it will go once you got it under contract. We are not appraisers, but we can give you a market value from our side of things.
Speaker 1:Right, and then we, because you don't want to price it too high. I know that what I hear a lot is. I want to leave room for negotiation.
Speaker 2:Price high and maybe we'll take less. We'll walk the way down.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but then you find some. Most of the time it just sits there and then you end up having to lower your price anyways.
Speaker 2:And then you've lost your momentum because you've been on the market for a week or two weeks or, in some of the cases, now, 100-day Dissusting days. Right, you're on the back burner. People are like, oh, that house has been on the market for three months. I ain't worried about that house, they just keep scrolling around and buy it. What's wrong with it?
Speaker 1:That's what they start thinking.
Speaker 2:Oh, they'll take so much less. It's been on the market for 120 days. There must be something wrong with it. They'll take 50,000 under.
Speaker 1:That's why we try to price it as accurately as possible straight out the gate.
Speaker 2:And haven't you noticed that when we price them accurately up front, we get multiple offers usually?
Speaker 1:Oh my goodness, and they go above our asking price.
Speaker 2:Yeah or they're showed every single day and you get an offer within a week.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Right, so pricing is a very, very, very big deal. I feel like.
Speaker 1:I didn't, yeah, I didn't realize until I got into the business how much thought goes into it. It's not just hey, what do you want to sell your house for, Right? Would you take that into account when?
Speaker 2:we? Yes, we do. And when we tell you it's gonna take a few days for us to get back with you on a price, that's not because I need to just sit on it a minute. It's because I'm really working hard. We're crunching numbers to figure it out because, ultimately, I wanna get you the most money.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's our job.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:All right, what's your next one? You got.
Speaker 2:Marketing. That's like totally your ally right there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's just this. Getting in front of the camera myself is the part that I don't like.
Speaker 2:I know you like to be the person behind the camera, but you have some really good ideas, so tell them about your marketing.
Speaker 1:Um. Walkthrough videos are my favorite thing in the world because it allows, because how many people shop online Right?
Speaker 2:For literally everything Right.
Speaker 1:So walkthrough videos give you a real life perspective of walking through a home. Also, I'm a huge fan of Matterport.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so there when you talk to like real estate people, they have kind of mixed opinions on it, but I have a lot of clients tell me they really like them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so Matterport for those of you who aren't familiar is a like Google street view of an inside spot of the home. So you just click the dots and it gives you a walkthrough and you can pan around 360 degrees and see where you're standing. My favorite Matterport to date is that house with the gremlin.
Speaker 2:Yeah, where you put a spot right in front of the gremlin so people could look at that they had like a three foot gremlin.
Speaker 1:It was fantastic.
Speaker 2:Favorite Matterport to date.
Speaker 1:So that's really handy, but it also at the end, once we get that whole Matterport built, it's like a 3D image. It creates a doll house view is what it's called, and it's a 3D rendering of the home, and it also comes up with a pretty accurate blueprint that we can create as well. So even if you are not listing your house and you are going to remodel or you're gonna add on and you don't have original blueprints for your house, we can Matterport it and create blueprints that you can then use to do those kinds of things.
Speaker 2:Okay, I didn't even think about it like that that's pretty cool. So marketing is really important. So professional photography, online platforms for marketing your home.
Speaker 1:Right, cause it's a more. I mean it's more than a local reach. We also do the old school way. I just sent a bunch of just listed cards for a new listing. It's going to hit all the houses in the area with a postcard in the mail. But I mean there's also. Online marketing allows us to reach people all over the world.
Speaker 2:We also do something called open house.
Speaker 1:Ah, open houses, I love open houses.
Speaker 2:I do too, I love.
Speaker 1:But that's weird that you do, because you don't really I don't like people, but I like hanging out with you. Oh, oh my, I'm vibing, did I not feel it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay so, but you do them by yourself sometimes too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I take my husband, but yeah, I do them by myself. I like open houses cause it's more people in the door for one purpose, and I like that it's focused. Does that make sense? Mm-hmm, like I know, the intention is to be there it's goal oriented to see that particular house.
Speaker 2:I like them too because sometimes I hold them, hold other houses open that are not necessarily in my listing and it gives me like insight into those houses.
Speaker 1:So then I feel like you need to clarify too that our open houses, like we're talking about, are not like how everybody else is open houses Right.
Speaker 2:We do broke, like our brokerage holds at least an open house a month where Office wide, office wide and so like. If other agents are busy and can't hold their own listings open, some of us will volunteer to hold houses open if we don't have listings that need to be held open or what happens.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we work together to help each other.
Speaker 2:Yeah To make sure that all the houses get put on the open house and they're open to the public, and what's really cool about it is when you're there, you get to. Not only do we do walkthroughs and go to everybody's listings, so we know about them but when you're physically there and you're having to 10 times show someone that house, you really learn about the house and many times I have learned so much about the house that I end up leaving there calling somebody saying I have the house.
