I got a hair cut this morning and as I was leaving the barber shop I had the same thought I always have when I leave the barber shop.  "Wow that is one God awful haircut, but I love my barber".    

I have been going to the same barber for over seven years now and he is quite possibly the worst in Seattle.  I won't tell you his name for fear of angering a man who wields sharp objects near my head.   Suffice it to say he is a Lebanese born man in his mid 50's. 

Keep in mind, cutting my hair is not all that difficult of a process.  You slap a #2 attachment to a pair of clippers and go to town, and yet still he manages to make a mistake or two each time.  Sometimes it is a clump of hair over my ear that was missed, sometimes he takes a chunk out of the back leaving a small but noticeable divot.  Once he actually clipped my ear and made it bleed for a few minutes.

So why do I go back?  I love the guy.  He is fascinating.  Grew up and lived in a war torn middle eastern country.  Has stories that would make your hair (pun intended) turn white.  Culturally he is dramatically different from me.   We talk endlessly about the difference he sees between America and his home land.  We talk about his children and the struggles he has to raise them in a foreign culture.   He is endlessly good natured and friendly.  He knows me, my life and my business.  I have also gotten to know him, met many members of his family and remember and bring up issues he is having with them, and his business.   In short, we have become friends over time. 

Why?

Because the guy is friendly and interesting.  He genuinely seems happy to see me each month, listens and shares stories and advice open and honestly.  He is a great guy, and month after month year after year I go back.  I risk the minor nicks and cuts.  Endure having to go home and reshape certain spots he overlooked, all because I cherish the experience.  He is comfortable familiar and I like going to him.

So what's the point.  As I left today a thought occurred to me.  What am I doing in my business that fosters the same feeling of loyalty and, dare I say it, love, from my customers?  What am I doing to make them so loyal that even if I miss trim their bangs from time to time, they will keep them coining back.

Here is my list of things to do.

•1.        Take a genuine interest in everyone in front of me.  Clients friends, family, acquaintances and strangers alike. 

•2.       Never treat anyone like a client.  The closing is secondary and they will come if you treat people correctly.

•3.       Truly make their interests mine.  That includes telling a client that now is not the best time to sell their home, or that that they can't afford the house they truly desire.

•4.       Take the time to get to know them.  Understand their needs, wants and dreams, before I ever act on their behalf.

•5.       Listen intently.

•6.       Share honestly.

•7.       Ignore the outcome.  Paychecks are temporary.  Loyalty is forever.

If you build it.  They will come. 

So good by for now my friend.  I'll be back next month.  But don't worry even if you take another chunk out of my ear, I'll still come back.  Some things are more important than perfection. 

----------------

Feel free to check out my Seattle Home Buyer's Blog at www.seattlehomebuyingguide.com

OK AR help me out.  If I have a post on AR and remove it but post the same post on a different blog, can I be penalized for dupicate content?  The post is original content created by me. 

Any ideas?

Dear Active Rain,

This is one of the hardest letters I have ever written, but I want to be honest with you.  AR you have meant so much to me and I owe you the truth.  You have no doubt noticed that I have been a little absent the past few months and not paying very much attention to you. 

The fact is that I have been having an affair. 

I have met someone who has changed my life.  Her name is Word Press.  Starting this past fall I guess I was feeling a little restless and my eye began to wander.  I do truly love you, but there was something missing in my life.  WP and I have a number of friends in common, who suggested we get together.  Well, one thing led to the other and we have created something that I think is quite beautiful.

Seattle Home Buying Guide

I hope we can still be fiends.  I want us to keep in touch, but things can never be the same as they were before.  This past 9 months with you have been extraordinary.  I learned more then I could have ever hoped.  You showed me how to connect with others, how to reveal my inner real estate agent.   You have introduced me to some amazing new people who have truly changed my world.  I will stay in touch with you and all the wonderful people you have introduced me to, but I need more.  I need to be free to explore this crazy thing we call the "internet".  

I need to keep in touch with my sphere through FaceBook. 

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=584838653&ref=name

I need to be able to twitter when I can't decide between going to Jack in the Box

or Taco Del Mar for lunch.

http://twitter.com/RobGraham

I want to answer questions on Trulia when Midge in South Carolina can't

decide what to do with her cats when she lists her Duplex.

