Avoid Attractive Female Agents!

In my years of searching for homes with buyers throughout the Boise and Nampa real estate areas, I have seen first hand what I  just read in SmartMoney.com.

"If you have hunted for a house, you probably got a sense that real-estate purchases don't represent consumers at their most rational. Did you like a house or apartment more or less depending on whether you saw it on a sunny day? Chances are, you did.

Buying a house isn't the same as buying a stock, an air conditioner or even a car. It's not just a product with pluses and minuses — good school system versus a small kitchen, a new roof versus a longer commute. A house represents the kind of life you want to live. And given its cost, a house and the value it gains or loses represent concretely the life you could live.

Thus, it can be disturbing — though perhaps not surprising — to realize that people's judgment about real estate is susceptible to many of the foolish forces that affect so many other consumer decisions. In some ways, it may be affected even more."

I remember some buyers that I showed two houses that were identical in floor plan and on the same street. The yards and landscaping were also very similar. They liked first home far more than the other. Why? They did not realize it but the reason  was because the first home had beautiful new furniture while the second was furnished with older mismatched pieces. Of course, the furniture was not included in the sale.

SmartMoney.com continues: "Research by Michael Seiler, a professor at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Va., has found that men and women — particularly men — are susceptible to the attractiveness of a female real-estate agent. The more attractive the agent, the more the buyer is willing to pay.

Superficial things such as a room painted an ugly color can make people less likely to buy a house, even though fixing that problem is as cheap as a couple of cans of paint."

I certainly have seen the ugly paint scenario, I had not heard about the attractive female agent factor before. Maybe I should use that in my marketing, "Save Money because I am not young or attractive or female!"