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Getting agents out to visit your listings in the Birmingham/Bloomfield Hills MI market can get tough. 
Talk about lousy timing. Responding to a phone call from my daughter-in-law and brand new mother, I hopped into my car and rushed over to her house so she could run out to take care of a few things. I should tell you they just moved into a new neighborhood, a lovely development with nicely updated homes and beautifully manicured lawns. As is common in our cooler market, you can't miss the "For Sale" signs that dot the landscape along the path to their home. 
When I was in school at the University of Vermont, I was an economics major. I thought it would be a good idea to do some non required reading, and I came across the book Boomernomics: The Future of Your Money in the Upcomming Generational Warfare. This was right around '99 when Social Security was the hot topic. The book absolutely facinated me. Of course I knew who the Baby Boomers were, but I had never really paid the subject that much consideration.
I have been getting a lot of people kicking tires. I have ask the other agents upon receiving the offers if they were doing just that. I have found it easier to make verbal counter offers. For one it does not tie you to that deal. I just had one that had a given a counter in writting I would not have gotten my seller $3,000. more. There are a lot of people trying to see how low they can purchase the property for. I have done several counter offers only to find it was a take it or leave it … (17 comments)
I represented a Buyer on a really nice single-story home (what we call a "rambler" out here, a "ranch-style" home elsewhere). It was situated on a half-acre wooded parcel in a small 40 home residential development. Usually, property boundary lines are not that important in these types of properties, but this situation proved different. To read more about our surveying adventure, go to SOUNDBITEBLOG (opens in a separate window)
Some of you may have already noticed but we made several updates to ActiveRain last night. Here's a quick rundown of what they are...
As a followup to my post earlier today, I wanted to write about the ins and outs of paying to have your website listed in the search engines. I haven't met too many individual real estate agents that use pay per click, but the ones that do seem to do pretty well if they know what they're doing.When you visit a popular search engine like Google or Yahoo, you'll notice that the first few results for a search are usually in a special box called sponsored links. The advertisers in this section are paying every time a person clicks on their … (31 comments)
Keeping Sellers happy in a slower market can be a difficult thing to do. If you want to be successful in this slower market you are going to have to improve on your communication skills. I mean let’s face it, it may take several months to get a home sold, even if it is priced right. Sellers are going to get antsy and we need to be able to keep them happy until the listing sells. My goal is to never remove my “For Sale” sign unless I am on my way to closing. If it takes 2 weeks or 12 … (21 comments)
Perhaps this will be my redeeming post? You guys be the judge.
I thought it would be cool to occasionally share thoughts on stuff that I've found really useful. Here's one:
Having taken a weekend away on a cruise ship out of Seattle to Victoria, B.C. and Nanaimo, B. C., I would like to share my experiences with you. 
What does it mean to be a closer? Sell the buyer on a home they don’t need or don’t want? Glossing over some obvious deficiencies of a property? Downplaying the client’s concern over the traffic noise? (“You’ll get used to it.”) Telling the buyer the home will be gone by tomorrow so you better make an offer right now, even it that’s not likely to happen?
The Northwest MLS, serving Western Washington, revamped their website this year. But, it has some bugs still. On some of the pages, it'll open up a new browser window, such as the map feature, but it does not provide any buttons or menu options. So, you can view the map page, but that's pretty much it. With the revamp, the print option was removed. However, there is a keyboard print command short cut -- CNTRL + P. This will allow users to print the map and other pages without the print button or menu option. 
Saturday night a sudden, deadly tornado struck in Rogers taking the life of a ten year old girl named Jaymi Wendt. It happened so quickly that the sirens weren't sounded. Although there was a tornado watch, it caught many be suprise. 
A few days late here...per my promise to have followed up Running Into Oncoming Traffic with this post. Sharon, I hope you haven't gone light headed in your waiting ( I'm waiting for your listing blogsites with baited [sic] breath....)--
This is a blog for all the Active Rainers that do not make the top 25 or even 100 list.
No cold calls, no net, no mailings just a phone call from a colleague in Washington asking me to help her niece, last night at 8pm got the call. The catch had to list the property today. Was one of the easiest listings we have ever done and the fastest. Paperwork in hand went to get signatures, view the home and took a few pictures. Priced to sell right where we needed to be. In and out with a beautiful listing in less than hour. Now life doesn't get much better!! … (7 comments)
The Outer Banks real estate market seems to be leveling off as far as new listings are concerned. Over the last few months the number of active listings has hovered around 4500 according to MLS. One of the reasons for this is the number of closed transactions have been increasing since the first quarter of this year, which is great news. The other reason is that the number of homes where the listing has expired or withdrawn has increased as the year has gone on. The expired/withdrawn listings are sellers who were probably testing the market and since they did not … (0 comments)
As a listing agent, I typically avoid attending the home inspection and advise my seller to do the same. I've had more than one seller who couldn't stand to stay away, and ended up getting themselves in trouble at a home inspection. I had one nervous seller following around the home inspector and then volunteered to correct every little item that came up, including some items that the buyer would have been willing to correct themselves. If there would have been a way to gag him, I surely would have.
For a long time, Naperville was known as the rapidly growing suburb west of Chicago. As the growth has slowed (running out of room) many of Naperville's other attributes are somtimes misssed by those that haven't been here.Disclaimer: ActiveRain Corp. does not necessarily endorse the real estate agents, loan officers and brokers listed on this site. These real estate profiles, blogs and blog entries are provided here as a courtesy to our visitors to help them make an informed decision when buying or selling a house. ActiveRain Corp. takes no responsibility for the content in these profiles, that are written by the members of this community.
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