Month: August 2008 (page 2 of 6)

August 26, 2008

The First Rule of Fraud Club Is, Don’t Talk About Fraud Club

by Brian Brady

Commercial Real Estate Finance Expert
Structured Debt and Equity
Licensed Real Estate Broker in AL, CA, and FL

Well, it looks like the Down Payment Assistance Programs are dead. Countrywide is usually the bellwether for any “out on a limb” lending and they sent me an e-mail today, telling me to “get my deals in” by Friday. Specifically, my down payment assistance transactions have to be locked by Friday and approved by a DE underwriter on Monday. Files are taking 3-4 days in underwriting so for all practical purposes, I’m out of the down payment assistance business as of 5PM, today.

That’s okay. I haven’t used these programs since 9-11 so I won’t miss out. Lower end home prices might get walloped next month, as the pool of unsuspecting buyers disappears, but we might just have a few more tricks up our sleeve.

Did you understand how those programs worked? You can read about how we got around the law by calling sellers “owners of participating homes” here. If it sounds a lot like the disclaimer that escorts use (escorts sell time; what happens between consenting adults is private), it’s because the same principle of “winking” at the law is employed.

The Rules of Fraud Club:

The first rule of Fraud Club is, don’t talk about Fraud Club.

The second rule is, you DO NOT talk about Fraud Club.

It would appear that this movie is about over. But wait, there’s a sequel! This one is called the First-Time Home Buyer Tax Credit. Essentially, it’s a $7,500 tax credit, that must be repaid, over 15 years to the Federal Government. If you’re buying a $200,000 home, that $7,500 covers your downpayment for a FHA loan. While “borrowing” downpayment monies are disallowed on loan programs, the first-time homebuyer tax credit is essentially an interest-free, government loan. The problem with this “trick” is that the buyers can’t get that credit BEFORE they close on the new home.

Hmmm…now, how do we get that money into the buyers’ pockets before April 15, 2009? I’ll bet that the downpayment assistance charities will find a way. Look for Nehemiah and AmeriDream to morph into “tax refund lenders”, some time this fall. Why?

Because, everyone knows the last two rules of Fraud Club

This Read more

August 26, 2008

Why Are We Wasting Our Time?

by Glenn Kelman

CEO, Redfin.com

Over the past few days, Redfin got into it with a bunch of other real estate websites. What else is new?

In an argument about who has the most homes for sale, which began on TechCrunch and continued on Redfin’s blog, one participant argued that what consumers really care about is advanced filtering options, not inventory.

Which got us thinking. We spend a fair bit of time on advanced filtering options. And we’ve always thought we need to spend more: every week, we get requests for filters on parking, townhouses, waterfront location (Seattle), historic designation (DC), pool (LA).

So Redfin’s Jim Lamb just analyzed 70,000 Redfin searches from Thursday, August 21 to find out which of Redfin.com’s search filters people really use. It’s an analysis we’ve done before, to figure out whether a listing gets seen more if it’s priced to be included in web searches, like at $449,500 rather than $450,100.

What we learned last night was a little demoralizing. People filter on price, beds, baths, sometimes square feet, and new (or very old) listings, but not much else:

$Redfin\'s Search Options$

Price: Min 24.8%; Max 53.9%
Beds: Min 32.8%
Baths: Min 21.4%
Square Feet: Min 15.1%; Max 2.4%
Days on Redfin: 12.7% (this would include requests for new listings, listing on Redfin more than 45 days, or filters on on a specific number of days on Redfin; I suspect that almost all the volume comes from request for new listings)

On looking at this, Matt Goyer said, “Who doesn’t filter on square footage?” I could only sadly shake my head. Consumers completely skip the fancy stuff:

Lot Size: Min 5.5%; Max 0.55%
Year Built: Min 5.4%; Max 1.1%
Has view: 1.1%
New construction: 0.24%
Fixer-uppers: 0.36%
Open houses: 0.7%

So even as we argued that filtering options aren’t as important as inventory, we didn’t really believe it: our engineers have been hard at work on… you guessed it, more filtering options. Just now, it’s parking & townhouse filters. (Every week, I get a crazy screed from a consumer about how much people hate townhouses… which I read… from my townhouse.)

