ASBESTOS – Buyer Beware!!

Posted on August 10, 2006 by ARDELL

[photopress:inspectors.jpg,thumb,alignright]I am just beside myself on the topic of home inspectors and asbestos. I don’t care how many inspectors want to tell me why inspectors aren’t “obligated” to call asbestos in the inspection, I will still keep saying: “You have GOT to be KIDDING me!!

I’ve seen more asbestos in homes in the Seattle area than in my entire career to date around the Country.

“Well Ardell, I know we both “think” that’s asbestos were looking at there, but we really can’t say it’s asbestos unless we send it out to a lab and have it tested. So we just have this disclaimer in our contract saying we are not responsible for calling asbestos in the inspection…and that is sufficient for US” US being the home inspectors!!

Yesterday I literally took a razor tool from the inspector and cut open some paneling held together by duct tape in a basement and forced an inspector to look behind it before he wrote “inaccessible area” on the report! I said if you don’t lend me something to do this with, I’m going to use my bare hands!

How come I can get 10 average Joe’s to stand around the asbestos wrapped pipes, who will all say “Yep, dats asbestis alright”, but I can’t get one inspector to note asbestos in a home inspection report?

Oh, and here’s the agent’s lovely comment (I represent the seller and she represents the buyer) “Not my problem. The buyer chose their inspector and if the inspector doesn’t tell him what he needs to know…that’s not my problem, is it?”

In PA inspectors included “testing for radon” by setting canisters in the house and sending them to the lab. They couldn’t see radon or taste it or smell it, but they didn’t put a disclaimer in their contract saying “Duh, Don’t Know”.

Here’s a clue, Risk Reduction equals every buyer KNOWING WHAT the heck they are buying!!, not 25 disclaimer and disclosure forms covering everyone’s butts in the industry! And they have the nerve to tell me that they don’t want me at the inspection because I make them look bad…Oh WELL!!

And if you stick that pointy metal thing and chunk away at the mortar between the bricks of my seller’s house one more time in some silly act of macho bravado, I’m going to take it out of your and and stick it where you don’t want it stuck.

Some days I want to be a waitress…

To Stephane, this entire post should be in bold AND all caps! I am heeding your advice. But if you tell me to stop using !!exclamation points!!, we’ll have to agree to disagree 🙂

Why I like Zillow and Redfin by ARDELL

Posted on August 8, 2006 by ARDELL

[photopress:3ofhearts.jpg,thumb,alignright]I’m still scratching my head as to why agents around the country hate Zillow so much that they want to call it “Z”. Theory is that if they even whisper the name Zillow, they are spreading “the word” and helping it to become even more popular.

Zillow is a system of mathematical calculations, a tool that is easy and fun to use. So isn’t hating Zillow like hating your calculator?

I like Zillow because before they came along, all of the lead generators were about buyers. Buyers went there to look at houses and hit the big flashing “Find an Agent” button and were taken off to never-never-land where the lead generator collected a toll. Buying buyer leads has always been a joke. I can hardly go anywhere without hearing someone talking about buying a house. Every coffee shop, restaurant, the lady in line in front of you at the bank, at least 20% of the people at a barbecue…really. If you need to buy a buyer lead you need to look in the mirror and figure out why you need to trick people into hitting a big flashing button and pay for one. Time to hone up your skills and get a personality.

The innovation of Zillow is that every lead generator has asked that question: “How do we attract SELLER leads?” Even House Values knows that they cannot get enough seller leads, and they can sell them as fast as they can get them. There are more agents willing to buy seller leads from House Values in prime areas, then there are seller leads to go around. There’s a waiting list…I know…I’ve been on it for over a year. Every time they email or call me I ask…you have a seller lead spot available for 98033 or 98034. Answer is always no, but they are trying to sell me something else. Because attracting sellers rather than buyers is something the lead generator industry has been very lax at doing well.

And then comes Zillow. I don’t know what they are selling, but they clearly have the seller’s attention. Did Zillow get an Inman award for that? If not…Zillow now has the ARDELL award for innovation in lead generating sites. Don’t be waiting for the trophy, I haven’t gotten out shopping for Greg and Sharon yet, and you’re behind them.

Kudos to Zillow. Don’t know where you’re running with that ball, but kudos for putting a seller oriented site in play.

I like Redfin, because…

a lot of my past clients who came to me from blogging,

tried them first 🙂

Trying to Force the Seller’s Hand

Posted on August 8, 2006 by ARDELL

[photopress:hand.jpg,thumb,alignright] If you are playing the game of “trying to force the seller’s hand”, you have to know how to play it right. It is not easy to force a seller to…anything. Regardless of who is right and who is wrong, if you can say there is a right and wrong to the situation, reality is what it is. If you want the house, and you are not the only one who wants the house, you have to stay “in PLAY”.

