Tag Archives: listing

Don't Outbid Yourself

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[photopress:stop.jpg,thumb,alignright]It is time to use Escalation Clauses in reverse. Many, if not most of my clients, were previously working with another agent. Some have explained that they were not happy with the fact that the agent was always, and without exception, recommending that they offer full price, with an escalation clause over the asking price. While this may be a sure way to insure that you get the property, you may at the same time be outbidding yourself. While over the past few years, buyers have used escalation clauses to WIN the house, it is time to use them in reverse, to protect yourself against overpaying for a property.

Recently I have seen a couple of these “Seller will not look at offers until…” backfiring to where the seller has no offers on that stated date. By requiring buyers to wait a week or so before the seller will look at the buyer’s offer ,and by pricing the property too high at the same time, the seller ends up “A day late and a dollar too high”. Just because “everyone is doing it” doesn’t mean that *you* can do it, and get away with it. You meaning the seller in that context.

Now that the market is winding down a bit, will we see an end to escalation clauses? I hope not. It is time to shift gears and use them in reverse.

Let’s say the seller is asking $530,000. Instead of putting $530,000 as your offer with a cap of $550,000, you might want to offer $500,000 with a cap of $530,000. Many falsely assume that if a property has many offers, that the property was underpriced. Clearly not so. Some who have made offers at full price or better with an even higher cap, have found themselves paying full price or better, even if they end up being the only offer on the table at the end of the “seller will not look at offers until….” timeframe.

No one can predict at this time of year if the “sluggishness” is seasonal, or a sign that the market is turning. Even during the period where it seemed prices were just shooting to “the sky’s the limit”, there are periods of sluggishness. Periods of sluggishness can be as simple as many, many agents are away on vacation (August). Many, many buyers don’t want to buy what happens to be for sale (Halloween through January 2). The period from now until early next year, with the exception of a “spurt” in September, is always a slower period with no way to predict what will happen in “high Season” (January through July).

I do know this. It is a very bad time for a seller to be “off” on his condition and asking price. It is a very bad time for buyers to assume that just because a seller will not look at offers until next week, that the seller is going to get multiple offers. During the time that you are waiting for the seller to be ready to look at your offer or respond to your offer, pay close attention. If the house has any inherent negatives, particularly with regard to location, do not outbid yourself by offering full price or better just because you “assume” that the seller will have more than one offer by next week.

To sellers…you have to be “positioned to sell” by September 15 unless you are willing to take the risk of having to wait until January 2. By the way, January 2 has always and forever been my favorite day to put a property on market. But that’s another story…

Valuing Homes for Buyers

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[photopress:dartboard.jpg,thumb,alignright]To some extent buyers, especially first time buyers, encourage receiving inaccurate information with regard to value and other home details, by asking the right questions at the wrong time.

Sellers understand that it takes time to work on a valuation. Rarely does a seller call and say, “I live at 123 Great Street, what is the value of my house?”. I’d venture to say that no seller expects an agent to know the value of their house on the spot, nor would they want a two second answer. Consequently, valuing the home properly for a seller, within the framework of the seller’s expectations of the time it takes to give an accurate answer, produces fairly good results most of the time.

Buyers on the other hand encourage shoot from the hip responses fairly continuously. The normal process should be that the buyer view the properties selected by both them and the agent. The buyer should select one or more that they might like to purchase, and then ask the agent to take some time to evaluate and value those properties that they like best.

But that is not normally how a buyer operates. Often they ask all kinds of questions, as if an agent knows every property they are showing in great detail and with a large degree of accuracy. Certainly the agent can, and will if you encourage it properly, do all of the work necessary to know every property. But buyers seem to expect an agent to spend this kind of time on every property being shown before the agent shows the property and before the agent knows if the buyer is even interested in the property. By and large an agent is not going to study every single property he shows in great detail, as it would be a waste of time, especially for the ones the buyer hates at first glance.

When you first look at property, you should simply be advising the agent if you like it or do not like it. Then you should ask the agent to dig into only the properties you like and might buy, and find out as much as possible about those and also value only those. For as long as I can remember, many buyers will go from house to house asking questions like, what do you think of the price? Is it worth it? What is the age of the house, have they had any offers, etc… By asking a lot of questions about every single house, even the houses you hate, you encourage the agent to answer off the top of his head. This starts the whole relationship off on a bad foot. The agent doesn’t want to say I don’t know to all of these questions, but it is not reasonable to expect an agent to know a lot about every single property being shown. Next thing you know the agent is giving sloppy and often inaccurate answers to avoid saying I don’t know to all of the questions.

