Our Marketing Strategy Gets Your House Sold.

Working with John is like having an MBA in your pocket.

No other real estate broker in Oregon has the financial transaction experience John has. It takes a typical real estate broker a year to complete the sales volume that John is accustomed to handling in a single day – negotiating, buying and selling $5,000,000 – $25,000,000 daily in energy commodities.

John has over 20 years of experience in achieving the highest profit possible for the people he works for. Most other brokers act as independent salesmen and come from a culture whose goals are to serve themselves first, and the client comes in second.  Unlike any other real estate broker in Oregon, John, as a Chartered Financial Analyst® charterholder, is required to adhere to the following ethics standards.

The Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA®) Code of Ethics maintains that John must:

• Place the integrity of the profession and the interests of clients above their own interests
• Act with integrity, competence, and respect
• Maintain and develop their professional competence

5-10% of floating house deals fail because of repair issues or financing.  Where other brokers fold at this point in the process, John welcomes the challenge by using his financial creativity and his network to get an un-closeable deal closed.

John doesn’t leave your money on the table – John secures more value out of the your transaction than most real estate brokers can only imagine.

We know most of the people who want to buy or sell on the river…do you want John’s skills working to benefit you or for your buyer’s benefit?

Our floating home websites are the portals which bring buyers.

Our internet presence generates more interested buyers seeking floating homes than any other website.  Buyers contact us and we have a database of thousands of interested buyers who are waiting for their dream floating home to come onto the  market.

Our standing with Google also places your home at the top of search pages so that buyers see our floating home listings first in their searches.

We represent half of ALL floating home sales in Oregon.

This isn’t a gimmick.  The process of selling a floating home is more complex than selling a home on land. It isn’t a job you should leave to someone with little knowledge of the process and the players.

John McPherson lives in a floating home, and he deals in floating homes every day.

John has helped clients buy and sell floating homes in nearly all 60 moorage in the Portland Metro Area!  There is a reason we are the top floating home brokers year after year.  We have seen everything and know all the key players and service providers onto river.  We are part of the community.

We are on the river 365 days a year.

John McPherson lives in a floating home, and he deals in floating homes every day – we are on the river 365 days a year.

We are the only team on the river with expert floating home brokers working for you.  We can achieve more for you and with quicker response times than single brokers working alone.  It is because we are floating home experts and we are part of the largest brokerage in the PNW, that we can provide you with service and value that other single brokers working by themselves from smaller brokerages cannot.

You are going to love our Single-Point-of-Contact Service.

So you want to sell your floating home and look for a house on land.  Or, perhaps you’ve already found a home on land that you love but need to sell your floating home first.

Our clients appreciate that we have the expertise necessary to help them with floating homes, but can also help them buy their homes on land as well.  Our Single-Point-Of-Contact service for both transactions greatly reduces the time you spend communicating with various parties (title companies, brokers, lenders, contractors, etc.) and reduces the risk of miscommunication or missed deadlines when you choose to centralize the sale and purchase of your homes with us.

Our expertise works for you on land or water.

Your time is important.  We don’t waste it.

Your home is not a tourist destination, nor does it serve you to prepare your house for a showing only to find out that the “buyers” were just looking for something to do to entertain themselves on a Sunday.

We understand that the process of buying a floating home is different than buying a home on land.  We thoroughly educate every potential floating home buyer and have the necessary conversations to ensure they are a serious buyer so that we don’t waste your time with showings which go nowhere.

A lot goes into ensuring that a prospective buyer CAN purchase a floating home. Each incoming prospective buyer call to our team, by either a buyer themselves or their inexperienced real estate broker, takes us quite a bit of time ensure that the buyer understands the process and has the means to purchase the home since financing is much more limited.  We make sure casual sightseers don’t waste your time.

A quick visit to our Buyers page and you can see all the time and effort we put into the online education of buyers (not including the phone and in-person work we do) before you go through the all the work of wiping down your sinks, tidying up, and leaving the house for the 1 hour showing in the middle of a prime weekend day on the river.