Two buyers have been “circling the wagon” for weeks. Offers have been presented to the seller, counters have gone back to the buyers. Back and forth, back and forth. Buyer Agent saying, “Did the seller look at the comps I gave you showing why the seller should?” “Well of course the seller has to fix this and fix that, remove this and add that”. Meanwhile the seller is just going about their business, day in and day out, waiting for the buyers to agree to their price and conditions.

Then along comes buyer number three. Buyer number one and buyer number two, who have had offers back and forth, know what the seller wants. So it seems only fair to tell buyer number three what the seller wants. Meanwhile buyer number two wants to submit an offer again, third time, for something less than they know the seller wants. I say, well you have two choices. You can bring an offer meeting the seller’s counter to you of a couple of weeks ago and beat buyer number three to the punch, OR you can hang back and wait to see what buyer number three does.

Buyer number two’s agent doesn’t want to bring an offer matching what the seller wants NOR wait until buyer number three makes their move on Saturday, so she brings an offer that she knows is LESS than what the seller wants and Tries To Force the Seller’s Hand”, by giving a very short response time. Bad move. You bring the seller an unacceptable offer and put a response time that is hours before buyer number three is scheduled to see the house. What happens. By trying to force the seller’s hand and make him respond before buyer number three sees the house, you are left out in the cold. Your offer is expired before the seller is going to respond. Buyer number three’s offer is accepted and your offer is a non-offer, because it expired before the seller was willing to look at it.

If you tell the seller they only have x amount of time to respond, and that timeframe does not match the seller’s schedule for some reason, your offer becomes invalid. Agent says “You COULD HAVE countered and just changed the date…” But why? Why would the seller risk countering an expired offer, when they have an acceptable and valid offer on the table? (agent’s answer is because she has worked long and hard and deserves…anytime the agent’s answer includes the agent in the picture…wrong answer – wrong thinking.)

If you are trying to force the seller’s hand by giving him a short wick, and putting a response time that is less than acceptable, you have to revise your offer and extend that date the second your response time passes. You have to keep your offer “in play”. By trying to force the seller’s hand…you can put yourself out of the game altogether, if you do not keep your dates running forward by submitting a new response time.

Buyers often think that the seller MUST respond, MUST counter. Not the case. No answer IS an answer. If you have no answer by the time your offer time expires…you have your answer. The answer is NO…try again.

When I was a teenager, my parents often didn’t want me to go to parties. So when I asked to go to a party, I didn’t demand an answer on the spot. I made my case for why I thought they should say yes, and then I left the room to give them time to talk it over and think about it. The fast answer was often no…I went to lots of parties 🙂

When you give the seller what he wants, you can try to demand a quick response. When you want the house for less than acceptable terms, you have to be willing to hang back, and you have to be willing to lose it, if the seller doesn’t meet your terms. You can’t bang your fist on the table and demand that you get the house for less. Presenting an unacceptable offer, and demanding a quick response, is like a kid throwing a tantrum…rarely works out for the best. And almost never works out for the best, when you know there are other interested buyers.

Time to get into 1st backup position.

Radiators

Posted on August 7, 2006 by ARDELL

[photopress:Radiator.jpg,thumb,alignright]If anyone out there lives in the Seattle Area and has radiator heat, can you post your comments please. Do you like them? Have you bought covers for them? Have you replaced the boiler, and if so where did you purchase the replacement.

Any and all comments on the topic of boiler heat and radiators is appreciated. We are particularly looking for a company who replaces the boiler without replacing the radiators.

Thanks.

How to List a Homicide-challenged Home?

Posted on August 7, 2006 by Dustin Luther

Between Galen scaring us with stories of AOL mischief, and both the WSJ and USA Today treating us to stories of crime-infested houses (you can’t just “repaint” over memories), I’m thinking there is something fishy in the air and I probably shouldn’t be writing any blog posts today.

However, I can’t help but wonder: What factors do you use in choosing your client when they are dead?

From the WSJ:

The red-brick mansion that just went up for sale in Greenwich, Conn., has about everything a buyer could want. Set on 2.1 lush acres on tree-lined Dairy Road, it has four bedrooms, four bathrooms, two fireplaces and a pool. Its $5.2 million asking price is, by Greenwich standards, appealing.

The home has another distinctive feature. The basement is where real-estate developer Andrew Kissel — who had been renting the home for $15,000 per month — was found bound, gagged and stabbed to death in April. “To say the broker will need all the luck he can get finding a buyer is an understatement,” says Greenwich broker Chris Fountain, who isn’t connected with the property’s sale.

From USA Today (via Zilow):

Almost 10 years after the body of 6-year-old JonBenét Ramsey was found in the basement of her Boulder, Colo., home, the Tudor-style house at 749 15th St. is on the market again.

