Just a short blog post today to remember and honor all the men and women in our Armed Forces.  These men and women voluntarily sacrifice time away from their family and friends to defend our country.  All too often they are put into harm’s way and are wounded or killed.  The recent tragedy at Ft. Hood, TX is but one reminder that danger is not reserved to foreign lands. My heart and thoughts go out to all the families of the fallen and wounded.  My gratitude goes out to those who serve now or have committed their service and reti

OK.  For whatever reason you decided you want to put your house on the market.  If someone comes along with the right price and the planets are in alignment, you'll accept the offer.  In the meantime, people who may want to take a look at your house can do so "by appointment only" with no lockbox. 

This means:

• you need to be home when anyone comes by and
• hardly anyone will want to come by

Yeah, I know.  There used to be a time when there were no lock boxes and agents had to jump through all kinds of hoops to show homes to their buyer clients.  Those days are gone, though.

The old saw about location, location, location is really only partially true.  You can have the best location in the world and if no one can see the inside of your house, live and in person, it probably won't sell.  Yeah, the Internet photos are great for getting people interested to visit your house but -- trust me on this -- they won't buy it unless they can actually step foot in it.

Just sayin'

This home has a ton of appeal and a ton of potential. This house has what we, in real estate, call "good bones". Yes, it needs some cosmetic fix up here and there. However, it could be the perfect home to the right buyer who sees the potential and gets the right mortgage -- a FHA 203 (k) would be perfect.

I guess with all the "Calls to Action" initiated by the National Association of Realtors, National Association of Home Builders and everyone else interested in selling real estate and all the peripheral products and service really worked.  Today, President Obama is expected to sign the extension and expansion of the tax credit into law.

Is this a good thing?

Maybe.

My take on this is that humans work toward a deadline.  It's in their nature.  That's why we've seen the uptick in pending home sales and existing homes sales (as opposed to new home sales) in recent months.  First time home buyers who have been "on the fence" -- really just procrastinating -- got real busy to meet the deadline to grab that $8,000 Uncle Sam is giving away.  Every title person or loan person I talked to says that November is "crazy busy" because of all the home sales in the pipeline to settle by November 30th.

Why is this important to know?  Well, winter is the normal slow period for real estate.  People are hunkered down for the holidays -- Thanksgiving and all the stuff that happens in December.  It's cold (at least in the MD Suburbs of DC). It gets dark earlier. The money they would normally use for a down payment is now going to holiday gifts.  Well, maybe not this year.  Still.

So my guess is that come February we'll start to see a flurry of activity centered around the next deadline.  This one, though, is a "soft" one.  Under contract by April 30th and settled by July 1st. 

Now people have some breathing room. All the people who stopped looking in mid-October will wait until after the first of the year and then maybe -- maybe -- get back on the Internet to look for a house.  Maybe some of the current home owners that have been thinking about moving up will get going.  My guess with the current home owners, though, are that the people moving for job relocation, divorces, deaths, and the like (i.e., people who would be moving anyway) are the ones who are going to benefit from the $6,500 credit.

I was writing a blog post on my Outside Blog about an article in today's Washington Post about a "father/son" team that went to a bunch of Open Houses and pilfered the home owner's jewelry and took it to local pawn shops to unload it. 

Due to some good police work and getting the word out within the local Realtor community, the Open House thieves have been caught.  The Alexandria (VA) police are still seeking additional victims of the Open House thefts in order to wrap this case up.  You can find the phone number of the Detective on the case here.

This really brings to mind the dangers of Open Houses in the Internet Age. Most people can find all the information they want about a house on numerous websites complete with Virtual Tours. On top of that, a good buyer's agent can provide you with your very own, personal tour of any house at your convenience. You don't have to wait until Sunday to go.

Honestly, I've never quite figured out why people want to advertise to the world "I'm not home. The door is open. Come on in!"  Jewelry isn't the only thing.  Prescription drugs, crystal, sentimental keepsakes.  All of it is available for the taking.

In my book, if you want to let your neighbors know you're selling your house and you would like them to take a look at it, throw a party.  Heck, I may even throw it for you.  Just make sure you're there, too...and your valuables are in a safe place.

