What is My Floating Home Worth?

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We have helped 145 floating home sellers and 105 floating home buyers.

Our internet presence brings more floating home buyers than any other online real estate portal.  We talk with floating home buyers every day.  We show buyers floating homes of all different types, styles and sizes, in a variety of moorages nearly every day of the week. We know what they want. We know what their questions are.  We hear their comments and reactions to hundreds of floating homes.

All this information helps us greatly in helping our sellers sell their floating homes faster and at the right price.

We have helped 145 floating home sellers so far, let us help you.

We are the only team on the river which specializes in floating homes which means faster response times and higher quality service.  Because we can also handle the purchase of your next house on land, our Single-Point-Of-Contact service streamlines the process so you don’t miss deadlines or communication from a variety of stakeholders which can otherwise place your deals at risk.

We offer no-commitment answers to your most pressing questions such as “when is the right time to sell?”  We provide an exclusive monthly Floating Home Market Report so that you can track trends about pricing and what is selling in the Portland Metro floating home community.

You won’t find any other real estate brokers with the background and financial negotiation experience that we possess.  Put our expertise and resources to work for you and put more money in your pocket to start your next adventure.

We understand how to market your largest asset.

Don’t leave your equity to chance with just any broker.  We understand the value of owned slips, the importance of educating first time floating home buyers, and have the marketing tools to get your home seen and sold.

Our Marketing Strategy Gets Your House Sold.

Pricing Strategy Options

Every client is unique.  Some clients want to sell fast.  Others need the highest price.  For each goal, there is a different strategy we employ to help you achieve it.  We have developed tool to help us determine your risk tolerance and customize the best pricing strategy to achieve your goals.

Top Placement in Online Searches

95% of buyers use the internet to search for houses.  Our strategy is to place your home at the top of those searches where it will receive 3-4 times the amount of online traffic that other houses see.  Our online portals show up on the first page of Google for every search related to floating houses.

Targeted Email Marketing

Being in the floating home business for 24 years, we’ve met a few people and have an email list of over 2,000 interested buyers who have signed up to see what is coming on the market. We send email blasts to interested floating home buyers as well as our network of 1,500 brokers to let them know your house is available.

Professional Imagery Package

We offer professional photography, videography and 3-D virtual tours.  Drone service is standard because we understand that we are marketing not just your house, but its prime waterfront location. 3-D virtual tours give buyers a chance to experience the layout so they know if it will work for them before they take up your time with a showing.

Just Listed Postcards

Floating home owners don’t really move their homes when they outgrow them.  They tend to buy new floating homes.  We also recognize the floating home owners have a few friends that would love to live the floating home lifestyle.  Our graphics department designs custom postcards that we send to every floating home owner so they will be notified right away when your home comes on the market.

Instagram-Worthy Signage

Our “made-you-look” signage was designed to catch your attention.  We place our signage at the street like everyone does, but we also place it on the dockside of your house so that neighbors are notified there is an opportunity to purchase as well as signage on the waterside so that we don’t miss an interested buyer.

Custom Blog Posts

Our site is the most comprehensive, one-stop, online presence for all things floating homes.  We are the top provider of floating home information in the area. A large segment of our subscribers are potential buyers who are waiting for their perfect home to become available.  We dedicate a blog post to every home that is listed with us so that potential buyers are notified as soon as the listing goes live.

Social Media Marketing

Your listing will show up in ads on social media.  According to the National Association of Realtors, for the 3rd straight year, the largest segment of home buyers were millennials – 36% of all home buyers.  Millennials and others use social media and appreciate the crowd-sharing options that social media offers. We market on a variety of social media platforms to ensure that we reach the widest possible audience.

Designer Print Materials

Our graphics department designs in-home marketing materials and leave-behinds for buyers that continue sell the home long after the showing ends and they are at home.  Permaflyers adorn our street posts so that drive-by interested buyers can be inspired to make the inquiry.

The greatest satisfaction comes from selling your home for the most money possible.

When you work with us, it’s all about YOU and YOUR goals.

Our approach is that we will listen to your story, assess where you are financially, what your real estate goals are, and we will use our experience to advise you along the way, help you to learn what to look out for, protect your interests, reduce your risks, and caution you when things don’t seem quite right.  Our financial background allows us to evaluate the market and your position, and guide you through every step of the selling process where other less-savvy brokers tend leave money on the table.

We have a 3-tiered approach depending on if you want to sell your house fast, sell it for the most money possible or somewhere between.

Typically, we find the greatest satisfaction to the seller is selling their home for the most money possible, and selling it fast is a close second.

We have found that the least amount of satisfaction from a seller perspective is a result of a broker who “is a really nice guy” and tells you everything you want to hear, instead of giving you the facts.  We see overpriced houses all the time and they languish on the market for months, sometimes, years, and the broker doesn’t have the courage to tell the seller that the house is overpriced.

Don’t just put a sign up and list your home with any Realtor®. Entrust the sale of your floating home with the team who strives to ensure your success and owns the front door to every search tool that prospective floating home buyers use to find the floating home of their dreams.

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 interested buyers seeking floating homes.  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.  Talking with buyers who inquire online helps us understand what buyers of floating houses want and don’t want, which helps us help you with the sale of your floating home.

