Category Archives: General

Gone Wiki

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A little less than a month ago, I released the Rain City Guide Wiki and I’ve been very impressed with the results so far… I’ve had quite a few local real estate professionals add themselves to the (free) directory that I’ve set up and even a few, like Grier Smith and Chuck Reiling, add their own pages.

Interestingly, I figured it would take some time before Google caught up with the wiki site, but I’m pleased to say that it really didn’t take much time at all! A search on Chuck’s name shows that the wiki page he created for himself is the number one result, even above his writings on Rain City Guide, which kind of surprised me.

[photopress:wiki_screenshot.jpg,thumb,alignright]Because creating a page on the wiki is as simple as putting text in brackets: […], it seems like a no brainer for real estate professional who want to kick start their internet exposure. All you have to do is add your name (in brackets) to the Seattle Real Estate Directory. After you save the page, you will be prompted to create your own page where you can write about yourself and add photos to your heart’s content.

However, I think the real benefit of the wiki will come as people fill in more details about the home buying process. Grier did a great job starting up the discussion with a page on the Home Buying Process. If others are interested in adding to his description, editing the wiki page is as simple as clicking on the link that says “edit this page”! And if you are making a meaningful contribution, I highly recommend you add yourself as a source!

Here are some of the areas of the wiki that I’ve put some time into updating recently:

  • Innovative Real Estate Search Sites. I get a steady stream of emails from people who want me to add their new real estate technology site to my list of innovative sites. My latest response is to say “feel free to add yourself to the wiki page because I’m in the process of moving the list over there anyway!” On the wiki, each innovative real estate site gets their own page and I’ve added lots of cross-links making it easy to see connections between companies. There is still lots more that could be added, so I welcome your contributions!
  • Seattle Real Estate Blogs. This is another wiki page I feel pretty good about because I’ve seen a bunch of local real estate bloggers add their sites recently. I keep learning about new sites thanks to this page!
  • National Real Estate Blogs. Similar to the Innovative Real Estate sites, whenever a blogger emails me asking to be added to my blogroll, I send them to this wiki page where they can add their own site. After I complete adding all the real estate blogs that were already in my blogroll to the wiki, then I’ll completely move my blogroll over to this wiki page so that I don’t have to do any work at all! 🙂

I’ve definitely gone wiki, and if you care to join, it can be a lot of fun!

As Good As It Gets

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[photopress:dragnet.jpg,thumb,alignright]

*

DRAGNET STYLE

Just the FACTS, M’am

Monday 10:05 P.M. – email – Hi Ardell, my name is “Jack”. I just moved here from X and am on a mission to find a house before June when my wife and children join me. I thought I could do this using the internet but I’m finding this more and more difficult as houses I like seem to disappear almost as soon as they hit the market. I just read some of your articles including the one titled Using the internet to buy your new home and you made me realize that I need help. I’m pretty sure I know what I’m looking for and where I want to live. Here goes: Quiet and clean residential neighborhood, good elementary school. Single family house with 3 bedrooms with an additional room for an office. Two car garage. Ramblers are not my first choice. My budget is _ and am pre-qualified with my bank. MLS# 26xx is a good example of a house I like that is currently STI. Is there hope? Can you help me?

Monday 11:15 P.M. – email – Yes “Jack”, I can help you. But right now I am going to sleep. Will set up a strategy for you to be in a home that you like, before your wife and children arrive, in the morning. Best regards, ARDELL DellaLoggia

Tuesday 8:16 A.M. – email – “Jack”, What I would like to do, rather than speaking with you on the phone, is meet you at the STI house you sent me. If they are having any problems with the current buyer, we might be able to do a backup offer. I would also like to see if you really DO like it, by seeing it together. I’m assuming you have never been inside of it. ARDELL

Tuesday 8:32 A.M. – email – I work at _ and usually finish at 5:00. I could meet you at the house around 5:45.

Tuesday 9:09 A.M. – email – Let’s meet tonight at 6 p.m. at xxx Ave. I would like to see this house, and the STI house in the same neighborhood, together this evening…ARDELL

Tuesday 9:28 A.M. – email – OK. See you at 6.

