Three days after returning home from the hospital, I walked into the kids bathroom and discovered the tub spout was lying in the tub and not on the wall where it belonged. Long story short, we had a plumber go through the wall from my sons’ room to repair the pipe so the spout could be replaced.
This same day, I was sending the Sellers Property Disclosure Statement for one of my listings under contract to the buyers agent. Which got me thinking, should I ever decide to sell this house and move (an unlikely proposition given me love for the logistics of moving), am I going to remember this repair?
We own a house that, for the Phoenix area, is considered old – it was built in 1989. The most notable item I remember from the sellers disclosures when we bought the home is it was a victim of the 1996 storm that tore roofs from homes across Glendale; the ceiling and roof on the east side of the house dates back to that storm when the shingles were ripped clear off.
Since we moved in, we’ve had the air conditioner tweaked two or three times (for all I know, it’s held together with the same bailing wire holding my sternum in place right now), the dishwasher motor has been replaced, we’ve gone through two disposals, had both showers worked on, changed out the bathroom fixtures and replaced the water heater.
Hey, maybe my memory’s better than I thought it was.
My own mental capacity aside, these are all items that will need to appear on our Sellers Property Disclosure Statement if and when we ever sell. Forgetting any of these things could, at worst, be considered a failure to disclose material facts about the property … not that a new garbage disposal likely will be the kind of thing that causes a buyer to sue later, but still.
Overall, though, you don’t necessarily want to leave these details to your memory. Keep a file with receipts and/or notes for all the repairs you have done, all the major changes that take place on your property. A little bit of effort now almost certain will save you some headaches later.
Things have been put on hold the last couple of days as we handled a little bit of housekeeping here. To wit:
1) I’ve moved the last of my websites off GoDaddy’s hosting and onto Hostgator. This should improve the load speed to some degree, but also will cause hiccups while I repopulate some of what had been on the two sites, VentanaLakesRealEstate.com and PhoenixRetirementRealEstate.com. The latter had automated fees with the latest listings in more than a dozen retirement communities and I need to recreate that information.
2) Yesterday, I very much belatedly took the plunge and signed up for Docusign. Docusign allows for real estate documents to be signed via an electronic signature and should simplify life greatly for my clients and myself. The only thing keeping this change from being perfect is that some lenders on bank owned homes will not accept electronic signatures, preferring instead to kill trees by requiring so-called “wet” signatures.
3) Tobey and I helped a seller close escrow on their Sun City Grand vacation getaway, which took a whopping nine days for us to sell. That, incidentally, is damn good in this market in general and especially in an active adult community during the summer. My buyers’ agent and I also are helping another buyer through their inspection period and counting down the days with the above mentioned seller before they move into their new spec home in Arizona Traditions.
4) The doctors have decreed I can’t drive for another two weeks or so, so much of the rest of the day is spent bouncing off the walls and sitting with the beagles hoping someone will take me for a bye bye.
That’s all from here. I owe you market stats and will get them posted once I finish working out the bugs on the two websites.
It appears the time has come to get serious once again about market statistics as for the first time in three years the numbers they are a-changing.
There was 2007, when week after week there was ludicrously high inventory and ridiculously low sales combining to leave the Phoenix real estate market with a year or more of inventory of single family detached homes. Then came April 2009 and the numbers flipped on a dime, the already falling bank owned inventory barely kept past with rising sales and inventory fell off to about three to four months, something vaguely resembling normal.
Fast forward to now and the continuous conversation about the end of the economic world and housing as we know it. From the Washington Post with a hat tip to the Notorious R.O.B., who’s a nice guy in spite of the name:
The latest sign that the economy is losing steam: Home sales fell 27 percent in July, the steepest one-month drop since figures were first compiled in 1968, according to a report released Tuesday. Analysts had expected sales to decline following the expiration of a federal tax credit for homebuyers this spring, but the drop was nearly twice as large as forecast.
Whatever are we to do while the sky falls around us? Keep a sense of perspective, perhaps.
In June 2010, there were 6,739 single family detached homes sold in Maricopa County. While “normal” for the post-April 2009 period, sales figures this high had not be seen since the 2005 Phoenix real estate boom and also had not been seen prior. In July, sales fell off to 5,169 – yep, that’s a 23 percent drop off from June. And it also is a return to what once had been considered a relatively brisk month of sales. August may be the telling month, as sales are off again – by how much we really won’t know until the closings of tomorrow and Tuesday hit, as the end of the month usually sees a rush.
(This reminds me greatly of the buyers who once were upset that they couldn’t get a sub-five interest rate anymore; when I purchased my first house in 1998 I was pleased as punch to be able to get down to the low eights. And don’t even get me started on the late 1970s. Perspective, perspective, perspective.)
If you read Rob’s full post, you’ll also note that NBC’s Brian Williams opined on the supply of homes jumping above the one year mark. Locally, though, we remain at a five month supply of single family detached homes.
And here comes a mea culpa … one of the reasons I tracked inventory levels on a weekly basis is the trend always was more important to me than the snapshot and with a weekly update it was easy to see the trend. Having not tracked the numbers in some time, I only can tell you what has happened from snapshot to snapshot. Inventory had been hanging around 3.7 months for a long time; there’s little doubt we’re trending up even though we still remain in the neutral market of four to five months.
