Yesterday, FannieMae and FreddieMac did what I had sworn they wouldn’t: They relented to accounting for the buyer’s-agent’s commission as a seller-paid concession:
This is almost no change from the bad-old-days that have been subject to so much litigation. Instead of splitting commissions by way of the listing agent’s commission instructions, the split will now be declared to be among the seller’s concessions to the buyer.
That’s good, even if comically pointless, and, very probably, of temporary duration. The jackals feeding on the National Association of Realtors seem unlikely to be sated by old wine in new bottles.
But: My advice to sellers remains the same. The buyer is getting advice at the seller’s expense, but the seller is getting the buyer – without whom nothing would be happening. You’re not paying for the advice – even though it is a liability shield for you. You’re paying for the introduction, for the contract, for the opportunity to successfully close the sale.
The seller’s motivation is the same for both agents, the lister and the buyer’s agent: You’re paying the people who are getting you paid. It’s just that simple.
Meanwhile, my plan to broadcast our buyer’s agent’s commission seems to be holding up. Because sellers can be pound-foolish, and because the ‘co-broke’ will be undisclosed in the MLS, Bloodhound being known for paying the whole pizza will work to my sellers’ advantage. Buyer’s agents are not supposed to care how much they are getting paid – in much the same way that paramecia are not supposed to move toward the food and away from the poison…
We’ll have to wait for FHA and VA to catch up to the brand-new same-old way of doing business, but this is the upshot: Status quo ante with less disclosure and more paperwork.
There are two ways to list a house for sale. Typically, a seller will elect to ‘start high’ – price the home above the value justified by the recent sales. Often a lot higher, usually at a creepily deceptive price like $349,900. It won’t sell early, it may not even show early in the listing. What will happen is that it will languish on the market through successive price reductions. Eventually the seller will relent for a price far lower than the listing started with, possibly lower than the home’s fair-market-value on the day of listing, often with seller-paid cash concessions to the buyer.
In other words, the listing strategy from the outset was to sell low and slow to the least qualified buyer out there.
Yes, that’s funny, but that is literally how most Sun City homes are marketed on the MLS.
We work very differently. The elements of a real estate listing that matter most are: 1. Price, 2. Photos, 3. Copy, 4. Directions. Our goal is to make everything perfect – irresistible! – on Day Zero. That way, we can be under contract and on our way to close-of-escrow in just a few days – instead of languishing for months and months.
The value proposition is in the headline: Better money sooner. We will get the best net return that can be had for your home – with the fewest hassles and in the shortest time.
We should talk. No cost. No obligation. No BS. Just better money sooner.
As you should expect, the property is better than its main photo. And yet: We are all Tinderellas now. Rejected on a quibble is still rejected.
Other than the tree, everything you might object to in this photo is personal property and will have been removed prior to Close of Escrow.
ACCORDINGLY, it is the listing agent’s job to make sure every potentially-off-putting thing has been put away for the durationPRIOR to photography.
Call that stuff in front ‘flair’ – as in the movie “Office Space.” The steps to staging would be deflair, declutter, deep clean, stage – and I don’t hate vacant if my alternative is too-much-lived-in.
The buyers have to find themselves in the home, and they can’t do that if the seller won’t get out of their way.
You live or die on the listing itself, by agent emails or Zillow or whatever. If buyers reject the house on the smartphone, they will never see it in person and therefore will not make an offer on it. Everything counts, and victory for the lister – and hence the seller – is the ease of getting across the finish line with every penny expected. Or more. 😉
Here’s the news: To get out from under the many lawsuits plaguing it, the NAR has elected to do away with its entire reason for existence – the cooperating broker’s compensation.
You know of it as the buyer’s agent’s commission, and, unbeknownst to practically everyone, it is the “why” of the MLS idea as such.
Ideally, my office has enough buyers to match up with my sellers, so I don’t need to leave the walled garden of my own brokerage to clear my inventory.
But nothing is ever ideal, so when I need a buyer that I can’t find on my own, I turn to the MLS to appeal to other brokers to bring me that buyer, offering them a split of my sales commission as incentive.