What do you think? Are we wasting our time? Confusing our consumers? As it is, we Read more

August 26, 2008

Clash of the Titans: Women shriek and children cower in blood-spattered suburban enclaves — when Realty.bots collide…

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

There’s news and then there’s news. Consider:

A real estate industry study released today shows that most popular consumer real estate search engines, including Trulia, Zillow, Google and Yahoo!, offer home seekers only a small fraction of the homes actually available on the market — and that many of the listings are inaccurate or out of date. Real estate searches on these popular sites in three sample markets — Miami, Dallas and San Diego — failed to provide users with as much as 92 percent of available listings in their home searches.

“Holy cow!” you might think. “The mainstream media is writing something actually factual about the defects of venture-capital-funded Realty.bots! No puff, no fluff, just the straight dope!”

Contain yourself. This is not news. Like most “news,” it’s a regurgitated press release. “Cui bono?” “Who benefits?”

The study, commissioned by Roost.com and conducted by the WAV Group, points out the stark contrasts between different online property search methods available today and concluded that the most accurate source of listing information is the local Multiple Listing Service (MLS). The WAV Group specifically researched how popular consumer real estate search sites including Trulia, Google and Yahoo!, among others — which aggregate listings from a variety of third-party sources — stack up to sites like Roost.com, which are enabled by the MLS. The MLS is the real estate industry standard database for sharing information on local homes for sale and is available only to licensed real estate agents and brokers; all the listings on the MLS are derived from local agents and brokers. To serve the needs of agents wishing to make MLS property search available to consumers, MLS boards nationwide have deployed a standard called Internet Data Exchange, or IDX.

This again is obvious, of course, so it’s perfectly understandable that mainstream media mavens seem not to know it. But it’s completely self-serving on Roost’s part. The actual news in this “news” would be:

Trulia/Zillow available everywhere (even on your phone), Roost unknown to founders’ mothers

But when would you ever expect to find news in the newspapers?

In fact, in the cities where it operates, Redfin.com has the most Read more

August 24, 2008

With a new iPhone application and support for other mobile devices, Trulia.com is pushing the Realty.bot race into the cloud, but its new free weblogging platform may put ActiveRain under a cloud

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Who’s winning the Realty.bot race, Trulia or Zillow? There is a constant flurry of new press releases from the two companies, but their boastful claims often sound like a pair of garrulous amputees agreeing with each other that the two-legged world is off its rocker: “Five million visitors! Ha-ha!” “A hundred thousand new listings! So there!”

Does any of this mean anything? There are wonderfully useful metrics for judging net.behavior. Unique visitors, for example. Pageviews per visit. Time on site. Even better: ROI per visit. But these measures are not independently verifiable, and the guides we do have available to us are inherently suspect.

So who is winning the Realty.bot race, Trulia or Zillow? Neither company has gone IPO. Neither company has gone belly-up. Beyond that, your guess is as good as anyone’s.

But: Tonight marks a decisive change in the game: Truila.com is releasing a fairly robust iPhone application as a part of a site-wide upgrade.

What’s new?

Trulia Mobile will offer a limited set of location-based searches from Apple’s iPhone, from an array of Lightpole-enabled smartphones and from Dash Navigation GPS devices. The user-experience will differ by device, but the design premise is based on location-sensitivity: Your iPhone always knows where you are, so it can interact with Trulia’s file servers to show you a list of nearby listings or open houses. You can get a detailed summary for each home on your list, and you can then email the listing to a friend, contact the listing agent directly or map the home so that you can hop over for a quick peek.
Trulia is adding a higher degree of user participation in the form of a new, free weblogging platform. Any registered user of the site will be able to start a blog.
Finally, Trulia is offering greater personalization of the user experience in the form of a self-customizing home page. Your home page will reflect “new property listings, home prices changes, upcoming open houses, median sales price trends, recently sold properties,” all of these based on your past search history, along with “relevant blogs and Q&As from our Trulia Voices Community.”