Everyone is pointing to the end of the $8,000 homebuyer tax credit as the reason for the drop in sales; in a backhanded way, this almost strikes me less as speculation as an indirect call to bring the credit back (which I believe would be a remarkably stupid idea.) Seeing the number of short sales on the market and the large percentage of the active listings that seem to fall into this category, I personally see more impact from the never-closing nature of the short sales than a tax credit that rightfully shouldn’t have impacted someone’s buying decision.
On a larger scale, though, it seems the slowdown may be due to the old fashioned lack of confidence in the economy. Let’s face it, the new administration brought with it a wave of hope for a bright future and so far little has changed fundamentally economically. The problems are a bit too big for hope to solve. Companies downsize and learn they can survive at the lower staffing levels (though, inevitably they’ll ramp up the staffing once the turnaround is in swing because nearly all seem to have a very, very short memory when it comes to economic cycles.)
Now, should the national lack of confidence influence your decision? Not really. What matters as an individual buyer are your own individual circumstances. You do not exist in a vacuum and as I’ve told buyers for some time when they ask about a property’s prospects, there’s still the possibility of the value going down before it starts coming back – and when it comes back it will be at a far more gradual rate than 2005. But if you have the means to take advantage of the relatively low pricing and the timeframe that will allow you to hold the property five, ten, 15 years or more … you’re in a position many others aren’t in.
The absorption rate numbers will return this Tuesday as the trends finally are changing and anecdotal evidence just isn’t sufficient.
In my spare time, such as it is, I usually find myself playing Diamond Mind baseball, a computerized baseball simulation game akin to the old-fashioned tabletop dice games like Strat-O-Matic or APBA. It’s relaxing to me to play past seasons – sometimes it’s a season from the late 40s, sometimes from the 1960s and now and again I forget I’m a curmudgeon and I play a more recent season.
One of those is 2004, which could be argued was the final year of the steroid era. Strategy is non-existent – why try and steal a base when everyone in a lineup seems capable of hitting a three-run homer – pitching is thin and no lead is safe. The other day, for instance, the computer took a 9-0 lead two innings against the Boston Red Sox I was managing; the Sox ended up scoring 11 straight runs and won 18-14.
Contrast this with a season such as 1968, the real Year of the Pitcher (can we stop calling this season the Year of the Pitcher? Show me the 1.12 ERA and all the 1-0 games and maybe I’ll believe it.) If you’re fortunate enough to get a runner on base, you bunt him over, move him over and hope for either a grounder up the middle or a fly ball to bring the rare run home. If your opponents gets a runner to third, you bring the infield in because one run just might be enough to win a game.
Same game, two very different environments and two very different strategies required.
The Phoenix real estate market isn’t much different. Selling strategies that worked in 2005 are as worthless as the low-ball offers that were being made with some success on bank owned homes through late 2007 and into the early months of 2008. Offering 70 cents on the dollar rarely has been successful but at least was in the realm of possibility … three years ago. These days, however, it’s an excellent way to kill a tree for no apparent reason.
There still seems to be a line of thinking that says since the bank didn’t really want to foreclose on the homes and their REO inventories are far higher than they want them to be, then they’ll be willing to accept virtually any price to get a house off their books. Nothing could be further from the truth. I’ve run the numbers from the Arizona Regional MLS time and time again and the reality is less than one percent of bank owned homes sell for that 30 percent discount or more. And the vast majority of bank owned homes sell at 90 to 95 percent of list price (this excludes sub $70,000 homes, where it’s not uncommon for the sales price to exceed list price because of demand.)
Following outdated buying strategies isn’t much different than trying to play a 1968 baseball game with a 2004 mindset. You can wait and wait and wait for that game-changing home run (or the four game-changing home runs.) But odds are, it’s just not going to happen.
My doorbell rang purposefully not once but twice, leading me to believe the kid from across the street was checking to see if my kids could place because she’s the only person I know who rings more than once. (It’s 2010, folks – not even the postman always rings twice.) Instead it was someone in a dress shirt and slacks in spite of the 100-plus degree temperatures and the impending dust storm.
“Hello, sir,” he said. “My name is Andy and I’m a real estate agent.”
“What a coincidence,” I said. “So am I.”
We quickly determined that I didn’t need the helpful little information sheet he’d brought me to tell me what’s been happening in the neighborhood I’ve lived in for the past seven years. I’m assuming he was bringing me recent sales … didn’t look like a recipe card … and half felt like telling him that I spent more than two years sending postcards with the same information and a clever beagle photo to little effect. But hey, thanks for playing.
Does door-to-door really work anymore? I have a hunch BawldGuy will tell me it still can and, hey, if you’re able to skin a cat doing it then more power to you. But I’m very, very hard pressed to believe that if you’re thinking of selling your house or know someone who is selling, either by choice or by virtual force as a short sale, you’d be more inclined to recommend an agent who you didn’t mean as they schvitzed all over your doorstep.
(Did you know that schvitz is in spell check on WordPress, at least in the past tense? Neither did I. Maybe I installed YidPress and didn’t know it.)
If you know someone who needs to sell their home via a short sale, you need an agent who knows the process – the paperwork involved, the process, how to price a short sale both to receive an offer and to sell (assuming there’s a cooperative bank) – and, yes, someone who knows whether it’s feasible.
