As the member of our team that "manages the process from contract to closing" I've become increasingly frustrated with the financing process that involves, for the most part, mortgage brokers. Now, I don't want this to be construed as a slam on mortgage brokers. I've got some great friends with that title on their business cards, but there's a process that seems to be a catch 22 for sellers and listing agents that seems to be "unprotectable."

Here's the scenario - Buyer makes an offer on your listing. Buyer's Realtor® sends over the offer, signed property disclosures and pre-approval letter. If they don't have a pre-approval, you let them know that seller will not accept an offer without it, and it must be the right kind. You know, the one that says we've checked their credit and verified everything about them, we just need a house to check out. So you get the pre-approval and negotiate a deal based on specific terms including the closing date. Back when we had multiple offers, closing date was sometimes the determining factor.

So you go to contract and find that you are not dealing directly with the lender but a mortgage broker but all is progressing otherwise. Inspections are scheduled and completed, repairs made, the survey gets done, all the little tasks are getting checked off the list. Then you get the dreaded call from your title company telling you they haven't gotten a response from the lender in days, no one's make a request for title commitment or some other red flag that says nobody's home on the financing end of your transaction. Turns out, mortgage broker has been shopping the deal since the day you went to contract and we're now starting over with a new lender 8 days before the scheduled closing. I know plenty of lenders who say they can close on 14 days or other such feats of speed but generally, not when it comes to B or C or other such alphabetical paper. Naturally the week of the closing arrives and title company still doesn't have figures or a package because new lender needs some more info from the borrowers. And now, buyer's agent is mentioning the word "extension."  Yikes! For how long? "just a couple of days." Two weeks, a month later when you close, you try to look back at how you might have avoided it. How can you protect your seller?

We once had buyers who made an offer on a home owned by Fannie Mae and in the "big fat addendum" (BFA, for short) that you are required to sign, it included a clause that said (I'm paraphrasing) "We negotiated this contract based on among other things, your financing, and if you change lenders, we get to renegotiate the whole contract." Now that's all well and good if you are Fannie Mae and can afford to hold inventory and keep homes on the market for years if necessary. My sellers couldn't wait to move back to their home state and scheduled everything to vacate on the date of closing. We hadn't arranged for a mail away because they were going to sign and collect their check on the way out of town. Thank GOODNESS that they weren't waiting to close on their new home.

The sellers HAD to agree to the string of extensions because after all, the house was on the market for 4 months, they didn't want to let this buyer go. Just like we knew at the onset, when there was a broker involved, that there was a potential for this to happen but what could we do? They'd met every request up to that point. Nothing we could do but hope that they would stay the course with that lender or if they did change, close on time with the new one. The broker was just doing his job, trying to get the best deal for his clients, and in some cases ANY deal for his clients after the first lender decided that they weren't willing to risk it after all.

However, there is usually plenty of blame flying around (whether misdirected or not) and we try to absorb as much of that as we can for our clients, to make THEM comfortable and to ease THEIR feelings. Most often they appreciate our diligence in keeping them up to date and tend to blame the lender or the buyer for not having things in place before trying to buy the home. We try to diffuse that too because in most cases, you are still trying to make sure that they are WILLING to flexible in order to get it closed and the more ire they build up toward the "other side" just makes everything more difficult. But how can we avoid it altogether? We don't want to scare buyers away at the onset and ask for a BFA like Fannie Mae, not with so much to choose from on the market. But is there anyway to insure that buyers do what my mom always advised and "dance with the boy that brung ya?"

I just got off the phone with one of our advertising vendors and it prompted me to write. He was very excited the other day when he called because they are launching a website in support of their magazine. He knew my role on the team involves our internet presence so he asked me to go to the site and check it out and give him feedback. I'm happy to help out a vendor, especially one that "owes me one" and the more I can do for him the less it will cost our team to advertise with him in the future. So, I went to the site. He had warned me that it was still "in progress" so some things would improve so I wasn't too critical. However, I encountered a few things that I think we all need to look out for when we allow others to publish our image whether it's in print or on the web. 

On our team, we have a Marketing Director in Sharon's daughter Tami, who has owned her own graphic design business. Everything we put in print has to be up to her standards and we often won't advertise in a publication if we fee the quality of the publication will not convey our image as we intend. Other times we may modify our design if it's something we want to support, like a program for a charity event. On the web we try to maintain the same standard. If I have a site on which I can upload my listings, we always pay attention to how to best present our properties, optimal file sizes and resolutions etc. It's our brand and no one is going to protect it for us. We are trying to create an image in the mind of the consumer (and our colleagues for that matter) that we are professionals who pay attention to the details. If we do that in our marketing it's a logical step to think that we'd do that with our clients and their transactions.

