As most of you in the business already know, our mortgage industry and housing industry is in a mess right now! A lot of the blame goes directly to the institutions themselves and/or the CEO's running them, part of the blame is the Feds, and the consumer gets to pick up the pieces - pieces of their lives, that is, which is now in shambles! What a mess! I could write 5-6 pages about my thoughts on this subject, but I'm not - not on this blog anyway.

What I do want to rant-and-rave/vent about briefly is a topic vaguely related to the above. To all the home owners that have been taken advantage of by the "industries" I have complete sympathy - to a degree. Momma always said "if it was too good to be true, it probably should be avoided", but trying to tell that to a first-time home buyer with a chance to own a home with "no money down", in an area that before he had thought "less than desirable", with a Builder that before he had considered "less than desirable", and in a home that, even though it was "bigger than he needed and REALLY stretched his budget - but I can handle it " mentality, was like trying to take candy from a baby - wasn't going to happen.........UNLESS THEY HAD ASKED ME!

I saw a report on one of the local news channels the other night, and the reporter was interviewing several people that had bought homes, and the people were all complaining about how they had "not understood the loan documents", "the Builder had not explained the HOA exclusions", "the loan officer had not explained the 'recapture tax' on this government subsidized loan", "the Builder's on-site agent had not told her ALL the exclusions in the model home from the one they had built", etc., and ONE OF THE PEOPLE THEY INTERVIEWED WAS A CLIENT THAT HAD GONE BEHIND MY BACK AND BOUGHT A NEW HOME WITHOUT CALLING ME!! I got tattooed! Did I feel sorry for her? NO! I had told her NOT to use this particular mortgage company because I had had previous bad dealings with, but she "got a better finance rate" than the company I had advised her to use - so she gets mad at me and cuts me out of the deal.

Now ALL of us, especially those of us that have been in real estate brokerage for as long as me (24 years), have been tattooed at least once or twice or eighty-four times in our careers. Part of that is my fault for not getting EVERY potential buyer to sign a "buyer/rep" agreement (not ALL will!), so 'my bad'. But I had a relative use another REALTOR instead of me because they knew "their/son/daughter/aunt/uncle/hairdresser", and THAT REALTOR sold them a house in an area I knew had "bad soil', and within 6 months their house had several cracks in it - AND THEY GOT MAD AT ME FOR NOT TELLING THEM! I would have if I had been your REALTOR stupid!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Do I feel blue - NO! tattooed - YES!

One of my (ex) best friends bought a home from a Builder new to Austin that they knew nothing, but that I was very excited about. So, I sent them to go see the model, and said call me back and let me know what you think. After repeated attempts over the next 3-4 weeks to contact this best (ex) friend, I found out from the Builder's agent that they had bought a home from her because she had discounted the home $15,000. She asked him if he had an agent and he said "no". When I eventually confronted him, he said he was afraid he would not have gotten that much discount if I had been paid a commission. Someday I will tell him that I had sold the same floor plan to another couple two weeks before, and had gotten them a $25,000 discount, and granite kitchen counter-top upgrade, and sodded back yard at no additional cost!!!!!!!! Do I feel blue that HE got tattooed - no!

My whole point of this 'gotta-get-this-off-my-chest-and-now-I-feel-much-better' blog is - while a large percentage of consumer housing woes are the fault of "the system", a small percentage of these woes could have been avoided with the help of a good REALTOR. I get tired of our industry being ranked with snakes, lawyers, and used car salesmen, being categorized with "junk-yard dogs", and constant gripes about "not worth the commissions" we get paid..........The sooner the public quits worrying about "what we PUT in our pocket" and starts looking at "what we KEEP in theirs", the sooner the rhetoric will cease.

One of the questions I ask on my web site, under the "WHY PHIL HUTSON" page, is this:

Second question: what do you do for a living? I bet the answer is NOT "...help people buy a home". In fact, most people only buy a home for themselves, and do so maybe 3-4 times IN THEIR LIFETIME! And a few still do so without a REALTOR! So, my next question is: what makes that person think he's a professional in the "home-finding" game, when they barely qualify as an amateur?

So now once this great news flash hits the airwaves can I expect my phone to start ringing with potential buyers clamoring for my services? Probably not - but I will celebrate my stress relieving blog tonight with a fine cigar and a couple of rum-and-cokes, and try to figure out where I can find another best friend.......................