If you’re selling in a place like Westbrook Village, why wouldn’t you start with the website that tops the Google rankings and attracts viewers from across the United States and Canada instead of the person going door-to-door like it’s real estate Halloween? My last listing there, incidentally, sold in just over three weeks to a buyer moving from Oklahoma. They’d registered on my site but contacted another agent before I could follow-up; no matter, the house still sold and my sellers were happy.
Instead of debating the dubious merits of a statewide MLS, I wish the Arizona Regional MLS were discussing turning lose the sold data in full. There’s not much compelling reason to hold on to it and in fact would allow agents to add value on top of the third-party aggregators as, hopefully, our data would end up being more accurate coming through the source rather than the oft-muddled tax records.
Without that sold data, there’s not much to peddle when walking door-to-door except perhaps an agents’ own accomplishments. Imagine having to market oneself on what you’ve done, not what you were able to find that others had accomplished.
Once every two years, I go to Tucson for the annual Arizona State-Arizona football game. It’s a ritual that I’ve been following since 1990 when I first made the 120-mile drive and, with rare exceptions, these have been my only trips to Tucson. In fact, I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve been in Tucson over the past 20-odd years not related to Arizona State athletics.
There’s a very simple reason … there’s almost nothing in Tucson I really want to see, do, or visit. In fact, I proudly count myself as one of the right-thinking Arizonans who want to reverse the Gadsden Purchase and send Tucson and everything else south of the Gila River (but mostly Tucson) back to Mexico.
For those who love to protest, this is in no way an anti-immigration stance or a post about SB 1070. It’s an anti-Tucson stance.
Legally, I can sell homes in Tucson if I so chose as I’m licensed in Arizona. I can’t access the lockboxes, don’t know the neighborhoods outside of the one with the same burned-out car that’s been at Speedway and I-10 for the past twenty years and the mall east of campus with a Chick-fil-A. I have no guarantee of getting paid since I’m not a member of the Tucson MLS and, honestly, most agents there would just as soon light a real estate agent from Phoenix on fire before cooperating with a carpetbagger from 120 miles away.
I don’t blame them. Two weeks after getting my license some six years ago I tried showing homes to a friend who had been laid off by Charles Schwab the same time I had. Aside from the fact I was brand new, which was an adventure onto itself, I didn’t know where I was or what was going on. But I was licensed, so that was good.
There are many, many other places in Arizona where I can sell homes if I were so inclined to deal with the lack of guaranteed payment from not belonging to the MLS. Not that I should, but I certainly could.
And right now, there appears to be some discussion (or at least thought) about creating a statewide MLS.
This would solve the compensation issue. I would say problem, but it’s not really a problem. If I’m loathe to drive to Queen Creek to show homes, why would I drive to Prescott other than lunch at The Palace?
But such a move would make me a referral monster. You see, I’m not too shabby with a website and with access to listings elsewhere in the state would soon be creating sites for those specific locales. Sure, there already are agents with websites in some of these places but that’s not the point – there are other agents with websites here in Phoenix, too.
A prospective buyer would come to my website, log on for the registration and then I’d start to qualify them – not so much for the purchase of a specific home, but for their strength as a referral lead I then could pass on to another agent in exchange for a portion of the commission.
I don’t know very much about Flagstaff or Kingman or Payson but I don’t really need to, outside of setting up the website. My local expert and referral agent would take care of that side of things. And if you don’t think a real estate agent would take on a qualified buyer for someone in their backyard from a guy in Phoenix and happily pay a referral fee, you don’t know this business.
From a business perspective, this sounds absolutely awesome … but from the consumer’s standpoint? This is an absolutely brutal setup.
Buyers are searching online for homes in a given community and, at least in theory, they are looking for an agent with the slightest bit of local knowledge to help them with their search and purchase. An agent in Yuma whose express purpose is sending leads to Winslow doesn’t qualify, but that’s who they’ll be dealing with at least initially with all the tap dancing such a situation entails.
I’m sure there’s a benefit somewhere to the consumer, perhaps the ability to search statewide for homes in one place. But when that place isn’t local … wait, what am I worrying about. This already happens on sites like Trulia and Zillow, aggregators who serve as middle-men trying to drive traffic to their “preferred” agents (read: those who pay to be featured agents, or whatever lingo is being used.)
Really, such a rule would even the playing field for a small guy like me even if it’s a playing field that I really shouldn’t be on in the first place. But if the rules allow me onto the field … that’s their problem, not mine. It’s actually the consumer’s problem but this discussion isn’t really about them, not on this post and not so much on the larger levels where this is being mulled.
My broker-owners don’t like when I’m cynical about my fellow profe … er … agents, so I’m going to be nice and positive about this one.
What real estate agents learn in real estate school helps them pass their exam and get licensed but has next to nothing to do with the actual day-to-day of the business. This is where the broker comes in, at least theoretically. New agents hopefully end up at a brokerage that will teach them the basics of day-to-day real estate 101. Since not all brokers do this, the onus falls on the agent to choose a brokerage with a training program. Some have them. Some don’t. Some are much happier if their agents pay their monthly fees and don’t ever write a contract – income for the broker without liability.
