Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Selling Greenville your favorite real estate podcast here in Greenville South Carolina I'm your host as always Stan McCune right here in Greenville South Carolina and you can find all of my contact information in the show notes if you need a realtor in this area and please if at the very least you might never use me as your realtor but just take a second to like the show right if you're watching on YouTube just hit the little like button if you're not subscribed please subscribe make sure you don't miss future episodes and if you're on a platform like Apple Podcast Spotify that lets you leave a rating I'd really appreciate if you guys could do that so please just take a second to do that I've noticed been getting some sporadic likes on YouTube you can also comment on there too I love those comments I try to respond to them but please if you don't mind just take a very brief second to do that and I would greatly appreciate it today we are going to be doing something that I don't know has ever been done before I'm gonna be completely honest maybe it has been probably someone out there has done it before but I've never heard of anyone doing this before we're gonna be looking at the Multiple Listing Service and using the price analysis tool which we have talked about on the show before to reverse engineer the value of different features for a home alright now I'm going to screen share here so you guys can see exactly what I'm looking at and so we talked about this price analysis tool before but long story short it basically takes all of the data that I've entered into the multiple listing for a multiple listing service for a listing and it can be a an active listing or a partial listing if it's a partial listing it's not on the market yet nobody can see it except for me so right now I've got a dummy partial listing using a property that I currently own as a rental property okay so I'm not using someone else's property doing something weird like that I didn't have to get permission from anyone except for myself to do this but basically the price analysis tool in the Multiple Listing service tells me based on the data that I have entered into the MLS right the location of the home the list price and all of the features that were checked it tells me how many buyers it matches to that have saved searches in the Multiple Listing service so I just ran it and it told me that there are 168 potential buyers matched to my home at 450,000 now does that number sound low maybe that's actually a decent number for the Multiple Listing Service remember this is not telling you all of the potential buyers this is just telling you the saved searches in the MLS and a lot of people right now are you know they have their saved searches on Zillow and what not so this is simply kind of synonymous of a larger pool of buyers is the way that I see it so 168 that doesn't mean that there's only 168 potential buyers in the market but this is reflective of the market and so what we normally would do with this tool is go you know up or down on the price and then see how the number of buyers changes so at 4:50 we had 168 buyers if I drop the price all the way down to 400 it goes way up to 249 buyers so that's obviously you know you at that point you're gaining what an extra 30% of the market by dropping the price $50,000 by dropping the price you know a little bit more than 10% so that's typically how this price analysis is used but we're going to use it differently today what I'm going to do is I'm actually going to go into the features of the home and I'm going to change some of these features and see whether that changes the potential number of buyers that we have for the house so keep the No. 168 in your mind that is the number of buyers that we currently have for this home now this home is a is a tri level home and so I'm gonna just start right at the top and just say what happens if I just say that this is a one level home alright so there's gonna be a little bit of a of a lag time with some of this because what I have to do is I have to make the change then I have to save it and then I have to run the price analysis so changing it from a tri level home to a one level home increases the buyer account from 168 to 204 okay that's a huge jump right that's like that's basically a 20% jump so guess what if my home were a one level a ranch home it would be 20% more there would be 20% more of the market for it than as a tri level home that's actually super interesting I did not know to expect that alright so I'm switching it back to try level the home is 50+ years old let's say that I change it to I don't know let's say 11 to 20 years old that's a really nice sweet spot because most people don't want the brand new homes they want a home that has quote unquote you know good bones but at the same time they don't want the really really old home so what did that do that upped my number from 168 potential buyers to 188 so about a 10% increase little more than a 10% increase by simply going from a 50+ year old home to an 11 to 20 year old home let's see what happens if I do if I do it as a 1 to 5 year old home just out of curiosity one to five year old home remember the 11 to 20 year old home is 188 one to five year old home goes up to 196 potential buyers so people really like that one to five year old home range let's see if I change it to new never lived in now you know I'm excited about this hope you guys are as excited about this as I am I'm on the edge of my seat 190 buyers okay so this is what I was saying there's fewer people you know looking for a brand new home than there are you know looking for a home that is one to five years old which was I believe it was one 96 right hold on let me run that again one 96 yeah exactly alright moving on from that let me change that back to 50+ years old to be accurate and we should be back at 168 buyers which we are alright let's look at what else we've got alright I've got the lot size as a half acre or less let's see what happens if I change that to a half acre to one acre okay or yeah half this is very very confusing the way it's the way it's worded here but yeah a half acre to an acre