Romancing the Home

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I’ve been inspired by Bill Wendel of the Real Estate Cafe to explore the theme “Romancing the Home!” during the next couple of weeks that lead up to Valentine’s Day. My hope is that some of the contributors (and readers) will use this as an opportunity to talk about the things that we love about our homes!

[photopress:girls_walking.jpg,full,alignright]I’ve had a great email correspondence with Bill for a while now and I always find him to be exceptionally knowledgeable and full of inspiration. Last year, he built a Valentines Day blog that is filled with wonderful stories including one about the Valentine’s Day parties that he would celebrate with his daughter every year.

When real estate blogging, it is so easy to get caught up in the investment value of a home that we can easily overlook some of the more subtle benefits. No matter how hard we try, most of us choose our home based on considerations that go beyond getting the best deal… Maybe we want on a home with a fireplace… Or a home in a nice neighborhood… Or a home with a great school system…. Or a home with a large kitchen. All of these things represent features that make our homes special.

So what makes my home special? Things that come to mind include our family room where we spend many nights reading stories around our fireplace, our neighborhood filled with great kids, and our garden where we’ve spent many a wonderful spring day after a rainy winter.

I encourage you to share you’re stories as well as check back in over the next two weeks as we spend a little time romancing our homes!

Watching the Dow

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It has been a very long time since I was in the Trust and Investment business. I don’t read the Wall Street Journal every morning anymore. But I do watch the Dow.

Every time it reaches close to the next level, as it is now, I get excited. It’s like watching a runner getting close to the finish line. Today we are at 10,953.95! It’s been over 11,000 before. But I keep thinking, it can’t get to 12,000 if it doesn’t get over the 11,000 mark and stay there.

I remember being at my desk back on “Black Monday” October 19, 1987. I was one of the few Investment Officers at the time who wasn’t an MBA. In fact, I think I was pretty much the only one in history to be an Investment Officer without a college degree of any kind. While I had attended the Wharton School of Business at night, I didn’t take the electives that would give me a degree. I was often the only woman in the room as well. But it didn’t seem to matter that day as all of the MBAs around me were sweating and stammering as all of the phones were ringing off the hook and people were screaming and yelling with the DOW plunging 22.6% in one day.

Finally one of the guys came to me and asked why I was so happy and why my phone was ringing, but I appeared to be having pleasant conversations while they were all ready to slash their wrists.

For some unknown reason, the week before Black Monday, I was selling off everyone’s stock. I had decided it was time to re-balance and take profits and bring everyone back to their original stock position. People who had originally invested 40% of their portfolio in stock were up to 80% stock due to the market increase. I just got it into my little head (I was pregnant with my third child) to sell them all back to 40%. That put all of my accounts into large cash positions, which I used to buy back into the market at the lowest point it has ever been to this date. I think it dropped from 2,500 to 1,750 or so that day.

On days like today, watching the DOW inch past the 10,950 mark, I am reminded that just having good gut instincts about things, has served me well for many years. Not much unlike real estate. Sometimes you just know.

Good night.

Follow the Money…

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Have you ever wondered where mortgage money comes from? Years ago, the money came from your local banker. If your credit was good, and the bank had the available funds, you had yourself a home loan, and you diligently made your monthly payment to that same bank.

These days, the majority of all conforming home loans begin the same way as they did years ago, but they now follow a trail that most often leads to three major institutions: Fannie Mae (Federal National Mortgage Association); Freddie Mac (Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation); or Ginnie Mae (Government National Mortgage Association), then on to Wall Street.

Please understand that there are many variation of this, and I’m speaking of standard conventional loans. Depending on a many circumstances, some loans follow different pathways.

We begin the process with a mortgage professional as we always have. We answer the questions, jump through the hoops, and sometimes feel our whole life is being reviewed, but all goes well, and we end up with a home loan. Now it’s here that the trail can take some turns.

If you placed your loan with a bank, it frequently appears that your loan is still with that bank, but in most cases the bank is simply “servicing

Getting Ready for a Home Inspection

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Having attended many, many home inspections, I would like to offer a few tips regarding getting ready for an inspection (sellers) and what to bring to an inspection (buyers).

There are a few things that a seller should do to get ready for an inspection. One is to change your furnace filter. I like the big bright blue ones for the inspection. When the inspector pulls out a filthy, dirty sometimes crumpled up filter in front of the agent and buyer, there is always a 15 second staring at the filthy thing that transpires. Just take my word for it. It’s not a pleasant 15 seconds. Check your filter before the inspector arrives.