Having said that, I don’t think wanting these handful of topics is such an outrageous request:
1) The difference between the MLS and an IDX feed. IDX feeds are public-facing versions of the MLS listings and are formatted as such; the listing brokerage is mentioned as the listing brokerage but the contact information is for the agent/broker providing the feed. It’s called a marketing tool, one that helps agents get their websites indexed on Google, Yahoo and the other search engines.
The MLS is the agent-facing version and provides all sorts of useful information not on the IDX feed – full contact information for the listing broker, information on the commission being offered, lockbox codes (hidden in other parts of the listing, in theory) and the like. This is where agents are supposed to go for data on a given home – we’re paying for it, after all.
In more than six years in this business I have never, ever, EVER used Google to look up a home for sale for the purposes of showing the home or tracking down the listing agent. Why? Because there’s no reason to do so, unless of course you have no idea how the MLS works.
This morning I received a call from a renter. He was in the car with his agent and they had pulled up in front of a house, Googled it and my phone number came up through my IDX listing. “I’m here with my agent and we need the lockbox code.” I suggested that his agent pull up the MLS on line instead of Google and then call the listing agent. (I’m still wondering if there was a sign in front of the home – if there was, and it was from a brokerage other than RE/MAX Desert Showcase, shouldn’t have that been a hint that it’s not really my listing?)
Please, brokers, encourage your agents to at least pretend they’re professionals and use the real MLS?
2) Lockboxes aren’t for everyone. “I don’t understand,” he said, “my agent just gives me the lockbox codes so I can look on my own and not bother him.” If you’re an agent and you give out the contractors’ lockbox codes, please reply below. If you’re a buyer and your agent is doing that, please comment with their name and brokerage. You see, they’re breaking the local MLS rules and are facing fines and/or suspension from the MLS. But since they use Google instead of the MLS, this really shouldn’t be an issue for them, should it?
3) Directions made easy. North is the opposite of south. East is the opposite of west. Left doesn’t mean right. Double-check the driving directions you give for your listings, or at least make sure they’re right so when you give your client the lockbox code they can find the house.
4) Inside the contract. There’s nothing more frustrating than having to explain the contract to another agent … wait, actually the lack of knowledge many agents have about the contract works to my clients’ benefit, so forget I said anything.
You gotta love it … here’s an actual e-mail I received earlier today.
Hey buttmunch, when are you going to fix the pictures so they can be viewed as a slide show? Clicking on each thumbnail separately is ridiculous, and BUYERS will go elsewhere!!!
Do I need to mention no name, phone number or e-mail were given?
I’m thinking this is my response:
Thank you for your e-mail. Clicking on each thumbnail separately is ridiculous, I agree. Fortunately, the individual property pages load as a slide show and if you click on “View Full-Size Photos” on my site, the photos load and then play as a slide show. May take a moment depending on how many photos there are, but it does load.
Personally, I would think that you not having an opposable thumb may limit your functionality with a mouse (the computer mouse, not the one living with you in your mother’s basement) and you’d look at the page for the 12 seconds it takes for other photos to load, but I must be incorrect.
I very much appreciate your concern that buyers will go elsewhere and I happily invite you to do so. I even know another agent with a dog here in town who sounds like the perfect agent for you.
Okay, so the last couple of months here have been more about me than anything else and that will change. Not today, but still. Reality is, everything has been about me for the last four months around here and what happens in my life happens in the blog and so there you are. (Then again, my daily traffic has been steady in the recent days I haven’t posted, so maybe my mother is the only reader after all.)
About four months ago, I noticed after a meeting that I was short of breath and my chest was tight. I figured it would go away, a friend urged me to get to the ER even as I drove to work a Diamondbacks game, and that was that. Except that wasn’t that and a month later (brilliant, yeah?) I finally did go to the ER and found the heart condition I’ve had my entire adult life had decided it was done playing games.
And was it ever. What had been a minor leak in a valve had become major and it quickly was determined a repair would be needed. Welcome to the Zipper Club, kiddo. No secret handshake required. The result of all of this was I was left with almost no energy. I hid it as best I could when working with clients on the phone and I even sold a couple of homes on that first hospital stay, though it’s not something I’d recommend trying.
While waiting for the surgery, getting up and moving around was difficult at best. If I walked 1,000 feet in a day it was a lot. Too much excess fluid, not enough blood pumping … the surgery couldn’t come soon enough. Even prospecting – just picking up a phone or writing a note – was requiring more energy than I was able to produce. This, to be blunt, sucked.
Fast forward two-plus months. Surgery was performed last Thursday – two valves repaired, as the other one decided, much like my children, that if the other one got help then it should too. By Friday, I was sitting in a chair. Saturday was a day of small walks and promises that I’d see exponential improvement. On Sunday I was past my 1,000-foot daily limit on a single walk. Monday was a mile spread through the day. Wednesday I was home. And Thursday, I jumped back into the business with both feet except for here – but again, it’s only my mom anyway here.
I’ll spare you all the life-altering, second chance mumbo-jumbo and simply tell you a couple things this all as taught me.
Don’t screw with your heart. Get to a doctor if something feels off and now.
Listen to the experts. I turned this to a real estate post a couple of months back but the reality is the experts likely know more than you do and aren’t coming from an emotional place. Real estate agents aren’t attached to your home and are more likely to price it to you sell than you are, being the person who measured your child’s growth on the doorframe. Cardiologists don’t want to hear you’re fine when everything says you’re not.
