Selling Your Home in 85718

Speaker: Michael Oliver, Oliver Realty
Topic: 85718 Catalina Foothills Market Analysis

Hi, this is Michael Oliver with Oliver Realty. If you are selling a home in the Catalina Foothills, 85718 zip code, you need to be aware of a massive gap in the market right now.

The median asking price for active homes is 1.25 million, but the median sold price is actually 883,000. That tells us there is a lot of aspirational pricing out there that buyers just aren't accepting.

And we've seen that quite a bit in the marketplace. The buyers are just... pulling back isn't quite the best way to say it, but being more selective about where they're going to invest their money.

When you're in the 85718 zip code, you know, it's like the pinnacle zip code in the Tucson Metro. It's the, I guess you'd say kind of like the flagship. If you were out in the ocean with a bunch of boats, your 85718 is going to be the last boat going down.

So, you know, we've always thought about that. I think the buyers think about it in the same sort of mindset—like this is one of the safest, if not the safest zip code to park my money in. And the homes, consequently, are some of the finest, fanciest, most expensive in all of Arizona. You know, definitely in the Tucson area overall, this zip code commands a lot of high-end demand. And there's others in the Tucson area, it's not just this zip code, but it's definitely accurate to say this is the most expensive zip code in Tucson.

So, the reality is right now the average home in 85718 is taking 70 days to sell. So if you're not pricing correctly, you're going to be joining the active inventory that on average, the active inventory has been sitting on the market for 97 days. So think about that. The homes that are selling are taking 70 days, but what's not selling, the average is at 97. So that's 27 additional days to not even sell.

So that's what I'm talking about. It's not buyers are pulling back so much as they're just not buying everything under the sun. There's not that demand pressure that really pushes buyers into homes like there had been for probably the last several years. And that's what we're seeing.

So at Oliver Realty, we do a lot of things differently. Our approach is totally different. You know, we look at a lot of luxury brands and study them and understand why and how are they doing what they're doing and what does that look like from a pricing standpoint.

So when Rolex, you know, sells their watches, they're getting an insane amount of money, you know, compared to a Timex or even an Omega. So what are they doing and why is that happening? Why is the market responding in the way that it is? And so that's how we think about selling homes.

You know, certain homes, certain neighborhoods, certain views, certain architectural styles are just going to have a higher premium attached. And how high that premium can go is... sometimes just unknown. It's almost unknowable. What's a certain view worth? What is a certain neighborhood, you know, where you can live two streets away from your mom who is getting elderly, what's that worth?

And so these are the questions that we're always constantly asking ourselves with each client that we take on is: what's going on here and what is going to be the levers that really push the value and the pricing power of this specific home to the highest levels possible? So that's what we're doing at Oliver Realty.

It's not as simple as 1, 2, 3. You know, a lot of it is subjective, a lot of it is experience-based. A lot of it is looking at it, inverting it, and looking at it from the buyer standpoint, which is very tricky to do. If you're a buyer, you're looking for a house, especially if it's a million-dollar, two-million-dollar house, you're... you don't need a two-million-dollar house. You know, you want one maybe, but it's not exactly a need at that point.

So at what... at what price point and what features and what intrinsic features of that property, whether it's the view or the privacy or, or it could be several things, what is, what does that look like to you? And to you, it's going to look like one thing, but to another buyer, it's going to be a little bit different. And to another buyer, it could be very different.

So that's constantly in our mind. And that's another reason why we do the marketing approach that we do. It's, it's, you know, very sophisticated. But the basic idea is that we are positioning our properties in the market to be the premium, you know, to be the luxury properties.

So we're going to do a custom magazine just about your house, you know, to really sell it. And it's going to have basically like an Architectural Digest type of, you know, feel to it. Premium photos, write-ups. You know, we're going to sell the emotion of the property, not just the sticks and bricks. Because the emotion is what I was going to with... that's why people will spend a lot more money on a Rolex versus a Timex. It makes them feel something. You know, right or wrong, that emotion is valuable to those who can command it.

So again, we've sold some recent homes in 85718. Uh, sold a house on Sutherland Ridge... sold that one for full price... took a couple days. Um, sold another one on Placita Amanecer. Uh, took four days on that one, sold that one for full price. Um, and there's been a lot of other ones, but those are just the, you know, kind of recents.

So I know what we're doing is, you know, making a difference. And, you know, this zip code, 85718 specifically, is where you really see the, you know, the more sophisticated buyers. No buyer really just wants to pay full price. You know, they all want to kind of get a deal. They all want to test the seller's will to sell. You know, that's just normal. That's normal business.

So to be able to get these buyers up to these high price points, you know, I think definitely speaks volumes to what, you know, we're doing at Oliver Realty to position our properties and create a leverage in the marketplace that makes the buyers realize that, you know, they're not... they're not settling. They're getting what they want and then some, and that's what makes the pricing not as big of an object.

You know, a lot of people want to argue about price and, you know, "I need a better price, I need a lower price, I need..." you know, whatever. But it's all price-based. But when you're selling a home, for sure, you really don't want to bargain in the price arena. You want to bargain in the emotional arena. I guess if you're a buyer, then you don't want to talk about how good the views are and how private the property is and how quiet it is and, you know, how you can see the hawks soar right outside your living room window. I mean, you don't want to talk about any of that because that's... that's going to cost you a lot of money.

But one thing you can always run to is "the price is too high." You know, "You haven't sold it yet, so that means that nobody wants this place and the price is just way, way out of reality." And so again, that's part of what you hire a realtor for. That's... that's their job more so than your job as a seller. But it's something to pay attention to is: what realtors, what real estate brokerages can really unlock that? And which can leverage the advantages that your property has to the buyer profiles that are going to want that type of property?

And what I mean by that is, you know, properties with pools, properties, you know, that have extensive maintenance, uh, properties that, you know, are brand new on the other side of the coin. You know, they all are going to attract a little bit different buyer profile so you need to understand what type of property you have and then consequently, who is that going to match up with the best because the best matches are going to be the ones that generally speaking also unlock the most value.

You know, there's a lot of people that would buy a house really cheap just because it's really cheap and they'll figure out what to do with it later. That's not what you want. You know, you don't want someone looking for a deal of a lifetime when they're buying a house. You want somebody that really understands what they're getting and even though they, you know, they understand it's also a high price, they're still getting what they're paying for. They're not, you know, getting a bad bill of goods.

So again, it always kind of goes back to that point. Basically, buyers in the 85718 zip code are sophisticated. You know, they're definitely looking for specific triggers, whether it's the District 16 schools, you know, we talked about views, an unobstructed Finger Rock view is a premium, again. And if whoever you have isn't providing the marketing to explicitly sell those features, you're likely going to end up selling for 96% or less of your list price. And that's the current market average right now in the Catalina Foothills 85718 zip code.

So, you know, if you want to be the one that, you know, gets your home sold faster, you know, and gets those higher prices that we think that we've been delivering for quite a few of the 85718 sellers... or you can scroll down and check out our sold portfolio and then you can see some of our work. But if you have questions or if you want to, you know, hire us to get your property sold, again, it's Michael Oliver. And our phone number, you can give me a call at 520-800-8922 and we can discuss the strategy that would be most appropriate for the property that you have. And like I said, we're going to get into all those tertiary fit and features of your property so that we can understand how to unlock that value because we know it... we know it does matter.

So anyways, thanks again. Give us a call if you have questions and be happy to help you out.