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There’s always something to howl about.

Author: Greg Swann (page 188 of 209)

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

September 26, 2006

Blogoff Post #28: Timid investor lost chance for large rental home gain . . .

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This is from my Arizona Republic column, a sad story about an investor who let a small fear lead to a huge loss:

In July 2004 I was working with a potential investor. She was prosperous and well qualified, and she was buying at a time when a nice rental home in the Phoenix area could still throw off a positive cash flow.

We had settled on a newer three-bedroom home in Tolleson, a good rental area with great appreciation potential. We put the house under contract (for $135,000, if you can believe that) and began the inspections.

The sellers were in pre-foreclosure. They hadn’t done a perfect job of maintaining the home, nor had they understood their rights under the builder’s warranty. In all, the repair issues came to around $1,500.

Not tiny, but not huge. Big enough, though:

My buyer canceled the contract. I thought this was a huge mistake, so much so that I offered to pay for the repairs myself. But she was scared enough by the specter of costly repairs that she not only walked away from this house, she fled real-estate investment altogether.

That house is now worth $225,000. She has lost $90,000 — so far — over $1,500 that I would have paid.

There is no way of predicting appreciation, of course, but how long could it have take for that home to buy back $1,500 — even if I hadn’t offered to pay for the repairs myself?

The end of the story: “Fortune – and fortunes – favor the brave.”

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September 26, 2006

Blogoff Post #27: Weblog Review: Behind the Curtain . . .

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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Jeff Brown’s Behind the Curtain is one of the most-amusing weblogs in my feed reader. Jeff writes in a folksy, avuncular style that just sweeps you up. The man is nobody’s grammarian, but you’ll forgive anything to get to the next killing joke.

Like this:

First, is it me, or does everyone everywhere think they know which way is north on the map with real estate investments? I swear, if one more person corners me at some social gathering just to tell me how they’ve ‘found the next Golden Goose’ I’m gonna scream. What makes it worse is that half of these Donald Trump types are agents and brokers who should know better than to spew their ignorance in public. I remember thinking last weekend that if this guy just spent a few minutes talking real estate while walking on my front lawn, I’d have the greenest lawn in the neighborhood.

It’s a hosted WordPress weblog, and it’s updated only infrequently. But the whole thing is so sweet and fine, like a warm pecan pie, that I’ll forgive anything.

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September 26, 2006

Blogoff Post #26: Ask the Broker: If the buyer has no agent, what does the listing agent get paid . . . ?

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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This question came in earlier today. It’s actually pretty simple, if you’re an insider, not so simple if not:

I am selling my house with one agent and the buyer does not have any agent. My agent brings the buyer and they put in an offer. How much commission will I owe to my agent? Is it 5% or 2.5%?

It depends on how the listing contract is written. If your agent used a boilerplate form and didn’t change it to reflect a sale with no cooperating agent, then he will take the full commission, whatever you negotiated.

That much is easy. Unfortunately for your agent, he may be entering into an undisclosed dual agency with you and the buyer, exposing him to considerable legal peril. In that circumstance, we would insist that the buyer find some sort of professional representation — to make sure the buyer is represented, to make sure that your interests are not compromised, and to cover our own behinds.

Either way, the commission you pay is going to be the same unless you made prior arrangements for a variable commission.

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September 26, 2006

Blogoff Post #25: Real estate weblogging? Who knew . . . ?

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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From the Online Marketing Blog’s “25 Tips for Marketing Your Blog”, here is tip number nineteen:

Post regularly. If it’s a news oriented blog, 3-5 times per day. If it’s an authoritative blog, 3-5 times per week, but each post must be unique and high value.

This is hard. Not what I’m doing now, but real estate weblogging in general.

Real estate is a demanding job, with very long hours, and a lot of intense but irregular activity. How are you supposed to keep up a regular blog-posting schedule as well?

I don’t know, but it’s something you’ll have to work out if you want to make real estate weblogging work for you. People have to know they can depend on you to make regular, creditable weblog entries. As hard as it is to get a reader, it’s very easy to lose one…

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September 26, 2006

Blogoff Post #24: How to make buyers fall in love with your home . . . ?

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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From the Problogger ‘How To…’ Group Writing Project, Stix ‘n’ Brix teaches us how to make buyers fall in love with our home:

Uncover The Bones
Clean It Up
Neutral Does It
Curb Appeal Sells
Set A Comfortable Mood
Head Off Their Doubts
Price It Right

In general, I like the detailed advice given in this article.