For those not buying or selling property, go check your filter. They cost very little. Keep a new one in there monthly or every other month during heating season and year round if you have forced air and air conditioning.

Also for sellers, the inspector will be spending some time with the buyer at the furnace, hot water tank and electrical panel. Make sure these are not covered with an inch of dust and dirt and are not blocked by boxes and storage items. Most times the inspector has to move things to get to these, which can put him in a bad mood. Trust me, you don’t want a crabby home inspector. At a recent inspection we had to move a whole storage cabinet to find the whole house GFI in the garage. So yes, wash that hot water tank and change that filter and make sure three people can comfortable get to and stand in front of these areas.

Buyers should bring some graph paper for drawing out the floorplan, a measuring tape for measuring the refrigerator opening if you are going to buy a new refrigerator, a clip board and pad for making notes, and of course your check book to pay the inspector. The Home Inspection is one of the few things you pay at time of service in a real estate transaction and is generally not transferred to the closing sheet. Sometimes you can be reimbursed for the inspection, so be sure to tell your agent or escrow closing person to show the cost as a POC on the HUD 1 if you have seller paid costs built into the sale price.

There are very few things you can do to get ready for a home inspection. Putting in a clean furnace filter is #1 for a seller.

Trulia Lands in New York

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I just got an email announcing that Trulia launched in New York!

Congratulations Pete and Sami! I know that was pretty high on your list of ToDo items!

Are you wondering what Trulia is?

I wrote a post on their service when they launched in California. In general, they have one of the nicest interfaces around for real estate search. If someone is looking for inspiration on how to build a tight real estate search that is focused on providing a maximum of useful information to buyers, they they need to look no farther than Trulia to see how it can be done.

Trulia Launches New York

So is there anything wrong with Trulia? I only have two qualms about their service. One, they launched in New York before Seattle! 🙂 and two, they don’t have a comprehensive database of homes (The California agents I’ve talked to have all mentioned that Trulia does not include a lot of homes that are available and did include a lot of homes that had already been sold.)

With those two caveats in place, it is my opinion that they have one of the most interesting real estate search tools available!

More:

Contributing to Rain City Guide…

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staircase with windowSeveral real estate agents (and one broker) approached me last week with an interest in contributing to Rain City Guide. Just about every one of them said they had noticed that Rain City Guide has a very high rankings on some key Google search terms, like Agent Recommendations (#1), Seattle Real Estate (#6), and real estate (#2 on blog search). (All of them were surprised to hear that we got these high rankings despite being less than a year old and not spending a dime on typical search engine optimization (SEO) techniques!) I’ve been trying to spread the blogging gospel for quite a while that if real estate professionals work together to create their own useful content for their potential clients (i.e. blog together!), all the agents involved would benefit. It is nice to see that some local real estate agents are finally starting to “get” it.

So back to the original question… What does it take to become a contributor on Rain City Guide?

It’s easy! Here are three steps that are guaranteed to get my attention:

  1. Join in the discussion by leaving comments! The number of people writing comments has grown dramatically in the last few months, with many popular and/or controversial posts getting dozens of comments. (If you have been only reading the posts and not the comments, then you’ve been missing out on some of the most interesting real estate conversations on the web!).
  2. Register with Rain City Guide. (As a bonus, this gets you a username so that you can log-in and edit your comments.)
  3. Email me and let me know you’re interested!

Who do I think should be contributing to Rain City Guide?

Curb Appeal EnthusiasmAnyone who is willing to share their unique insights on the Seattle-area real estate market! There is no doubt in my mind that the site will be a better resource as more and more experienced real estate agents/brokers, mortgage brokers, and title representatives join the discussion. I also think the site would benefit from having a few other real estate professionals, like photographers and investors, adding their unique insights. All-in-all, there is plenty of room to grow and improve!

One more idea… Maybe you’re an agent who doesn’t want to jump into the blogosphere where your opinions can and will be closely examined (dare I say, “examined with hostility” 🙂 ) but you still want to benefit from the exposure that posting on Rain City Guide will provide. I have an idea on how you can get involved as well! I’m looking for someone who would be willing to post an article each Friday that lists the most promising Open Houses of the weekend similar to the wonderful Curb Appeal Enthusiasm column that Alex of Behind the Mortgage puts together! I know that some agents already do this type of research, and if you are one of them, this would be a great way to get additional exposure for your hard work and knowledge! If you’re interested in putting something like this together, or have another idea for a regular column, let me know.

