Making the Decision!

To Rain or not to Rain..... That is the Question.....

Brian Woodring (Keene Company Realtors) — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 08:09:13 -0700

So I've been thinking a lot lately about all the things I'm doing for my real estate business. Kinda going over the money that I'm spending and seeing what works and what doesn't. I am a new agent so I haven't really gotten fully off the bench as I work full time to support my wife and I. A viscious cycle we have here as the time I need to spend on real estate so that I can produce the income I need to quit the other job is more then I can currently give. So I was wondering why Active Rain? And thought I would ask everyone here and get the best information from the source.

First I was thinking that maybe I will cancel until I can attend a raincamp so that I can fully understand everything behind what Rain does. The next one that is closest to me is in Chicago and that is quite a while away. So I tryed thinking of things to stay until then and am coming up a little dry. I love blogging and the amount of information in this site is tremendous but I don't have to be a rainmaker to utilize the info.

So what I want to know from everyone is why do you make it rain?

What are the benefits you get from being a rainmaker?

What's the difference between my blog that is already set up and the outside blog that ActiveRain will set up and why should I have both?

Let's go with the brass tax here, no need to sugar coat it, because I will see through that. :) After all I am in sells and have been for quite some time. Just give it to me straight! Should we or shouldn't we make it Rain in Louisville? :)

Brian Woodring

Keene Company Realtors

The Story behind Hiring a Realtor...

Brian Woodring (Keene Company Realtors) — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 08:31:31 -0700

There have been several instances in the last few months when after speaking with someone; I realize that their perception of what we do is not what I think it should be. Our job is to work in the best interest of our client. (You) This is everything from making sure you get the write price on the house your looking at to something as simple as making sure we've signed in all the right areas of a contract.

If your buying a home then I want to make sure you find the best house for your money, and in the area you wish you live. I’ve heard people say that agents are going to show you a house that you can’t afford. In my mind this just isn’t true or a good practice. I can’t possibly be looking out for your best interest if your price range is $100k, and I show you a house for $150k. If you can’t afford the house then why should I show it to you? Someone said so that I can make more commission. If you can’t make the payments and have a bad experience buying your home, would you refer me? The real estate business is almost 100% referral and burning bridges just isn’t an option. And the commission that I make will be more on helping 3-4 of your friends then it will be on selling you a home that isn’t what your looking for to begin with.

When you sell your home, this can be one of the most stressful things you ever do. By hiring a Realtor your putting your best foot forward. We do this everyday and it’s our life blood to make sure this transaction goes well. We will sit down with you and discuss your financial situation to see what we need the house to sell for. We’ll even prepare a CMA (Competitive Market Analysis) so that we can see what the market says your house is worth. We suggest things that need to be done for curb appeal and things to change so that it shows the best.

Overall a Realtor is kinda like that wedding planner you never had. You have all these ideas and know what you want but don’t know where to find it and how to put it together. That’s where we come in, we get all the information and present you with all the options. I’ve had people say they didn’t know buying a home could be this easy after we were done. And that means a lot to me because if your happy then I’m happy!

Brian Woodring

Keene Company Realtors

What a weird phone call......

Brian Woodring (Keene Company Realtors) — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 23:25:57 -0700

Last night I was at my parent's house enjoying our family dinner as we do every Sunday, when my phone rings. I didn't recognize the number but thought it may have something to do with real estate so I decided to answer. On the other end was a guy that said he was online and got my info and wanted some advice... Just his tone sounded very weird. I guess I should be glad that he found me somewhere out there in the Internet but this seemed a little to odd.

He said that his mom had put an offer in on a property and that the owner was the listing agent. She was a elderly lady and some things were starting to go awry and he wanted some help. Just trying to be the nice guy I am I decided I would listen to what he had to say. Apparently his mom had put an offer in on this house and had the inspection done. There were plenty of things that needed to be fixed and they asked for them to be fixed. In the contract they said they would do so. (Now comes the strange part) He said they called his mom to have her come over and cancel the old contract and to sign the new one. Once this was done they are refusing to do any repairs as promised. He kept saying it's like the other agent is trying to rip my mom off. I have no idea who the agent was and from the weird phone call starting putting my foot out the door. I asked him if he had used a Realtor to make the offer and he said no. (And this is why you should :)) He said they were going to keep her original good faith deposit and wanted her to put another one down on the new contract. This whole thing just seemed messed up but it was like he was trying to get me to find out who the agent was and bash them for what they were doing.....