In truth, personalization might Read more

August 24, 2008

BloodhoundBlog sports new iPhone theme: All the dog, half the drool

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

I installed an iPhone-only theme this morning. If you land on BloodhoundBlog from any browser except Safari for the iPhone, you’ll see our normal theme. If you come in from the iPhone, you’ll get a theme optimized for the iPhone’s (or iTouch’s) screen size.

This is the way BHB looked on an iPhone until this morning:

This is how it looks now:

The theme rotates as you would expect it to, so you can get to a wider, shorter, easier-reading page if you want to.

The normal sidebar stuff is entirely omitted, so you’ll have to come in from a desktop browser to see that content.

Remember that you can easily add a BloodhoundBlog button to your iPhone home page.

I have to work out an algorithm, but, last night, in a fit of ecstatic romantic frenzy, Cathy and I worked out how to produce engenu-like pages on-the-spot. If I can figure out how to move iPhone photos to a file server, we could produce previewing web pages from within the house we are previewing.

Sufficient unto the day: If you have an iPhone, the new theme should make BloodhoundBlog easier to read on the run.

Technorati Tags: blogging, real estate, real estate marketing, technology

August 23, 2008

Is it sink, swim, or just taking a deep breath to find buoyancy?

by Brad Coy

Realtor, Urban Jedi

It’s Saturday, which means it’s my Sunday, which means it’s my one day off if I’m lucky. This last month has been the busiest I have seen this year. The choices of my clients, both on the buying and listing side have seemed more challenging now than I have ever seen. Well, that’s not entirely true, many buyers have had no problem sitting on the fence. On top of that, the opportunities that have been presented to me have be overly scrutinized this week. I was out to dinner last night with some guests from out of town when it hit me. The stress and lack of sleep has had me going around acting somewhat zombie like, I literally responded to the Maitre d‘s question of “how are you this evening?” with a “nnnnyaeh”. The obviousness of my failing condition was now as apparent as the gibberish expelled from my throat.

Now before this comes across an absolute whining session for me to vent off the frustrations of my life at the moment, let me tell you that I have the tools to navigate rough waters. I’ve been here before, as we all have. The bumps along the way keep it interesting if nothing else, right? The unpredictable events the follow poor decision making are ones that can be reversed or taken into a more positive direction given the awareness of the direction of said bonehead moves. I’ve never thought that it was helpful to beat one’s self up over what could be a mistake. What I do feel is negligible is witnessing someone (or yourself) having the awareness of a mistake and keeping that action on the same path. This, a good friend of mine would say is like sticking your head in the oven only to find that it’s too hot for a head, and then going back again the next day to try it again and still find it’s still too warm…. though I could never figure out why somebody wanted stick their head the oven, the lesson was not lost on me.

Simplicity is always my best fix. Making Read more

August 23, 2008

Buy low? Sell high? You can’t sell high for now, but prices are low enough that a buy-and-hold strategy could pay off handsomely

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

This is my column for this week from the Arizona Republic (permanent link).

Buy low? Sell high? You can’t sell high for now, but prices are low enough that a buy-and-hold strategy could pay off handsomely

Last week I met with a potential real estate investor. She’s an investor because she’s got the money, the credit and the will to dip her toe in the water. She’s a potential investor because she hasn’t yet been a landlord.

With new investors, I talk about premium suburban single-family rental homes. This is normally the safest, most economical way to start a real estate investment plan in Phoenix. That’s especially true right now, when the right rental home will be cash-flow positive from the outset.

But I also talk about other income opportunities in real estate, if only because land-lording is not for everyone. I would not advise a first-time investor to take the plunge in a large multi-family community or a strip mall, but there are plenty of other ways to take advantage of our current market conditions.

An example? Flipping. There never was heard a more discouraging word, but flipping has a horrible reputation because a horde of TV-educated tycoons bought at the top of the market and sold their refurbished masterpieces at auction. Now, when entry prices are low and trending lower, a slow flipping strategy promises nice rewards.