Savor the little things. Value your friends and family. Yeah, that one’s mushy … moving on.
Welcome the opportunities and possibilities
This whole episode has left me a little limited in what I’ve been able to do so over the past couple of months I’ve paired with a couple of agents to working as my buyers’ agents and also paired with a half-dozen rental agents. The result? I have multiple clients being helped on any given day, more than the one I could take around myself, while I’m able to spend more time working the phones to stay in touch with past and current clients and identify future clients. It’s a fairly old formula for real estate but one I wouldn’t have used if not for necessity.
While the whole “it’s a great time to buy” concept gets mocked, particularly here, I’m still asked whether it’s a good time to buy or sell a couple of times a week. For some it is, for some it isn’t, and for some (particularly the sellers) it is and they just don’t want to admit it to themselves as they wait for a 50 percent rebound in the Phoenix real estate market. That’s another post for another day.
The point is, keep yourself open to the opportunities and spend less time like the dog holding a bone over the river. The someday you’re waiting for price-wise may not come, the “deal” you’re wanting may already be a deal on the basis of list price alone depending on the depth of the descent in a given area. Open up to the realities and the possibilities and you’ll find yourself moving forward instead of sitting in virtual hibernation, wondering how to allocate your 1,000 feet of movement on a given day.
To say Washington Nationals pitcher Stephen Strasburg has been treated with kid gloves once coaches realized there was a lightning bolt attached to his right arm would be a severe understatement.
At San Diego State, coach Tony Gwynn (yes, that Tony Gwynn) went out of his way to make sure his phenom didn’t throw more than 100 pitches. Last June he was drafted by the hapless Nationals and this spring he made his debut in the minor leagues. Again, the 100-pitch barrier was put into place … all this based on the latest view that there only are so many lightning bolts to be thrown.
Sorry, Zeus, you’ll have to let Achilles figure this one out on his own. You’re on a pitch count.
The Nationals also were carefully gauging Strasburg’s total innings pitched, again based on a relatively new theory that a pitching arm only can handle incremental increases in that total from year to year and, as a college pitcher, Strasburg never had thrown all that many innings. (There’s a decent argument that such pitch counts and innings limit create a psychological barrier, but that’s another story for another day and has less to do with real estate than today’s first half-dozen paragraphs.)
About the only thing not done by the National was to encase the right-hander in bubble wrap.
And then a funny thing happened. Stephen Strasburg’s shoulder tightened up before a scheduled start last week and he was placed on the 15-day disabled list. The Nationals had done everything they could to try and protect his right shoulder only to learn that Mother Nature still is going to do what she wants to do.
Real estate transactions tend to follow the same path. There’s a running joke at my favorite title company that my files are cursed, which is to say they sometimes become complicated. (I’d like the record to show I’ve had as many escrows fly through with nary a hiccup as those needing beneficiary deeds and other fun, just to protect my own reputation.)
There always are going to be surprises of some sort during a transaction. Some of them are caused by the people on the other side of the transaction, some are caused by my own clients and some, like Stephen Strasburg’s right shoulder, are practical jokes of the gods and thoroughly unavoidable.
There are two keys to overcoming these challenges when they happen – having an agent who knows what to do to resolve the situation (or at the very worst knows where to get the answer) and accepting that there are going to be times when a little give and take is needed.
Screaming into the wind isn’t going to make Stephen Strasburg’s arm feel any better, therapeutic as it might be; all that can be done is choose the best course of rehabilitation and get it him back on the mound. At the same time, demanding that this is the way it has to be in a negotiated situation isn’t always going to have a positive outcome, especially once the transaction is underway and there’s little leeway. At that point, all that can be done is to find the best possible resolution within the bounds of what is possible.
Obstacles only remain such for as long as we allow them to be.
Last week I told you about a new listing Tobey and I took in the Sun City Grand vacation rentals.
This was a nice 2-bedroom, 1,300 square foot home in Sun City Grand that had been painstakingly upgraded by the owners to include granite counters in the kitchen and bathroom, wood floors, a custom built Murphy bed in the spare bedroom …
Maybe it would just be easier if I showed you the photo tour to jog your memory:
Yesterday, the sellers and I received an offer on the property. Today we finalized the last details of the counter offers and this home is under contract and in escrow nine days after it was placed on the market.
Here’s the interesting part …
We priced this home a little bit above current market value, a strategy which if you spend your time trolling the pages of Trulia Voices you’ll come to believe can’t possibly succeed. Except it can and it does if applied in the right circumstances … say, a home with little competition and a clear head above the homes that are on the market.
Upgrades don’t receive dollar-for-dollar treatment in this market but they still do matter. With an aggressive but proper pricing strategy, it’s quite possible to do what I’ve done on my last two sold listings … price the property slightly above the current market in hopes (since realized) of receiving nearly the highest dollar amount the market would bear.
On the first such home the sellers might have been able to realize an extra $1,500 or so and the same may apply here; since both of these sellers are turning into buyers, though, it’s simply a matter of me as their agent helping to realize savings greater than that on their purchase. For the first sellers, I successfully helped them purchase a home $8,000 below their lender’s appraised value.
Now, I realize the word “I” is coming up quite often but this is an “I” kind of story. There are 40,000 agents in the Valley and at least 14 of us are doing some sort of business. Anyone can slam the price down on a home to sell it; not everyone can price above the market and still find a buyer.