Tuesday 10:15 A.M. – called listing agent of STI house. Buyer and Seller in heated negotiations over inspection issues. Will likely resolve them but seller starting to hate buyer, and so might be amenable to a buyer swiitch out. Long shot but doable. Then called listing agent of the other house I was showing, twice, determined it might sell at the same price as the STI house even though it was priced $25,000 higher. Already had an offer that didn’t end successfully.

Tuesday 6:00 P.M. – Met “Jack” at 6 as planned. Saw both houses. We both hated the STI house that looked great in the internet pictures…BUT was terrible! We both loved the other house. Asked why he hadn’t seen it on the internet. Said price was $25,000 over his max. We all drove back to my house so I could look over the comps while my partner fixed “Jack” some dinner. Told him I couldn’t promise, but I thought it would sell at the same price as the STI house if we could tie it up before the weekend. Talked till after 10:00 P.M. Wrapped it up for the evening at 10:15 P.M. so I could get something to eat besides the cookies I had at the Home Inspection. Always hire a home inspector whose wife bakes cookies.

Wednesday 8:18 A.M. – email – “Jack”, I would like your thoughts in the morning light. Before I talk with the listing agent this morning, your thoughts would be appreciated. ARDELL

Wednesday 8:32 A.M. – Jack called and said he and his wife decided to make an offer..

Wednesday 10:00 A.M. – Found new listing on the same street that came on while we were talking the night before at 8:28 P.M. emailed new listing to Jack.

Wednesday 10:43 A.M. – email – had an excellent conversation with the listing agent and started “pre-negotiating the offer” She is running over to see the new listing too. The new listing has a smaller square footage of just over x squre feet on both the first and second floors, so I don’t think it is a better house for you than the one we we saw last night. Now that I see how much smaller the new listing is, you may not need to see it, but I will see it either before or after my inspection appt. today. I did get a lot of details regarding the offer he did receive and where it soured and ended and what happened. Call you later.

Wednesday 11:41 A.M. – email – It would appear that an earlier closing date, rather than later, would be a plus to keep the price no higher than target price.99% sure we can keep it down to $10,000 over, or even $5,000 over, but smack on target price will be tough, but I think doable.Going in at anything less than target price would result in a higher counter than going in dead on target price. Leave no room for a counter. I will pre-negotiate that we are coming in with “final and best”, but leave $5,000 to $10,000 room, just in case. Offer needs to be written and submitted by 7-8 tonight, response time for seller tomorrow night or Friday night (before the weekend) and a close date of X. Just a few things for you to think about before I call later.

Wednesday 12:14 P.M. –Ran through new listing on the way to my home inspection appointment. No good. First house much better. First house $30,000 more than this one, But I think we can get it for $25,000 less. Called Jack. We agreed to meet to write offer after he got out of work and I finished my home inspection appointment.

Wednesday 4:56 P.M. – email – Just got back from the home inspection and am working on your offer. ARDELL

Wednesday 6:00 P.M.- My partner, Kim Harris, met Jack at new listing just to be sure he hated it as much as I did and also went back to “the” house, while I was putting the finishing touches on the offer, including calling the seller’s agent for a third time in one day to let her know I was faxing the offer by 7:30.

Wednesday 7:00 P.M. – Jack and my partner returned. Jack signed the offer and left so I could prepare the cover note to the contract and fax it. I need to be alone when I write the cover note and call the listing agent.

Wednesday 8:34 P.M. – email – Seller’s agent was very impressed with the simplicity of the offer and the fact that we included the initialed legal description and the signed page 5 of the Form 17 up front. She assured me that there are NO other offers at this time. We should hear something tomorrow, and I will of course call you as soon as I hear something.

Thursday 10:05 A.M. – email – CONGRATULATIONS! RIGHT ON TARGET PRICE! NO COUNTER!!


I sit back with my smoke and wonder if it is pure coincidence that the first email came in Monday at 10:05 P.M. and the final on Thursday at 10:05 A.M. If I were a gambling girl, I might play that 10-05…but I ain’t.

(music)

(credits)

Clever marketing

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I’m back from a crazy contract job in New Orleans and a great vacation in the Copper Canyon, Mexico, where the real estate agents must walk eight hours up a steep arroyo just to talk to their rural clients. I’m guessing there aen’t a lot of buyers for precariously perched tiny houses serviced only by burros. I recommend the trip and I am a big proponent of a trip to a hot sunny place every Seattle March.