I am new to the business and the one thing that kept resounding in my head was "Do NOT give legal advice" I told him I would call an attorney and have them look over the contract to see what they could and couldn't be doing. He thanked me and then hung up.....

Anyone else ever get one of these phone calls? And if so any advice for a newbie agent lol??

Thanks!

Brian Woodring

Keene Company Realtors

Common Sense to Much to Ask For???

Brian Woodring (Keene Company Realtors) — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 07:15:38 -0800

Of course it is when there is politics to be discussed, but what about real estate? I think one of the reasons I have made several of my last career choices is because I see someone doing something terrible and think "I could do a better job" Of course this hasn't always made my life easier either. So in several jobs I feel like there a few things you should do just for the "Cost of Admission". In retail it's "Greet the damn customer!!!", and in Real Estate I think it should be put picutes with your listings.......

This started as my brother-in-law was listing their home. It had been on the market for a while when my sister said something to me about how it looked and if I could make any suggestions. Being a newer agent I thought it would be a great oppurtunity to see someone else's work and give feedback. I pulled up the house which was listed for $480,000. In their area this was a very expensive price range. But as I had been over for a holiday get together I had already seen the marble counter tops, marble flooring, wrap around stair case to the upstairs and the HUGE open floorplan. I understood why it was so expensive, there were all kinds of things about this house that made it stand out more then any other house in the area. When I pulled the listing there was 1 photo!?!?!? The front of the house with his truck and trailer sitting in front of the house. So even this one photo could have been made so much better by getting the truck out of the way. It just cheapened the home so much. I was dumb-founded. How could someone even think this was ok. It wasn't a limited listing company or anything. I just thought to myself, i'm new and this is clearly not the way this is supposed to be done.

What is the thought process of why people don't put pictures with the listing? Our job is to show the best things about the house to people. Now in some cases I understand that the best thing about the house is the living room and that's the photo you choose to make as the headline. I completely get it, but when a house is in outstanding condition and has so many eye-opening features, why wouldn't you put photos with it?

It's like here it is, it's on the market, if you wana look go see it. I'm done......

Pictures, Pictures, Pictures, Can you really ever have to many? And would someone ever tell you, "Hey I think you should take out some of the "well-placed" photos on there. I don't want them to see what the bedroom looks like......"

Brian Woodring

Keene Company Realtors

Special Olympics and the Polar Bear Plunge

Brian Woodring (Keene Company Realtors) — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 12:22:57 -0800

Each year a group of friends and I decide to help out the Special Olympics. It's called the Polar Bear Plunge. Name of the event pretty much says it all. We are going to jump into the Ohio River at the end of Feb and hope that we don't get Frost Bite lol. It's for a great cause and Louisville really makes a huge deal with it. I am always shocked at the number of people that come out for these events. People dress up like anything from being in a snuggie which i think is cheating to being like my crew and having our entire bodies painted like super heros and REALLY freezing.

It's all about having fun, right? It's sooo cold. This is one way that I try to give back for being blessed in the work that I do. Alot of people don't have the same oppurtunity's as others.

http://soky.kintera.org/faf/donorReg/donorPledge.asp?ievent=447703&lis=1&kntae447703=D6FC001FA4634E429596C3A8B408A879&supId=315413355 is the link for donations if anyone feels generous. I will be posting pictures on here as soon as it's over. Last year we were super heros. This year who knows.

Brian Woodring

Keene Company Realtors

How much should a good faith deposit be?

Brian Woodring (Keene Company Realtors) — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 06:52:32 -0800

I have had a few debates over this and I haven't been in the market very long. "5 deals under my belt and a year has passed. " The average house sale where I am is probably around $120,000 and it seems everyone is ranging from $500 to 1% of the purchase price. So far two of the offers I've written has been with a $100 deposit. Why? Well it's all the buyer could afford at the time. Luckily both offers have gone through and everything has been fine.