If you take a look over on the right side you’ll see an extra little button there where you can vote for the best real estate blog in Phoenix. I’m trying to adjust the programming so that if you click on that voting link and then select Jay Thompson’s blog your computer will download AVGold but I don’t think that’s gonna happen.
Besides, he’s only one of my competitors (and, in several cases, my friends) who are on the list.
Not that I want you to vote for any of them. Frankly, I’m quite shallow and desperately want your votes as affirmation than the last four years chained to this keyboard have added something to someone’s life other than giving me an excuse to ignore my children when they’re on spring break.
Wait, that’s not going to get my sympathy.
There has to be a better way for me to pander for votes … a method that doesn’t actually involve me doing the dirty work. I need those who already have an expertise for begging non-stop, be it for affection or food or table scraps.
That’s it!
Don’t cast your vote for me … cast it for the beagles!
No beagles were harmed in the making of this post. Humiliated? Yes. Harmed? No.
If you take a look over on the right side you’ll see an extra little button there where you can vote for the best real estate blog in Phoenix. I’m trying to adjust the programming so that if you click on that voting link and then select Jay Thompson’s blog your computer will download AVGold but I don’t think that’s gonna happen.
Besides, he’s only one of my competitors (and, in several cases, my friends) who are on the list.
Not that I want you to vote for any of them. Frankly, I’m quite shallow and desperately want your votes as affirmation than the last four years chained to this keyboard have added something to someone’s life other than giving me an excuse to ignore my children when they’re on spring break.
Wait, that’s not going to get my sympathy.
There has to be a better way for me to pander for votes … a method that doesn’t actually involve me doing the dirty work. I need those who already have an expertise for begging non-stop, be it for affection or food or table scraps.
That’s it!
Don’t cast your vote for me … cast it for the beagles!
No beagles were harmed in the making of this post. Humiliated? Yes. Harmed? No.
This one’s a little different than the old inventory updates I used to provide with absorption rate and all; instead of looking at the whole Valley, here’s a quick rundown of my own listing inventory. This, naturally, breaks one of the rules of real estate blogging – never talk about your own listings – but, as you probably have been able to tell over the past few weeks, I’m in a contrary mood.
For more information on any of these properties, e-mail me or call me at 602-502-9693.
APPROVED SHORT SALE IN AVONDALE
The last buyer did the heavy lifting in getting an approval price from Bank of America. All we need now is a new offer at $110,000 (net, so raise the price if closing costs are needed) and this home can be yours fairly quickly.
FURNISHED SUN CITY GRAND WINTER RETREAT
Hard to believe with the warm weather around the country but cooler days are less than two months away – unless, of course, you’re in the Valley. Step into this furnished vacation casita in Sun City Grand and spend your winter on the tee box.
LAKESIDE LIVING IN ARROWHEAD RANCH
Fish from your private dock or watch the sunset reflect off the mountains to the north of you. Relaxation awaits you in Arrowhead Lakes.
BANK OWNED VALUE IN GILBERT
We’re waiting for the current buyers to finally officially cancel their failed attempt to buy; once that happens, this 3,800-square foot beauty in Cameron Ranch can be yours. It’s bank owned so it’s an as is sale, but such size and value is hard to come by.
This may seem a little bit odd for a real estate agent to do, but I’m going to tell you the story of another agent who works in my parents’ neighborhood – the neighborhood in which I grew up.
For more years than I can remember, Bob delivered neighborhood real estate updates – the standard fare of what was for sale, what recently sold, etc. Even more notably, on the patriotic national holidays – Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day (if memory serves) we’d wake up to find a flag in our front lawn with a note saying that this gift had been left by Bob.
Keep in mind I was eight when I moved to the neighborhood and the memory sticks, if for no other reason than the presence of the flags was as predictable as the rising of the sun in the east.
Fast forward 30 years and my mom told me she had been visited by Bob … after three decades working the Dobson Ranch, he still was out door-knocking and saying hello to folks even though the neighborhood in the intervening years had become too large to dominate in such a manner. In fact, there’s at least one other large real estate team now working the Ranch who is about as well known.
What always struck me is that Bob, and Jim later after I moved from the area, both were working to build a sense of community. What also struck me is neither seemed particularly shy about the fact that they were real estate agents and they made their living helping people buy and sell their houses. The efforts no doubt were sincere but they also were transparent … they wanted the business and made sure you know just what business they were in.
Real estate seems to be unique in that most agents are hesitant to discuss what exactly is is that they do for a living. Maybe it’s because of the reputation real estate agents have in general in the minds of the public; then again, maybe that image would be better if we as a group didn’t spend so much time trying to soft sell what it is that we do. I’m not talking about silly agent tricks like crooked name tags or upside-down name tags or some other such allegedly “clever” concept. I mean being up front about what it is that we do, why we are making ourselves visible to the public eye, how we put food on our table, etc.
Transparency was a byword of the real estate blogs when they first started – the original group of us, even if we scoffed at the actual use of the word transparency – often tried to peel back the curtain on some of the silly tricks agents use, to be the Penns and Tellers of the real estate world, showing how the tricks are performed and mocking the simplicity of it all.
