Category Archives: Marketing

Wigley house sold to Peter Seebach and Jesse Hajiceck

We closed on our house today. Peter Seebach and Jesse Hajicek are the buyers. Details and photos on Locally Grown.

Wigley house 4 sale: closing set for Sept. 14

We have a buyer. Two weeks from today, we close on the house. We’re madly packing, as are the new owners who are moving from St. Paul.

I asked them how they found the house and what they thought of the blog:

What happened was, we hit Google for “northfield mn real estate” or something similar, found an MLS page with a couple of houses we liked, and I kept saying “I dunno, the Linden street one looks really cool”. Anyway, then I did another search with different terms, and the blog came up, and I looked at it — and immediately IMd my spouse to say “hey, look, there’s a blog for that Linden Street house”.

20:21:39 – Woah, they have a blog!
20:28:15 – I’m sold.
20:28:22 – They love that place, and everything got redone in 2006.
20:28:35 – I have written a polite email asking whether we could come have a look at it tomorrow.

We were already leaning towards “the Linden place” a bit, but the blog was absolutely the hook. We then went out to Perkins to sit around worrying that you’d already sold it.

Give us a call for a private showing!

Call for an appointment to view the home anytime at 1016 South Linden, Northfield, MN. (507) 645-6065 or (507) 645 8319

See this Location blog postfor Google satellite/street maps.

It’s easy to find/get here as long as you don’t assume that you’re close if you’re on Linden St on the west side of Highway 3. Linden St is over there, as well. Just think “off Woodley St.” and you’ll be fine.

Summary of the house

Click this PDF flyer for an overview of the house and then click on any of the house categories on the right sidebar (bedrooms, porch, garage, etc) for all our blog entries on those items. Click to enlarge any of these photos.

L to R: front yard of the house in winter, summer, fall

L to R: Kitchen, family room (kitchen in background), living room

L to R: front yard fish pond, porch (about to be rescreened), back yard

L to R: 1st floor BR w/ fireplace, 2nd floor stairs, one of 5 upstairs bedrooms

L to R: 2nd floor bathroom, small 2nd floor bedroom, binders of warranties

(This blog post has been updated since its original date of Feb. 13.)

Open house signs with balloons and spinners

We’ve been surprised how effective our open house signs have been at bringing in people. Robbie combined the signs we got with our Owners.com listing with ones she bought locally. She’s enhanced their visibility with helium balloons and wind spinners. The main trick was to get them to stay up on windy days when the snow was piled high and the ground frozen. Click photos to enlarge.

L to R: in front of our house; at Woodley and Linden,

L to R: at Woodley and Hwy. 3; at Poplar/Jefferson Rd. and Woodley; at Woodley and Professional Drive.

At Woodley and Division.

Wigley House 4 Sale Finder’s Fee: $2,000

We are offering a finder’s fee of $2,000 to be paid to anyone (non-realtor) who is directly responsible for referring someone who ends up purchasing our house. The money would be paid after closing.

So put on your thinking caps! Who do you know who might be interested in seeing this great family home?

Have them contact us (using your name) or send us their name and email address and we’ll contact them for you.

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MLS and StarTribune.com

We purchased an MLS listing for $377 through Owners.com on Sunday night (flat fee MLS) and by noon today, it was on the MLS with #3321826.

And by tonight it was showing up on the databases of various real estate agencies and on here on Realtor.com.

Owners.com uses a 3rd party who in turn works with local realtors who do the actual listing. In our case, we got referred to David Nunn at Pathways Real Estate in Minneapolis who called promptly on Monday morning, emailed us the forms, and had it all done by Tues. afternoon.

We also purchased an online-only ad with the StarTribune homes service: $100 for 30 days, which includes open house listings. If you search for Greater MN single family homes in the South, you’ll see our house in this list.

One-time showing agreements

This weekend we had a realtor bring a prospective buyer to look at the house using what’s called a one-time showing agreement. We signed a contract that guarantees the realtor their commission should their client buy the house from us.

So if you’re a realtor who might have an interested client, don’t hesitate to contact us.

Banner ad on Northfield.org

We’ve purchased a small banner ad on Northfield.org.

It’s in a 10% rotation for two weeks, which means it displays randomly on approximately 10% of the pages that are viewed.

Cost: $50.

Click the screenshot on the left for a larger view.

Our bank and the tree

It was 17 years ago this week that the house plant/tree in the photo on the left arrived at our front door. (Click to enlarge.)

So this morning, my wife Robbie and I hauled it down to First National Bank Northfield and posed with bank president Dave Shumway.

Why?

The bank gave the tree to us as a house-warming gift in 1990 because we got our mortgage (our second) through them. We’d also gotten a business loan from them — and managed to pay it off, even though the business failed. I think they were relieved since we were on the edge financially at the time. Becky Behrens was the bank’s mortgage specialist back then and still is, so if you’re in need of a mortgage, visit her personal real estate loans page. Just don’t ask her to toss a tree into the deal or I’ll get into trouble.