Understand that it's not you it's me.  I need to be free right now.  I need to be able to adjust my permalinks and metatags on a moments notice.  I need to obsess over long my long tail keywords at 2:00 am in the morning when I can't sleep or change my theme all together to match my mood. 

I know this must all sound selfish, but I have to be honest with you and myself.  I will always love you and stay in touch, but right now I just can't be tied down to just one blog format.  Please try to understand.  I owe you more then I can ever repay. 

I wish you nothing but the best,

Love,

Rob

It is easy to get all mixed up with the vocabulary swirling around the real estate market these days.  Two very confusing terms being thrown around right now are short sales and distressed properties.  While the two are similar and many times both are involved in the sale of a home, they are not the same thing.

Robopedia:

Short Sales - When a seller is selling a home and the proceeds of that home will not be enough to cover the loan amount that the seller owns on the home. 

For example, If you refinanced your home for $500K last year and put your home up for sale for $480K, that sale is officially a short sale.  

Distressed Property - A home where the seller is at least 30 days behind on a payment of a loan that used the property as collateral.  This could be a home loan, home equity line of credit, construction loan, etc. 

• So if someone has fallen behind on payments and is selling their home, but the proceeds from the sale will be enough to pay off all loans owing on the home, then it is a distressed homeowner situation but not a short sale.
• If a seller is selling their home and is current on the payments but the proceeds from the sale will not be enough to cover the loans owing on the home, then it is a short sale but not distressed.
• If a seller is at least 30 days behind on loan payments and the proceeds from the sale of the home will not cover the loan debt, then it is officially a short sale and a distressed homeowner. 

The situation for a potential buyer is different in each situation and the pitfalls can be significant.  Be sure to get some good advice before attempting to buy a property in any of the above situations.  They can offer some of the best deals in the market, but also come with some extra baggage.  The world of real estate is in a rapid state of change at the moment and this stuff isn't even clear to many agents. 

Give me a call if you need help.

There is a lot of buzz in the Seattle media about short sales.  So what the heck are they anyway, and how can they save you tens of thousands of dollars on a home? 

Put simply, a short sale is when a home owner is trying to sell a house, but the proceeds from the sale of the house will not be enough to cover the loans currently owing on the home.  So the seller will need to get bank approval once a buyer makes an offer on the home, because the bank will not get all of their money back when the home sells. 

Why is this a big deal?

A short sale situation can be a big deal as far as the time it takes to close on the house.  Because of the extra step of having to get bank approval, the process can take several extra weeks to several extra months to complete.  Each bank has its own process for considering short sales and not all of them are very efficient.  Part of the problem is the volume of short sales that many banks need to consider.  There are a lot more now than a few years ago.

The time lines are a serious consideration.  Take a client of mine right now.  They are first time home owners who don't have a lot to spend on a home.  They found a house they like but it is a short sale situation.  They decided to move ahead with the offer.  We agreed on terms with the seller, did an inspection and the offer went to the bank.  The timeline has been delayed several times by the bank.  First they told us a few weeks now it is looking more like about a month and a half.  In this situation the bank has all the power and can take almost as long as they want to make a decision. 

So why would anyone consider buying a home that is subject to a short sale?

Quite simply price!  If a seller is not going to make any money on the sale of their home anyway, you can imagine they are much more flexible on terms and price of the sale of their home.   If you are the only person making an offer on the home, the bank will need to take the offer seriously, even if you offer significantly less than the asking price for the house.   In many Seattle neighborhoods, short sales represent some of the best deals around.   In the case of my buyers, we will get the house for nearly $75K less then what the house was refinanced for just a year and a half ago.  Well below market value.  (I won't tell you the value of the home because the negotiation is still going on, but it is well below $300K) 

In short (pun intended) there is no reason to be afraid of a home that will be subject to a short sale.  In fact they may be some of the best values out there.  Just be prepared for a longer timeline, a little more hassle and be sure to use an escrow company, mortgage company and if I may be so bold, real estate agent with some experience in short sales.  You may just find that hidden gem at a bargain basement price.

Happy Hunting

I am sure there are a lot of you out there who are just like me, trying to figure out how to use all these different on-line platforms effectively and integrate them to get the maximum bang for your free bucks.  I thought I would create a post showing what I am doing with the platforms I have found most useful.  Please check them out and give me your feedback, but especially if you have found things that work that I have not included please let me know what you have found.

