What is the highest home sales record in Pasadena?

BTH sold 1340 Fairlawn in Pasadena- a beautiful midcentury modern- for $4,650,000.00- $650,000.00 over asking price, and in so doing, had the highest sale of a 3 bedroom house in the entire city for the year 2024. This was no accident; it was the result of meticulous research and planning, lots of prep work, and a very specific way of running the marketing and running the deal, all of which came together and resulted in a record-breaking price. This is a short article on how we did it. We hope that any potential seller reading this will realize that all agents are not the same, and, there is way more to selling a property than throwing it up on the MLS. We strive to be the best listing agents in Los Angeles, and we like to think this result helps us to fulfill that goal.*

STEP 1: LOTS OF DUE DILIGENCE AND FACT GATHERING.
Our seller client inherited the house, and along with it, boxes and boxes of documents and records connected to the house, dating back to the mid 2000s. We went through all of these, to find out exact answers to likely questions that buyers always have such as “How old is the roof”; “When was this addition done?” , “When was the plumbing updated?” and even “Who was the architect who did this addition?” [An important question when a house has architectural distinction]
This way, anytime anyone asked us a question, rather than saying “Sorry we don’t know” – as realtors often do, we had concrete answers (usually good ones). Anytime buyers hear “I don’t know”, they assume the worst, or at best, they assume mediocrity. We are proud to say that by the end of going through everything, we reduced the “I don’t knows” to almost nil.

STEP 2: PRE INSPECTIONS AND DISCLOSURES.
We did not want our seller to be surprised in escrow during the inspection process, by a buyer coming up with all sorts of alleged problems found during inspections, and trying to get big discounts based on such issues. So, we did all our own inspections FIRST, and found all potential issues with the house, and we disclosed all our inspections and issues up front to potential buyers, before the buyers finalized their purchase offers. This way, any buyers offering were doing so with knowledge of all the issues in our inspection reports- and thus, these buyers could not ask for any discounts for any of those things later on. If these buyers wanted to ask for any repairs or discounts, they would have to find entirely new things to use as a basis.
This method, while it costs some time and money up front, takes quite a bit of uncertainty out of the transaction, as it blunts (or eliminates entirely) the most powerful tool the buyer has to get discounts from the seller, namely inspections / gripes about property condition, which are often used to get concessions and discounts from the Seller during the sale process.
The buyer here did not get one single dollar discounted for repairs or property condition.

STEP 3: HIGH LEVERAGE REPAIRS AND FIXES OF PROPERTY ISSUES PRIOR TO SALE
Once we did all the pre-inspections and figured out every issue with the property, we hand-picked issues to deal with ourselves, prior to actually marketing the property, and performed certain high leverage upgrades / repairs to the property, which cost a few dollars on the front end, but resulted in massive returns on the back end. A non-comprehensive list of these things is:
• Replacement and remediation of drywall, which was damaged from a shower leak from years prior. This was a must as a wall stain does not look good, and the fix is not that expensive;
• Refinished Hardwood Floors. Hardwood floors look amazing when refinished, and not as amazing when they are showing age. Refinishing floors costs very little and changes the entire vibe of a house. This was a no brainer;
• New Rugs. New rugs are easy high-leverage improvements, Old rugs look bad and new ones change everything, often for $1000 or less. These were also a no brainer;
• Painted entire house. Another thing that changes the entire vibe- and we almost always recommend doing this if seller is willing to;
• Replacement of old fixtures and hardware. Whether it is old light fixtures, old cabinet pulls, old faucets or showerheads- we recommend replacing any old fixtures with brand new ones. Nice new light fixtures can be as low as $75 each- and cabinet pulls are $3-8 each. And these all make a house look significantly better;
• Landscaping: This is another thing that is not expensive, but changes everything. Some people skip the outside, but we think it’s very important. Just buying a few bags of smooth stones and spreading them in the right place can make a real difference;
• Handyman fixes, so everything works and nothing seems broken. We went through the house and identified every small thing that wasn’t working and made it work. We recommend doing this any time a house is sold. A sliding door that doesn’t open or slide properly, drawers which are loose and off their tracks, a toilet seat with broken hinges. These are small issues, sure, but stack up a few of them and all of a sudden, the house becomes “not in great shape” in the mind of the buyer. Which is a totally different vibe than “turnkey”. We recommend remedying all small handyman issues (and we did here).

We oversaw all the work ourselves using our own vendors, to make sure it was all done up to our standards.

STEP 4: PROPER STAGING, DECORATING;, LIVING SPACES THE NIGHT BEFORE PHOTO SHOOT.
We have many relationships with expert stagers and decorators, and reached out to multiple companies, to give us bids on the property, and explain their vision of what the property should look like/how they would stage it.
We oversaw the whole process, and after a couple of rounds of staging and re-staging, the company declared themselves “done.” The photo-shoot was the next day.
We ended up at Living Spaces the night before the shoot, to get some things we thought the Stagers missed, including a large area rug, which we schlepped in ourselves, and put down ourselves.

STEP 5: PRICING.
Probably one of the most important parts of the art of selling a house is pricing. Sellers want the highest price of course, but, most of the time, the lower listing price will end up in the higher sales price, and vice versa.
When a house is priced high, there is minimal interest, less competition, less fanfare. But when a great house comes onto the market priced under-market- everyone flocks to it. And when they do, they see everyone else flocking too, and ultimately, the result is often exactly what we got- multiple competing offers trying to get the property, and the property ultimately going for $650,000.00 above list price.
Proper pricing is very important. All too often, Sellers believe they are in charge of the final sales price and can control what the house ultimately sells for by setting the price at a certain amount– but that is actually not true,. The market and the buyers dictate the price. The seller can only take such actions as will cause buyers to want to pay more, or take such actions as to make buyers want to pay less.*
In this particular market, there was a strong buyer pool and minimal inventory. Therefore, the strategy of pricing lower to end up higher worked like a charm.

STEP 6: RUNNING THE MARKETING AND RUNNING THE DEAL.
We Called all the local agents to see the place, had a brokers open, a wine and cheese twilight open house (because the views!), a well publicized open house where hundreds of people came, did special night showings for people, among other things. The more attention on a property, the more buzz about a property, the more people want it, plain and simple.
Anyone who has ever bought real estate knows—as a buyer, if we are viewing a property, and nobody else is there, nobody else seems interested- we think to ourselves “gee I wonder how low I can make the seller go, obviously nobody wants this, it’s probably not even that great a deal.”
But, if we go and see 50 other people milling around, whispering to their agents and taking video to share with friends and family- then our mindset becomes “Wow everyone wants this, it must be a great deal- I wonder how much I am going to have to offer in order to beat all these people and get this?”
The two different buyer mindsets are obvious. The first one (“Wonder how low I can chisel the seller down on this?”) is the one you do NOT want your buyers to have, and the second (“Wow everyone is after this, wonder how far over ask I will need to go to get this?”) is the one you want your buyers to have.
The more attention a property has, the more people have mindset #2, the less attention, the more mindset #1 starts to predominate.

CONCLUSION
There are lots of tiny particulars in to running the marketing and the deal, which we do not have space to get into here- and many particulars in all of it. Suffice to say, we know these particulars, and can employ them for you.*
-Richard Evanns

*: Every house and every deal is different, and different methods are used on each, depending on the property, and the market. The above is not guarantee or warranty that any deal will turn out any particular way, or that the any particular method will be used on, or is appropriate for, any particular deal. Each deal must be analyzed individually, and a proper strategy employed.