“It’s stigmatized. It’s always been stigmatized,” says Joel Ripmaster, president of Colorado Landmark Realtors. Ripmaster has represented the last four owners of the property, all who purchased or sold the house at below-market value since JonBenét’s slaying in 1996.

Note: I went ahead and published this article today because it was brought to my attention that RCG does not do well in “real estate murder”-related search queries 😉

20 million reasons to cancel AOL

Posted on August 7, 2006 by Galen

Update: You can now search the AOL data from your web browser.
As promised earlier, I did some scans through the massive privacy invasion from AOL for some real state search insight. I’ll leave it to other sites to search for the tell you about the disgusting things people search for.
Not many AOL searchers are looking for “seattle real estate” in those words – in fact only 21 of the 20 million queries contained that text and those users largely went to the big Google-optimized sites like Seattle Power Search (the number one result) or the Seattle Times (the number 3 result).

AOL users found Rain City Guide through many long-tailish routes, with relevant keywords like “zilllow” (sic), “small condos,” “seattle real estate,” “earnest money recipt” (sic), and “five factors that determine if an idea is a good investment opportunity.” Guilty-conscience user 917673 came to us while searching for “sellers disclosure for condominium complex.” And User 1636230, who came to Rain City Guide after searching for “seattle real estate,” also visited Winderemere and Seattle Power Search. One searcher also found us when they searched for “dustin dustin.”
Here’s where this data goes beyond our own site (and where it gets creepier): what preceded and followed those inquisitive searches? Can we tell something about these people? Well, User 1636230’s interest in real estate was passing. They searched around for five minutes in March:

www.happydogtoys.com 2006-03-21 14:12:20 2 http://www.happydogtoys.com

www.happydogtoys.com 2006-03-21 14:12:20 2 http://www.happydogtoys.com

hometown realty executives 2006-03-21 15:30:32

hometown realty executives seattle 2006-03-21 15:30:41

hometown r.e. executives seattle 2006-03-21 15:31:05

hometown real estate executives seattle 2006-03-21 15:31:24

seattle real estate 2006-03-21 15:33:18 1 http://www.seattlepowersearch.com

seattle real estate 2006-03-21 15:33:18 8 http://raincityguide.com

seattle real estate 2006-03-21 15:33:18 9 http://www.windermere.com

locks for love 2006-03-22 10:52:35 1 http://www.locksoflove.org
…

Then decided to look into building their own home a week later:

lux homes 2006-03-28 15:33:40 1 http://www.luxhomesllc.com

woodenville builders 2006-03-28 15:34:56 (4 more identical searches)

User-1636230 then went on to search for approximately 10,000 pet related items and for much sadder subjects, including for cancer drugs and incontinence.

What of guilty-conscience-User 917673? They were clearly concerned about their condo and they didn’t want to tell the buyer. Here are three of their searches (of over forty):

condominium disclosure by seller in los angeles

arbitration for selling or buying a condo

consequences of no disclosure from seller

Sounds like someone got a bum deal on that condo!

In looking at the other Seattle Real Estate searches, it seems that the adage that buyers and sellers go with the first agent they talk to does not apply to searches (no big surprise here). Searchers go all over the internet and leave and come back to the same search repeatedly. If they’re as committed as User 917673, they use lots of slightly different word combinations. What I found interesting was watching users hit a site that they are interested in, then go on to search for that company’s or person’s name to see if they can find some background (so it is good to be on a first name basis with the search engines).

I only found 668 occurrences of “cancel AOL.” I suspect and hope there will be a lot more this week.

Real estate search patterns and AOL users

Posted on August 7, 2006 by Galen

Yesterday AOL proudly announced the release of 20 million web queries from 650,000 users (screenshot), with each user “anonymized,” but identified by a unique ID. This is appalling – it means that potentially thousands of social security numbers and email addresses are now free for spammers and thieves to harvest, along with a lot of other personally identifying information. Think about what you search for – email addresses, people’s addresses, business secrets and even social security numbers come to mind. AOL quickly realized their mistake and pulled the plug, but not before the dataset had taken on a life of its own.

So, spammers and thieves are having a field day, but now that it’s out, we might as well use it for educational purposes. It’s a big, unwieldy file, but I’ll try to post some real estate search patterns by tomorrow. If you’re hoping to do your own analysis on this dataset, I wager that there will be a nice web interface for you to use within a week (Consumerist thinks so too). I’ll let you know when it pops up.
More on the ramifications of the release at TechCrunch. If you’re going to cancel your AOL account, good luck.

My Favorite Real Estate Story

Posted on August 7, 2006 by ARDELL

A seller receives 23 offers on his property. All of the buyer agents want to present their offers in person and introduce the buyers to the seller.

There are 23 buyer agents and their buyer clients seated on folding chairs in a big room. Picture 50 or more people sitting on folding chairs with Offers to Purchase in their hands.