Note well: It is the listing broker, not the seller, who is paying the buyer’s broker’s commission – even though he might rather have kept everything in-house.
Under the new rules announced Friday, an MLS listing will continue to elicit cooperation, but it can no longer promise compensation.
Buyer’s agents can show houses, but they may not know how – or even if – they will be compensated.
Accordingly, they will either appeal to their typically cash-strapped buyers for their pay, or, more likely, buyers will either go unrepresented or their agent will also be the seller’s agent – just like the bad old days.
Worse for the NAR, there is no longer any reason to prefer the MLS to Zillow. That’s where the buyers are seeing my listings, and not only can I promise compensation there, I am free from every other arbitrary MLS rule.
The NAR uses the golden handcuffs of the MLS to keep its membership ensnared. But with free-market forms and third-party lockboxes, and with no particular advantage to listing by MLS, there is no reason for agents to stay in the NAR – paying for its legal blunders.
Meanwhile, sellers: Be wise. The commission is a marketing fee. You pay it because you net more at Close of Escrow for having had professional marketing. Stiffing the half of the marketing team who is bringing the money to the table is penny wise, pound foolish.
I have been studying Sun City for six months, planning an assault that begins April 2nd. I’m going to tear this town up.
That’s me for the past five years. NeeizzObody has numbers like these. I want to hit the ball like this 50 times a year, Thursday to Tuesday, every week.
That is my take on the NAR settlement: Losing buyer’s agent’s compensation from the MLS is a terrible thing for buyers, which in turn will hurt sellers.
But: Even so: Because the buyer’s agent’s commission is now a marketing differentiator, placing the ad you see above in a flyer frame in each of my listed homes will give my sellers a leg up on their competition.
It’s against the rules for buyer’s agents to shop by commission, but it is my perfect right to let them know that Bloodhound Realty, at least, has them covered.
I wrote about the NAR settlement in greater depth in an article I sent to the Independent. If they don’t care for it, I’ll post it here.
Meanwhile: A good listing agent is the best bargain in real estate, surfacing for the seller the highest attainable net return from the buyer least likely to fail to perform, all in the least amount of time – the highest/safest/soonest offer.
And the second-best bargain in residential real estate is an experienced buyer’s agent: Literally paid just for the introduction to their buyers, yet shepherding them through every step of the process, startling long before we sign a contract, and then making sure every hurdle in the escrow process is overleapt on time.
The bottom line is the bottom line: If you got less than you wanted – of anything! – you overpaid. If your results were better than you expected – tell your friends and family! 😉
“The opposite of anarchy is warfare, and the war is on at Duffeeland Dog Park.”
A Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Willie story
Sun City, June 27, 2013 This is a story about how the world gets shittier and shittier – utterly unnecessarily – one stinky little turd at a time.
“Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?” Thus spake Commandante Clipboard, the Sun City Recreation Center’s micro-minion charged with annoying people and their dogs at the Duffeeland Dog Park.
His is not my first clipboard – hell is heaven after it was reorganized by busybodies with clipboards – so I said, “I think I need to pass on that opportunity.”
“Okaythen,” he forged ahead obliviously, “Can I ask where–uh… Wuh– ?”
“I said, no, I would rather you did not ask me any questions.”
I was there with Naso, of course, and we had stayed too late in the day. It used to be that the park was open twenty-four hours a day, but since the Rec Center took it over locks and chains and orders backed by threats are the order of the day.
“But I have to know if you belong here.”
“Now there’s a topic fit for a philosopher. I am imminent, surely, but does my imminence make me immanent? But, really, practically speaking, addressing such subjects is no path to eminence, much less prominence, and I speak from a lifetime of experience.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Commandante Clipboard was getting steamed, and I confess to taking a certain satisfaction from this particular flavor of petty vengeance.
“I’m trying to help you determine if I belong here. I would argue that my presence is an existential instantiation of a contingent, temporary inevitability: I am here by my own free choice, but while I am here I am incontrovertibly here, I am not anywhere else, and no one else is where I am. If that doesn’t equate to belonging here, then you’ll have to do your own homework.”
“Sir. What is your full name?”
I said, “Nescio Nomen” – which means ‘I don’t know my name’ in Latin. I was helpful enough to spell things out for him.
