On signage, and real estate

Gotta hand it to this woman for promoting her house for sale in an unusual way. The sign may not be the greatest and the outfit is, well, unusual... but it got her a photo in the biz section of today's Bulletin and apparently some leads on her property. Lately, I've been zooming the Bend MLS a little bit, just to see what's out there. Like so many others right now, we're sort of flirting with the idea of downsizing, but hate the idea of even thinking about selling our house, which we truly love. But, it's probably a moot point, because not much seems to be selling anyway. Plus we have one little problem: a dog named Weasel who is so sweet and dear, but in her old age hacks and barfs and does things on our carpet. It keeps our carpet cleaning machine in constant use: potential buyers are not likely to be amused.

All that aside, this is what I've noticed in my paltry research. Some brokers have really stepped up their promotional efforts, and give you lots of good photos of houses, with slideshows and sometimes a whole little music/video presentation. Others -- and I can't quite comprehend this -- are still showing photos of houses surrounded by snow, or with date stamps from months ago. How much effort does it take to update a few photos? Because guess what? It's August and if I were actually looking for a house in Bend, I would not want to be reminded of last winter, and what our houses and landscaping looked like then. I want to bask in the light we have right now. And where's the urgency, the specialness, the 'hot property' aspect of a house that has obviously been on the market for a long time?

In our shops, if there's one lone little neglected last bit of a collection we're no longer ordering, no one will buy it. Not even on sale. I had some leftover Votivo candles that we were closing out and put them out on our sidewalk sale at half off. They clearly lost their "buy me!" juju, because nobody wanted them even at half price. Then they got all melty in the sun and now they're hardly even worthy of the donation pile...