Feb 28
For those of you interested in going to the one day RETech South conference on Friday March 20 at the Gwinnett Center in Atlanta, Georgia, here are a few links to find info:
http://www.retechsouth.com/ site where you can register and find info
http://tatango.com/profile/retechsouth to get text updates before and during event
look for the REtechSouth Conference on Facebook
…and follow @REtechSouth on Twitter.
I’ll be looking forward to seeing you IRL at the Conference! Look for me!
Feb 25
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Like this video? Go vote for it.
Because of the market turbulence, many times a homeowner has to sell his or her home for less than is owed to the lender. This can mean bringing a check to the closing table. What if there is no money to do this? Oftentimes, a homeowner will hope that the lender accepts what the home sells for, and forgives the rest of the debt. This is called a short sale, and the video above is a quick introduction by one of my friends.
I attended a seminar sponsored by the WCR yesterday, and the facts that were tossed at us were sobering. An attorney who works for one of the major servicers in the state revealed that these lenders look at appraised value, and have decided that an offer below 76% of that value will not be accepted- that the lender will make more if the property goes to foreclosure, particularly if there are secondary lienholders.
Whether this is unrealistic, or pennywise-pound foolish, isn’t the point. This is what homeowners are dealing with: standards that are already in place that they will have to accomodate if there is any chance that they are to sell their home.
Sellers: one thing that we have found- and I have spoken with other REALTORS who sell short sale homes- is that the chances of an accepted offer increase if there is an attorney involved. Ask your agent. Another thing that is helpful is to be scrupulously honest with your real estate agent about any loans taken out against the home, and anything else that would need to be taken care of at the closing table, to avoid any unpleasant surprises.
Buyers: you ARE likely going to get a bargain on the home, but you won’t be purchasing it for pennies on the dollar, as is sometimes intimated. However, this bargain will probably be coming warts and all, since the homeowner will not be in a position to address the issues found at home inspection. You will also be working on the lender’s timetable. There will likely be a long time before the offer is accepted- and it needs to be accepted by the lender, and then the process happens more quickly than in the typical home sale.
I have read on some forums that success rate for short sales can be as low as 30%. This figure can approach 90% if your agent has experience, and if the right people are involved. Like everything else in life, it is important to do your homework- and this is difficult to do when you are in the midst of dealing with something as stressful as selling your home for less than you purchased it for.
Feb 22
I met a buyer at one of our team properties yesterday. I showed them the property, and presented the MA Mandatory Agency Disclosure for signature. This describes the different relationships that a real estate agent can have with a buyer or a seller, and is supposed to be presented, explained, and signed by the consumer (or not) at the first face-to-face meeting. It is not an option for real estate agents- they are supposed to tell the consumer which side of the fence that they are sitting on.
So, good enough. We were at that point, and these buyers had seen enough property prior to this so that they were familiar with the document. The person signing even mentioned the terms “buyer’s agent,” “seller’s agent,” and “facilitator.” Sometimes I think that real estate consumers come to the table with more information and understanding than the agents.
Then she said to me something chilling, and I am going to relate the story here. She told me that she had called and made arrangements to see a property with the listing agent. She has three friends who are agents, and has chosen to go through this process without a buyer’s agent; were she to choose representation, she would have picked a friend. She got to the door, and the listing agent had been too busy to come out, so she sent her brother. Her brother said to this potential buyer that she would have to sign an Exclusive Buyer’s Agency contract before he would allow them to view the home.
I am not sure whether this was meant for this particular property or not, but it doesn’t matter. The agent told this buyer, “I don’t work for free.” The buyer turned around and left without signing the contract.
On how many levels is this wrong? The seller is not getting the representation promised in his contract if buyers in this market are being turned away at the door, so that is one frightening thing. But to stand at the door, contract in hand, and try to strong-arm a signature- let alone disclosing your motives and and relationship to the listing agent- this agent may have had brass balls, but no real intelligence to back it up. If I were that buyer, I would have turned around and walked out too- if it was the last house for sale in the region. If I liked the home, I would have called one of those friends and tried to arrange a showing, but I would never- NEVER- have signed a contract with that agent.
Real estate agents have a more close relationship with the consumer than, say, a car salesperson. This is certainly not meant to disparage car salespeople, but the relationship for agent-consumer is actual agency- the consumer is a client. Real estate agents are privy to sensitive information about financial conditions and motives, both of which come into play in the negotiating process. I would want to be absolutely certain that my agent was capable of handling those confidences, and knew how to use this information.
To the real estate agents out there: We are not the gatekeepers of information. We have no right to stand at a door and disallow entry, literally or figuratively- these doors are wide open. As this buyer told me, she has all the information that she wants at her fingertips. She wants help with the actual sales process. I think this is pretty typical of many buyers today, and this is really the area that an agent can be of help- with the process, and in the interpretation of that information.
No, no one wants to work for free. But how long do you think you will be in the business of helping people if you are not helping them?
Feb 21
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo&hl=en&fs=1]
When you start feeling like you are having a bad day, run this by yourself. Wonderful!
Feb 20
Gary V at Inman
One of the best speakers at Inman Connect
Feb 15
I have a friend who had asked me for some advice about purchasing his first home. He let me know that he had seen a loan officer to be preapproved for his mortgage. Excellent! This lets people know if they are able to qualify for a mortgage (and if not, how they can improve their ability to borrow) and how much the lender feels that their mortgage limit should be. It’s wonderful that he has this important first step out of the way.
