Category Archives: General

Passing the keys to the new owner

Posted on by
Reply

[photopress:DesiArnez_LucilleBall.jpg,thumb,alignright] An obtuse suggestion.

Ardell says, “I’ll meet you at the house with the key the evening the property records!”. I’m all excited.

Buyer: “Ardell we love you, truly we do”. BUT, uh…sometimes three’s a crowd”.

Duh, what was I thinking?!

Whether I am the agent for the buyer or the agent for the seller, I generally like to “pass through” the property after the seller is gone and before the buyer enters it for the first time. You would be amazed at what we find there sometimes! Most recent worst story I heard from an agent was that she had to hire TWO DUMPSTERS to remove junk from inside, but mostly outside, the property on the day of closing.

Most unusual request I have personally had, was a seller who called me after closing and said, “I forgot my gun that I have hidden on the ledge just inside the attic crawl hatch.” I escorted him back into the property, but I didn’t touch the gun.

On several occasions I have arrived at the property to find the seller, in a terrible state, trying to get everything out of the property. Mover was late. Friends that “promised” to help never arrived. I’ve carried mountains of clothes from the upstairs closet down into my car, and made several trips from the seller’s “old” house to their “new house”. I’ve rolled up my sleeves and carried mattresses down a flight of steps and out to the truck. I’ve sent handymen back after closing to fix scrapes or holes made, particularly in the staircase wall, when sellers were moving out.

It is the buyer agent’s responsibility to get the keys from the seller’s agent and get them to the buyer. My favorite method is to have the seller put all keys and garage door openers in a kitchen drawer along with any warranties and appliance manuals. I ask the agent to leave the lockbox with the key to the front door there for an extra day. I pull the key from the lockbox, walk through the property, address any issues. I make arrangements to pass that one key to the front door to the buyer, everything else he needs being inside the kitchen drawer.

Often the buyer prefers to pick the key up from me, away from the property, so that first step through the doorway is NOT with agent in tow.

Russ on Listing Copyrights

Posted on by
40

RCG contributors have been all over Inman News lately…

Today Russ is giving his opinion on two papers recently released by MRIS (Washington DC MLS) that have to do with the copyrights that agents have on listings.

The general thrust of the reports are that real estate agents should assert the copyright on their listings:

“Our intention with this discussion paper is to remind those that can lawfully assert copyright rights that they have legitimate recourse at their disposal if they feel their rights are violated,” the paper states.

Issues related to the copyright, control and ownership of property listings information have been debated for many years within the real estate industry, and there has been an increasing focus on these issues, the paper states, that has created “robust” and “at times contentious” discussions about the present state of the business and the future of the industry. Among new entrants to the industry are “alternative business models that propose to dramatically change the real estate industry,” as well as “new offerings from existing industry participants that may also impact the way the industry thinks about — and practices — real estate,” according to the paper.

Russ is not convinced that agents have all the rights that the paper asserts:

(Russ) said he “completely” disagrees with the perspective in the report that the listing price of a property is copyrightable, for example. “It’s the seller who typically comes up with (the listing price) and not the agent,” he said. “If it was copyrightable it would be copyrightable to the seller. In my opinion the argument does not have legal authority to back it. If challenged in court I believe that the court would find the listing price is a fact as opposed to a protectable element.” The listing price, as far as consumers are concerned, is definitely a very important aspect of property listings information, he said.

This is an interesting argument and at the root of the DOJ case against NAR that is currently working itself through the legal system.

Which Home Inspection Addendum to Use?

Posted on by
22

Here in the Seattle area, the buyer of a property gets to choose which Home Inspection Addendum to use, when making an offer to purchase. The primary difference between the two, lies in who has the “unilateral” POWER to keep the contract in-force or not, after the inspection.

The seller can counter by replacing the full inspection addendum with the other variety, but that is rare. I recently had an agent ask if “we wanted” to change the inspection addendum to the one that favored the seller, under the guise that another offer was coming. We decided to call her bluff, and our offer was accepted as written, there being no other offer in hand by the time ours required a response by the seller. Though she was quite surprised that we called her bluff in that regard.

The decision regarding which inspection clause to use, often has very little, if anything, to do with the inspection. It has more to do with whether or not the buyer retains the right to cancel based on the inspection.

I currently have two contracts in escrow for the same party, one on the sale of their property and one on the purchase of their next property. On their sale we have a 35B “Seller’s Opportunity to Repair” inspection addendum, giving them the power to keep their contract in force regarding the sale of their property, at least with regard to the inspection. On their purchase, we have a 35A “Buyer’s Satisfaction” inspection addendum, giving them the right to cancel based on their inspection, to counteract the “resale certificate” out, on their sale contract, since they are buying a home and selling a condo.