let's see if that takes us up from 1 68 to a higher number only takes us up marginally higher to 1 70 so the difference in buyers looking at homes with less than a half acre to those in the east side looking at homes with a half acre to an acre not a whole lot not a big difference what if we go to 1 to 2 acres let's see what happens at one to two acres 173 buyers so again not a huge difference so buyers in the east side of Greenville acreage kind of doesn't matter as much to them now maybe if we you know went up you know kept going up let's see two to five acres I'm just gonna do this this will be my last acreage one that I do we'll just see if this does anything yeah it's still at 173 so there doesn't seem to be a huge pull for a bunch of acreage in the in the east side Greenville area alright let's go back to a half acre or less and save that alright let's see here what else can I tinker with there's a lot there's a lot that I can tinker with here alright let's say this this is this is an important one this is a tri level home it has no bedrooms on the main level right if you know what a tri level home is typically the living room and kitchen are on the main level and then there is a double staircase that leads up to a partial second level and a partial below grade basement level and usually either upstairs or downstairs your accommodation of the two are where the bedrooms are and that's exactly what this home is you walk into the main level kitchen living room dining room and then upstairs are three bedrooms including the primary bedroom downstairs is one bedroom a den and the laundry room alright just so you guys can understand that now one thing that we know is that primary bedrooms being on the second level really hurt the value of a home right primary bedroom people want it to be on the main level for a variety of reasons not the least of which is that people just want the ease to be able to just leave their home without having to go up and down steps people that are older they don't wanna have to obviously deal with steps either and if you know anything about the real estate market the boomer generation is very very active in buying and selling well their knees are not and their hips and what not are not as good as they were 20 years ago and so very important as I deal with people with baby boomers and those of the silent generation it's very very important to them that the primary bedroom is on the main level and so I'm just I'm changing it from the second level to the main level to see what happens not a whole lot happened it went to from 168 potential buyers to 170 that's actually kind of surprising now this would not be the case in every neighborhood I I think that this is probably somewhat unique to this specific area east side of Greenville if you go out into other areas I found that that primary bedroom being on main is more important now there is another let me see if I can find this without just taking just way too much time okay yeah there is another place that talks about below grade and above grade bedrooms but that's we're that's not gonna affect anything all right so moving on from that now I've got all of the various features of the home okay let's look at lot features real quick let's see if there's anything interesting here so I currently have it as a corner lot with a fenced in yard sloped with some trees okay let's see if I take away the fenced in yard let's see if that affects anything so remember we have 168 buyers with the fenced in yard it only goes down to 166 if I take away the fenced in yard not a big deal so the fenced in yard good feature right definitely a helpful feature but we only lost two potential buyers out of 168 that's really not that big of a deal let's see what happens if we have a Mountain View okay let's add a Mountain View and I went ahead and put the fence back in there fenced in yard Mountain View takes us from 168 buyers to 170 buyers okay so there's a few people that want a couple people that want a Mountain View let's see if I do it as a cul de sac get rid of the Mountain View how many people want to be at a cul de sac or how many people don't want to be at a cul de sac we don't know doesn't matter a we still ended up with 168 so I don't know if we lost some and gained some or just nobody had that selected in their search criteria what happens if we add a water view this one might be the one that that where we see a big difference so some sort of a water view it doesn't specify what kind of water view it actually doesn't make that big of a difference takes us from 168 to 174 now remember garbage in garbage out realtor had to have selected that in their search in their buyer search in order for that to actually you know make a difference in terms of what we're doing here let's put lake on here right there's not a ton of homes in the east side of Greenville on lakes but I'm just kind of curious big difference here that takes us from 168 to 185 potential buyers so people definitely excited about the possibility of living on a lake that's definitely something people are looking for alright let's see here I've got some basement stuff but this this home already has it's already on a basement let's see what happens if I take the basement away let's see if that causes anything to happen with our count if I take the basement away we lose two buyers okay this is an argument that I've had with appraisers before that the basement I've had appraisers tell me that basements are worth less than above grade square footage and that's simply not true that that is on multiple multiple levels that is objectively not true the market and this is anywhere in Greenville County there are more people wanting a basement than there are people that don't want a basement that's just the reality of the situation appraisers need to need to figure that out need to adjust their way of doing business accordingly but that's neither here nor there let's look at exterior features okay current exterior features are pretty minimal I just have a porch front porch tilt out windows and vinyl aluminum trim not a whole lot going on there let's see what happens if we do an inground pool all right now before I run this frequently