Kerri Naslund-Monday's (kerrinaslund-monday) Blog

There is a specific type of home in the Bay Area that gets undervalued constantly.Not because it isn't wonderful. Because it gets marketed wrong.It's the home with the drought-tolerant landscaping that the seller spent two years cultivating. The one with the solar panels and the reclaimed wood fe...

I want to tell you about a seller I worked with in Rockridge.She had bought her home twelve years earlier ... mid-thirties, climbing fast in her career, newly partnered, focused on the things that felt important at that stage of life. Good address. Impressive finishes. The kind of house that phot...

I bought my first property in 2000. I got my license in 2005.Which means I walked into this industry approximately two years before the market fell apart in a way that nobody saw coming and everybody claimed to have predicted afterward.I did not predict it. I want to be very clear about that. I w...

I want to talk about what happens before the sign goes in the yard.Not staging. Not photography. Not the listing description ... although all of that matters and we will absolutely get there. I want to talk about the conversation that should happen weeks before any of that ... the one that most s...

I want to tell you about a buyer who lost four offers in a row.Four. In Oakland, in a competitive stretch of market, four consecutive offers that didn't win. Each one hurt a little more than the last. By offer number four she was calling me from her car in a parking lot somewhere in the Laurel Di...

There is a moment in almost every transaction where the client wobbles.Sometimes it happens at the inspection. Sometimes it's when the appraisal comes back and the number isn't what anyone expected. Sometimes it's completely unprompted ... a Sunday night spiral where they start questioning everyt...

Let me tell you what happens when a seller leads with the wrong thing.I was working with a seller in the Laurel District ... wonderful woman, meticulous about the home, genuinely proud of what she'd built there over fifteen years. But she had gotten in her head about the one thing the house didn'...

I want to tell you about a couple I worked with in Alameda.Two architects. Which ... I will tell you right now ... is both a blessing and a curse when it comes to buying a home. The blessing is that they understood space and light and proportion in a way most buyers don't. The curse is that they ...

Every agent has one.The transaction that makes you question every decision you've ever made, wonder if you chose the wrong career, and develop a very personal relationship with the concept of escrow timelines.For some agents it comes early. For others it sneaks up in year two or three when they'v...

I want to talk about overpricing.Not in a vague, theoretical way. In a this-is-what-actually-happens-and-it-costs-real-money way.I've had this conversation more times than I can count. A seller comes in with a number in their head. Sometimes it came from Zillow. Sometimes it came from what their ...