To understand the difference between these two addendums, you should review both inspection forms, 35A and 35B AND ALSO the followup forms 35AR and 35BR. The striking difference between the two is more noticeable on the followup form 35BR, with regard to the seller’s power given him by the buyer. If the seller checks the box on the follow up form saying he is going to repair the items, the inspection contingency is satisfied. It becomes a unilateral decision of the seller to satisfy the inspection contingency, whereas the 35A is a unilateral decision of the buyer to cancel.

Simply put, a buyer who makes an offer using a 35A “Buyer’s Satisfaction” inspection addendum, retains the right to cancel based on the inspection. On a 35B, the seller can simply check a little box, agreeing to repair the items in the report, causing the inspection addendum to be satisfied. The buyer cannot disagree with the seller’s choice and walk from the transaction, without risking the loss of their Earnest Money Deposit.

So which should you use? If their are multiple offers, you might be able to avoid a bidding war by using a 35B, which favors the seller, so you can win on terms vs. price. 35B trumps 35A and “no inspection contingency” trumps them all. I don’t recommend no inspection contingency in a blog, though often do in “real life” where I have the opportunity to view the property and ascertain my clients true needs and sensibilities.

It would be interesting to hear from anyone out there in the Seattle area who recently completed a sale, either as a buyer or seller. Which inspection contingency did you use and why? What factors led you to the decision to use a 35B vs. a 35A, or none at all?

Idea for Rain City Guide…

Posted on by
2

Maybe one of the highlights of being a blogger is that I get emails from people from all over the country (world!). The most common emails are from people who want me to let me (1) know about an interesting news item, (2) review a product or (3) add their site to my blogroll (hint: you can add yourself!).

Here are some of the conversations I had this week that I thought might interest RCG readers:

  • Magnus Svantegård asked me if I was going to the Realcomm conference in Houston this June. I’d never even heard of this conference, but I’m interested in learning more. After a few minutes on their website, it seems that this group is pretty focused on the commercial side of real estate. Have any readers been to this event in the past? (I added it to the real estate technology calendar 😉 )
  • Stephane Grenier (of the wonderful Follow Steph blog) offered up a free copy of LandlordMax to any Rain City Guide contributor who would write a review of the software. I definitely not the right person to write a review of a Property Management software package, but if a contributor is interested in testing this software out, let me know.
  • Max Chirkov let me know about one Google Trends (he wrote about it here). Steve Rubel appears to be having a lot of fun with this tool…
  • Joel Burslem wrote to let me know that he recently started a blog on real estate marketing. This is definitely a blog worth adding to your feed reader and assuming that he keep writing such interesting posts, it will definitely attain “must read” status.

UPDATE:

I can be bribed!!! If any investors out there are interested in purchasing apartment buildings in Southern California, check out Havan’s latest offering and let him know that Dustin send you! 🙂

The Earnest Money Check

Posted on by
10

[photopress:check.jpg,thumb,alignright]The times they are a changing.

Personally, I don’t see any reason why anyone except the closing agent, should view my buyer client’s personal check.  A “qualified reperesentative” from the escrow company, picks up the check and gives me a receipt for it.  When they deposit the check at escrow, I get a second receipt showing the funds were deposited. 

When the seller’s agent wants “a copy of the Earnest Money check”, I give them a copy of the “Deposit Receipt” instead.  In my mind this is proof enough that the Earnest Money is on deposit where it needs to be, with the closing agent.  I received a fax last week from a seller’s agent saying “My company needs the buyer’s account number from the bottom of the Earnest Money check”.  Isn’t this an outdated policy?  Why do they need my client’s personal checking account number?  And why do I care about the internal policies of a company I am not associated with? 

When I represent the buyer, I don’t really care what the “policy” of the seller’s agent’s company is.  When I represent the seller, I don’t really care what the “policy” of the buyer agent’s company is.  If a “deposit receipt” that contains NO personal information of the buyer’s account is good enough for the DOL, and it is, then it should be good enough for all of the real estate companies.

Protecting my client’s information against identity theft and fraud, is my only concern, once complying with the State’s requirements.  Multiple copies of the personal check of the buyer floating around in everyone’s files, is a policy to be changed…not complied with for the sake of making someone’s little checklist, designed in the dark ages, complete.

$3,578,671,984 Homes with Granite Countertops!

Posted on by
62

[photopress:granite.jpg,thumb,alignright]*

How many granite countertops does King Couny need?

*

In 2005 alone, 6,428 properties, valuing $3,578,671,984.00 sold with granite countertops according to the mls, using “granite” as a search word in the marketing remarks section.

