Your help requested

Posted on by
24

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

Posted on by
42

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

Posted on by
22

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.

The Mind of a Seller

Posted on by
20

So we’re moving…

This seems like a very appropriate place to discuss some of the things that are going through our minds as we prepare to sell our current home and buy a new home in a new city… Interestingly, my knowledge of “good” improvements to make is very limited and probably much closer to the typical home owner than an experienced real estate agent. With that in mind, I’m going to throw a bunch of ideas against the wall and see what sticks.

So where to start?

[photopress:tree_house.jpg,thumb,alignright]We have a wonderful Tudor in North Seattle that we’re going to be selling. The home is not perfect, but it has some features that make is pretty darn desirable (Good size, big backyard, a good school district, great access to Downtown, great neighbors, etc). However, it is an old home, so I’m thinking that we could add some value and make the house more “marketable” if we made a few improvements.

Here are some of the potential improvements that come to mind.

Electrical:

  • Elimination of old wiring. There are some remnants of the original knob-and-tube wiring in the house. As far as our inspector could tell when we moved into the house (two-and-a-half years ago), the old wiring only supplied power to one light in the attic. I have no idea what it would cost to simply eliminate this wiring, but I have a feeling it wouldn’t be much if combined with some additional electrical work. My guesstimate for the cost: $1000.
  • Ground the computer room. At some point, someone went through and grounded the outlets in the kitchen. I think it would be good to do something similar in the computer room (which is very close to the kitchen and directly above the electrical panel which is located in the basement). My guesstimate for the cost: $1000.

New Appliances:

  • [photopress:dishwasher.JPG,thumb,alignright]Dish Washer. There is a small dishwasher in the kitchen which as never worked. It definitely get electricity and water, so I’m thinking we simply would need to find another (small) dishwasher that fits in this space. I see this as an improvement that makes the house more “acceptable” rather than one that really adds value. My guesstimate for the cost: $500 to buy and install.

Windows:

  • New Windows. We’ve got single pane windows throughout the house. They’re really old, more than half of them are painted shut, and cold air leaks in through cracks on many of them. Would we be best off fixing these before we sell? My guesstimate for the cost: $10,000.

Floors:

  • Refinish Wooden Floors. The wooden floors through the living room and hallways have potential to really shine should we refinish them. My guesstimate of the cost: $2000.

Basement:

  • Finish Basement. Our basement (which includes a separate bathroom, kitchen, bedroom, game room and utility room) has been 95% finished. However there is one wall that needs to be finished (i.e. add drywall) and I think a few other small projects (like adding a door to the closet in the bedroom) could make a big difference in making it feel “finished”. My guesstimate for this cost: $2000

Of course there are some other things on our mind as we get ready to sell:

  • Contractors? Would it be better to hire specialists for each of these jobs (i.e. contract with a window replacement firm, an electrician, etc) or just hire one contractor?
  • List in the MLS. Of course, Anna would list the house under her name, so we will really only be paying 3% of the typical 6% fee if we listed the home in the MLS. But do we really need to even go there? I’m telling Anna that we need to put the home on the auction site I installed on the back-end of Rain City Guide, but she’s not ready to be that “innovative”. 🙂
  • Time. We’d obviously like to get everything done relatively soon. My hope is that we can complete the improvements we decide to make relatively soon, but that is probably asking too much…

Also, if you are, or know of, a contractor interested in this high visibility project, definitely feel free to contact me.

I think my next post will be “The Mind of a Buyer” where I talk about some of the things that is going through our minds as we look to buy a home in a new city. Either way, look for frequent updates on our move.

The Lame List Part II – MLS Rules

Posted on by
53

[photopress:LAME.jpg,full,alignright]Recently, Dustin, Anna, myself, and the fine folks at LTD Real Estate, had the pleasure of dealing with the NWMLS.

The gist of the discussion was our inabilty to host a NWMLS search tool due to NWMLS belief that Rain City Guide is alledgedly not an agent site. They are of the belief because multiple agents from multiple brokers participate on Rain City Guide. Because of this, having a “framed” IDX solution developed by me, using LTD’s feed on Rain City Guide would be considered a violation of NWMLS rule 189, because said rule states: “No member shall advertise, sell or otherwise provide to any other member’s subscriber or a non-member any product utilizing information or content derived, extracted or complied, in whole or in part, from or through NWMLS.”

Needless to say, this rule makes no sense, because any web site that offers any publicly accessable MLS search could be considered in violation of rule 189. At any rate, I’m sure Dustin will comment more on this in a future post.

Anyway, the more I learn about how the MLS operates, the more I want to start a “bottom feeder” site and screen scrape everything I need. Any way this experience has lead me to the following questions for the peanut gallery.