But the trouble with being a smart ass is that people can get the idea you’re cooperating with them. “Can I see your Rec Center card?”
“I expect you can. You don’t show any signs of impaired vision.” That was a canard on my part. I tried being formally polite. I tried being a smart ass. What could be an easier sell in Sun City than an addle-pated old geezer?
“Mister Nomen, will you please show me your Recreation Centers of Sun City membership card?”
“Nope. I don’t have my wallet with me, but I don’t have your card in there, anyway. And I would not choose to show it to you if I had it plastered to my ass and could kill two birds with one stone. If you want to put me off this land, go get a gun or a cop. Until you do, I’ll thank you to leave me alone.”
What puts the shit into a little turd? Authority without accountability. What brings the shit out of that little turd by the geyserload? Holding him accountable anyway. Before he could latch onto a handle to fly off of, I said, “Let me talk for a minute, and then let’s see if we can make a deal, okay?”
I didn’t wait for him to respond, I just launched into my schtick. “This park used to be the perfect anarchy, a little piece of paradise in the midst of the mundane. One man owned it as his own private property, and he shared it with his neighbors – with anyone who loves dogs and wants what’s best for them. And the people and their dogs loved him and they loved this park and they took care of it like it was their own.
“And this is the only dog park in all of Phoenix where there is decent shade. And Duffeeland was the cleanest dog park in The Valley, even though most of the people who come here aren’t all that spry. And the park was open all hours, and it was safe to come here anytime. We’ve met a lot of interesting people here after midnight, and more than once my wife and I have made out on a bench while Naso here took in her late-night sniff.
“But then the owner sold the land and the Rec Center bought it, and everything has been downhill since then. Chained up all night, right away, even though the night-time is the right time for a desert dog to take exercise. And then the signs came and the threats and the fines and recriminations. It’s not ours any longer, it’s yours – and it shows. The dog shit’s starting to pile up, but that’s just a symptom. The people here used to be a ‘we’ – a loose-knit family. Now they’re an ‘us’ – because you’re ‘them.’ The opposite of anarchy is warfare, and the war is on at Duffeeland Dog Park.
“But think: Before one man owned the park and everyone valued it. Now everyone owns it and no one values it. Before a group of people who got along perfectly worked together joyously in pursuit of the values they shared together. Now there are spoils up for grabs and power to be seized and innocent people to be shamed and bullied and milked and pit against each other, and the spirit of family – this thing that we do together means more to me than something else I might do instead – that spirit is all but gone from Duffeeland. It vanishes every time people try to supplant force for persuasion, coercion for cooperation, warfare for anarchy…”
To this he said nothing. My guess is he was bored. Sun City is full of amazing people – people who built business empires, people who won wars – but the young idiots who do the scut work around here quite literally have no way of comprehending that greatness. An ant could climb all the way to the top of a skyscraper and yet never catch a clue of what he’s doing, so it just won’t do to ask him to evaluate giants.
I said, “Here’s my thinking: The Rec Center is essentially a homeowner’s association, so its real job is to sustain the value of the real estate. How would you do that? By making people feel welcome, at home, delighted to be here. Is there anything in the ways that people react to you that makes you think they are delighted to see you show up?”
I held up my hand. “Don’t answer. I’m over my quota on lies for the day. In the long run, warfare will win here. You will drive people so crazy, they’ll stop coming to Duffeeland, and then the Rec Center will sell the land as a matter of fiscal prudence. In five years, this will just be another drive-through pharmacy, with access from both directions. Sic transit gloria mundi.
“But here’s my deal: My dog is dying. I’m here until she dies, and then I’m gone with the monsoon winds. I’ll be back to Sun City, but I’ll never be back to Duffeeland. Now it happens that this big, gangly Bloodhound bitch is the queen of this particular dog park. Everyone loves her, and she loves everyone. If you want to make a big show of throwing your weight around, you can endure the shrieks of three-dozen angry grannies. Or, instead, you can forget all about me for two more weeks, and then we’ll both work hard to forget each other forever. Sound like a plan?”