  • 2006 Year to Date – King County – 4,730 homes for sale, in escrow or sold with granite counters
  • 2005 – 6,428 homes sold with granite counters
  • 2004 – 5,027 homes sold with granite counters
  • 2003 – 3,614 homes sold with granite counters

Of course that doesn’t count all of the people who remodeled their kitchens using granite countertops, who did not sell their homes.

So what’s your guess? What comes after granite? Anyone seeing new homes with something OTHER THAN Granite countertops?

Real Estate Technology Events on Google Calendar

Posted on by
30

With Google’s recently released calendar feature, they’ve made social networking of events much easier. With this in mind I’ve pre-populated a public calendar with real estate technology events that can be shared (and managed) by a group.

So far, the events that I’ve added to the calendar include:

I’d REALLY like to get some other people interested in real estate technology involved and then we can all work together to keep updated on events no matter what part of the country they occur.

At this point, I’ve tested it out with Galen Ward and he was able to manage the calendar with me (i.e. add, edit and invite people to events). If you’re interested in helping us out with this calendar, just let me know and I’d be happy to add you as a manager as well. (You will need an invite-only gmail account, so let me know if you don’t have one and I can get you one!)

For everyone else, here is an RSS feed of the calendar which can be added to your feed reader so that you can be updated each time a new event is added.

If you want to learn more about Google Calendar, Stopdesign gives a bunch of very useful tips and tricks to get the most out of the tool.

The race for 2nd place has begun

Posted on by
28

OK, I’m biased and I still believe that “Zearch” is currently King of the Hill of King County home searches. However, I’m willing to give credit where credit is due and say the distance between us and the rest of the pack got smaller today.

[photopress:NewJohnLScott.jpg,full,alignright]

Today, John L Scott and their solution provider, Bellevue based Real Tech, have quietly introducted what they call “Real-Maps 2.0“. Essentially, they are now using Microsoft Virtual Earth instead of the old school ESRI based solution. Additionally, it appears they’ve AJAX-ifed their search pane on their map page, so when you change search criteria it automatically updates the map and the matching results count (which is pretty slick). It also appears that Real Tech has gone all out, and at first glance, it appears they are using the not quite released Microsoft Atlas framework (a new development tool that makes “Web 2.0” style applications easier to develop). It appears they are using JSON for the postbacks (most sites use XML, I currently send back Javascript source code). I haven’t spent much time reverse engineering it or learning Atlas yet, so it’s possible they are using a 3rd party AJAX framework. Regardless of the technical details, it does raise the bar for everybody else.

So what does this mean? Here’s my thoughts….

  • Me – Time to install and learn Atlas this weekend. If I’m going to remain competitive with the big boys, I gotta be using the same tools that the big boys are using. Besides doing complex AJAX with Asp.net 2.0 ICallbackEventHandler is bit tedious for my liking.
  • Galen – Wondering if he should rewrite ShackPrices so it uses Ruby on Rails instead of PHP?
  • ESRI – Between Google Maps & Microsoft Virtual Earth, this company won’t be serving the real estate mapping market much longer.
  • RedFin – That flash based satellite map, though very cool in it’s day, is increasingly looking like a liability. Better update it, do as Zillow did (partner with GlobeXplorer & Microsoft), or let one of the big boys handle your maps. Any map in which the Issaquah Highlands looks like polar bear eating vanilla ice cream during a snow storm, doesn’t cut it for me.
  • Zillow – Better do something cool with that MLS data you’ve been collecting. Otherwise, those eyeballs you were counting on, will be visiting the big brokers instead. Fortunately, for Zillow they could lose the local battle, but still win the national war. The NWMLS is releasing sold listing data in the near future and I’ll be shocked if the local big brokers don’t add “Zestimate” like features to their web sites in the next 6-12 months. Hell, Rain City Guide, already has one, but you already knew we’re ahead of the curve. 😉
  • Realtor.com / HomeStore / Move – Obi Won “Dustin Luther” Kenobi – Are you their only hope? Do something! Add an Rain City RSS feed, if you have to! Anything! 🙂
  • Coldwell Banker Bain – Since they are also Real Tech customers, I suspect they’ll be asking for Real-Maps real soon now.
  • Windermere – They can’t be far behind their arch-rivals, or can they?
  • Other local brokers/agents – Time to re-evaluate your MLS search/IDX vendor? Now that John L Scott’s web site has entered the 21st century, the pressure is building for you to join them.
  • John Q Home Buyer in Seattle/Eastside – The new John L Scott, is like RedFin but with better maps & aerial photos.
  • Everybody else, elsewhere – Consumer expectations are slowly being raised. I believe Seattle is ground zero of Real Estate 2.0. Those of you lucky enough to be living outside of the 206 & 425 area codes (aka the war zone), had better pay attention, because what’s happening here will happen in your neck of the woods, sooner than you think.

So what do our fair Rain City Guide readers think of this development?