Scenario:  Mr. Seller is very eager to sell his house.  He just "happens to be home" when a lot of the buyers and their agents pop by for a visit. Mt. Seller likes to be the tour guide highlighting all the parts of the house he [the Seller] likes about his house. Mr. Seller also likes to talk money.

Yes, that's right.  Stuff like "I can do this with closing help or I can do that with less closing help or....."  Get the point?

So I get the call from the agent with a low ball offer.  I present to the Seller.  The Seller tells me, "I told Ms. Agent what I could do and not do and yadda, yadda, yadda.  I thought she was on board."  Or I get feedback about how awkward the agent felt or that the buyer really didn't like the main feature of the house the Seller was so proud of.

No matter how may times I ask Seller clients to take a walk around the block or go to a movie or hide in the basement, there are those that insist they can sell their house just fine, thank you very much.

I don't get it.  If they really didn't want the help, why'd they ask (and agree, in writing, to pay my fee)?

Please...to all you Mr. and Ms. Sellers everywhere: you may get more than you thought, in less time than you thought, with less stress than you thought...if you let your Realtor do their job.  Sit back. Relax.  We'll get it done.

I guess I really shouldn't be surprised but I am always caught off guard when my buyer clients start out saying they want one thing and within a couple of visits make a complete 180 and want something different.

Now, before my fellow real estate professional tell me I should have a thorough and complete buyer consultation at the outset of a home search -- I do.  No, not 100% of the time.  I do like to get a good fix on what my buyers want, though, so I don't spend a whole lot of time riding around, burning gas, putting wear and tear on my car and filling out feedback forms for listing agents.

Here's an example: new buyer clients say they're interested in a certain area because they want their kids to go to a certain school.  They've already done the research and this school is the school. Great! Narrows down the geographic area (or does it?). They also tell me they want a certain number of bedrooms and baths, single family home, etc. etc.  They have it pretty well narrowed down (or do they?).  Oh yeah. Foreclosures. They want to look at foreclosures because they've heard they're a "deal". (or are they?)

This sounds great, I think to myself.  We'll look at the 10 homes that match their criteria. They'll pick one and we'll go happily to settlement in a month or two.

Well.....almost.

After the first outing, they've decided that maybe foreclosed homes aren't such a great deal. They're all trashed and/or gutted and/or have water damage. They've decided that the "plain vanilla" sales (where the Seller have some equity and doesn't need that pesky "third party approval") are just too plain. Now they want to expand the geographic ares (wait. what about the school?) and they even want to look at new construction (whoa. that's a change from foreclosures!), they want to look at a new price range, too.  Hmmmm.

All this is OK.  They're financially qualified and, hey, they can live where they want, right?  It's just that it always amazes me that people start out with one idea of what they want and then completely change course. It's as if they never had that initial consultation about what they wanted and why.

If I were a cynical person, I might suspect that home buyers tell their Realtor consultants what they think we want to hear or, maybe, what they think their friends told them would be a good deal.  Or, maybe, they just don't know themselves.  That's possible and that's why we Realtors try to get our buyer clients to focus.

Sure, sometimes it's fun just to go out to look at different houses to see what's out there or to get decorating tips or maybe see what $400,000 gets you in the MD Suburbs of DC vs Bismark, ND.  Most of the time, though, maybe even the vast majority of the time, it is the wiser path to know what you want and go after it (within your financial ability).

Knowing what you want goes a long way to actaully getting what you want.

I'm not an appraiser and I don't play on on TV but I feel fairly confident of my ability to value property pretty fairly.  Granted, sometimes the Seller wants a little more and over prices the listing.  If they don't I usually feel we'll make it past any appraisal.

It seems, though, that appraisers are really reveling in their new found independence.  I also hear that a lot of appraisers are getting the short shrift, money wise, from all these third party clearing houses that lenders have to go through to order an appraisal.  So, I can see where appraisers may feel a tad resentful and also feeling their wild oats a bit.