Here’s one slow strategy: Find a great flip candidate at a rock-bottom price. Buy it to own as a rental. Hold it in that state — with the monthly cash-flow covering your costs — until prices recover to your satisfaction. Then do the refurb and sell.

Here’s another one: Buy your cheap refurb candidate and move into it. Redo the home slowly, room by room, especially when the materials for doing a particular room are very cheap. Sell it after you’ve owned it for five years or more and take the capital gain tax free.

There is a common investment idea behind these strategies: Buy low. Sell high. You can’t predict when you’ll be able to sell high, but you know for sure you can buy low right now. If Read more

August 22, 2008

One for the dogs, one for my baby and one more for the road

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

In the weeks before Unchained in Phoenix. I stopped reading my feed reader. I was wall-to-wall with Unchained work and wall-to-wall with money work and something had to give. I’ve read this and that since then, but I’m over 16,000 posts behind in my reading. Oh, well…

When I knew for sure that we would be getting iPhones this Summer, I switched from Vienna to NetNewsWire as my feed reader, this because the desktop and iPhone clients will sync to each other. Same subscriptions on both, but what I’ve read on the iPhone won’t show up on my Mac and vice versa.

So I added the feeds I really wanted to NetNewsWire, but I also kept the old set running on Vienna. Interestingly to me, since I made the switch BloodhoundBlog has added over 200 posts, an astounding accomplishment. Something in WordPress or a plug-in is wasting post numbers, but we are over 3,000 posts, total, on the blog in just a couple of years. Even more impressive is the depth of our posts. If your goal is to understand the world of hi-tech real estate, reading here will be more beneficial than reading everything else put together.

So let’s hear it for the dogs: The best, the brightest and by far the loudest voices in the RE.net. It’s an honor for me to write in such a company.

So far, 2008 has been very, very good to our tiny little real estate brokerage, but it certainly didn’t start that way. Q4 ’07 and Q1 ’08 were plenty scary for anyone in real estate, and I’m sure they contributed to putting a lot of people out of the real estate business. We normally go to Las Vegas at Independence Day for our wedding anniversary, but this year we did not. We were busy with money work, which was most welcome, but we were also gun-shy about spending money.

July rocked, August rocked, and we’re picking up buyers if not listings with alacrity. It’s time for Greg and Cathy to have some alone time. Even so, we’re still more than spooked about money, and we both have Read more

August 22, 2008

Aufedersein Lip Syncher!

by Thomas Hall

Realtor, Rabble-Rouser

… and now back to our regularly scheduled program – sorry for the technical difficulties!

True Confessions:

I am a reality TV junkie – American Idol, Big Brother, Top Chef, Flipping Out, Million Dollar Listing and of course Project Runway – glad I have DDR – there are others – but these I won’t miss – even for a showing request – kidding – of course.
I eat lunch at Costco – I sample the samples. Don’t knock it – I have seen many of my astute colleagues binging off of the sample trays too, only I openly admit it – I have no shame.
I love country music.
Being an American Idol fan, I sing Daughtry and Carrie Underwood at the top of lungs in the car – sometimes – unknowingly – with the sunroof open – windows down – stopped at traffic lights – allegedly.

* cleansing breath*

That was so cathartic – and so much better than kneeling behind a curtain in a small, dark box filled with the distinct aroma of peppermint schnapps.

Yesterday, one of my esteemed colleagues made the mistake of confirming my delusional rock star status. I have one of eleven listings in a high rise on the famed Lake Shore Drive – great unit, smartly updated I might add. Glorious views and a terrific value – yet in a building that can be a challenge in which to sell. Traffic up until now has been sporadic if non-existent.

Two weeks ago, in an attempt to generate buyer traffic, I decided to coordinate a joint building open house. Not an uncommon marketing tactic – contact all of the other listing agents, get them all to agree to a time and a date – encourage everyone to market the open house independently and VOILA! Buyers!