Those days are largely gone. And, if you listen to some, so is the brief golden era of real estate blogging. Which I guess leaves real estate writing in some sort of post-apocaplyptic hell. And what does that hell look like?
Mostly, it seems, agents attempting to build community through Facebook or through Twitter. Which is well and good, or at least to my mind would be well and good if there wasn’t such a desire to hide the fact that it’s a real estate agent at the heart of the effort.
What all agents strive for is top of mind recognition – think of the places you go out to each when you want a certain type of food; this is the reflexive recognition all of us hope for and precious few achieve – yet more and more, agents are trying to find that top of mind recognition through osmosis or, less scientifically, a game of Password. “The secret word is … Realtor.”
Conference after conference, panel after panel is devoted to ways to infiltrate build community within your social medial circle, a place where we all are supposed to be a bit more open and yes, transparent, yet we’re trying to soft sell a basic reality of who we are – real estate agents.
Soon we will move on from Facebook as we moved on from MySpace and from Twitter as we search for the next big thing. Hyperlocal blogging – where you can learn about every farmer’s market in town and once in a while get real estate information – already is enjoying its own renaissance after a bright start and fizzle.
And all of this really seems to pale in comparison from a top of mind perspective to the idea of flags in the front yards on the Fourth of July. Then again, that was sooooooooo 20th Century.
This afternoon a post from the GeekEstate Blog appeared in my feed reader – I can’t link to it because the link leads to a 404 message, which means either the post has been taken down, is future dated or there’s a bad link somewhere in the mix – though I wish I could if only for this nugget from an agent in another market:
As an active real estate agent and a fledgling developer, I’ve felt firsthand the pain points on both sides. Here’s an example of how I now search for real estate for clients:
Load up the Zillow app on my Ipad.
Easily (and enjoyably) find properties and save them as my Zillow favorites.
Log onto my MLS, paste the mls addresses into the search, then email them to my clients from there because I’m too embarrassed to admit I search using Zillow.
Again, this is a different market so perhaps Zillow has tapped into a stash of accurate listings that isn’t necessarily duplicated elsewhere in the country.
As an experiment, I decided to look up how many active single family detached homes for sale were listed on Zillow and in the Arizona Regional MLS in the city of Phoenix. Zillow listed roughly 10,000; in the MLS, the actual database into which agents enter the listing data for other agents to use and show homes, there was roughly two-thirds as many homes available.
Perhaps, I thought, this was a case of old listings not being updated – Zillow doesn’t automatically update a home’s status, at least to my knowledge and experience. Except after entering a mere four addresses from ARMLS into Zillow, I already had a found a listing that wasn’t listed on the aggregator site. Which is well within the right of the listing agent – there’s no requirement that listings be promoted on any third-party site if the agent/brokerage so chooses. Their listing, their call (presumably in consultation with the seller.)
Expanding the search to Maricopa County, the proportional difference is about the same – Zillow has about one-third more homes for sale listed by agents, and there remain active listings that aren’t there.
Here’s what is concerning … many of us caution are clients to take with a grain of salt the online searches on these third-party aggregator sites because the data’s often incomplete, conflicting or flat out missing. Yet here is a real estate agent admitting that he searches Zillow for homes because he can do it on his iPad while, presumably he can’t do the same with his local MLS.
Why would an agent search if there was the possibility of homes for sale not appearing on the search?
As I’ve said in comments on past GeekEstate posts, this isn’t an MLS issue – the onus shouldn’t be on the MLS to make the data perfect for these third-party aggregators who elected to crash the party and regurgitate what can be found online. It’s not the third party’s data. Ultimately, my listing data belongs to my broker and we post it in the MLS because of the effectiveness in advertising and selling homes on that platform.
No, the onus should be on the aggregators to make sure they know what they are posting before it gets posted and the public perception of accuracy is built. Just as the onus ought to fall on the individual agent to set aside the latest gizmo in favor of making sure the client’s needs really are being met.
How many of you shop inside the convenience marts attached to gas stations? Apparently, far more than I ever really imagined if what I’ve seen at my in-laws’ ARCO station is accurate.
Until I was looking at the numbers one day, I would have assumed that the gasoline was driving the station’s profit margin. Believe it or not, it doesn’t. While not quite a loss leader, the real markup – and thus the real profit – comes from the items for sale inside the convenience mart. Margins on gas are thin but, as anyone who has had to buy a bottle of ketchup because the kids finished the last bottle and didn’t say anything may know, margins for everything else are fairly high.
Which likely is why I never shopped at these stores, at least not since my pre-teen days when I’d ride my bike down to 7-Eleven to buy a Slurpee, a pack of baseball cards and to play the pinball machine. (Yes, I really did say pinball machine.)
The listings feed on this site and other agent sites here in the Phoenix real estate market and elsewhere are much like the gasoline for sale alongside the corner convenience mart – while not loss leaders, these listings provided via IDX are the lure we use to try and get you, the consumer, talking to us. I highly doubt you’ll find an agent who can tell you with a straight face that this information is provided as a public service – it’s a tool of our business, plain and simple. You derive benefit from it and, hopefully, when you’re ready to buy or sell we’ll be the ones you contact.
Many folks already working with agents come to this site, which I suppose is fine (though in some cases I wonder what service the agent is providing if the buyer feels the need to come looking for homes here … are you not getting anything from your agent or do you not believe the completeness or accuracy of what’s being sent through to you. Answer yes to either one and I’d suggest rethinking that working relationship.)