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

We are NOT your typical brokers.

Everyone begins their home selling process confident that they will move onto something better. They understand that those dreams start with selling their home and they begin to look around for real estate broker recommendations. Everyone knows a realtor – your dog-groomer’s sister, your brother-in-law or that guy who sits near you every Sunday at the sports bar and cheers for your team. All too often, real estate brokers are chosen because they are a friend you trust or a relative you know, or just simply fun to be around during the home listing process, while sometimes lacking credibility, experience or the business acumen to see the deal through.

John is not your typical real estate agent. He is your full-time advisor working diligently to help you achieve your financial goals through your real estate transaction. It’s like having your own MBA in your back pocket to negotiate on your behalf at every step in the process.

At the end of the day, however, it is the structure of the deal and the money exchanged which determine whether the deal actually closes. We have closed deals that, literally, could not have closed without our ability to think creatively through nontraditional financing and contract alternatives while negotiating tenaciously to achieve our client’s goals.

It’s in the ability to close the deal with the most money possible in your pocket which provides the most satisfaction to the seller.

Why would you give your dog-groomer’s brother or your sister-in-law control of the most valuable asset in your portfolio?

Whether it’s your first time selling property or your tenth, the process of selling a floating home is different than selling home on land.  Without an expert floating home real estate broker to represent you and your interests, you can end up with someone who doesn’t understand the floating home market and the value of what you have.

Contact us anytime.

The Top Floating Home Real Estate Team Serving The Portland Metro Area

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FLOATING HOMES SOLD
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FLOATING HOMEOWNERS CREATED
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OREGON MARINAS SERVED

We help clients with homes on land and water.

Our clients appreciate that we have the expertise to help them sell their floating homes, and also help them purchase their home on land as well.  Single-Point-Of-Contact service for both transactions streamlines the process and means less time our clients spend communicating with various stakeholders and less room for miscommunication or missed deadlines.

Our Clients Say

“Thank you for all of the professionalism you and John showed throughout a difficult transaction. Your diligence in keeping the transaction moving forward, in spite of a difficult buyer, was much appreciated.”

TIM DEGGENDORFER • HOME SELLER - JANTZEN BEACH MOORAGE

“Bob and I want to thank you and Graham for selling our house so quickly.  The pictures of our home were beautiful.  We appreciated all the information you gave us, and guiding us through the actual sales process.  We will and have recommend you to others.”

ROBERT & JACQUELINE KENNEDY • HOME SELLER - DIKESIDE MOORAGE

“Fuzz was incredibly helpful in my home buying process. I got into the floating home market knowing very little. He made time to get to know me and made time to help me understand my options.  It took me a few months, but he stuck with me and found me an awesome spot, in a great community on the channel. I feel very lucky to have him as a realtor, neighbor and friend. If it ever comes time to sell my place, Fuzz would be my first choice in agents.”

ANDY, HOME BUYER, WAPATO MOORAGE

“We want to express our thanks to the team of Graham Marden and John McPherson for their expertise in selling our floating home.  They answered all our concerns, helped set the right price, and have allowed us to move on to the next chapter of our lives.  There were some late night phone calls and text exchanges, but they were always there to answer our questions.  This team knows the Portland floating home market and were very glad we chose them as our agents.”

JIM SPEER • HOME SELLER - MACADAM BAY CLUB

Our Approach to Real Estate is Different

Most real estate agents come from a sales background, they are “yes” men and women who will tell you whatever you want to hear in order to secure the listing. Their goal is to complete a transaction quickly so they can move onto the next deal, regardless of whether or not the seller wants to sell fast or at the highest price.  The pricing strategy for selling fast is very different from the strategy for selling high.  We’ve seen houses listed too low and sell fast, but if it had been priced higher and the seller had the patience to wait an extra month or two, the end result could have been more money in the pocket of the seller.  Being in tune with what is going on in the market and using data and facts to drive our pricing decisions and strategies can go a long way toward protect you and your investment.

We see the relationship between the seller and their agent as something more than a means to a paycheck. Using a well-informed, consultative, communicative approach, we maximize the value we bring to you, not by luring you in with chats about your favorite sports teams, but by listening to your wants, needs, and goals, educating you about the process and pitfalls to avoid and collaborating with you to develop a strategy to achieve your goals by relying on our guidance, expertise and deep negotiation experience to fight for you and you alone. We consider the sale successful only when you have closed the best deal that could be made to get what you want. We believe that it isn’t just about closing the deal…it’s about getting you there with the most money in your pocket and with the least amount of risk so you can move on to your next adventure in the best position possible.

Our Network

Portland Floating Homes is a part of The Portland Team, a real estate team with Premiere Property Group, LLC. The Portland Team partner network serves the Portland metropolitan area including Portland, Lake Oswego, West Linn, Sherwood, Tigard, Beaverton, Aloha, Hillsboro, Forest Grove, Cornelius, Gresham, Scappoose, Warren, St. Helens, Columbia City, and Deer Island.  Premiere Property Group, LLC is the largest real estate brokerage in Oregon and SW Washington with over 1,000 agents, eleven offices, and over 2 billion dollars in local real estate sales annually.

CFA® and Chartered Financial Analyst® are registered trademarks owned by CFA Institute.

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