Avoid these mistakes when selling a floating home:

1. Do NOT hire a real estate broker who has no floating home experience to represent you in a floating home transaction just because they are your friend or your family member.  Do choose a real estate broker who specializes in floating homes.  We’ve said it again and again, and we will say it some more. Choose a broker who understands the process of buying and selling floating homes.  There are only a handful of expert floating home brokers.  There are many more who claim to have expertise but can get you in trouble.  When hiring a broker to help you purchase your floating home, we completely understand that you may not want to work with us.  And that is ok (although we’d really love to represent you).  But, please, choose a broker who specializes in floating homes.
   • We field calls every day from the following buyers:
     • Buyers who have just seen an inexperienced broker’s listing in the RMLS for a floating home at an asking price of $250,000 and are eager to see it, until we explain that the seller’s broker doesn’t understand floating homes and neglected to put in the notes that the house cannot be purchased for under $450,000 because of details the seller’s broker omitted from the listing.  This mistake causes the wrong market segment to view your home and completely misses the people who are searching at your price level.
     • Buyers who are eager to purchase a floating home for sale with an FHA loan because the seller’s broker has no idea about the financial requirements of floating homes and listed FHA loans as an option.
     • Buyers who are eager to see a home listed at $50,000 (“Wow, can this be true?!?), because the seller’s broker said this hoe was fully financeable and neglected to say that the float needed a $120,000 cash infusion on top of the purchase price just to qualify for financing.
   • We see these novice mistakes and many more – and those are just the mistakes made in the way the inexperienced broker listed the property…this doesn’t even address the mistakes that we see through the process which cost their sellers money.
   • The process of selling a floating home is different than selling a home on land. The Buyer Repair Addendum is another key point in the process where you want someone on your side with floating home expertise.  Working in floating homes every day, knowing what repair requests are commonplace and reasonable or not, can save you $10,000 – 20,000, and we know and have relationships with the service providers who can get the work done for you.
   • You can help determine who is an expert and who isn’t by asking the following questions:
     • How long have you lived in Portland? Their answer will help you determine if they have enough familiarity with the area and its waterways.
     • Do you live in a floating home? Their answer will help you determine what kind of experience they have with the process.
       • If you do live in a floating home, did you have any float work done? Their answer will help you determine if they understand float construction, repairs and most importantly, who are the best and trusted licensed float contractors.
     • How many floating home transactions have you represented?  Any answer less than a dozen should inspire you to call the next person on your list.
2. Do NOT hire a discount real estate broker to sell your floating home.  You will most likely give away money to your buyer. Discount brokers typically market that they only charge 4.5%, but in the fine print, that means that 2.25% goes to the broker who brings the buyer.  Floating home brokers can assure you that selling a floating home is more difficult than selling home on land – the process is different, there are more stages of negotiation and more stakeholders involved (HOAs or marina owners, inspectors, etc.) to communicate with. Selling a floating home takes a broker 5 times the amount of phone calls, time and work than selling a home on land. Discount brokers tend to place a sign at your house, put your home in the RMLS, but tend not to answer calls from anyone who brings a buyer.  While the amount that a seller’s broker pays a buyer’s broker is not supposed to influence which homes get shown to the buyers, discount brokers offer buyers broker’s fees which cause a buyer’s broker to work for free and therefore your home does not get the traffic it deserves.  There are currently no expert floating home discount brokers.
3. Do NOT try to sell your floating home by yourself.  We know – it’s so tempting to want to save the fee.  But keep in mind that you will most likely have to pay a buyer’s broker anyway so you are only saving half of the fee…and for what?  Selling a home on land is tricky enough, selling a floating home is far more complex – additional stakeholders, limited financing options, more paperwork required, more inspections, more opportunities to accidentally love money on the table.  Coupled with the data point that it takes us about 25 to 45 minutes to educate every inexperienced floating home buyer or their broker on the process, how everything works (leases, HOAs, rules, floats, financing, etc.),  along with the fact that floating homes tend to get 10-20% tourist factor calls – people who are not actively looking but are just curios about what they are like.  It makes a special kind of buyer to qualify to purchase a floating home – 85% of the inquiries we take from buyers do not qualify to purchase floating homes.  We screen for this and don’t waste your time. Selling a floating home takes a broker 5 times the amount of phone calls, time and work than selling a home on land.  Logic and reason should be screaming at us to run away from this profession, but we are on the river 365 days a year, and love floating homes and the lifestyle it offers.  You won’t get that kind of slice that comes from this passion anywhere else.
4. Do NOT ignore our explanations of how the process is different than buying a  home on land and do NOT sign paperwork you haven’t read.  Surprisingly, many people think they know how to sell a floating house because they have sold plenty of houses on land or they, themselves remembered the process of buying their floating home.  Floating homes are not considered Real Property like houses on land are.  The paperwork is different, the process is different, the requirements are different.  When we review the process and the paperwork with you, pay attention.  So often, we have represented buyers who can’t be bothered to take the time to understand the differences with floating homes even as we are explaining it to them.  It’s ok to say you don’t understand.  It’s ok to say you don’t know something.  We will guide you through it.  You must take the time to understand the process and the documents you are signing.