So, I went to my vendors new site and he had a good start but I could see right away that the web design team was either by choice or by lack of supply from my vendor, using inferior images for the site. Though the layout is ideal, essentialy the magazine page for page, there were some navigation challenges that I noted. For my vendor, the website is just another opportunity to showcase his advertisers, traffic to the website might be of assistance when selling ad space. As a result, the advertiser's index is prominant which links to whatever page you find the ad on. What I encountered was to me the biggest problem. It was clear that someone had taken the high quality pdf and simply done a "save as" to .jpg then resized it to fit the appropriate space on the site. The image of our ad was bad, the faces actually looked a little scary and much of the text was blurry. Certainly, not the image we are trying to project by any stretch of the imagation. We were not alone however, as I looked at all the advertisements, they appeared to have suffered our same fate. So that was the feedback I gave him. It's not just about slapping it up there if it's not the image you want to create. I gave him some tips and he was so grateful for my honest feedback that he gave me a free dinner at a local restaurant. He asked me if I could be on a conference call with his website vendor to give my feedback direct to them because he is a self confessed "web dummy." I of course accepted if it will help to insure that our branding, or image, is presented in the best possible way.

We often get the feedback from local clients who say "you advertise everywhere." We don't, but those statements tell us that we are advertising where people are looking. They notice our ads whether online or in print. And if our clients notice the people who are not yet are clients probably notice too and you never get a second chance to make a first impression.

In the past few weeks several of our sellers have grown impatient with the market and have opted to offer their condos (nothing with single family homes yet) available for lease. They figure, while its empty and on the market, any income, even if it doesn't cover their expenses, better than nothing. In an already soft rental market there are even more heading into the pool of available rentals. I have to say it's been a little bit of a challenge because as I look at all of the places that we feature our listings on the web, not many of them are geared toward the rental market and I'm not sure that it's an appropriate venue for them. Sure, I'll post them on Craig's list and in our MLS's rental section but I recall my own experience looking for rentals a little less than a year ago. We tried internet searches but when it came down to really seriously looking for a place to live, we were coming the classifieds of the St. Pete Times and driving around.

If a majority of people are beginning their home search online, are renters doing the same? It just seems like there's no "big boys" when it comes to rental posting sites. maybe I'm wrong and if so, I'd love to know about it. But it brings up a strategy that a client suggested that we're working on. Now, we let our sellers know that advertising listings (for sale) in the local newspaper has never made our phone ring. And when you take into consideration ad rates, we get more bang for our buck elsewhere. She inquired however, if we advertised in Canadian newspapers since this is near the time when many Canadian visitors head to Florida. And if they rent the condo, they may like it enough to buy for use next year. Although it makes logical sense, I have a strong feeling that it's too narrow a focus for the budget. Wouldn't advertising in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohiol, etc. be equally as effective since those folks head down here about that time as well? And do people really look in their local paper for rentals in destinations they are planning to go? It's a topic I'm going to have to pursue because we have 2 other listings that are on track to become rentals. I'll let you know what I discover.

I was talking to a client the other day and he was lamenting his choice of REALTOR® to market his home in another market. He's already purchased a home here and will be moving in soon and fortunately was not in a position where he HAD to sell first. However, he's fairly certain that the listing will expire and he'll be going with another REALTOR® after that. One thing he mentioned to me was that it's been on the market for over a month and she still hasn't sent out postcards. Now, we don't regularly send out "just listed" postcards so I asked him if that was part of the marketing plan she shared with him when he made the listing agreement. And here's the crux of the issue: they didn't really go over a marketing plan. Whether she has one or not is still a mystery to him. Granted, she should be sharing this information with him but she may very well be working very hard to market his home but due to the market forces at work right now, it's lack of movement may not have anything to do with how hard or quickly she's working. I encouraged him to get with her and if she didn't have a plan and he didn't want to withdraw the listing from her early, he should ask her to or help her develop one.

I'm fortunate enough to work on a team where we get a lot of positive feedback from our clients. It's not just about making them happy, it's about turning them into "raving fans." The reinforcement that I get from our clients is why I do what I do, it's validating and rewarding. But I think a lot of the reason that we get that feedback is that we try, from the first contact, the first endeavor to work with someone, to manage their expectations. We lay out a plan, cite some of the issues that may come up, and work with them to address their needs and concerns. That way, we know what they are looking for from us and they don't have to wonder when the postcards are going out. For example, we have one client that had a listing expire and came to us. His biggest complaint was, of course, no communication from the agent. Now, almost all of our sellers get both regular and intermittant contact from various members of the team. Each week, I send written reports via e-mail regarding certain marketing activities. However, this seller is a pretty busy guy, doesn't have much time for e-mail, especially written reports. He just wants a 5 minute phone call, once a week whether anything is happening or not. Easy enough. But if we hadn't asked, I'd be e-mailing him reports and he'd probably still feel that we weren't communicating, just like his previous agent. 