The number one problem I have with homes I’m showing right now is that they are not market-ready. That can be a moving target, but, in this market, if everything is not absolutely perfect, everything might just as well be rotten. Buyers have many homes to choose from. If yours isn’t everything they want, they’ll just move on…

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September 26, 2006

Blogoff Post #23: The perils of pre- and post-possession . . .

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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This is another of my favorites from my Arizona Republic column. The topic here is pre- and post-possession, either moving into a new home before the closing or staying in your old home after it has closed:

Pre- and post-possession create a de facto tenancy. It may be just a friendly agreement between buyer and seller, but when you occupy a home you do not own, you are a tenant. You should ratify the occupancy with a lease. But there is still potential for big trouble.

Suppose the house burns down. Who is liable? The owner, even though he is not occupying the home? Or the occupant, who is not the owner and probably just lost all of his personal property?

This used to be common in the sale of a home, but the legal difficulties arising from pre- and post-possession can be huge:

If the owner did not disclose the tenancy, the insurance company probably will not pay on the house. If the occupant had homeowner’s insurance, not a tenant’s policy, his underwriter also might refuse to pay for the lost personal property. There may be two aggrieved lenders, and both might call their notes due, even though the house is now destroyed.

But the worst is yet to come. Everyone involved gets to spend years in court fighting over who owes what to whom. The owner will be out the value of the house. The occupant will have lost all of his portable wealth, including the memories attached to those things. Everyone will emerge from this lengthy process bruised, begrudging and much, much poorer.

My ultimate answer: “Take possession at the close of escrow, just as the purchase contract advises. Whatever convenience you might enjoy from pre- or post-possession, the risks are just too great.”

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September 26, 2006

Blogoff Post #22: Weblog Review: The Real Estate Tomato . . .

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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Jim Cronin’s weblog, The Real Estate Tomato could not be better-named. Juicy, tart and refreshing. Jim has a terrific graphic sense, and that serves to liven the place up as well.

This is a business blog, in more ways than one. Jim’s evangelical mission is to spread the idea of real estate blogging among practitioners — and not just Realtors. But Jim is a vendor, as well, and — although this is rarely obvious — his role is to move his company’s product line. I deeply admire the deft way Jim handles this, because I feel that the best salesmanship of those products comes from his not ramming them down our throats. I trust him because he doesn’t betray my trust, and that’s a lesson every salesperson should learn.

The blogging platform is Typepad, which I don’t hate, but which has a truly annoying trackback system. Overall the site is clean and easy to use.

Jim Cronin is an excellent teacher and The Real Estate Tomato is an excellent teaching web site.

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September 26, 2006

Blogoff Post #21: Ask the Broker: What about my pets . . . ?

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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Here’s a question dear to Cathy’s heart:

I’m selling my house and have pets so I don’t want to put my house on a lock box. All the realtors I’ve talked to say I have to put my house on a lock box, and the one who I wanted to give the job to actually turned me down if I don’t put it on a lock box. She said she can’t sell it if I don’t. Is that true?

Good thing you didn’t call me: I would have insisted on a lock-box, you bet. But beyond that, I would want two more things:

  1. I would want the pets out of the house entirely
  2. I would want their odors completely eliminated

Pets are a wonderful thing. Because I love my wife, and because she loves every living thing, we have four dogs and nine cats right now. How do we sell our houses? We move first, then remodel the house we’re leaving prior to selling it. The carpets go, and everything gets repainted. Plus we pet-proof our new house before moving in.

Does that sound like an extreme expense? This is the burden you took on when first you admitted a large, furry, affectionate creature into your life. (Note that in real estate, pets that can’t escape their habitat and don’t make odors don’t matter.)

I have been in pet-occupied homes where I could not smell the animal. But I have been in far more where I can smell the pets from outside, even from the street.

Odor is a powerful subconscious influence on the human mind. Even people who like pets won’t like the smell of your pets.

So: Lock-box, yes, but not before the pets are out of the house and all of their odors eliminated. If you want your house to sell, you have to present it in the way the buyer wants to buy it. If you don’t, buyers will go elsewhere…

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September 26, 2006

Blogoff Post #20: Weblogging for real estate? Host it yourself!