  1. What MLS rules are you least fond of and why?
    Granted, I’m an outsider loooking in, but it’s seems the current rules are very agent unfriendly and add uncessary cost & ineffeciency to the entire system.
  2. Why are there 189 rules?
    Well, that’s easy, because 188 weren’t enough! But the bigger question is how do these rules get written in the first place. I’m assuming MLS board members write them, but is there any kind of vote by the membership on these? I can’t imagine why any agent (or broker) would impose such crap on themselves.
  3. Is the wave of MLS consolidations good or bad for the industry?
    Slightly off topic, but I’m curious to find out how Joe Realtor and Jane Broker feel? I think fewer MLSes make things easier, but I’m so far undecided if things would be better or worse.

Anyway, after learning about their interpretation of Rule 189, our local MLS earned a spot on my Lame List.

MOVE.com – a strategic shift

Posted on by
26

We, here in the Seattle area, are in the unique position of seeing first hand, the coming of change. There is no place in this country on a parallel path with technology and the future, like the Seattle area. The hiring of Dustin Luther by Move.com is as significant as Realtor.com BECOMING Move.com It is a sign that the butterfly may finally be springing from its cocoon. MOVE hiring Dustin Luther as the Director of Consumer Innovations, is the starting bell we have all been waiting for, announcing the metamorphosis to come, in an industry long overdue for change.

Back in October, when Realtor.com hired Allan Dalton as President of Realtor.com http://www.realtor.org/realtororg.nsf/pages/realtorcompres?OpenDocument it appeared to be simply another dose of “same old; same old”. I attended Allan’s recent “seminar” in Bellevue earlier this year, and left with the feeling that he was somehow chastising the industry at large and its professionals in the room. It was as if he were screaming “embrace change or BE changed!”

I am sitting here with my signed copy of “REAL ESTATE TECHNOLOGY GUIDE” authored by the “Tres Amigos”, Saul Klein, John Reilly and Mike Barnett of Internet Crusade. These three men have almost “single handedly” moved the real estate industry into the present with regard to technology, since they met one another in 1995. And yet it would seem that they too are screaming “embrace change or BE changed!”

The hiring of Dustin Luther by “MOVE” is a huge pendulum swing from the hiring of Allan Dalton by “REALTOR.com”

It is a sign that the movers and shakers of this industry may be attempting to “moult from their skins”. For too many years they have lain constrained in the hardened cocoon they themselves have weaved. Like the “constrainedness of the caterpillars and chrysalises, their range of activity and movement has been very little as they have been cumbersomely tied to their food source”, the REALTOR organization.

[photopress:dustin_1.jpg,full,alignright] Time and again we have seen the cocoon harden around the “would be” innovators. Will the industry escape? Is the hiring of Dustin Luther and the Title: Director of “Consumer Innovations”, a sign that the largest and most powerfull conveyor of national home listing info, may be willing to shed its REALTOR shackles and MOVE into the consumer’s long awaited public venue? With the hiring of the white butterfly, instead of another caterpillar needing a food source, I am hopeful. I am very hopeful.

Don’t Get Carried Away!

Posted on by
16

A couple of weeks ago I had occasion to take three different clients through the same house – an attractively-priced 1967 split-level home just north of Microsoft. So everybody knows that Microsoft will be hiring a lot more folks over the next few years, and a lot of those folks are thinking maybe they should pick up an investment rental in that area – with so much high-income job growth, there should continue to be great appreciation. Great logic. But don’t get carried away by the opportunity.

In this case, the home was priced at $375,000 – for a 1967 split-level home, 3 bedroom, 2.25 bath, 1,820 sf, 2-car garage. All the right specs. Price egregiously low. First, that low price led people to look at the house who were not anywhere near qualified for the price it would actually sell for. Second, that low price led investor bidders to fight over it in a bidding war that maybe should live in the annals of northwest real estate. So here’s what I have heard: the first winner got it for $475,000 – and then failed financing. Seller put it back on the market, same low price, same bidding war (if there were 10 to start with, there might be 9 still standing – hopefully fewer as they realized what it was really going to take to win it). Second winner got it for about $470,000.

Was it a great deal? I don’t think so. Was it a reasonable deal – maybe so. This place was structurally sound, but needed to be completely updated and refinished. It would be fair to say that a lot of the house was original (almost 40 years old) and worn out, including the garage doors – and on and on. The lower level would need to be stripped down to the studs and re-wired and re-sheetrocked. The baths needed to be redone. The kitchen space needed to be reconfigured (i.e. move walls) and then rebuilt. If the new owners are both thoughtful and handy at doing a lot of the work themselves, they will probably come out fine.

If you knew it was going to be $475,000 to start with, you might have looked for one in much better shape and saved yourself a lot of work. Don’t get carried away!

Adding Some Sun to Rain City Guide

Posted on by
112

I’m extremely excited to announce that I’ve accepted a position with Move (HOMS) as the Director of Consumer Innovations.

Until recently, Move was known as HomeStore and they (we!) are the people who run Realtor.com, HomeBuilder.com, RentNet, Welcome Wagon, and a few other sites… The idea behind the Move brand is that we’ll be creating a one-stop-shop for connecting consumers with comprehensive real estate information and expertise.