[photopress:Fortunes.JPG,thumb,alignright] On to real estate: Normally I’m not into cutesy marketing, but these fortunes cracked me up. Bonnie’s dedicated client served her fortune cookies after a great dinner and noted that they really matched Bonnie’s style, which got me to thinking about the basics of any kind of marketing; your marketing (including your blog) should match your style. If you’re outgoing and funny, your marketing should be outgoing and funny. If you’re a brain, it should be more like the puzzle a friend of mine got from his money manager last year. Which just happens to bring me to a new real estate blog that sings to the bean counter in me: Altos Research. Charts and graphs, oh my!

Disclaimer: Mike is the relative of a friend of my relative.

INBOX: Best Brokerage in Seattle to Work For?

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I just received an email from a Seattle investor who has recently earned his salesperson license and is now interested in finding the best place to hang his license. I began by sending him to the list of brokerages I’ve compiled on the wiki, but I imagine there are some readers who could do a better job focusing his search.

I know him well enough to say that he has more than a little bit of experience investing and he is interested in focusing his energy helping other investors.

Is there a brokerage that does better with this segment of the market?

What questions should he be asking as he interviews brokers?

How many emails does it take to buy a house?

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I belong to an agent oriented forum with 17,000 “participants”, many “lurkers”, from all over the Country and Canada.  I have been “speaking” there since 1998.  At least once a year a newer agent there asks the question: “What is the average number of emails per transaction?”.

Of course it is possible to go from start to finish with no emails at all, I guess.  Hasn’t been my experience, but I’m sure it is still humanly possible for that to happen.  Last year I had one that took close to 400 emails AFTER the transaction closed, to solve an after sale problem.  None of the emails were from the other agent in the transaction :-), though I did copy him on every email response to his client.  I was the seller’s agent.  I also had many, many phone calls and meetings, in addition to the 400 emails, and all turned out “well”. 

“Rule” is I can never contact someone else’s client in the transaction, but I must answer honestly, if that client calls me.  Usually I do tell them I will respond to their agent and their agent needs to be the one speaking with them.  But when they say their agent isn’t responding to them, I am left with no choice but to handle both sides until the matter is resolved.   I apply the same rule to email, usually.  I never email the other agent’s client in the transaction, nor do I copy the other agent’s client during the course of a transaction.  But if someone else’s client emails me directly, I respond directly, with a copy to their agent.  When you consider that those 400 emails were often directed to at least 6 people, that is 6 times 400 communications or 2,400 communications!

In my experience, the “average” transaction takes between 150 and 200 emails.  This is only my side of the transaction, so if the other agent in the transaction has the same experience, that would be 400 per transaction. Many of these copy multiple parties and only count as 1 email to 4 people.  Emailing escrow with copies to the other agent and my client, for example. This does include emails from the day I meet a potential client until the day they close on the property, and afterward if and as needed.  It does NOT include emailing property to them from the mls, as those emails do not show in my Outlook data.

Blogging is trimming down the number of emails needed to complete a transaction!  Since 1/1/2006, when I began blogging, I have noticed that many of my clients already know a lot more than they ever did in the past.  They already understand more about various transaction details, having read my blog before they contacted me.  I find they also read it during the transaction, and sometimes I direct a blog post to a specific issue at hand in a generic way.  This way I not only help my client to understand what is happening in the transaction, but the general public at large at the same time.

That being said, everyone, agents and consumers both, need to undersand that an email is “in writing”.  There are still times when I need to pick up the phone to say something that I am not willing to put in writing.  A good agent needs to know when to send a letter or a card by snail mail, when to email and when to pick up the phone.  Each of these communication mediums have their place in the transaction, and it is an art to know which to use when.

What a week!