Speaker 2:Right, this is the one you've been looking for. I found it. We need to go look at it right now, and so we just get that extra knowledge about the house, and that's another marketing tool. That we do is we go and we look at houses that are listed within our brokerage.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Weekly pretty much, so that we know more about them, so that we can On top of the team meeting we have every week where we talk about them and look at all the pictures. Yeah, for sure. So number five is timing of listing your house.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah, again not one of those things that I thought about until you.
Speaker 2:So right now, with interest rates the way they are, when you have a house that's like under 200,000, that's a really, really, really hot item, no joke.
Speaker 1:So listing now or anytime, really Right when everyone's like well, I'm going to wait until after the holidays. There's not really anything to do.
Speaker 2:No, and I hate to say it, but then those people that have those over $300,000 houses now's not the time to wait either, because everybody's coming in for Christmas to visit their family and then they're like we're going to go closer to grandma. And while we're there.
Speaker 1:we should pop in and check out Exactly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and several people already scheduling out for closer to the holidays to go look at some things, because they're coming into town to visit family and they want to shop while they're here. So I don't see the reason Can't say that, waiting until after Christmas or before Christmas, or.
Speaker 1:Well, and the other thing is is if you have someone coming to look at your house this time of year, they're usually very serious. It's not, we're not dilly-dallying, we're not.
Speaker 2:Oh, we're just browsing, we'll be able to get on the cold first off. Yeah, oh yes. A lot of times people are having to take off work right now to go look at houses because it gets dark at five. So unless we're on a weekend and people don't really like to give up their weekends that much, unless they're invested Right so between the weekend and having to see before five because it gets dark and you can't look at the outside of a house in the dark, right they're pretty serious people Right.
Speaker 1:but I also like as far as timing goes. We talked about momentum. There's just that short period of time where oh, this is the new hot ticket thing, so you want to take advantage of that window there that you have?
Speaker 2:And what number was that? That was five, we are rolling, we are. Six is real estate experts using a real estate expert.
Speaker 1:Oh, why they should call us that's right. That was really sly, but you slipped that in there like that Well.
Speaker 1:I loved it for you. Oh my gosh, why should you use me? Because you get this, because you get this? Not enough? No, we have told you my theory on this. So before, real estate, weddings was my big thing and I like, I thrive under pressure, I enjoy it, I like the high stakes and the big decisions and I live for that. And real estate is just that, in a different dress. Okay, so I feel like this is a big decision that most people don't get to experience a whole lot in their lives. They don't have the skill set that we've been trained in, and I feel like that's reason enough to call a professional.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:I mean, how many loopholes do we have to know and when things come up and the paperwork, florida mercy, all the contracts, all the things that we have to be able to translate. And I don't know about you per se, but I work my tail off. You may sit in the office a lot and look at a computer.
Speaker 2:What Did you really just say, that I'm just kidding. You are actually like one of the few people who work more than me, because who calls me like randomly, at like 10 o'clock some days and is like why are you not in the office? That's true. Because I'm there every day and I'm there to like after five every day. Well, I was showing houses.
Speaker 1:Yes, the only reason you're not in the office is because you're just doing more real estate things. Exactly so, real estate hiring a real estate professional, you're hiring someone who's going to work hard for you. You should be.
Speaker 2:And you should be interviewing agents and not just picking your friend.
Speaker 1:Oh, absolutely no joke. Just because you've known somebody your entire life doesn't mean that they're going to work the hardest they can for you, right? That's kind of mean to say Not that I've said it out loud, but that's the case and I 100% feel that way.
Speaker 2:I've always in the past, before doing this job, when I was a nurse and when I was different things I knew people that did real estate and so, like I hired a friend kind of thing, people I knew. But now, after doing it and knowing what I know, not saying any of them didn't do me a good service, because of the two houses that I sold sold within a few days, Right Both times, and I feel like I got good prices for both of them. So I'm not questioning any of that. But what I'm saying now, knowing what I know, just using your friend could almost be a disservice to you because you may not feel like they're doing what they should be doing for you.
Speaker 1:But you don't like to just go?
Speaker 2:And it's harder to say that to them. And do you want your doctor to be your friend? Do you want your lawyer to be your friend?
Speaker 1:Right, if you're in trouble, are you calling your best friend? Are you going to call the best that you know?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Or are you going to call the best attorney in town that's going to fight for you, right? Are you going to call the best surgeon in town that's going to save your life, right? You need to call the best real estate agent that's going to work the hardest for you, because guess what? You're paying for that service too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's true, that is true, so I say that as a nurse who wants to work hard for their people and take care of their patients, do the same thing, same thing In this, yeah. So those are our tips for selling a house and getting your house ready to sell. I just realized you have.
Speaker 1:Christmas fingernail. I do because it's Christmas. It just goes with the horribleness of your sweater.
Speaker 2:So, and this podcast may not air till after the first of the year because we're trying to get our content up and running early. So I may be Christmassy. No, I think it's going to air next week, isn't it? I don't know You're the boss, because that's why we're a Christmas sweater. I don't even remember. I don't know what's going on. But thanks for listening and just know that this is the craziness of our lives we're overworked. No, we're not, see you.
