John first came to Tucson on July 4, 1984 as an Aircraft Electrician on the A-10 while stationed at Davis-Monthan. After completing 4 years in the active duty Air Force, he served for 3 years in the Arizona Air National Guard at the Tucson Airport while he transitioned to a new career as a computer programmer. He ultimately earned 2 Associate degrees (Aircraft Accessory Systems Technology and Engineering), a bachelor’s degree in Organizational Management, and a master’s degree in Information Technology.

John was first licensed as a Realtor in the early 90’s and is currently hanging his license at eXp Realty.

He has long been a proponent of utilizing technology to sell homes in addition to traditional methods. In a listing presentation you will learn about the single question John asked when hiring a Realtor to sell his home in Tennessee. Out of 3 Realtors, the one who had the strongest answer sold John’s home in about a month as the market was heading into the challenges of 2007/2008. After reading through the information here, contact John and he will share the question he asked, and how he would answer the same question for you today!

In 2018 John discovered and started utilizing virtual tour technology (Matterport) – seeing the power and value of allowing the most buyers possible to view a home without needing to inconvenience his selling clients any more than absolutely necessary. Since Covid became an issue earlier this year, his virtual tour business (Southern AZ Virtual Tours) has become very popular to help keep everyone comfortable and safe while providing buyers a unique way to view homes. Only those potential buyers who have viewed the virtual tour and have serious interest need to come and see the property in person. A virtual tour is like a 24/7/365 virtual open house.

You may explore an example of John’s virtual tours by visiting  http://home01.SouthernAZVirtualTours.com. You can “walk around” virtual and fully explore the home in ways not possible through pictures or even video. It must be experienced to be fully appreciated. This technology also provides the ability to generate a floor plan complete with measurements without needing to take measurements and also take any needed pictures from the virtual tour without visiting the home again.

A recent home John listed was sold in a couple of weeks during the start of the Covid concerns by utilizing a virtual tour which resulted in 356 people viewing the virtual tour – 4 couples coming to see the home in person, and one of those couples purchased the home for list price.

Another example is a listing John took on after a previous Realtor failed to get the home sold. The previous Realtor instructed the seller to lower the price by $10,000 to $15,000. The seller decided he needed to try something new. The seller listed the home with John Backer, and John Backer provided hard and fast numbers that supported a list price $5,000 higher than the previous listing. In a little over a month, John found a buyer which offered 99% of the higher list price.

When you list your home for sale with John you will receive a unique combination of services:

Weekly listing activity reports – these reports let you know how effectively we are reaching potential buyers. How many buyers are looking at the listing? What other homes are they looking at and how to those homes compare with yours? If the potential buyers “like” or “save” your home in their MLS portal, what else have they liked and saved? This report allows us to keep our finger on the pulse of how we are doing, and John is a strong believer that you can’t manage what you can’t measure.Email all agents in the area to announce your home being for sale – there is not a lot of inventory available currently, but It is important to put your home “top of mind” of all the Realtors in our area.A data driven approach to arrive at a suggested list price for your home. Instead of pulling numbers out of the air, you will have a complimentary Comparative Market Analysis (CMA) prepared which helps to guide you to the best price to get your home sold at top dollar.Social media used to market your home – John has tremendous reach on social media and will promote your home to his large audience.Home staging and home condition suggestions – John is a certified home staging resource which provides free feedback to his clients on how they can tweak their furnishings to maximize their sales price while minimizing the time required to sell your home.

Contact John today for a no cost, no commitment consultation.

Fellow Realtors, John welcomes conversations with you. Through his Southern AZ Virtual Tour business and his technical knowledge and experience, there might be a way he can help you too!

John Backer, Realtor

eXp Realty