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[photopress:view_of_santa_monica.jpg,thumb,alignright]My family and I spent the past week scoping out appropriate neighborhoods in Ventura County! No matter where we choose to live in Southern California, it will definitely be a major change from our way of life in Seattle…

As I spent most of the week away from the internet (I did have a BlackBerry, but that doesn’t really count!), I’ve fallen way behind so I’m going to play a quick catch up here by mentioning a few of the things that have caught my eye this evening as I returned to the web:

  • Dan Green, ofThe Mortgage Reports Blog, let me know that Rain City Guide received at least one nomination for the Most Innovative Real Estate Blog. Very cool! Thank you Dan!
  • There has been some buzz around a new real estate blog featuring a large group of real estate professionals. I look forward to following the site…
  • I received emails from people at both Zillow and Move on how to better use their systems to find appropriate neighborhoods, so I’m going to have to revisit my post on the home buying process.
  • Ardell published a great article that has been very well received by other bloggers!
  • For the first time since the inception of RCG, I’ve not read EVERY single comment that has been posted on RCG! AHH!!! I’ve got some more reading to do! And on a very related note, my inbox is over-flowing with emails that are worth a quality response, so don’t be surprised if it is taking me a while to respond!

Top Ten Obstacles to Selling a Home

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In David Letterman style, let’s list the top ten things that make a buyer say “let’s get out of here!!”, when I am showing a house. 

 

NUMBER TEN: DEAD BUGS LYING AROUND!  That being said, I have to admit that not only have I sold properties with dead bugs lying around, I have bought them myself.  Often people will exterminate a home after moving furniture out and then put in new light carpet and put it on the market vacant.  After exterminating a home, dead bugs can appear for weeks afterward, and with no one living in the house, you find the dead spiders lying on the brand new light carpet.  “I said light, bright and airy NOT light, bright and buggy!” 

NUMBER NINE: SKEEVY CREEPIES!  You know, those things that make you just a tad nauseous.  Like when you open the shower curtain and there’s black gunk in the corners of the tub and along the caulk line, or in the grout spaces.  Or that thick, heavy layer of soap scum on the shower door.

NUMBER EIGHT: MAJOR FLOOR SQUEAKS!  I once had a buyer who loved to stand on these and rock back and forth like he was playing an accordian.  If I was in another part of the house talking with his wife, he would rock back and forth until it annoyed us so much we had to acknowledge where the noise was coming from.  These are usually fixable.  If it is squeaking under a rug, there are screws to put in right through the rug to resecure the subfloor to the joist.  The screw has a “break off” head that is removed once the base of it is screwed in.

NUMBER SEVEN: THE NEIGHBOR!  Good luck with that one.  I have found no cures for a neighbor’s dog who barks incessantly.  The neighbor with 8 junk cars parked on his front lawn.  The neighbor who has eight buddies drinking beers out front and lining up the empty bottles on the shared fence.  It’s not a good sign when I’m showing a house and the neighbor is whistling and saying “Hey Baby, Whatcha Doin’?”

NUMBER SIX: PILES OF DIRTY CLOTHES! I saw a really odd one tonight.  The house was completely empty until I got upstairs into one of the bedrooms.  One of the main features on the flyer was “remodeled master bath”.  When I got up to the master bathroom, the new jacuzzi tub was filled with dirty clothes, as was the floor of that bathroom and the closet and the bedroom.  Big piles of dirty clothes and towels.  Pretty weird for a vacant house.  Dirty clothes lying on chairs, on beds, on floors…once someone’s seen your dirty underwear, they don’t seem to be interested in buyng your house.

NUMBER FIVE: BIG DOG BARKING!  You ring the bell and no one answers except the dog.  He’s barking and growling on the other side of the door as if he’s saying “Do you feel lucky today?”

NUMBER FOUR:  DIRTY ROOF!  Huge piles of pine needles all over the roof or big mounds of moss growing on the roof and into the gutters.  Gutters jam full of pine needles.  If you live in one of those great places like Bridle Trails Bellevue with big tall pine trees everywhere, get out the blower and round up those pine needles!

NUMBER THREE:  BUYER STEPPED IN DOG POOP!  I know it’s been winter in Seattle and you haven’t been out in the yard for awhile.  In fact it was raining so much you just opened the back door to let Fido do his business, instead of taking him out for a walk.  And you haven’t wanted to go out in the rain to clean up after him.  But nothing says, I’m not buying this house! like the would be buyer stepping in mounds of dog poop in the yard.  Especially when you made him take his shoes off at the front door so he wouldn’t dirty your carpet, and now he’s got dog poop all over his socks and can’t put his shoes back on.