So what’s next? Most searches suggest a zip code-number of bedrooms-number of baths approach. This isn’t the way people would naturally search for a property; these searches are devised for computers, not humans. There will be more organically-based search paradigms available in the future. I just recently sat in on a teleconference/presentation for one- Onboard’s Lifestyle Listings Engine- that will be rolled out soon.
These searches will allow you to find homes by lifestyle choice. Interested in homes with the best ranked school systems that will be 20 miles from your office? Maybe you want to be as close as possible to the city, yet remain a half hour from work. You will be able to prioritize the characteristics that are important to you, and narrow your choices of home to the most relevant.
But for now you have to work with the search options available, and this can be difficult given that a search of, say, single family homes in Lowell, MA for under $300,000 gives you more than 125 choices. Even if half of these appeared unsuited to you by appearance, condition or size, checking this many properties out is a daunting task.
This is how I would begin. Where you work determines to a great extent where you live, unless you are Tom Cruise. I would decide the maximum I would drive, then get a map (paper or virtual) and draw a line circumscribing the area that that would include. This gives you the starting-off point, and will keep you from looking at houses within a town or zip code that are too far away.
Then I have to sit down and really think. What would my next set of requirements look like and how would I order them? Things to consider and decide the importance of:
These are things you cannot change. On average, homeowners move every 7 years according to Realtor.com, and survey respondents indicate the majority do this for lifestyle reasons. You need to decide what is important to your lifestyle, and look for homes within communities that can provide that. If schools are important, research which communities within the circle that you drew can provide the best education, and start there. You can do much of this on your own, or you can ask for the help of a real estate agent to narrow your search.
At this point in your search, I would be speaking with friends to see if they can recommend a real estate agent. Plan on speaking with more than one to see with whom you hit it off and feel is knowledgeable of the process.
How exciting! You’re nearly ready!
Feb 15
I went to pick up my daughter Rebecca at college yesterday. She had been sick all week, and went to the hospital the day before, was admitted, didn’t like the treatment and checked herself out against medical advice.
Unacceptable. I told her to wait there and I would pick her up and bring her to her doctor here because if what she had was serious enough to admit her, it needed to be taken care of.
I left the real estate office where I work, and headed out to get her. We made an afternoon appointment with her doctor, and began the long ride back. She was feverish and hadn’t been able to sleep because of a really bad cough- she had been diagnosed with pneumonia. She curled up in the front seat, I rubbed her head like when she was a little tiny girl, and she drifted off. As we got closer to the house, she woke up again and said, “I’m glad I’m coming home. I probably would have died if I had spent another night away.”
I told her that as long as she needed it I would be there, but I was thinking about that before she even mentioned it. What is it about home that draws us, that makes us feel better, that- for my daughter- is the safety net that allows a return to health? Having Mom there is one thing, certainly- someone to love us and take some of the burden of responsibility off our shoulders.
But there’s something else- something less quantifiable, less tangible. I could see it in my daughter’s face when she walked into the house. I could see that she lost the tension of being an almost-adult- the furrows smoothed on her forehead and her demeanor lost 10 years. It was as if the chicken soup on the stove reminded her of all of the other pots of soup that helped her through her other bouts of pneumonia. She looked around the kitchen and was drawn in by the ghosts of Christmases past, and Thanksgivings, and just popcorn and movies and snowball fights and fingerprints on the walls and the thousand other mundane things that a family weaves into a house to make it a home.
Sometimes I show houses that have not been updated for decades. I think the people living there don’t see the wallpaper as faded or the rugs as worn. They see their children writing their initials on the wallpaper at arm level- about 3 feet- and the story that spins off of that. They can hear the kids playing tag around that rug, hear the click-click-click of the cocker spaniel’s claws as he races after those children. Houses can become so laden with memories that it is nearly impossible for the owners to strip them back to the plaster and start again.
Rebecca asked me if she could come home whenever she needed to. I told her, “As long as you WANT to, you can come home when you need to.” I meant it, but the goal of every parent is to package up the feeling of home and send it out into the world with that child.
“Home is the place where, when you have to go there,
They have to take you in.”- Robert Frost
Feb 13
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdrKK1LJggk&hl=en&fs=1]
Christina’s first vlogpost interviewing me. Should have gotten a little more sleep the night before!
Feb 5
My 10 year old daughter has been home sick the past few days. It hasn’t been anything too serious- apparently a virus that has caused her temperature to bounce up as high as 103.6 and made her feel very sick. She is, however, ordinarily very active, and when she has to lie still her natural exuberance shows up in non-stop talking. She Rick rolled me several times by email, made me watch all of the new Is It A Good Idea To Microwave This? videos, and repeated the punchlines to several thousand SpongeBob Squarepants shows.
So I will have to admit that I was half-listening to her when she tossed this at me, and I don’t know if she made it up or ripped it from the headlines. She said, “Escalators can’t break. [pause for effect] They just turn into stairs.”
Well, that made me pay a little attention. It just struck me that what she said was so true. If I saw an escalator that wasn’t running, because of my mindset I might walk by in search of an alternate way to ascend, even if it turned out to be a staircase. Why is that?
It made me think. I could look at it as an analogy to adapting to a changing real estate market place. I could think of it as a commentary about learning to master new marketing skills. More broadly, it is about trying to overcome blind spots and habits, both of which keep you wearing down the grass in the same circle.
How often do I walk by a paused escalator, not realizing that it’s really a staircase?
Feb 5
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Jann Taber interviews Tamara Dorris.
You are in control of your belief system, and this video reiterates how important that is. I love the reminder that we need to “Pray while moving our feet.”
from http://therebelwoman.wordpress.com/