Not so fine are the folks who call and e-mail to ask about a property or request a showing because they “don’t want to bother their agent with this.” Which makes sense, because my time clearly is less valuable than theirs and my agents and I should be spending our time working with people for free.
It’s hard to blame the public for not realizing all of the listings they see on a given site aren’t necessarily the agent’s listings. Hell, more and more real estate agents seem to be making the same mistake. At least once or twice a week I’ll receive a call from a real estate agent asking about a listing that’s not mine. When I tell them it’s not my listing, invariably I’ll be told “well I’m looking at your name.”
And that’s because you’re looking on Google, not on the MLS. Shouldn’t be hard to log in and check out the listing agent’s info, should it? Apparently it is.
All these machinations may seem a little bit cynical but the truth of the matter is real estate is a business like any other. We market a product when we list a home for sale but we also market ourselves, using whatever tools are available to us to do so within the rules set forth by the state and the REALTOR associations and Multiple Listing Services’ boards.
Think about it … no one calls Best Buy to buy a printer, goes to the store and then goes to pay for the printer at Staples. These are competing companies with their own inventory, etc.
Real estate’s just not that different. Again, this may be a surprise to some but it shouldn’t be.
At Dodger Stadium on Tuesday night, Los Angeles Dodgers manager Joe Torre was ejected from the team’s game against the San Francisco Giants. Bench coach Bob Schaefer, the Dodgers’ second-in-command as it were, also had been ejected leaving batting coach Don Mattingly in charge of the team for the game’s final innings.
Mattingly has been around baseball for decades and he well knows what most baseball fans also know – a coach or manager only can visit a given pitcher on the mound once; on the second visit, the pitcher has to be removed from the game. Mattingly went to the mound to talk to All-Star reliever Jonathan Broxton and the rest of the LA infield, took two steps off the mound then turned back apparently to answer a question asked by first baseman James Loney.
The problem? As soon as Mattingly stepped off the mound, his first visit was complete; when his foot hit the dirt again, that now was his second visit. Out of the dugout sprang Giants manager Bruce Bochy to make sure the umpires knew what what just taken place. After a conference, out of the game came Broxton.
Visiting a pitcher during the course of a game is a very basic, very uncomplicated act. And if a manager does it incorrectly it can have dire consequences, at least as dire as can be when dealing with a game.
Real estate runs the same way. As I’ve said in this space many times, you don’t necessarily need a real estate agent to sell your home. Some of the marketing that I complete for my listings can be done by someone else willing to pay for a shared hosting account, photo tour software through Real Estate Shows and with the time to put all of it together.
Similarly, buyers don’t necessarily need their own agent. They can rely on the honesty of the listing agent, knowing all the while that the listing agent represents the seller and has absolutely no responsibility to the buyer outside of the Code of Ethics’ fair dealing clause (which has been known to be trampled even in deals involving two agents.)
As long as everything is done correctly there are no issues. But when something goes wrong, such as a foot put out of place at the wrong moment in time, the circumstances can be dire and can cost real money.
Look through Trulia Voices any given day and you’ll see question about question asking for advice about a purchase contract already signed (questions better saved for the buyers’ agent, but I digress) when these questions are little different than asking how best to contain an elephant in your backyard after it’s rampaged through the house. Good question, just asked way, way too late.
If not all agents fully understand the contract, would you reasonably expect someone buying or selling a home for the first time in years to know the particulars? (Which brings up a side note I’ll have to expand upon later … for all the talk of how consumers want agent rating systems, talk usually started by the companies who are trying to put these ratings together, how are you going to rate someone’s knowledge of the purchase contract? Shouldn’t that matter maybe a little bit?)
Don Mattingly, a 30-plus-year veteran of the game, knew the rules and broke them without realizing it had been done. Would you sitting in the mezzanine having never before coached or managed been able to avoid the same pitfall if you were in his shoes?
Postscript: Here’s the most interesting part of all, at least to me. The umpires got it wrong, too. There’s a little-known codicil to the two-visit rule which, if enforced correctly in this case, would have left Broxton in the game to face the next hitter before being removed. Mattingly also would have been ejected, leaving the Dodgers with Vin Scully running the show as best I can tell.
Umpires are drilled incessantly about all details of the rule book before, during and after the season (they also presumably are told the difference between fair and foul, out and safe but that’s another story.) Not one of the four had any idea that they were misinterpreting the rule that Mattingly didn’t realize he’d broken.
The moral … if it’s not easy for the experts, why expect it to be easy for the general public?
Break a dam anywhere else in the country and all hell breaks loose.
Break the dam holding together Tempe’s Town Lake – a man-made creation inside the otherwise dry Salt River channel – and, well, not much happens except some triathlons get canceled and the water level goes poof.
Video clip’s courtesy of azcentral.com and, needless to say, there likely will not be a state of emergency declared anytime soon. Lake should be back to normal in a few months.
Full credit goes to my good friend Gail for the photographs; I simply was the guy driving the car today after taking a listing in Sun City Grand’s so-called vacation getaways.
More on that property in a couple of days. In the interim, five reasons to live in Sun City Grand in Surprise, Arizona. (Oh, and keep in mind the view’s about the same in January as it is now.)