No surprise that this will be a huge change for me and my family. Not only are we moving to Southern California, but I will now have some actually time to spend pushing the boundaries of online real estate technology (I’m no longer a transportation engineer!?!). What a difference a year of blogging can make!

I imagine that there might be a question or two I could answer about this change, but I’ll save the answers to what? why? how? and when? for future posts.

Relevance is at the Long End of the Tail

Posted on by
18

Listen to enough conversations on the internet and you’re bound to run into the concept of the long tail. It is a fascinating concept that helps define how people use the internet and helps clarify how real estate professionals can be successful on the internet.

The long tail is a concept that was first popularized by Chris Anderson as an article in Wired back in October of 2004 and grew into a popular blog devoted to the subject. The essence of the Long Tail is defined by the following chart:

long-tail-graph

In this chart, the red areas represent the most commonly sought after (and served) markets… I think of them as the “best sellers”. The yellow area represents the niche markets that only appeal to a small subset of people, and due to (the lack of) economies of scale, these markets tend to be under-served in most industries.

The concept of the long tail is that successful on-line business have (with very few exceptions) thrived by providing adequate services to the people under the yellow area of the curve. Sure you can go to Amazon to find the latest best sellers (red area), but you can also go to Amazon to find hundreds of thousands of titles that you won’t find at your local bookshop (yellow area). Same thing with eBay. The internet is best situated to serve otherwise “hard-to-serve” people.

But economies of scale don’t explain everything. The real beauty of the long tail is that it is often much easier to provide exceptional service to customers in the yellow area of the curve. If someone is searching for a generic topic on Amazon like [popular fiction], it is really hard to know if they would be happy with the results. But if they were to search [accident analysis training manual], you can be pretty sure that they will be happy with the results because there are only a few books dealing with this subject and Amazon will show them all!

The Long Tail and Real Estate

Recently, Chris over at RealtyBlogging asked “How are real estate and blogging alike?”, and this is my answer. Both real estate and blogging thrive when they effectively serve a local and/or niche market (i.e. the yellow area under the curve).

The idea behind this should really be second nature to successful real estate agents who know they couldn’t possibly serve all the niches within a major City. Rather, my experience has been that successful agents will say that they began by providing exceptional service to a small subset of people. Maybe their niche involves houseboats or condos, or a specific neighborhood… The specific niche doesn’t matter. The important aspect is that a real estate agent realized that they were never going to be able to serve everyone well, so instead they focused on a small subset of people and learned that market inside-and-out.

Similarly, blogs almost always come with a strong point of view and serve a niche market well.

In addition, the internet has allowed a few companies to do a very similar thing that real estate professionals have always been doing. Namely be extremely relevant to a small subset of the overall population. Not only has Amazon and eBay found success this way, but Google has created a billion dollar industry out of this concept. The idea behind Google Ads is that they provide relevant ads to users on obscure topics. I doubt many lawyers would consider putting up a banner ad on Yahoo to attract people looking for mesothelioma lawyers, but give these lawyers a chance to reach people who just searched for [mesothelioma lawyers] on Google, and they are willing to pay $54.33 for one click!!!

This extremely relevance is exactly how the real estate agents of the future will be successful on the internet. Not only that, but I happen to think that blogging is a great way for agents to get out from under the “red” of the curve (where most real estate websites live… and die) and out into the long tail where their niche knowledge will be appreciated and rewarded!

Professionalism and the email address

Posted on by
57

How does one acquire the title of “professional”?  This is a subject often debated in real estate circles.  Are doctors professional? Yes.  Are lawyers professional? Yes.  Are real estate agents professional?  Are mortgage reps professional?

I am prompted to raise this point by the last two comments on a previous post.  An “anonymous” commenter asks if anyone is “kicking ass today”.  Dustin responds with “?”.  Seems to me this same commenter has raised the “kick ass” question before.  By following the trail to the source, one can assume that this commenter is in the mortgage business in Southern California.  One can also follow the yellow brick road to his email address which is at Yahoo.com

People often ask how they should select a real estate agent and/or mortgage person.  Maybe it is not fair to say that those whose email address is yahoo or hotmail or even aol are not “professional”.  But doesn’t it seem so?  Can it be as simple as that?  Often when I am caught in a transaction with a less than professional agent or less than professional mortgage person, I am dealing with someone whose email address is nastyboy69@hotmail.com.   So I think I will go out on a limb here and propose that one’s email address IS an indication of who you are dealing with. 

If you want to be perceived as a professional, if you want to be viewed as someone whose standards of practice reach the level of “professionalism”, then take the extra step to acquire an email adress with a professional domain name.  Conversely, if you choose a real estate agent or lender, or even a lawyer, whose email address is kickass4U@yahoo.com, then don’t complain when they appear to be less than professional when acting on your behalf.