Asking your agent if the asking price is reasonable, is of course a very good question. But just as the seller gives the agent hours and sometimes days to come up with that answer, don’t expect an answer on the spot for every single house you are shown whether you like it or not. If you do ask the question, and the agent answers immediately without taking at least an hour or two to research the answer to that question, don’t be surprised if the answer you do get on the spot is a knee jerk, inaccurate answer.

By encouraging the agent to answer inaccurately, you set up a relationship where the agent continues to give you shoot from the hip responses even on the property you eventually purchase. Look at property from your perspective. Do you like it or not. Then ask the agent to research the properties you like. This will insure a more accurate valuation and more accurate facts. First the agent calls the listing agent to see if he has any offers and if so, what time are the offers being presented. If you have a few hours to get your offer in, and you usually do, set an appointment for a couple of hours later and ask the agent to research the properties in detail before you sit down to discuss the price and terms of the offer.

Often it is not a good idea to ask ALL of your questions before making an offer. If the buyer’s agent calls the listing agent and asks tons of questions like How old is the roof, Did they ever have water in the basement, etc., that buyer will not be given good consideration if there are multiple offers. Many questions, especially negative toned questions, should be asked after you “tie up the property” and most of them should be asked of the home inspector during the home inspection.

Sorry, I seem to have covered two topics in one there. Just following the normal sequence of errors buyers often make when viewing property and prior to making an offer. Often the seller is more negotiable with a buyer who loves their house, than one who is “kicking tires” from the getgo. Timing is everything. You should ask your agent all of the questions you may have and he should answer all of the questions including the ones you didn’t ask. Leaving the agent room to apply proper timing to obtain the correct answers, without alarming the seller or seller’s agent at the wrong time, can make a huge difference in whether you get the property and how much you pay for it. Once deemed a “difficult or squirrely” buyer by the listing agent, you will often have to jump through more hoops to get the property, if you can get it at all. Give your buyer’s agent enough room to play everything to your best advantage and don’t look at him like he is stupid, if he doesn’t know every answer to every one of your questions “off the top of his head”.

Addiction to technology can be damaging to your mental health

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Yesterday’s list of ten stories was fun to write… So in cleaning out the 400+ unread stories that had accumulated in my feed reader, I came up with these ten stories for today:

  1. I’ve had countless people ask me about how to set up a wordpress blog, so I was glad to see Matt point out that CNet now has a video that details the steps of setting up a WP blog. It’s a simple video, but that is appropriate since the instillation of WP is simple. However, if terms like “FTP”, “domain” and “web host” don’t mean anything to you, then skip over this video and go straight for a hosted blog like blogger or wordpress.com.
  2. Technology bloggers are so much more advanced in their blogging problems that they have to worry about things like the Echo Chamber. Since linking is still a novel enough concept in real estate, this is not really an issue within the real estate blogosphere. None the less, advice like “say something original once a day” is good stuff that we could all benefit from.
  3. I include the next article only for the last paragraph: ‘Employers provide programmes to help workers with chemical or substance addictions. ‘Addiction to technology can be equally damaging to a worker’s mental health’. (It’s one thirty in the morning as I type this, I obviously need help.)
  4. In an effort to separate addiction from hype, Seth Godin reminds us that “just because people know who you are doesn’t mean they’re going to buy what you sell… the best way to succeed is to have a really great product.”
  5. In relation to real estate technology, I can’t imagine why anyone with $17M would think that Reply.com is a good idea… How do they justify the business model that they are going to allow anyone to make an offer on any house? From their CEO: “every home in the country is for sale – for the right price!” The idea seems like a fun exercise for a graduate level economics course, but an actual product??? I don’t get it. Please feel free to let me know in the comments if I’m missing something…
  6. Also, Joel points out that Reply’s product is not likely to make Glenn very happy since he’s working on a similar service and even taken a patent out.
  7. More web technology that seems misguided to me: I can think of plenty of people who are in search of a good blog, but I can’t think of any other blogs that are in search of a good blogger…
  8. And then sometimes, people take misguided to such a different level that I start to doubt my own sanity. How smart do you have to be to refuse $1M? (Really! What does he know that I don’t???)
  9. Barely on topic… There is an interesting house that was recently (re)listed in the NWMLS. Turns out the owners were not doing a good job showing the house from 1000 miles away, so they took it off the market while they reorganized their efforts. During that time, a friendly conversation on staging turned into a full-on listing for one RCG contributor. So far, the owners have been blown away by the difference that this one woman can make in preparing a listing for sale. If you saw the place before, please considering checking it out again because the changes are phenomenal. A neighbor said she barely recognized the inside of the house.
  10. On a related technology note, I found out that the previous listing was “live” again because it showed up in my feed reader based on a listing feed I created for my zip code from Robbie’s fantastic Zearch tool. Anyone in the Puget Sound area can use this tool to be easily updated every time a new listing shows up in their zip code, city, neighborhood, etc.