I put together a joint marketing piece highlighting the fact that there would be nine units open, committed to an ad in The Tribune. I’d do it for my client anyway, so why not for the other units? Hopefully we can generate greater power in numbers. Well – needless to say, buyers did come. I had 20 visitors – Read more

August 22, 2008

OODA Redux: Marketing is What You Do, & Who You Are.

by Chris Johnson

Instigator, anthill kicker.

I talked about OODA for Real Estate before, mostly because it’s more clear to more people that there are no barriers to doing amazing (even splendid) things in or out of Real Estate. Again, OODA is: Observe, Orient, Decide Act (lather, rince repeat). A better definition is here, A still better definition is here. But my current campaign work has me thinking more tactically in lieu of strategically.

What I’m guessing is this: Most Realtors (and chess players…and people….) would be far better served to study tactics than strategy. Yes, yes, strategy matters—there are some preconditions that must be met before success in any venue is attainable. A few would be: the ability to tell the truth, the ability to focus, the desire to help people, etc. But, beyond the building blocks of a complete man, most people are addicted to strategy and planning. Because making a plan is a blast. And because you are getting a glimpse of the possible. It’s the doing that’s a bitch.

Most people plan their work, and then plan their work, and then plan their work when they should be working. Planning and thinking becomes procrastination, and then you may be great at Observing & Orienting but when it comes to deciding and acting…it’s easier to go to Reader to check in than it is to grind out a deal. Easier to join the cadre of nincompoops on Twitter…and say ‘that sux,’ to one another.

Orly? Easier for a day, that is…until you suddenly find someone calling about your car payment which is 16-days-past-due and you but you have only-$312 to last you until the 23rd where you SHOULD have a closing if the mortgage loan officer (or underwriter) gets off their ass, so why don’t you call the LO right now to get an “update?" That kind of stress comes from overplanning and underworking.

LO: Hi, How’s it going.

Broke Realtor: Well, You tell me. (weighty silence)

Buh-leave me. I know from brutal (and sadly, all too recent) past experience Read more

August 22, 2008

Mortgage Market Week in Review

by Tom Vanderwell

Mortgage Officer

Here we are on Friday again and it’s time to take another look at what’s going on in the mortgage markets. This week we’re going to talk about two economic reports and two big question marks.

First the economic reports from the week:
1. The Index of Leading Economic Indicators came out and it was down quite substantially. What is that index about? Basically it’s the conference board’s way of looking at what they think the economy is going to look like going forward. That’s why it’s called “Leading” rather than most reports that are essentially reporting what happened. This looks at what they think is going to happen based on trends and such. The fact that it’s way down doesn’t bode well for an economic recovery any time soon. It doesn’t specifically mean that we’ll have (or are in) a recession, but it does mean that things aren’t pretty.
2. The National Association of Home Builders reported that builder confidence came in for August at a record low. Gee, for any of you who read this who are a builder, know a builder, or work with one, it’s probably no surprise at all. We’re going through a fundamental shift in the building capacity that is needed in this country and the weeding out that is going to (and is) happening is not a fun thing by any means. Whether is was building, lending, or real estate sales, the bubble allowed way more people to get into the businesses than what the overall health and growth levels could handle. That’s an ongoing readjustment that needs to continue before we can hit bottom and go up from there.

Now for the two question marks. Actually, it’s one question about two companies. What’s the real story behind Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? I’ll make a couple of points to tell you what my take on them is:
1. As “quasi governmental” institutions, Fannie and Freddie have been able to borrow money at rates that are better than what other companies can borrow money at. That’s because of the implicit backing of the Read more

August 21, 2008

Rhapsodizing the iPhone: A full day of my chaotic life, hours of phone time, a trip to Pleasantville — and I could not love it more

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

I’m totally loving my iPhone, so far. Wine Dog is right about power. I think I want two, one each for in- and out-bound calls. But it’s so far beyond any other phone I’ve ever had, I would never even think of stepping back to yesterday’s phone.