Which begs the question, if I don't have to do a $1000 deposit, why should we? That, I'm going leave open for discussion. I mean they can always counter offer wanting a bigger deposit check, right? The good faith deposit is supposed to the show the seller that we are serious about buying the home. When the house we're looking at is below $100,000 and the type of loan is a government assistant loan so that they don't have to come through with a big chunk of the down payment. $100 to these guys is a lot of money.

Where does everyone stand on this issue and what seems to be the run of the mill figure/idea??

Thanks!

Brian Woodring

Keene Company Realtors

Proper Communication Part 1 (Emails)

Brian Woodring (Keene Company Realtors) — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 05:36:09 -0800

I recently had a real estate deal where I felt the communication was opportunistic to say the least. I started thinking about all types of communication and what would be the proper form/type of communication for different occasions. I don't exactly think that everything we do is "Time is of the essence" but it seems as if most things are relatively important and should be responded with in a timely manner.

Emails

1. Using all caps when sending or replying to an email..... To me this is an easy way to get misinterpreted quickly. Why is she yelling at me?? Your mind starts zooming all over the place thinking of well it's not like I was late with the deposit check, it's her fault for not calling me back the other day, so on and so fourth. There is really no way to determine what emotion someone is just typing the email with, and of course caps lock doesn't help anyone. :)

2. Response time.... When someone sends an email and the title is "Counter Offer", "Addendum", or "Urgent, need a copy of their pay-stub", chances are that this requires your attention and should be read and responded to quickly. Even if it's not possible for you to do the required work soon, a response is better then no response, this way I at least know you saw it and are going to be getting back with me. Instead time may pass and we'll think your not interested and move on..

3. Forwards - These are about as annoying as they can get anyway. All these ridiculous emails that if you don't forward this to ten people your going to have a really really bad day.... I don't participate and it seems like my days have been just fine! Or could it be the email god just hasn't caught up with me on his busy schedule..? If you do forward something to someone please change the title. after responding several times and of course asking different questions, The 10th time probably isn't the same topic. Also make sure that the people your sending the email to is supposed to get it. These email can have several people in them replying and if I got an email from a reply-all or forward saying "I wish he would hurry up, I'm so tired of dealing with this guy", it's probably not going to go over to well with my next email being in all caps...

4. Professional Username - I have only had one of these in my dealings and hopefully they go away. This agent's email address was something like "ladylove###". I couldn't believe this was the email on her cards as well as the email she really wanted info sent to. Now while this is all just my opinion, I do think that we should have email addresses with our name or company name somewhere in them. This way people don't have to guess who the email is from. There was an article done about the different domain names and what you could assume about the person based on their email address. I thought it was interesting and true. Of course the @aol and @hotmail ranked on the lower portion of this email. This is also true when applying for a job. All of these websites ask for your email. I can't count the number of the times I've looked over an email and saw Stoner420, Partygurl69, and all kinds of others. While what you do in your spare time is great, I probably don't want to know in these cases....

5. Signatures - This is a great place to put all of your contact information. I have my cell phone number, my website and my companies website. This makes it easy to get in contact with me in some way, shape or form. You can even put the facebook, twitter and Myspace logos at the bottom so they take someone to your page when they click on them. If someone misplaced your contact info, they can pull up an email that most people have saved and grab it again.

6. Attachments - In this day and age we're doing everything over email. "You need that contract, sure no problem, I'll email it over to you." We get it and of course we can't read it, the numbers that we need were cut off and if I have to resend if then of course it gets worse. Every now and then please send yourself and email and see just how other people receive it. You may just find out that what your sending may as well be scratch paper for me to write notes on...

7. Spell-check - Lastly of course is the one thing that takes us all forever to do.... Hit that button that says "ABC" with the check mark by it. Emails are sometimes used as confirmation that something was received and cant even be used in court for numerous other issues. Do you really want your email printed and read in a manner that makes someone seem like an idiot? It takes a second to proof read an email and make sure that what your saying is what you mean.

This is all I have on this portion of communication, although I feel as if this is just a small portion of what we should expect from emails. Communication is key to a lot in our business and we have to ensure that we do our part to make things go as easy and smooth as possible.

Brian Woodring

Keene Company Realtors