The story of a successful Luxury Referral…
I received a call from an agent in Concord, a suburb north of Boston asking me about my experience in Needham. Since I had been living and selling Real Estate in Needham for over 12 years, I assured her I could handle any referral. A few days later, I met Martha in her art studio above the garage in their home. I toured the house, the amazing grounds, and the extensively filled garage. Martha was a little anxious about getting this home ready to sell and they were considering buying something that needed a ton of work. In addition to her full time job, she couldn’t imagine doing more. I assured her I would take care of everything and get her the best price possible for their home.
After meeting her husband Ben a week later, we decided that the home needed way too much work and wasn’t really going to be attractive to an end-user with the 3 bedrooms and 1 very outdated bathroom. Since the house sat on almost a half-acre of land and was a close walk into Needham Center, I explained that the builders in Needham would be clamoring for it and I would handle the bids.
Pleasant St. in Needham is zoned single family on one side of the street and multi-family on the other. Knowing the builders would pay more if there was any way they could put up two houses instead of one, we all set out to do as much research as we could. Unfortunately, this home was on the single family side and even after trips to the Historical Society to try to see if way back in the past, it could have been multi-family, we were out of luck and needed to get the house sold so Ben and Martha could move on.
I began with some Facebook marketing to places where people relocate from-especially Greenwich CT as GE was just moving to Boston. I made beautiful mini brochures using the architectural rendering of the home that was to be built through my Luxury Marketing account at Merrill and distributed them accordingly. I wrote up a spec sheet, 
began showings and called for offers on March 17, 2016. The luck of the Irish was with us that day and we were able to get Ben and Martha one of the highest selling prices that any builder has paid for a lot in Needham to date–$805,000! They managed to move out all their stuff within a few months and Elite Builders got started. They worked on the house until January of 2017 and then asked me to list the property. It was only framed, but luckily we found buyers with vision, and it was under agreement in 9 days. The asking price was $1,989,000.00. for three finished floors of space including 4 bedrooms, 4.5 bathrooms, a guest suite on the first floor and a gorgeous flat half-acre of yard. The average days on market for homes in Needham at this price is 180!
The perfect buyers came with a buyer’s agent from another KW office in Westwood. They were relocating and have two boys who could walk to their new schools who really loved the yard! They decided to finish the basement with another guest room, a workout room and another bath so the construction took a bit longer than expected but finally in June, 2017 the family closed on the house for $2,061,000.00 and moved in!
This is a story of a very successful Luxury Referral. An agent in Concord referred me to a nice family. Because of my expertise in this market I was able to show them that despite their affection for their home, selling to a builder yielded them more profit and less headaches than trying to clean it up for an end-user. The builder also made a sizeable profit and both the referring agent and I had a nice payday!
If you know of a nice family in the Boston area who needs an experienced agent who can help determine whether they should fix up their home, sell to a builder or sell as-is, please call me and let me help them! It is my pleasure to be of any assistance possible. Thank you!
For more pictures of this beautiful property, click here.