I have a piece of software called HandBrake for the Macintosh. It will convert DVDs to other file formats. It’s how I made this clip of Pleasantville last Summer. In early July, I ripped a full copy of Pleasantville in the iPhone’s ideal video format. I just watched it now. Excellent video, and theater-quality sound through the headphones. I’m ready to convert a DVD a night, while I sleep, and park them on a big hard disk for easy syncing.

I had calls drop today when I was in the mountains — nothing new for Phoenicians. Otherwise, the iPhone was fault free, and it works beautifully with the Jawbone headset. I do see power as being an issue, but it was with the Treo 650, too. I often drive for part of the day with my phone plugged into the cigarette lighter (what’s that?). With a hands-free headset, it doesn’t matter. Give me a strong voice dialer, and it will matter even less.

The Jawbone is so much better in sound quality that I’m thinking of pushing a lot more work toward Jott or other transcription software. Cathy is playing with OmniFocus, an iPhone-optimized GTD app. The iPhone is a software universe, rather than simply a set of tools like an ordinary smartphone, so there are almost unlimited horizons for us to discover.

My biggest challenge, I think, is to get Cameron interested in the iPhone SDK. Brian already has a project, and we can come up with dozens more. It’s not that this is the ultimate computing solution — far from it. But in many ways it is the optimax solution, the tool that offers the most, the most-flexible and the most-available computing power relative to its portability and form factor.

An example: I was talking to a reporter today from a business magazine about the availability of Read more

August 21, 2008

iPhone euphony: When you hear the beep, hang tough

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Seventeen months after Steve Jobs’ original announcement, Cathy and I finally got iPhones last night. Our Treo 650s were just about beaten to death, so the moment was right. We had known from the first that we were going to wait for 3G and extensibility. The immediate sell-out of the original inventory of 3G iPhones was like a sign from the gods. We are rarely early-adopters, preferring to let other people find the bugs in dot.oh.dot.oh releases. With luck, this week’s release of iPhone OS 2.0.2, which we installed last night, will be golden.

In the Googlefied world, everything is easy. The AT&T geeks knew nothing about how to convert from Palm Desktop the iPhone, but Apple has a fairly simple procedure. I got all my contacts and my calendar events going back to 2001 just like that. AT&T and Sprint are still squabbling over who gets to service my phone number — I can literally call myself, iPhone to Treo, on my own number. But, so far, everything has been easy and nothing has hurt.

Well, one thing is going to hurt. I’m losing the ability to record phone calls. Many of the podcasts you hear here were recorded directly on my Treo, and I will often use CallRec to “take notes” with clients or real estate news sources. That feature is unavailable, at least for now, on the iPhone. We’re gaining a lot, including a whole lot more power in the cloud, but I’ll miss being able to record calls.

I have a few iPhone plans for BloodhoundBlog, but they’ve been waiting for me to have a phone to test on. For now, if you want a BloodhoundBlog button on your iPhone home page, snag one. (Hit the plus sign at the bottom of your screen and follow the prompts.) Within the next couple of days, I’ll be adding an iPhone-only theme to make the blog easier to read on a small screen. But even now you’ll have one-click access to BHB — and Odysseus at his most glamorous on your home page.

Technorati Tags: blogging, technology

August 21, 2008

Splendor versus squalor: The part you throw away

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

[I wrote this in March of 2007. I’m revisiting it now because it fits so well with the essay I wrote last night about honesty. At just about the same time I wrote this post, I penned an essay about an idea I call The Implied Accusation — the elephant in the room. I lucked upon a sweet cover of the Tom Waits tune quoted below, so I’m adding that as well. –GSS]

I believe in integrity, but I believe in a very Latinly kind of integrity. It’s normal for me to translate words in and out of Latin, to write and think in those words in the way that they are composed from their Latin atoms. So when I think of the word “integrity,” what I think of is “all one thing.”

And I try to live that way, too, with my whole life, as best I can manage it, being the expression of one idea: Splendor.

I’ll give you a definition, which I will immediately qualify:

Splendor is the interior experience of being so enthralled by the act of creating the values that contribute to and ultimately comprise your idealized perfect self that, while you are experiencing it, you are your idealized perfect self.