NUMBER TWO: PICTURES ON THE WALLS  Pictures, Pictures everywhere!  I know it looked great in that Pottery Barn catalogue when they took a whole wall and covered it with all different sized pictures in black frames.  Long ones, tall ones, short ones and wide ones.  Do you know what people see when they look at these pictures?  The holes that will be left in the wall when you take them all with you when you move.

NUMBER ONE: ODORS!  In my experience, this applies to all smells, both good and bad.  If you open the door and there is a strong smell of ANY kind, it is a problem.  That doesn’t just apply to pet odors and smoke or mustiness, but also bleach, pine cleaners, rose and floral scents, carpet fresheners or wall plug in room fresheners.  I can only think of one time in 16 years where I have sold the house, when I had to walk outside to get a gulp of fresh air after viewing each room.  If I feel like I am going to pass out before I make it up the stairs to the second floor,  the buyers and I are usually out of there before making it through the entire house.  Often these homes are vacant, and the owners or listing agents haven’t been inside the house, since they installed  “plug-ins” in every single room outlet, to mask some other foul odors.

Your help requested

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I would appreciate your help with the two requests below:

1) Visting Realtor from Jacksonville Florida is coming to Seattle for the week of the 4th of July.  Along with some recommendations of good restaurants, he is asking for some suggestions of what to do when in town that might interest his two sons age 10 and 15.  I have all girls and we always shop!  I haven’t a clue what 10 and 15 year old boys like to do in Seattle.  Looking for Rain City Fans to come to the rescue with some suggestions of what restaurants and activities you might suggest for “Bill and his boys”.

2) “Newly married Martie” is off on her honeymoon and landing here on May 4.  She needs a rental, two bedroom house that will allow two dogs.  Price range about $1,200 a month.  Her new husband will be taking a job at the airport, so way out of my area.  Around here a lot of rentals have signs in the windows or on the lawn and I write them down as I walk by to help people who are looking for rentals.  There is just no good one central place for rental info, especially when you want a house and have two dogs.  So anyone who spots a rental that might meet these requirements, please post the info so she can check in here when she arrives in town after her honeymoon.

The Mind of a Home Buyer

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So, we’re moving to Southern California, and we have some obvious questions we want answered:

  • What neighborhoods should we be looking in?
  • What neighborhoods can we afford?

Here’s what we do know:

  • I’m going to work at location 30700 Russell Ranch Rd, Westlake Village, CA.
  • We can afford a home in the $500 to $600K range.
  • I’m willing to commute a fair distance (up to 40 minutes) if the home was a great deal, but I’d really rather be within bicycling distance to work.
  • The employees of Move that I talked with recommended Thousand Oaks (10 minutes), Santa Barbara (45 minutes) and Santa Monica (45 minutes).
  • If we can’t afford something in our price range that is acceptable, I’d consider renting a place, especially if it was close to the beach.

Anna and I spent some time on the internet playing around. We tried what I thought would be the most promising options: Realtor.com, Trulia and Zillow. I know that none of these sites is geared toward finding appropriate neighborhoods, but I thought I might be able to “trick” them into helping us out:

  • Realtor.com. I began by doing a search of [3 bedroom homes in Westlake Village, CA]… Surprise, surprise, the only home listed under $600K are mobile homes (and yes, there is a mobile home listed for $599K). I didn’t really expect to find a home in Westlake Village, but I was hoping that I might be able to do a large-area search using this tool, so that I might be able to get an idea where a concentration of appropriate homes are located, but there was no (obvious) way to widen my search using the available tools. Next I turned to their beta map search. This was more helpful in that it gave me homes nearby Westlake village, but it was not entirely clear to me how it determined it should widen my search. And scrolling around the map doesn’t refresh it with new properties as one would hope. Because we don’t even know the cities/zip codes we want to look in, I couldn’t keep Anna interested in searching around the beta site and we moved on after a few minutes.
  • Zillow was a bit better because I could zoom in and see a price next to each City’s name. Presumably, this is the average price for the City, but I’m not 100% sure of this. However, smaller cities (and/or huge neighborhoods in the case of Los Angeles) don’t show up. Until I zoomed into each individual property, there was not an easy way to tell if I could afford the area. Overall, we gave up on Zillow after a few minutes as I couldn’t “trick” it into telling me about appropriate neighborhoods.
  • Trulia was definitely the best of the three… I could give it a very detail search entry [3+ beds, $550K to 600K, Westlake Village], and then scroll around the map to see what neighborhoods might work for us. It also had the bonus of showing us “average home prices” depending on where you center the map. (i.e. if I’m over Thousand Oaks, I see the average 1, 2, 3 and 4+ bedroom price!).