people there is this thing that's out there in the ether when it comes to real estate that people think that in ground pools are hurtful for a home value and I generally speaking have found that to not be the case I found it to be the opposite actually that they help home values in the Greenville area cause we don't have a ton of pool houses particularly at affordable price points like the below $500,000 price point so let's see what happens let's see if we're at a at above or below 168 hits oh yes way above 190 so we gained basically what close to 20% something like that by adding a pool 20% more buyers by adding a pool people want pools they want in ground pools now what I'm curious about is what if I do an above ground pool yeah here we go above ground pool let's just see I I have to I'm sorry listen I've got an above ground pool that's built into my deck alright so no shame so we 167 buyers so there's someone out there out of our original pool of buyers that that is just like under no circumstances do I want an above ground pool that's amazing all right let's see here let's do outdoor kitchen see if people are into outdoor kitchens these days someone's has to specifically search for it nobody's specifically searching for it nobody asked for that so outdoor kitchen that's a classic example of something that is a luxury kind of a luxury item right people aren't necessarily going to search for it but they're going to like it if they see it how about hot tub a lot of homes have hot tubs let's see where we go up or down from 1 68 we stay at 1 68 so people don't care about hot tubs are not adding or they're not inherently adding or taking away value people are taking those case by case how about a full yard sprinkler system ever wonder how much value that adds we're about to find out how many buyers it adds none it has zero buyers nobody was searching for an a a full yard a sprinkler system so I apologize to you if if you have that let's see here in a little bit of feedback okay I think maybe there was like a loose connection there alright let's try RV boat parking see what happens how many people are looking for RV slash boat parking takes us up to 1 69 so one person is added specifically looking for that how about how the OK let's look at solar panels least solar panels we'll start with that and then we'll do owned solar panels see if there's any difference least solar panels we're still right at 1 68 so nobody has ruled them out nobody has ruled them in let's look at own solar panels see if that makes any difference owned solar panels doesn't make any difference we're still at 1 68 so people are not solar is just not on people's radar right now they're not really thinking about it they're not in they're not asking for it they're also not currently ruling it out garage now one thing that's interesting about this home is that it has a a detached 2 car garage let's see what happens if I change it to an attached 2 car garage and there's actually two places where I have to change this alright so I just changed that in those two places and we go from one 68 168 buyers to 179 buyers okay so not a huge difference but that is a noticeable difference that's you know what about an 8% different something like that maybe not quite that much not quite that much but a noticeable difference from 1 68 to 179 definite obvious preference for attached garages versus detached garages I think I figured out the feedback that I'm hearing I think it has to do with my headset I don't think it has to do specifically with the with the sound so hopefully you guys aren't hearing that feedback that I have coming in here alright changing it back to the detached two car garage okay let's see here what else do we want to play around with here let's look at interior features so the current interior features I have are disappearing attic stairs cable available ceiling fans smooth ceiling granite countertops open floor plan pantry closet and there's a whole lot more that I can include in here let's see what happens if I change it to a walk in pantry right that's one of those things I could see people specifically having as their search criteria but they don't okay it's still at 1:00 68 alright so people are not specifically searching for walk in pantries versus closet pantries alright so that's good that's good if you have a a closet pantry let's see let's see if there are people specifically searching for split floor plans split floor plan in case you don't know it's when the primary bedroom is kind of on a different side of the home than the guest bedrooms nobody nobody's asking for that that's not it we stayed at 168 for that didn't help didn't hurt let's see here we'll do second living quarters here in a second oops let's do 9 foot ceilings okay let's see if that makes any difference here takes us to 169 so we had we added one buyer by putting 9 foot ceilings in there alright let's do second living quarters this is this would be like if you had an in law suite or something like that kind of a niche field I don't know okay yeah it took us up a little bit from one 68 to one 74 we added six buyers that are looking for something like that whether it's for multi generational living whether it's for you know maybe you know short term and mid term rentals something like that added a few buyers that's worthwhile primary bedroom features so we currently have a full bath primary on 2nd level you know it's funny we changed before the primary on main level and it didn't do anything but I didn't change it here I forgot to change it here so actually that's gonna be the first thing that I do so anyway we got primary on second level multiple closets shower only and then other see remarks I'm going to change it here now from primary on second level to primary on main and see if maybe this is the field that realtors are searching for when they're setting up their searches for clients only wanting primary on main level and yeah it is we went up from 168 buyers to 198 buyers OK so forget what I said before there for whatever reason there are sometimes multiple places where these fields are redundant and this was an example we just went up we gained 20% more buyers by having the primary on the main