David Sporn is a broker associate with Coldwell Banker in Miami Beach.
Every week, we ask a Miami real estate professional for their thoughts on the top three stories from the week before.
This week, we talked with David Sporn, a residential specialist with more than 30 years of experience. An expert in the Grove Isle and Coconut Grove markets, David also has extensive knowledge of the Miami Beach and South Dade markets, and his success in those marketplaces has earned him an induction into the International President’s Premier designation, which is reserved for the top 1 percent of all Coldwell Banker NRT sales associates nationwide.
Miami Agent (MA): We cover the syndication sites quite often; do you use any of the “Big Three,” meaning Zillow, Trulia or realtor.com, for your business? And how effective do you find them?
David Sporn (DS): We use those sites, plus ColdwellBanker.com and 575 other sites, but the “Big Three” are the major sites that you get hits from.
Ninety percent of buyers start their search online and while these sites provide information for the consumer, the most qualified buyers are repeat and referral customers and people with whom I’ve had long term relationships.
I believe in having a major presence online, including social media; the more information that’s out about you – as long as it’s good information – is positive for your business.
MA: We’ve been working on some stories about home improvement projects – the most common projects among homebuyers, the most in-demand improvement professionals, etc. – when it comes to your clients, what improvement projects are the most common in preparation for the listing of the property?
DS: There is a lot of landscape work, particularly with lawns and adding flowers for color, and sometimes just painting. The focus is really on making the house look fresh. Also, buyers want to picture themselves in the house, so it is helpful to remove personal items and keep it clean and open. Take a look at a new development and how they stage. That’s the look you want.
We also have clients un-clutter; that’s a major issue. Say a house has quite a few closets. If they’re all filled, buyers will think, ‘Wow, I don’t have any room in this house.’ Whereas, even if you’re selling an apartment without much closet space, but you un-clutter its closets completely, it makes it look much more spacious and more appealing to buyers.
MA: Our most recent ‘Inside Edition’ feature was ‘Can You Live Without the MLS?’ Is that a prospect you could ever manage for your business?
DS: Absolutely not. That’s 100 percent no – not even a chance. We have a great Realtor board and a great MLS.
It’s super user-friendly for us to find information. For instance, say a Realtor puts in an address wrong or the area wrong. If you try to pull up the property, it’s not going to come up. But our MLS has a mapping system, so all I have to do is draw a line around a specific area, and every single property in that area is going to show up. So that way, even if the Realtor screwed up on their input, I’m still going to get the property. And that’s important, because otherwise, you could not show your client a property because of someone else’s error – and technical errors happen all the time.
Our MLS also has an “Auto Notification” program, which all my clients are signed up for. The second that the exact property they are looking for is entered into the system, it emails them information about the property and photos of the property, which is amazing. And it emails me too, allowing me to call the client and follow-up with them.