I've found that I am most pleased with a vendor, professional or anyone that I work with when I know what to expect or they lay it all out to me. I wish I could say that this happens often but unfortunately not.

Lately I've encountered a series of contradictions in my industry and I just wanted to put it out there in the event that others are encountering the same challenges that I am. You see, I am a licensed assistant. I'm constantly reminded by my team  that I'm much more than that but for the purposes of our local board of REALTORS, our broker and anyone who wants to charge us more money, I'm merely an assistant. I have a college degree, 10 years experience in corporate and small business management and most importantly to this discussion, a valid Florida Real Estate license.

Back when I started a few years ago, my initial offer to come work for Sharon (Simms, my team's "Rainmaker") was a combination of need and want. Sharon needed someone to replace her soon to be departing, part time assitant and daughter in law to help maintain the paperwork, field phone calls, and generally manage the office. She also wanted a full time person with technical skills to build and maintain her website, the office technology and manage her internet presence in general. She offered to pay for me to attend Real Estate School and get my license so that I could "have a brain" when I answered the phone as we all know how much trouble unlicensed assistants can get into for what they say on the phone, whether it's true or not.

In Florida, to have an active license, you must have a broker that you work under. In most cases, going to work for a broker is an expensive propostion with all the fees for both the brokerage (or franchise) as well as the board to which they belong. It doesn't really make sense to pay all that if a person (me) does not show property, have a lockbox key, is not named on contracts, and is a salaried employee of a REALTOR. Luckily, I found a company that would allow me to "activate" my license for a nominal fee so long as I agreed that I would not do any of the above mentioned things in writing. It allows them to maintain a low overhead, particularly with E & O insurance and allows the agents registering there to maintain an active license in order to continue to be eligible to collect referral fees. The downside, in order to maintain the low overhead, it's not a member of any board and therefore, not a member of FAR or NAR.

This is all well and good until you consider the concept of education. Sure, I can get my continuing ed credit easily to maintain my active license. However, to best serve OUR clients, I want to go beyond that. And I want our clients to know that. In Real Estate, that means designations. Sharon has virtually every designation you can get from that applies to her clients in Residential Real Estate. She advocates education and would like nothing more than for each of us on her team to earn as many designations as she has. It's a little more challenging for me because I won't ever have the production requirements necessary for things like CRS if I'm never named on a contract, but I'm OK with that. I'm looking toward designations that would tell our clients or potential customers that I have worked hard at learning as much as I can to operate in their best interest. 

In R E school, they refer to the GRI as like the master's degree in Real Estate. There's a reason the Florida Real Estate Commission allows the GRI courses to satisfy various post licensing and continuing education credits. Although it's a lot more hours than required to maintain an active license, I went ahead and took all three. They were happy to take my money and even called and apologized for needing to send me the "Non Member" fee which was only $25 more. However, by the time I was about half way through the second of three courses, I got a call because they needed to change the schedule (it's Florida, there was a hurricane, surprise). In the course of our conversation I found out that although I could/would complete all coursework and tests necessary, I would not received the designation. Would have been nice to know when they were taking my money. I did mention it more than a few times when I was registering over the phone and again when they told me that I'd be charged the non member fee. I can't get the designation because it's a FAR designation and since I'm not a member of FAR, I can't get it.

Ok, fine I get it. But here's where I'm confused. The thing we hear over and over again by people in the industry is that we are a profession. Thing like education count and educating the public that we have some higher degree of expertise is important. If that's the case then why are there no designations for support staff, why is there no incentive for anyone who's not collecting commissions to do anything more than the bare minimum? In Medicine you have MDs but support staff is also accredited from RNS and LPNs to CNAs and the like. Lawyers have paralegals. It just seems like if Real Estate fancies itself as a profession, it should act like it and account for the important role of knowledgeable, professional support staff.

So, I'll keep getting more education because I want it. In my bio, although I can't use the designation GRI, it is not untrue that I have completed all of the coursework to be a Graduate of the Realtor Institute. One day, maybe I'll pay the money to switch to a broker that belongs to the board, and then pay for the dues to be a member so that I can put that designation on my business card. But I'll probably get my masters first. At least there, when they take my money and I do all the course work and pass all the tests, I'll get to tell the public I have a masters degree and I won't have to renew my membership each year to do so.