Here is what I learned from Trulia from my search:

  • There’s no chance we’re going to buy a home along the coast of Santa Monica or Malibu (I didn’t really expect that this would be an option, but now it is confirmed).
  • If we want to buy a place within biking distance, we may be able to afford something in Thousand Oaks. My brief foray into Realtor.com hinted that a place in Thousand Oaks would likely be a townhome.
  • There are a lot more options either north (Simi Valley) or west (Camerillo, Oxnard, or Ventura), but the dream of owning in Santa Barbara is definitely out of the picture.
  • It looks like there might be something available for us in “the valley”, but both Anna and I want to go in the other direction if possible.

We’re thinking of making a trip to LA relatively soon to check out neighborhoods and tour some homes. Is it enough for us to check out the Ventura and the Simi Valley/Thousand Oaks area, or should we add a few different neighborhoods/cities to our radar?

Of course, the home search process definitely makes me wonder if the LA market has topped off and if it might make a whole lot more sense for us to rent (could we be near the beach?). If I do decide to look further into renting, I’ll definitely post an review of my online search.

Interesting side note: Despite my proclaimed confidence in “context” tools like blogging, I haven’t yet turned to blog posts and/or forums for any answers about neighborhoods (nor have I felt compelled to click on any ads).

The YES, NO, MAYBE tour for relocating buyers

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I invented this back when I was doing a lot of relocation work for Coldwell Banker on the East Coast.  I thought Dustin and Anna might like to try it when looking at homes in California.  It comes in very handy when you are touring a lot of homes the first day in a new area.

It’s pretty simple.  You each have three little cards (kind of like Richard Simmons’ Deal a Meal – yes, it was that long ago when I came up with this.) One card says YES, one says NO and the other says MAYBE.  You can only use ONE card in each house.  Anna has a set and Dustin has his own set. 

At each house you are not allowed to say a word to one another until you make your selection from the three cards.  If you are touring homes with an agent, you hand her one of the cards as soon as you know your answer, not how you think your spouse will feel about the house.  Since there is a MAYBE card, this should be a fairly quick procedure for most people.  If the agent gets handed two NO cards as soon as they walk in the front door, you can all get back in the car.  Unless the owner is home, in which case you do a “pity” pass through.  Easier than saying we already know we hate this house.

If you have all NO cards played at the end of the day, what you don’t like is your price range, and you may have to go back to your new employer and say, “what you offered to pay me is not enough to live here”.  If you have three YES houses where you both said YES, you may as well toss out the MAYBE houses and go back at the end of the day to the three YES houses and spend more time in them.  I usually ask people to rank their YES choices as they go.  First YES, no ranking.  Second YES, you have to label one #1 and the other #2.  This way if you have 7 yes houses at the end, you can go back to #1, #2 and #3. 

Why did I feel the need to invent this system?  Can’t people know if they like a house without a little card? 

Here’s why. 

1) Sometimes the relocated spouse feels guilty about making the family move and says “Whatever my sweetie wants will be fine with me” until it is time to sign the contract and wants to offer 80% of asking price.  That’s called saying yes and meaning no.  It’s a passive/aggressive thing some people do 🙂

2) The wife walks in first and starts saying things like, “well, we could take this wall down over here and we could add a master bathroom…”, take it from experience, that’s a NO.  Before they start arguing over how they are going to afford the time and money to do all of that stuff…get a NO card and GET OUT!  Otherwise they will be crying and fighting before you get to house number 4.

3) When they both hand me a YES card and find out that the other party agrees, they can move through the house really evaluating whether or not they should actually buy it, instead of discussing whether or not the other likes it.  And you will be amazed at how happy they both are when you tell them they both said YES.  Sometimes one spouse is afraid to say they like the house because they don’t want the other spouse to buy it just because THEY like it.  It is a great moment when they both hand over a YES card.

Of course the client that keeps handing me all three cards at every house drives me nuts 🙂  Some people just don’t like to be pinned down.