UPDATE:

I had an email from a reader asking me how many hits Rain City Guide gets per month from Google… Not knowing the answer right away, I dug into my stat program and produced this chart:

Unique Visitors Per Month on Rain City Guide

Some interesting notes:

  • More than half of Rain City Guide traffic comes from Google searches
  • In January of this year, Rain City Guide received more visitors from Google Image search (378) than from either Yahoo search (333) or MSN search (194)! (While I’m missing data from one more day in January, the trend will almost definitely hold!)
  • The uptick in May ’05 was almost definitely due to my release of gHomes (now replaced by this home search).

DOJ-"opt-out" and a war with a "discounter"

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A new Broker opens an office and has no listings yet. He goes to area brokers and asks if he can advertise their listings in his “window” to help get him started. Mostly they say yes. They are not trying to force out the competition and they are more than willing to help him.

Now they walk past his office and they see their listings in his window. No problem. Until they see this big sign on top of the houses for sale, which are their listings. “Our Mission: To reinvent the existing residential real estate business — an ANTIQUATED, INEFFICIENT, and COSTLY system of selling homes!!”

That is an actual statement from a website. It used to be pages and pages of “Help us fight the GREEDY brokers! Join our CAUSE!

Well, do you think the local brokers wanted their listings in that “window”? Would you? So the “window” is the internet, same difference isn’t it? That guy was using their listings to show homes on his site because he didn’t have any listings yet, and badmouthing them at the same time. Does that seem right to you?

The brokers didn’t opt out against this company because he was a discounter. They opted out against this guy because he was advertising their listings (VOW site showing other broker’s listings) while at the same time badmouthing them and calling them greedy SOBs! That’s the kind of “mud” that causes the “opt out” provision to be invoked against a “discounter”.

The local brokers said get my #%$## listings off that guy’s site now!

What do you think? Do you think the brokers should be forced to let this guy put their listings on his site, while he badmouths them on the site at the same time? I don’t think so. But I’d like to know what you think.

This is what the DOJ suit is about. The DOJ is trying to remove that right of brokers to say, OK, you can use my listings. But don’t sling mud at me from behind the picture of my listing! If you do that, I’m taking my picture out of your “window”.

Of course we could break his kneecaps, but opting out seems like a better answer 🙂 The brokers “opted out”. The new company didn’t have any homes to show on his site. He cleaned up the site a lot, though the Mission is still as it appears above without the CAPS, and a compromise was reached. Opting out is a negotiation tool to prevent companies from getting started on other broker’s listings while slinging arrows at them. There is another group involved. Same theory. EBAs. But they are “Johnny come lately’s to the suit”, so let’s stop at this example.

Tell me how you feel about all this.

DOJ suing NAR and the "opt out" clause

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Galen: “As I understand it, the Justice Department is not challenging this sort of (NWMLS) setup.”

The reason NWMLS is not affected by the DOJ suit is because the DOJ is suing NAR. Most mls systems are owned by NAR and State Boards of Realtors. Ours is one of the few in the country that is not owned by the Board of Realtors. Our mls system is owned by the member brokers. So if the DOJ wins the suit against NAR, it would only affect mls systems owned by NAR and State Boards of Realtors.

Galen “I’ve heard that other MLS systems are a little different, where members can withold listings from selected brokers’ websites, which does little to keep nasty, mud tracking agents out …”

The “opt out” clause is a NAR policy. It could be the policy of broker owned mls systems in the country too. But the suit is against NAR, so even if broker owned mls systems had that rule the same as NAR, the suit would not appy unless the DOJ sued each mls separately. So when you hear that the suit does not involve NWMLS, that doesn’t necesarily mean they don’t have an “opt out” clause (I don’t know one way or the other). It means the suit does not involve them even if they do have the same clause, because they are not named in the suit and do not come under the NAR umbrella of the suit.

The two groups who are joining forces with the DOJ as potential targets of the “opt out” provision are the “discounters” and the EBAs. The reason these two groups fear being targeted has to do with the mud they track through, but not the kind of mud you are thinkiing of. It’s more like “mud-slinging” as opposed to dirty mud from rain soaked Seattle.

I will give an example in another post that should “shed some light” on this whole DOJ thing. I happen to have witnessed it first hand, and while I will not name names, I will explain how and why some brokers “opted out” on the “discount” broker.

I think it was a reasonable move and it worked. The discounter was not put out of business, nor was it the intention of the other brokers to put them out of business. It was to force them to clean up their act and stop mud slinging and it worked.

Read my next post and see if you feel differently about the “opt out” provision after seeing how it is used in real life examples.