$435,000 Ballard home: only $900 a month

But only if you’ll send a check to Rev Robin Beaty in West Africa. I just put up a post on the Estately blog, but I thought I’d alert the RCG community to the more-humorous-than-dangerous side of real estate scamming (Reba keeps it real with the scary real estate scamster stories).

We received the following by someone clearly looking for a good deal on Seattle rents ($900 for a Ballard 2BR is tough to pass up).

JUST WANTED TO LET YOU KNOW THAT THERE IS A DUDE SAYING THAT HE IS RENTING THIS HOUSE OUT! HE SAYS THAT HE IS REV ROBIN BEATY AND HE IS A MISSIONARY IN WEST AFRICA AND WILL SEND THE KEYS TO THE HOME AFTER RECIEVING $900 FOR TH E FIRST MONTH RENT.

Our hot tipper goes on to wish, as I do, that people had the common sense to avoid scams like this. Word to the unwise: don’t send the dude your money.

Neighborhood Roundup: Breaking the Espresso Rut

Creating the list of active neighborhood blogs was only the first step in my grand vision… (or is it Greg that has the grand neighborhood vision?) Okay… Maybe there is no grand plan, but I thought it would be fun to give a roundup of recent neighborhood posts…

The West Seattle Blog has turned to Cafe Rozella to break out of an espresso rut and is “really impressed”.

Dave at the Learning from Lake City expanded my skatepark world view considerably… Skatedots? Skatepots? Districts? Regionals? Who knew?

Georgetown Stew highlights a scam where people are not only taking advantage of day laborers, but it gets worse

Not only are some folks in South Park being stiffed out of their wages, the employer(s) are apparently asking the workers for their home address, with the promise that a paycheck will arrive in the mail. And then the surprise arrives. Not a check, but officers from Immigration & Naturalization show up.

Beach Drive gives us a beautiful photo of a brave soul on the Sound…

Linked a day too soon to the Outer Limits blogEricka announced that she was moving on (thanks to a job!) and looking for a replacement…

The Miller Park Neighborhood Association blog is looking to get people out at an upcoming (March 28th) Sound Transit meeting to show support for lightrail on the eastside

The Kirkland Weblog highlighted a great new photo blog out of Kirkland… The idea (as I understand it) is that the author of Kirkland 52 is planning to post photos of Kirkland once a week over the next year.

The Capitol Hill Seattle blog indulges their love of maps with an interesting map of voter patterns on the Viaduct Replacement. (PI Article)

The Belltown Bent highlights an award given by a Harvard Group to Weiss/Manfredi Architects for their work on the Olympic Sculpture Park.

Ballard Avenue wallows a bit in the transportation history of Ballard… I think the photo makes the post.

Buyer Beware – New Construction Sites

[photopress:images_1_2_3_4_5.jpg,full,alignright] I wrote an article earlier today about a scammer. I can almost appreciate the creative talents of an obvious scammer like that. But when it comes to the real estate industry, I just want to puke.

I stopped into a new construction site yesterday to evaluate it for one of my clients. There are four people in the room. A guy sitting at the site plan talking to a young asian couple and a woman standing a bit on the side. I see the guy giving the “hard sell” about two and only two “available” lots. I’m standing back and looking at the site plan and I see about 50 available lots. Only two of them have “available” stickers and 6-9 have a sold sticker. So doesn’t that mean all the ones with NO sticker are “available”?

For some reason the young couple doesn’t “get” this, but I just keep my mouth shut and wait and watch. Can’t quite figure out who the woman in the room is yet. The guy tells the young couple something about how Tuesday or Wednesday is the deadline for them to get one of those two available lots. They thank him kindly and leave to think about which one they want, if they want one at all.

When they are out of earshot, I ascertain that the woman is an employee of the builder before I step up and say, “I’m here to help one of my client’s pick a lot. Where are those big electrical towers I saw when I drove up, but don’t see on the map here?” At this point point the woman gets obviously “annoyed”. I continue to ask questions about all of the good lots. The woman keeps trying to push me at the two “available” lots. I ignore her and continue to evaluate the better lots in the development.

As I’m leaving I ask about the other developments nearby. The guy knows nothing. The woman gives me the whole run down of the builders other projects.

Then they tell me that HE is the agent for the SELLER and SHE is the on-site agent for the BUYER. What a JOKE! She is obviously the closer of the two. She obviously works for the builder and knows more about the builder’s stuff than the guy posing as the “seller’s agent”. What a “Good Guy; Bad Guy” scam that is! Nauseating, isn’t it?

I have one final question. What is the commission to a Buyer’s Agent who isn’t “the builder’s hired closer/buyer’s agent”. He says “FULL COMMISSION”. I say, “What is FULL”. She says 3%. I say, what does the buyer get if they have no “Buyer’s Agent”. She says, they get ME. LOL What a hoot. I said so the buyer gets nothing if they have no agent? No price reduction? No upgrades? No something for the builder not having to pay an extra $21,000?? Nope. Nada. Not an option. I ask if the buyer had lost the opportunity to have an agent if they had “signed in” already. They said no. Great News!

So I leave, I go to my client to evaluate the property they will be selling. I tell them there’s an extra $21,000 on the table for us to include and negotiate, if they buy that new construction (which they had asked me about), or even if they buy a different property. My fee will be less if they buy the new construction, of course, because they were the ones who asked me to go there in the first place to check it out. Well, no. They just said they were thinking of buying in there before I even met them, and didn’t ask me to check it out.

So by poking my head into the New Construction site, even though they hadn’t asked me to, I found an extra $21,000 that would have been left on the table. Turned out they will not likely buy there, at least not before considering other options. My gut says if the builder is willing to pay 3% to an agent, even though the agent wasn’t with them when the buyer first went in to the new home sales office, there’s probably something wrong with the place.

Every not lot sold in a new construction site is available. Maybe not today. Maybe they WANT to sell two at a time because it squeezes the buyer more into making a quick decision. But if it Ain’t SOLD…I’ts AVAILABLE, regardless of the little stickers. No sticker equals available.