level versus the primary on the second level that is a big deal that is a very very big deal and so yeah I think before when I changed it I I don't know I've already changed so many things I'm losing track I apologize if it had made a big difference before when I changed it and I just forgot yeah forget it haha let's do I so the current house does not have a walk in closet let's add a walk in closet and just see what happens again I I changed it back to primary on 2nd level walk in closet doesn't do anything people are not searching for walk in closets kind of interesting kind of interesting maybe there's kind of a general Assumption that that the home will have that or maybe people are just like you know I don't want to specifically search for that and then you know rule out other homes that have multiple closets or maybe ample closets that just aren't walk in let's look at specialty rooms okay let's look at hmm there's a lot of options here let's look at office if I have an office in here let's see if that bumps us up from 1 68 it does to one 77 that's noticeable that that's a noticeable difference so having an office slash study is a good thing what about sunroom people love their sunrooms but it doesn't make a difference we're still at 168 buyers with the sunroom that's fascinating very very fascinating I'm gonna do something different here I wanna see if I change it to an office and then bump us down to three bedrooms all right and so basically what I'm saying is I'm saying that one of the bedrooms is an office functionally I'm gonna see if this takes us up or down I have no idea what's about to happen I haven't run any of these before so I don't know what's gonna happen okay so getting rid of the fourth bedroom and instead inserting an office took us from 168 buyers to 141 buyers so that's not the move people want the bedroom over the office but all else being equal people would rather have the 4th bedroom and have a dedicated office too alright so let me add that 4th bedroom back in and let me get rid of the office let's see here what about workshop I could see the workshop getting us some hits how valuable are workshops didn't make a difference 168 just for kicks let's try let's try Wine Cellar I'm just kind of curious wine cellar does it add or subtract well it's not gonna subtract yeah it's just that we're still at 1 68 nobody's searching in this area at this price point for wine cellars okay let's just do a few more of these and then I'm gonna let you guys go but I think you've gotten a good sense for you know okay what are some of the things that are valuable what are some of the things that are not valuable and I can actually use this tool in real time you know if I have a potential seller client that's interested if I enter all of this information in I can actually tweak all of this to specifically answer you know these questions they're like well what if I add a workshop okay is that gonna add any value to the home well it does is it but is it going to actually add buyers to the home that's kind of a different question right because a a feature that that doesn't add buyers to your home might make your home more attractive to the buyers that are interested but really the best features are the ones that actually add buyers right those are the ones that truly do add value let's see if there's is a difference for this is gonna be the last one that I do water heater okay so currently it's an electric water heater let's see if I change it to gas if people care about gas over electric if that's like a specific search that people have it's not okay but let's try one more thing let's say that it's gas and tankless see if see if people care about tankless nope nobody is searching for that not in this area at least so if you've got as in is my case an electric not tankless a big old tank water heater people don't care about that people are willing to take that nobody at this point in time is clamoring for a gas tankless water heater I'm gonna do one more alright I said that was gonna be it but I wanna do one more so for the for the flooring in this home it's only wood and ceramic tile hardwood and ceramic tile flooring what I am going to do is I'm going to add carpet as an option and I just wanna see if there is anyone that specifically wants or doesn't want carpet nope that keeps us at 168 so nobody is ruling out or specifically asking for a carpet at least for a home like this so there you go that hopefully gives you a sense of first off how we can actually use the Multiple Listing service and and the different ways that that we do it also gives you a sense of what are some of the things that are valuable right the primary being on the main level versus 2nd level super valuable having a lake on your house obviously valuable having a pool valuable like there were several things that that we went down the road there you know being one level versus being a tri level home valuable and so these are the sorts of things and you know probably a lot of the people that are actually searching for those primary bedrooms on the main level maybe they don't even do that search specifically maybe they are doing the search for well we're just only looking for one level homes right and that's their way of doing functionally saying we want the primary bedroom on the main level because we want everything on the main level right so I hope that that was informative for you guys and helpful these are some of the things that as the market has shifted I've started to get more creative with how I'm looking at my listings how I'm how I'm pricing homes how I'm assessing you know updates that people can do to their homes you can't just do it the way we've always done it you've got to stay on the cutting edge and so I'm finding new ways to do that and I hope you guys found that helpful and informative so thank you so much for watching or for listening please like rate review subscribe to the show Selling Greenville and please contact me via my contact information it's in the show notes if you need a realtor if you just want to talk shop talk about the show I'm always happy to do that so thank you guys so much for watching or listening we will talk again next time!