In a little conference room sits a seller and the seller’s agent preparing to review these 23 offers. The seller is not happy. All he wants is one, good and acceptable offer. He is overwhelmed by the prospect of having to review 23 offers and send 22 people home “empty handed”.

One by one the buyers and their agents “present their offer to the seller”. After about 8 of these “presentations”, the seller is totally confused and beside himself, as all of the offers seem about the same to him.

Along comes buyer number 9 and his agent. The savvy buyer’s agent can sense that the seller is completely fried and wants this over with. So he makes the seller an offer he can’t refuse, and the seller says to his agent “I’m going to take this one, get everyone else out of here.”

So the totally embarrassed seller’s agent goes out to the big room of many people in folding chairs and announces that the seller is DONE! He thanks them all for coming, but the seller is going to take offer #9 and they should all leave now.

AND THEN, AND THEN….ALONG COMES HANNAH!!! She jumps up from her chair, runs past the seller’s agent, kicks open the door to the little conference room, points at the buyer and buyer’s agent in the room and says “Whatever these guys have offered…we’ll go $100,000 over THAT!!

The seller’s eyes get as big as saucers. He realizes that it may be in his best interest to let everyone compete with one another and so he tells his agent to proceed as originally planned and “the game” proceeds until all 23 agents and their buyers have given their “Final and Best” offer.

I just love the picture in my mind of Hannah jumping from her chair, TACKLING THE LISTING AGENT, kicking down the door and refusing to be eradicated! I wonder why no one has ever made a movie of her valiant move! Her client must have been stunned, the whole room must have gasped in awe! I totally LOVE this story.

End result: Hannah’s client did NOT get the house. In fact Buyer #9 did, in the end, get the house for $400,000 more than his first acceptable offer. Buyer #9 got the house AND he sued Hannah’s company for making him have to pay $400,000 more for the house, as Hannah and Buyer #9’s agent worked for the same company. The suit was settled out of court and we now have “the Hannah clause” in all Buyer Agency contracts stating that the buyer is aware that the company may have other buyers under contract competing for the same house.

So Hannah’s efforts have become legendary…but only in the archives of lawyers and new stock clauses.

Hannah deserves much better…she at least deserves this article on a blog. So here’s to you Hannah! You are my idol!

The Best Online Real Estate Marketing Time Can Buy

Posted on August 6, 2006 by Dustin Luther

Jim over at the Real Estate Tomato has an interesting post about the type of content that real estate agents should produce on their blog. The question of content really boils down to how to do the best possible search engine optimization (SEO). So, here are my two cents…

The type of content you write about is almost irrelevant.

Really! I’ll repeat that…

The type of content you write about is almost irrelevant.

There is no “perfect” content or “magic bullet” that will get you to the top of the search engines and thrust you to internet lead nirvana.

Here’s the reality: It is far more important to be interesting in a real estate kinda way (hence the “almost”) than to worry about creating the “right” content.

I sincerely doubt that Hanin Levin set out to be the #1 result on any search for real estate information in Laguna Niguel. He got there because Google has a lot of trust for his site with regards to real estate and at one point he happen to mention Laguna Niguel in one of his blog posts. This is the the long tail in action, which also helps explains why Rain City Guide shows up #2 on that list.

Why does Google have a lot of trust around Hanan’s site with regards to real estate?
Because a lot of real estate sites (mainly bloggers) have linked to him. That back-and-forth of linking between related sites blows away all other factors.

Why do other real estate bloggers link to him?
Because he is interesting!

Maybe after you’ve created a real estate blog that does well in Google, you’ll decide that you’re missing a few keywords, but more likely your readers will do that for you. An recent example occurred when a reader pointed out that we didn’t have any good houseboat information. A simple post three days ago on houseboat financing has already put Rain City Guide at the top of a useful Google search.

[photopress:williams_at_christmas.jpg,thumb,alignright]The important thing to remember is the “perfect” content will only work if others are linking to you and the content is good enough to keep readers coming back for more. My guess is that people begin searching the internet for real estate information months before they are ready to talk with an agent. As an agent, you want to write content that will keep them coming back long after they’ve forgotten about their initial google search!

You could try to be interesting like Lockhart with lots of NYC real estate gossip, like Hanan by posting fascinating links on a daily basis, or like Joel by being on top of real estate technology, but more likely, you’re going to need to write about something that hits a little closer to your interests. Blogging done right is similar to all other human endeavors done right… Success will be a reflection of your personality.

Finally, Jim, it would be wrong to write this whole article without giving you the link you’ve earned by being interesting… So, here’s my link to a great marketing article from the juiciest real estate tomato in northern california! 🙂

Rain City Guide

Your Guide to the Seattle Real Estate Market

Category Archives: General