UPDATE: After playing with the service, Joel goes so far as to give Reply.com the 3-finger salute.

Inman News and St. Joseph

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[photopress:St_Joe.jpg,thumb,alignright]Dustin, Glenn Roberts and I received an email yesterday from Bill over at The Real Estate Cafe, about an Inman News article on the use of St. Joseph statues to sell real estate, and a comment I made on it. Dustin didn’t know about the practice, which is fairly well known around the Country, so I thought I’d shed some light on why, how and when the statue is used in the real estate business, from my personal perspective.

Many years a go I had a wonderful client who was losing her home. She had started her own business and had used her home as collateral for the business start up expenses. Her husband had a good job, they were doing well financially. She was not behind on her mortgage payments. They had lived in their home for a very long time with their now grown daughter and little poodle. But the lien against the house for the business bankruptcy was causing them to lose it.

The woman was so beside herserlf, because she caused it. She was a dynamic person. So when she approached me rather sheepishly one day with a request, I was a little surprised at her quietness and hesitancy. She said, “I really need your help with this and I don’t know how to ask you to do this. Someone told me to plant a St. Joseph statue in my back yard upside down and all will be OK. I wouldn’t have any idea where to get one, since I’m Jewish, and I thought you might be able to do that for me. I know it’s a lot to ask of a real estate professional, but since you’re Italian…I thought…”

While Bill over at The Real Estate Cafe, and many Catholics, are up in arms over using St. Joseph in this manner, I didn’t hesitate to jump into my car and find the little plastic statue shown here. I didn’t know there were actually “St. Joseph kits” designed for this purpose. I just went to the same place I might buy rosary beads and they knew right away what I needed. I went back to the house. It was one of those houses that appraised at $185,000 but the owner “had to have $205,000”. When I first listed it I didn’t know why they were selling it, or let’s say I wasn’t buying their story that they were just downsizing. I didn’t know why they HAD to have a certain price.

The owner wasn’t present when I performed my little ritual for the first time of “planting St. Joseph on his head in the yard”. Needless to say it worked. The owners received the price they had to have from a buyer who loved the house. It was one of my favorite sales, as the woman came home every day at lunch to vacuum. This was in the days when agents called the office for an appointment and no one in my office would speak with her. They thought she was difficult, I knew she was distressed. I asked her to remove the blue tablecloth in the kitchen and replace it with a white one. An hour later there was not one white table cloth, but two, so that if it got dirty she could quickly lift off the top one. She worked like a dog to get top dollar, I came up with the spiffiest flyer anyone had ever seen and she and I, together with St. Joseph, accomplished the objective that seemed near impossible.

The bankruptcy attorney cut the commission down at the last second and my office manager was freaking out. She even went to the closing where the bankruptcy attorney, she and the other agent were duking it out. I stayed outside with my clients while they where fighting, and assured them that it was one of my favorite sales, regardless of what happened in there. It was truly a pleasure to have known them and to have helped them in their dark hour. I never contacted them again because I knew I was part of a memory they should never have to revisit. “Follow up postcards” from me would have been painful reminders of a time they wanted to put behind them.

While Bill is upset over the fact that there are some agents who order St. Joseph statues in bulk like business cards, the custom of burying St. Joseph to assist in the quest of real estate pursuits goes back to at least the 1500s, when St. Theresa of Avila buried a St. Joseph medal. They needed some land for a Church and St. Theresa buried a St. Joseph medal in a plot of ground that was perfect, but they could not afford, and of course they did eventually raise enough money to buy the land with St. Joseph’s assitance.

