Untruthful Clients - 06/26/08 10:03 AM
How do you weed out clients that are untruthful? We recently had a deal go south because the buyer wasn't honest about her finances. The buyer was supposedly going to use the equity in their home to purchase an ocean front condo. When the appraisal was done on the home, the value had decreased significantly They then contacted their local bank and were getting nowhere fast. We suggested using a lender familiar with financing beach properties. After a couple of weeks of speaking with one of the lenders we had recommended, they finally allowed this lender to pull a credit report. … (4 comments)

Life As A Real Estate Agent At The Beach - 06/24/08 09:49 AM
I just spent an hour plus on the phone trying to set appointments to show ocean front condos. After all this, I only have three units that I can show. All of these condos are on rental programs or at least 95% are. Check out and check in is Saturday between 10AM and 2 PM. Many of the clients wishing to look at property are also under these time constraints. They have to check out on Saturday and head home, so they want to look at property during the week. We have probably an 80-85% occupancy rate during the Summer months. … (2 comments)

Sign of The Times - 06/21/08 10:19 AM
I guess, it's a sign of the times. While flipping through a copy of the Real Estate Book for the Greater Grand Strand area of South Carolina, I noticed one company had a compete page of foreclosures. It seems as I look at the new listings in the MLS daily, that many are either foreclosures or "short sales". A lot of these were bought at the height of the market and financed a hundred percent, so owners owe much more than current market value. If they can mange to hold on for a few years, everything will work out, but quite … (3 comments)

Indecisive Clients - 06/18/08 01:54 PM
We have a condo listed where the seller is buying another property contingent on the sale of his current unit. After his current unit had only been listed for a few days, we get a call and the person is interested in buying his condo. Great we say! Wow, this is going to work out! Both sides of one sale and one side of the other.! A good week or so we thought. After we get everything agreed on and all the contracts signed, we don't hear from the first buyer for a week or more. Efforts to contact them proved … (3 comments)

"Short Sales" - 06/17/08 09:26 AM
We are now six months and counting on this "short sale". We are totally amazed the buyers have not walked. We have re-written the contract at least six times to conform with what the bank wanted it to say. We are now two weeks away from the latest contract expiring and the property has just been assigned a new negotiator. We realize banks are really swamped with short sales and foreclosures but it seems someone could just say yes or no. In the meantime the property is still active and someone else can come in and snatch it away from our … (2 comments)

Over Priced Listings - 06/16/08 01:11 PM
What are sellers basing their opinions of what their properties are worth on? We had a listing appointment this morning and as is most often the case here, the owner lives out of state and rents his properties. They were really in bad shape and needed a thorough cleaning, new carpet, etc. Despite all this, the owner still thought they were worth twenty to thirty thousand dollars more than what other condos in the same complex were selling for. Needless to say, we declined the listings. Do these people not read the newspapers or listen to the news on TV? Although … (6 comments)

Summer At The Beach - 06/14/08 10:44 AM
The Summer Season is in full swing here in the Grand Strand area of South Carolina. This makes life complicated for us Realtors. Most of the ocean front condos can only be shown between check-out and check in. Many times, they haven't been cleaned, so you have to get your clients to imagine what they would look like with beds made, trash picked up, vacuumed, etc. To many prospective clients, the traffic is a big turn off, also. Sometimes, it can take forever to get from one location to another, especially near the new Hard Rock Theme Park and other area … (0 comments)