Recently, I was listing a home in a neighborhood that could reasonably be called "moderately priced". There was a mixture of short sales, foreclosures and "plain vanilla" sales in the area so I had to really think about it but I came up with what I thought was a reasonable value.  The Seller want $10K more. So be it.

Amazingly (to me), the house had 27 showings and 4 offers in 2 days.  The Seller was sure we she had under priced her house and was having all kinds of second thoughts. However, she moved forward with one of the offers which was both reasonable and realistic. 

Fast forward to the appraisal.

The appraiser calls and says she wants to come by that day.  OK, I'm thinking to myself.  I have the key and it was the same key 27 Realtors used to show the house.  I set the appointment to meet the appraiser.  Lo and behold, the Seller had locked a top lock to which I had no key.  I couldn't get in.  The appraiser couldn't get in.  She was a little miffed.  She said she would call "when she was coming back to the area." OK.  Works for me.

Now, it turns out the appraiser isn't coming back (VA, by the way) and she isn't stepping foot inside the house. She's sending her appraisal to the lender and the buyer's agent called me to tell me it might come in low. The buyer's agent doesn't know how much lower than the contract price, what comps were used or anything.

So, I wait. An irritated appraiser who could care less if the seller, buyer or lender are affected one way or the other.  An appraiser that won't put the fact of multiple offers into the equation.  A VA appraisal that, for all the appraiser knows, may or may not have conditions that need to be addressed. An appraiser who comes from God knows where into a neighborhood she may or may not know anything about.

I sent comps to the buyer's agent but I suspect the buyer's agent probably doesn't care how low the appraisal comes in.

Hey, if it was easy, anyone could do it, huh?

Every now and then I'll encounter a home seller that when they say "I want to sell this house." they really mean it. They listen to my rationale for recommending a price. They look at the comparable sales. They make a decision to price the home so it will attract the largest number of potential buyers through the front door and provide an offer that will end with the sale of the house.

A lot of the time, I encounter home sellers who will say "I want to sell this house." and what they really mean (but don't say out loud) is "I'd like to sell this house if I can get the type of money I need to [fill in the blank]." Usually the fill-in-the-blank has nothing to do with true market value, comparable sales or much of anything else other than something the home seller would  like to accomplish outside of selling the house.

It could be they need a certain amount of money to buy the next house or pay for a retirement living arrangement.  A lot of the time it's really about wanting some money to have fun or feeling that it's due to them for making whatever improvement they have made to the house over the years they've lived in it.

Sometimes, a home seller will price the house aggressively and when a good offer comes in sooner rather than later, they begin second guessing the pricing strategy.  "Hey, if everybody's house is sitting on the market for 6 months, how come I got an offer in one week?" (as if this was a bad thing). Or, "This is a full price offer. It must have been priced too low." What I like best is, "People (i.e., all my friends and co-workers who are not real estate professionals) tell me 'Realtors just want to sell the house'".

Yes, as you can tell, I have a little bias here. When I hear the "Realtors just want to sell the house." I would like to ask, "What do you want to do?  Just let it sit on the market and have total strangers continue to walk through your home at random moments?"  Of course, the implication is that Realtors are most interested in setting the price as low as possible to sell it as fast as possible to pick up that big commission check.

The flip side, of course, is that when the house is priced too high and it sits on the market too long the Realtor is suggesting the high price so they can get a bigger commission check.

Luckily, I don't run into too many clients that like to second guess the selling strategy.  When I do, though, it drives me crazy!  I like to think I can tell who just wants to test the waters and who is really serious about selling their home to move onto the next chapter in their lives.  Sometimes, I get that part wrong. When I do, it's a doozy.  Having to listen to regrets and sellers remorse and the greed starting to kick in makes me want to run screaming from the room.

But, hey, if it was easy anyone could do it.

 

I saw the URL to this video on Twitter (where else, huh?). It's just boggles the mind how quickly social media has taken off and how far reaching it is. You should really toggle this to full screen to get the full effect...and it's only a tad over 4 minutes.

If you've been thinking if all this Active Rain, Facebook, Twitter, etc. stuff is a waste of time (you know who you are!) you may change your thinking after the next 4 minutes....