St. Joseph is “the worker”. He’s the symbol that any pursuit backed by one’s sincere desire and hard work is achieveable. For many years after he helped my clients, I had this little statue (right side up) where ever I worked. When I had too many closings all at the same time, I would lay him down and put a little felt blanket over him and tell him it was time to rest. St. Joseph and I performed some great miracles together and he was my guiding force my first few years in the real estate business.

We haven’t heard about this custom for quite awhile because it has been a seller’s market. But based on Inman News giving the custom some attention recently, it looks like St. Joseph may be making a comeback. To Bill Wendell at The Real Estate Cafe, try not to think of all of the agents buying 100 statues at a time and using it as a “gimmick”. Think of my lovely story, and how St. Joseph, while standing on his head, brought some comfort to some very nice people in need of his gentle touch.

"Frank"-speak on "broads" and the mls' lame 24 hour rule

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[photopress:bgrable.jpg,thumb,alignright] This broad is lonely. You know, the kind of lonely that just has to be scratched…like an itch. So she says to me, she says, Frank, I just gotta get out there and get a man, and she starts putting on her coat. I say Whoa there…hold up, Babe. You ain’t gonna get the right man that way. Go in the toilet there and fix yourself up a bit first. Pin up your hair like Betty does, and put on that fancy armored under-stuff that makes every woman look like a Betty Grable pinup at first look, till you get up real close and see the spines on ’em. That’s right. Take your time, honey. The better you look, the more successful your gonna be at this venture. Now put on that lipstick and pull down that thing over there and hike up that and stand up real tall, like you don’t need nobody! That’s better. If youse goes out lookin’ like a loser, that’s exactly what you will end up bein’ at the end of the night…a loser!

Now someone please tell me who came up with that stoopid mls rule that says a seller HAS-TA put his house up for sale within 24 hours after he signs a listing contract? Hell man, da ink isn’t even dry yet! Do yus really think an owner can get his sh-t together that fast and spif up da joint in 24 hours?! Heck…he barely has time to pull up his pants and douse his tonsils with his “Jack”. Are you guys kiddin’ me??

And what agent worth his weight in peanuts is gonna have a fancy, glossy, snappy flyer ready in 24 hours? Heck, can ya even get a sign up that fast? Who made up that rule anyways? You guys better stop drinkin’ that NAR Koolaid and get da F outta here pronto! Cause I ain’t puttin’ my house on the internet for everyone to peek at until it’s good and ready! Ya hear dat! GOOD and ready. And youse guys can go pound sand with your lame mls rule dat says udderwise. I don’t give a rat’s behind if you guys stab each other in da back or in da front or any other ways. Dat ain’t MY problem! You can’t tell me what I HAVE to do and you sure as hell can’t tell me that I ain’t got no say in it. So what that I can give you some letter saying “hold up, pal”, what about da poor slobs dat don’t know any better and have their underwear hanging over the shower curtain in the mls photo. Scratch that rule…scratch it now…cause it’s lame. Like my pal Robbie says…Lame, Lame, Lame MLS Rule! Trash it, cause it’s garbage and its stinkin’ up da place!”

I’m signing this here contract to get me the best damn agent there is and I’m sure as hell payin’ him plenty of dough! So’s he better damn well work his butt off for a whole lot more than TWENTY FOUR HOURS before HE pushes that button that sends me LIVE into the cyberworld.

I thought it was jes dose NAR Koolaid drinkin fools spoutin’ this garbage. But when I saw David Barry sayin’ his NEW Consumer Oriented Free Public mls was gonna go and copy that same stoopid lame mls rule, I said dat’s IT. I’ve HAD it. Jilly…go knock some sense into dos guys before the whole planet goes koo-koo on dat koolaid! Knock some heads together if ya has to…but don’t let the poor public be fooled into thinkin that they have to go out in public lookin’ like a LOSER! It ain’t dare right to say so…cause I say so and it just ain’t the right way to treat people and their most valuable asset. Heck, a girl takes longer than that to spruce herself up to find a guy. How da heck is a fella supposed to spruce up his whole house in 24 hours! It ain’t right…it just ain’t right.

Just because users can post doesn’t mean they will

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In spite of all the hype for social websites, there have been a rash of noble attempts that come up short recently. No one has quite figured out the right way to start an open dialog about individual homes yet.

ShackYack, “the only real estate site where you can comment and rate the product, just like amazon, netflix, ebay etc.,” launched in late May. Apparently they have found that houses aren’t mass produced and sold by the millions like iPods and people really don’t have much to post about them. That said, part of the reluctance to comment on properties is probably the buggy interface and their newness on the market.