He was looking away, deliberately not making eye contact. Nobody likes to back down, but I’m betting he could guess how much more he had to lose in a dog park war than I ever would. After a long time he turned to me and said, “You have yourself a nice evening, Mister Nomen.”
I didn’t fix anything, don’t kid yourself. I’ve talked my way out of the endless shit that oozes out of officious shitheads all my life, but I’m sure it’s because I just don’t look quite like food to them. But warfare is conducted by people, and people can be swayed. I don’t love it that I have to defend myself from petty thugs, but I love it that I can do it when I need to.
So I smiled, and I really tried to put some warmth into it. “Happy Independence Day.”
The Sun City Business is a topic I want to return to: How Sun City’s citizens get taken. Of immediate moment is the advice in the headline.
Here is why you should carefully read the super-secret real estate agent’s print-out of the listing for your home: There are six Active listings in Sun City right now that are not denoted as being Age-Restricted, even though they are, of course.
Why does that matter? Anyone who is searching for homes by Age-Restricted status is not seeing those listings at all.
There are Gemini/Twin homes marketed as Single-Family Detached houses and an enormous number of Town/Patio homes listed as Apartment Style condos.
Agents will typically search within a subdivision or by using a map-based search, so they are likely to see everything. But people making their choices about which homes to see from Zillow or another portal can filter badly-listed homes right out of their visibility.
Everything counts, and any mistakes will be paid for by you, not your listing agent – in money but most especially in time. Take the time to read your home’s listing carefully.
I have a hotsheet for the first time in my career – a daily report on real estate activity in a specific place – in my case within that odd blue shape in the illustration. I call that space 99 Bells, everything age-restricted west of 99th Avenue to the river, south of Bell Road but north of Grand Avenue.
That’s where I live, where I ‘farm’ for listings and where I am most interested in what is going on. So now I get up in the wee hours every morning to see what happened yesterday.
It’s been an eye-opener, to say the truth. I am an avid student of listing mistakes, so there is plenty for me to work with every day. I’ve been studying Sun City listing agents for months, but the hotsheet focuses my attention where – and upon whom – it matters.
So here’s a simple mistake, literally repeated daily, one you can use to test potential agents:
“What’s the best day of the week to post a new listing – or to make a price reduction, should that be necessary?”
There is a right answer, and worse than not knowing it is showing that you don’t know it by making those MLS entries on the worst possible days.
If you follow along with me, I will show you how to get your own home sold faster and for more money. Half the battle, at least, is knowing what not to do…
This is a great property. Someone you know should buy it. Better still, you should hire me to market your Sun City home with the same thoughtful attention.
I am Cassandra: I wrote a long thread on Twitter last fall on how to list a home so it will sell for top-dollar on the first weekend. The response? Crickets. The truth is that most real estate agents are very bad at selling homes, by my standards, and yet all of them are convinced they have nothing new to learn.
Here’s the way the world works: The only remaining marketing channel for a residential listing is the MLS – by way of sites like Zillow and Realtor.com. I do everything I can think of to supplement the listing, but, in a world where no one looks up from the cell phone, the cell phone is the only way you have to reach buyers.
Hence: More than ever, real estate is not just a marketing praxis but a publishing job: To be effective, the listing must make your home’s ultimate buyer crave the property. The analogy of the Christmas Wish Book is spot on: If I can get you to peruse my listing over and over again – you’re not looking at anyone else’s.
And that’s my job. Over time, we’ll talk more about how I work; as noted, I have no fear of my competitors learning anything from me. For now, take this away: The listing is the invitation to the showing, and the showing to the offer. The marketing strategy that works is the one that gets buyers off their phones and into your home – before anyone else can steal it away.
Urgency. Fear of Missing Out. Sold. And it all starts with the MLS listing…
This post marks a soft relaunch of this web site. I’m marketing for new business for the first time in 14 years, and we’ll celebrate with a new Sun City listing later this week.
Jump over to the About page to see what’s what. The Cliff’s Notes is simply this: I want to list your Sun City home, when you’re ready to sell, and I would love to have the opportunity to show you why I am the better choice: Better results in time and money, yielding better net returns in your pocket at Closing.
Call me: 602-740-7531. I can do better, and I can prove it.