YouTube:

Recently I created a YouTube Channel that I named RainCityRealEstate.  It is more or less a video blog page highlighting my home town and offering instructional videos created by me.  Setting up the channel is about as complicated as setting up a blog.  Believe me it is almost idiot proof (and I should know).  I make simple videos with my Cannon Power Shot camera edit them using Windows Movie Maker, and post it on my channel.  I have tried to keep it simple and let people see my personality in a clearly non-professionally produced video. 

In addition there are videos I have found from others highlighting specific neighborhoods in Seattle, or interesting events in Seattle that I feature on the channel.

There is a place for anyone to leave comments and also subscribe to receive future videos as I create them and display them.

So far I have had a subscriber and I am just getting started! 

I also have the URL for my blog displayed on the channel for an additional link back to my blog.  And Links = Good

Please feel free to check it out and leave me a comment or suggestion.

http://www.youtube.com/user/RainCityRealEstate

Active Rain:

I have been an Active Rain member for about 8 months.  With YouTube it is easy to capture the HTML code and past it in the AR format.  I add my own comments and VIOLA!  I have a video entry on You Tube and the identical video on my blog with my comments.  Two shots out to the public for the price of none.

I try to post traditional posts as well that do not have video content in between the video posts so that it is more interesting and less visually boring to the observer.

Again I try to be as genuine as possible and only post things that would be of interest to those who might be shopping or selling in the Seattle area.

 http://activerain.com/blogs/robgraham

Twitter:

This has taken me a while to figure out and I have to admit I am not quite there yet.  Twitter is a micro blogging site that asks only one question.  "What are you doing now?"  You can tweet back and forth as many times as you want per day.  I have to admit that I am not quite sure of the value of this, but some people swear by it.  The one true value I do see is that you can post the URL to any new blog post to it automatically.  You may have seen this option on the post page of AR. 

I actually have several people who have started following me on Twitter and almost the only thing that I am posting is URL's of AR blog posts.

This creates an additional "back link" to your blog.  Long story short, the more links to your blog or web site the more important Google thinks you are.  So links = good.

http://twitter.com/RobGraham

Facebook:

Ok, finally Facebook.  Facebook is a social network web site to make and keep in touch with friends.  Think of it as an ongoing sphere web site that allows you to post comments, pictures, favorite movies music or links.  One of the valuable things about this is that similar to Twitter, you can post a link to any location that has a URL.  So when you create a new post, video or find an interesting article about anything, you can post the URL.  Facebook then allows you to add comments, choose a photo and send it out to everyone who views your Facebook page.  

Again this creates another "back link" and links = good.

Facebook also allows you to post comments to anything your "friends" are doing or posting.  You can also update what you are doing such as, "off showing houses on Capital Hill".  Everything is updated to anyone who cares to see it, so it is a great way to remind everyone that you are still an active agent.

All of these platforms are linked to one another as much as possible and back to my web site.  Remember links = good.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Rob_Graham/584838653

So that is what I am doing.  Please check me out on YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook.  Feel free to leave me comments and suggestions.  Let me know what you are doing and things you like or dislike about what I am doing.  If you want to be my friend on Facebook, follow me on Twitter or YouTube, that is all encouraged as well. 

Hopefully, we are all taking the time in this market to upgrade our technology and knowledge to gain every advantage we can. 

Hope it helps. 

Cheers

If you are up to a year away from buying a home, now is not the time to be talking to a bank.  Here is my recommendation for what you can be doing right now to put yourself in the best position when the time comes to buy your home.

Seattle based Starbucks is hosting a promotion to try to encourage or at least reward people for voting.  If you go into a Starbucks tomorrow and tell them that you voted, they will offer you a free coffee.   

Can I vote more than once?

http://www.starbucks.com/

Ok, so it doesn't rhyme, but you get the idea.  It is recommended that you change the battery in your smoke and Co2 detectors twice a year.  An easy way to remember to do so is to change them in the spring and fall when you adjust your clocks for daylight savings.  Tonight is the night we all need to wind those clocks back and gain an hour of sleep (or whatever frivolity you plan on doing tonight).    So go buy new 9 volts and trade out the old ones.  It's cheap and keeps your family safe.   

Now if there were only a way to protect the family from leftover Halloween candy, Hmmmmm.

Home owners!

Before you run out and spend thousands of dollars to remodel you home to get it ready to sell, watch this video.  You may be surprised at what you need to do and more importantly, not do, to get your house ready to sell.