Archive for the 'Wild & Whacky Real Estate' Category
This post is inspired by Tni LeBlanc who wrote about getting a steal of a deal in real estate today In her post she suggested that HGTV might want to take this one up….
So I have a proposal for HGTV – Let’s create a show entitled “The Real Estate For Robber Barons Challenge“ By turning it into a competition we can create criteria for the best Robber Baron. Think competition like Design Star with the ruthless cut-throat edge of The Apprentice.
Each week contestants need to find a distressed seller who is willing to sell their home for a fraction of its actual value. The ability to achieve this is based on the contestant’s capacity to con the seller to ignoring the basic principles of mathematics, common sense and their own best interests. The contestant then creates almost instant profits via the the slum Lord route or by flipping for an obscene profit. This is all done with minimal seed money that the contestants saved in a cookie jar over a period of six months.
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People often ask me that question – albeit without the profanity – though in the back of my mind they are just trying to be polite…but that’s what they are thinking!
There has recently been a “round robin” of postings on Active Rain about compensation for agents, rebates and the (fading) rebate market.
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When home buyers engage an agent they often expect us to be the repository of any and all neighborhood information. They often don’t see the need to do their own research because they can just pick the brains of their buyers agent. But the truth is far more complicated than that. Steering Laws prevent me from divulging anything about following:
- Demographics – for example – I can not answer a questions like “Does this neighborhood have a lot of young families?”
- Schools - for example – I can not address whether a school district is good, bad or anything in between.
- Crime Stats – I can’t answer your questions about whether or not an area is “safe.” In truth you could be walking into a neighborhood rife with gang warfare – but I’m not allowed to discuss it.
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Last Saturday I was busy prepping a property for listing. The owner no is no longer local – so after supervising the sanding and refinishing of floors, painting and the rehab of a bathroom – I went in with a cleaning lady complete my vacuum cleaning and other cleaning supplies since the home is now empty. These are some of the activities that can and often are, associated with listing a home.
At some point during the process, I got a phone call. I was expecting a couple of calls and stupidly did not notice that it was an 800 number. It was a representative from what we refer to as a “third-party-site.” Such a site is basically a web site with a fairly good “mousetrap” that somehow convinces the unsuspecting public to logon and give up their name, email address and perhaps even their phone number. Very often the site promises to find the unsuspecting buyer or seller an agent that is an area “expert” who supposedly knows the location they are interested in the inside and out. What the prospective buyer or seller doesn’t realize is that most (but not all) of these sites are simply mills that collect buyer and seller information and “sell” the information for an agent willing or desperate enough to give up enough of their commission to satisfy what appears to be an insatiable appetite.
Real estate agents are middle men…
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With the myriad towns and villages in Westchester NY its small wonder that people in search or Westchester NY real estate find our “system” of towns, villages, and PO’s a Byzantine mess of confusion. When looking for Westchester county homes for sale, buyers find that the address does not always match the municipality.
One of the more confusing aspects is towns vs. villages. The town of Greenburgh NY is actually a rather large town that comprises various villages and POs.
Greenburgh covers several river towns and also cuts a swath eastward to the central portion of the county.
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Right now I’m suffering from smart -phone envy. Since my robbery of three weeks ago – I have been sans much of my smart-phone capacity. The police are holding my sleek new iPhone captive as “evidence.” And getting that phone back has become something close to an obsession. The old phone that a resurrected was not in great shape. the battery drains fast, but it charges slowly. The letters aren’t allowing me to type messages. On a good day I can read my email but can’t answer it. For a real estate agent spending time on the road – it makes me want to tear my hair. Horror of horrors – I’m taking the laptop and searching for WiFi to plug into the internet. I knew things were getting out of hand when I felt insanely jealous of a client receiving and opening an email while I was showing homes. Its amazing how addicted I have become to a piece of technology that I have only possessed for a little less than three years.
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Sometimes I venture into the blogosphere of politics…OK – I’ll admit it – I’m a political junkie but there are worse faults a real estate agent could have – so please don’t hold it against me. I guess I get some of this fascination with local governance from my late mother who was involved in our local political scene for decades. She foresaw the trend of the shifting burden of the tax base from corporate entities to individuals 15 years before retroactive Certioaris flattened much of the New York tax base like a pancake.
But I digress…
Matt Yglesias wrote a post on the need for moderate priced housing in the DC area and suggested rezoning to allow for greater density. This set off a wave of responses including some rather typical “NIMBY” comments and cautionary tales about how zoning changes may not result in the desired moderate priced housing.
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To all of those who have been logging on to this site, I have just become aware of a problem with my graphics. One of the issues of running a web site or blog is that how your site appears to you may not be how it appears to those using another browser.
Being an Apple person from day-one – I do not spend a lot of time on Windows and Internet Explorer. When I have been, it has been to examine more recent postings and not those formatted and written some time ago. Over the past three to four months I had changed the way I embedded some figures and photos. The new method appears to work on Firefox, Safari and Explorer. So I was shocked that on closer inspection – some of the pages that have been up and running for some time had graphics that were not working at all. This was particularly true of charts and graphs .
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This is an issue that is brought up by sellers all the time. Usually the question is asked far more politely…and goes something like this:
“I know you work hard at what you do, but these are hard times and I am barely breaking even. Is there anything you can do about the commission?”
Sometimes there is no room!
Now, a great deal depends on the price range of the home involved. There are cooperatives and condos in our area where there really is no wiggle room with respect to commission. Gone are the days when an agent can take a couple photos, slap it on the MLS and sit back. Marketing is necessary and it is not inexpensive. So at the entry level I can easily find myself working nearly pro bono and sometimes find myself with a net loss. Read the rest of this entry »
When buyers first come to me they have a lot of criteria on their wish list. Very often the hype in the market about homes being available for pennies on the dollar sets them up for disappointment. It is not unusual for me to hear the following…
We love this house! It has all the amenities we want – but that neighborhood! Why can’t we find this in the school district (or insert other criteria) that we want?
This is a question asked by many buyers who are frustrated that they are not able to find exactly what they are looking for at their price point. Lenn Harley wrote a tremendous post on this topic and kind of beat me to the punch on this topic. “I’ll send you my criteria….” In that blog – Lenn aptly describes a situation very familiar to Westchester NY agents. A buyer who is perfectly capable of buying has created criteria that is so tight it prices them out of the market. It happens all the time and the way I answer that question depends on the circumstances.
Often the buyer has has selected an area exclusively based on the school district (as in Lenn’s blog) I recognize and understand everyone’s desire to give their children every advantage, but unfortunately everyone likes that town (zip code) for the same reason. Since pricing is determined by supply and demand, how much you can buy often depends more on where you are looking. Some areas are highly competitive while others have plenty of inventory.
This post is inspired by Tni LeBlanc who wrote about getting a steal of a deal in real estate today In her post she suggested that HGTV might want to take this one up….