However! Propsmart’s interface isn’t buggy. In fact, it’s one of the best out there and they encourage comments too. But a random sampling of homes on the site shows no comments.

Why would you want to publicly comment on a house unless you’re the owner or an agent looking for leads? The house, along with your comments, is going to be off the market in a few weeks and, unless you’re an agent, you’re going to be out of the market in a short period of time too. And if you’re an agent, blogging seems like a more public and permanent way to go.

That said, Propsmart’s blogging service appears to be stillborn, with the last post being posted over 2 months ago. Even blogging systems aren’t always a hit.

I feel like I’m picking on PropSmart here, but I’m really not. Whenever you introduce new services, some will be hits and some won’t. Their search site and their interface in particular are great and they are definitely the most straight-talking real estate search company out there (possibly the only one?).

Homeowner a Guerrilla Marketing machine

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After coming home this past weekend from a family trip to Lake Chelan and Ephrata in eastern Washington, I couldn’t help but notice (including thousands of others driving westbound into Seattle on I-90), the “For Sale” sign draped over a home that was located just over the westbound I-90 tunnel as you approach Seattle’s downtown. You can’t miss it.

The home also made the news in today’s business section of the Seattle PI. I wonder if the homeowner knew they would get the attention of the local papers and blogs. Talk about leveraging the location of your home when you have to sell your home! Guerrilla Marketing at it’s best.

What else is Zillow good for?

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If your Zillow Zestimate is higher than what your home sells for, than you will likely have no trouble appraising for the buyer’s loan, AND you can let it bid up if you get multiple offers without fear that it will not appraise.

If the Zillow Zestimate is lower than what you are able to sell your house for…don’t count your money until after the appraiser leaves, and be sure to take the offer with the most money down, and the buyer who is willing to make up the difference between sale price and appraised value in cash.

There’s a first time for everything

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[photopress:a.jpg,thumb,alignright] I never thought I’d say “This One Won’t Last!” on one of my listings. Somehow I managed to get by for 16 years without saying that. We all laugh at the agent who forgets to remove “This One Won’t Last” from their public remarks after the property has been on market for over 60 days.

For some reason as I “backed out” of the property yesterday, after finishing up my “light staging” efforts in my favorite bayberry color scheme, I knew. As I put the wreath on the front door and decorated the window boxes on the balcony, I knew. As we vacuumed our way out of the property and looked at our many hours of effort getting it “just so”, and placed the “20 flyers to offer” on the counter in the kitchen, I knew.

So when I input the listing at 20 minutes to midnight last night I found myself saying what I never thought I would say, “This one won’t last!” I even put in the listing that I never thought I’d ever say that along with a little smiley face.

When I received a call that the very first person who saw it is writing an offer, I breathed a huge sigh of relief, confident that I wouldn’t be choking on my words by end of day. There’s a first time for everything…sometimes you just KNOW. Cross your fingers. I’ve managed to make it this far in life without having to eat my words. But like they say, there’s a first time for everything.

Fire Sale in Queen Anne on Craig’s List

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[photopress:fire_sale.jpg,thumb,alignright]I was out and about in Seattle today. Before heading off to finish staging the townhome I listed tonight in Ballard/Fremont, I got a call from a new client asking me about a property she found on Craig’s List.

It was a For Sale By Owner in Queen Anne at 2447 5th Ave W. I decided to meet her over there so we could chat and I could see the place for one of our investor clients. I have never seen a house after a fire like this one…every burnt ember is still intact! The hanging burned curtain…the mattress springs from the totally burnt mattress…all that was left were the springs! The walls in the dining room were incredible…looked like folded black crepe paper.

As we were chatting outside, my favorite “non-client” was coming to see it. It is such a small world sometimes. Luckily no one was hurt in the fire. We were having so much fun, it was a blast, that I felt guilty and asked a neighbor, and they assured me no one was hurt during the fire. So we partied on!

You can’t tell from the outside that there was a fire, but the inside is worth seeing. I’m not sure if someone will gut this and remodel it, or just tear it down and build a new one. Investor types should go over and take a look. Not sure what the lot value is over there, but it’s a great location. Too much for my new clients or my favorite “non-client” to handle…but one of you might be interested. Owner’s number is on the sign out front and the place is open for inspection, but be careful, some of the floor boards are pretty soft and there’s a lot of soot to wade through. Don’t wear your best shoes.