Interesting Denver Post Article....12.30.12
The devil really may be in the details.
The owners of a Ridgewood, N.J., home were
eager to sell because they had already bought another place. After a couple of
months went by without an offer, they cut the price and stripped the outdated
paneling from one room. But buyers weren't biting, and they thought they knew
why: Their street address was 666, which some Christians believe is a sign of
the devil, based on a biblical passage.
So the homeowners got the address changed to
668, and the place sold.
It was just one example of how seemingly
minor issues can make — or break — real estate transactions. In most cases,
there are only a couple of big-picture items that sellers can control when they
put their homes on the market: the home's condition and its price. For that
reason, sellers are usually urged to set a competitive asking price and spruce
up the property by painting, refinishing hardwood floors, and upgrading the
landscaping.
But sometimes, unexpected or oddball details
— not always in a homeowner's control — can be the difference between success
and failure.
"A home purchase is a very emotional thing,"
said Beth Freed, an agent with Prominent Properties Sotheby's International
Realty in Ridgewood, N.J. "If you feel at home, for one reason or another, that
very often is all it takes."
Jeana Cowie, listing agent on the Ridgewood
house that used to be No. 666, said she was surprised when people commented that
the address might be a problem. One buyer at an open house told her it was a
"weird number."
To change the address, the homeowner went to
Village Hall; each town has its own procedure for this, but usually the tax
assessor has to be consulted to make sure there's no conflict with another
address. Emergency services and the U.S. Postal Service must also be
notified.
"I don't want to say that 668 sold the
house," Cowie said. But she thinks it helped.
Hedy Weiss, a Coldwell Banker agent in
Franklin Lakes, N.J., also closed a sale after the homeowner changed the
address. The house was on a corner in Franklin Lakes, facing a busy street, but
also had an entrance on the side street.
"Because people could see it was on a main
street, a lot of people didn't pursue it," she said. The homeowner had the
address changed to the side street.
"We started getting more showings with the
new address," Weiss said.
Within two months, the house was sold.
Freed says one of
her home sellers got a boost when the village lowered the speed limit on the
street to 25 mph. Suddenly, the property became more attractive to families with
young children, and it sold soon after.
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Other numbers also can make a difference.
Some agents have favorite pricing tricks. Orly Steinberg, a Coldwell Banker
agent in Ridgewood, for example, ends her prices in "888." She started doing it
20 years ago, to catch the eye of agents paging through big multiple listing
books.
She wanted to be listed just ahead of the
agents pricing their listings at more common numbers using 9s — for example,
pricing a home at $299,888, instead of $299,900. Over time, it became her
signature; her license plate even reads "SOLD888."
"It gets you a little bit more attention,
which is what you want," Steinberg said. Later, she discovered that 8 is a lucky
number in Chinese culture.
For that reason, 8s are included in 20
percent of the asking prices in real estate markets with a large Asian
population, the real estate website Trulia recently reported. (And 13 is
uncommon in prices everywhere, Trulia says.)
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