What’s the qualification? Splendor is not words, and it is not merely thoughts or deeds. Splendor is the tone and the timbre, the warp and the weft of a life spent pursuing it. Words, deeds, thoughts, actions, hopes, dreams, plans, memories, work, leisure, solitude and companionship — everything you do in the pursuit of positive values and nothing that you do in quests for disvalues.

This is such a simple idea, and I love it better than anything. It is everything I want to be when I am being the best person I can be, and it is everything I want for everyone I see. It’s one of the reasons I love being a Realtor, because this job, at its best, is all about Splendor, helping people get the most and the best that life can offer.

I don’t talk to my clients directly about this, but they get the idea. We Read more

August 20, 2008

“Shoot the elephant in the room before he breaks all the furniture?” Yes, because even if we don’t always do well by doing good, we must always do the right thing — even when no one else is watching.

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

I had a house close yesterday, and there was a little incident as I was trading keys with the buyers that I found instructive.

Back story: These folks came to me through my Arizona Republic column. That column produces almost no business for us, and I don’t milk it for business. But the clients it brings out are invariably very interesting, and they often bring with them multiple transactions. This particular family will do two listings and one purchase, and it was the purchase that closed yesterday.

They had started out thinking in terms of $800,000 homes in very tony desert locations. There are health issues, so I suggested that a smaller home closer to town might work better. We ended up buying a very nice home that comped for $425,000.

They were willing to risk losing the home in order to make sure they weren’t overpaying, so we offered $335,000 — $90,000 under two recent comp sales. We got that price, and the seller didn’t flinch at our repair requests. A fun, painless transaction, my kind of deal.

But wait. Didn’t I betray my sacred duty to milk the consumer for every last penny? I talked myself out of a commission on $800,000, then talked myself down again to a commission on $335,000. I don’t even think that way. I got a smokin’ deal for my buyers, and we all had fun every step of the way.

Because we’re doing multiple sides, we gave them a break on all three commissions. They didn’t ask, we just did it. Commission is always the elephant in the room, so, no matter what we plan to do, we always raise the issue first.

Why? Because doing the right thing is always the right thing to do, no matter what.

But also: Because affecting to ignore the elephant in the room only serves to make you look oily, evasive and corrupt — and the other party can use your presumptive corruption as leverage against you.

I believe that we do well by doing good — that consistent virtue reaps commensurate rewards in the long run. But even if we don’t, doing the Read more

Month: August 2008 (page 2 of 6)

The First Rule of Fraud Club Is, Don’t Talk About Fraud Club

by Brian Brady

Why Are We Wasting Our Time?

by Glenn Kelman

Clash of the Titans: Women shriek and children cower in blood-spattered suburban enclaves — when Realty.bots collide…

by Greg Swann

With a new iPhone application and support for other mobile devices, Trulia.com is pushing the Realty.bot race into the cloud, but its new free weblogging platform may put ActiveRain under a cloud

by Greg Swann

BloodhoundBlog sports new iPhone theme: All the dog, half the drool

by Greg Swann

Is it sink, swim, or just taking a deep breath to find buoyancy?

by Brad Coy

Buy low? Sell high? You can’t sell high for now, but prices are low enough that a buy-and-hold strategy could pay off handsomely

by Greg Swann

One for the dogs, one for my baby and one more for the road

by Greg Swann

Aufedersein Lip Syncher!

by Thomas Hall

OODA Redux: Marketing is What You Do, & Who You Are.

by Chris Johnson

Mortgage Market Week in Review

by Tom Vanderwell

Rhapsodizing the iPhone: A full day of my chaotic life, hours of phone time, a trip to Pleasantville — and I could not love it more

by Greg Swann

iPhone euphony: When you hear the beep, hang tough

by Greg Swann

Splendor versus squalor: The part you throw away

by Greg Swann

“Shoot the elephant in the room before he breaks all the furniture?” Yes, because even if we don’t always do well by doing good, we must always do the right thing — even when no one else is watching.

by Greg Swann

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