Use Hyper-Local Real Estate Statistics to Inform Your Clients

Posted by Ryan Ward on Jun 26, 2008

One of the most difficult aspects in today’s market is getting consumers to understand the difference between national, local and hyper-local real estate trends which could vary dramatically depending on your location.

More importantly, a client’s perspective in the market will in large part determine their expectations for a transaction. Many home buyers today feel that the water has run completely red with blood and many buyers believe that they can steal a home with this new found leverage. Many are excited about the possibilities and have heard the news reports about buying homes for 60 cents on the dollar.

If you don’t convey to your clients up front that this is not likely to be the case, you will have problems getting buyers and sellers to agree on a price at which the home could be purchased.

Understanding your hyper-local market, even within your city and being able to convey how that translates into accurate expectations for a client has never been more important than it is today.

Being an expert in your market is paramount to building trust and in turn clients and it’s your responsibility to understand and be able to convey the difference to help educate them.

Knowing what is happening on a hyper-local level, will help you be the local expert, build their confidence in you and help you close sales.

An example of why hyper-local information is important is illustrated below. Here in Atlanta, the real estate market varies greatly depending on what part of the city a client wants to buy.

It’s critical to know your market statistics and how it differs from the larger real estate market to set the proper expectations.

If you look at the Atlanta home values on the chart below, you can see that prices have been trending downward since June of 2007 and if your buyer thinks that is relevant for the entire city, they might have the wrong expectations.

While it is interesting to note what is happening in Atlanta or in your city, it’s probably not telling the whole story and might not apply to the hyper-local market your client is looking to buy in.

Below is a chart I have posted on my Alpharetta webpage indicating quite a different story for home values.

Clearly Metro Atlanta is down, but, Alpharetta is quite clearly trending up in its values. If a buyer anticipates finding a home in Alpharetta based on what they know about the Greater Metro Atlanta market, they will be in for quite a surprise to find that their negotiating positions is not likely to be quite as strong as they initially thought and sellers may not be as inclined to consider a low offer.

Setting these expectations early with your clients will help ensure that you can get to the closing table.

I use charts like the one above on my Alpharetta real estate page and cite it and other charts like it often when working with clients. They are easy to create in Microsoft Word, are visually attractive and very easy for consumers to read.

I will usually create a new one for either blog posts to keep consumers updated or when needed while working with a client.

It’s often much easier and more convincing when buyers can look at it and read it for themselves. These charts make it easy to get a snapshot of the local market quickly and often times that’s really the information they need to get the correct perspective on the market.

What are you doing to keep your clients educated about your market and what works best for you to set the expectations?

Ryan Ward is a REALTOR® with Keller Williams REALTY Consultants in Atlanta.

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