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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From the Online Marketing Blog’s “25 Tips for Marketing Your Blog”, here is tip number one, perhaps my number one crazy-maker:

Decide on a stand alone domain name www.myblog.com or directory of existing site www.mysite.com/blog. Sub domain is also an option blog.mysite.com. Avoid hosted services that do not allow you to use your own domain name!

So many of the real estate weblogs I like, including some I will review, are in violation of this rule.

True hosting is fast, easy and cheap. WordPress will come free with the hosting package. There is no good reason not to do this, and one outstanding reason to do it now rather than later: The bigger your traffic base, the more readers you will lose when you make your move. As with the Chicken Pox, you’re better off living through the pain while you’re still young…

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September 26, 2006

Blogoff Post #19: How to write a great blog post . . . ?

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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From the Problogger ‘How To…’ Group Writing Project, Blogging Blog teaches us how to write a great weblog post:

Once you’ve decided on a topic and a goal, begin writing. Don’t be hard on yourself yet – write whatever pops into your head. You can always change things later, but often you cannot remember lost ideas.

After you’re out of ideas, start editing your post – and be tough on yourself. Quality is far more important that quantity here. You want to be sure that your original message comes across exactly the way you intended it. You also will want to cut out some of the fat – remember, editing is absolutely crucial, and is a step you cannot afford to skip.

Actually, I consider this hideously bad advice, but probably the only way to learn to do better is by following it.

Usually — meaning not now — I have things written in my head before I take keyboard to finger. I don’t hate the idea of free-flow writing with a lot of chop-and-drop editing — except that it can be a huge waste of time. If you train yourself to draft next-to-perfect prose, editing becomes simple. Even better, because you have so little editing work to do, you can concentrate on punching up the prose with more-active constructions and perfectly apposite word choices.

But: How do you learn to do this? Write a lot. It gets easier…

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September 26, 2006

Blogoff Post #18: Most home-improvement stories are substantially improved . . .

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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This is from my Arizona Republic column:

Home improvement is usually not a good financial investment. Instead, remodeling will normally have lifestyle value as you use and enjoy your improvements while you live in the home, then pass them along to the next buyer at a discount.

How big a discount? You may get dollar for dollar for tasteful upgrades to kitchens and bathrooms. A well-maintained pool can trade at its replacement value. For everything else, you’ll do very well if you get 50 cents on the dollar.

There are ways to improve these results. The worse shape the house is in, the greater the relative value of intelligent remodeling. If you can upgrade the market value of the property at the same time — for example, adding a master suite to a two-bedroom house — so much the better.

On the other hand, it is possible to spend a lot of money and make the house worth less. I was in a home where the sellers had redone the kitchen with black marble tile, black cabinets, a black porcelain sink and, as the crowning glory, black Corian countertops with bright red accent stripes. They couldn’t understand why they kept getting low-ball offers.

It’s always a treat on listing appointments to listen to sellers explain why their home improvements are worth even more than what they cost. This would be the only used stuff in the world that sells at a premium over new…

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September 26, 2006

Blogoff Post #17: Weblog Review: Rain City Guide . . .

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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What’s the curse of volunteer organizations? For every stand-up guy or gal who steps up to pick up the slack, there is a cadre of slackers standing down, standing around, circling in inaction until they wear a hole in the ground.

This is a signal defect of Rain City Guide, arguably the best of the real estate weblogs. Blogger-in-Chief Dustin Luther has assembled a fantastic team of writers. But it seems, too often, that the team is happy enough to let Ardell DellaLoggia or Dustin himself carry the ball.

When the others are there, they’re all the way there. But I wish they were there more often. No one can tell volunteers when they have or have not done enough, but, as much as I like RCG, I like it best when all of the contributors on the masthead are making prominent contributions.

That criticism aside, RCG is first-rate in every way: Nicely-presented in WordPress, finely-tuned and very, very active.

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September 26, 2006

Blogoff Post #16: Ask the Broker: Why are the lots so small . . . ?

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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This question comes from my mother-in-law, Cathy’s mother:

Why do builders make yards so small?

This is a question that applies to the Phoenix area, but I know it fits in many markets in the southwest.

Phoenix was settled in sections, 640 acre square-mile parcels. A farm might be a section, a half-section, rarely smaller than a quarter-section. When parcels were split to become housing lots, the one acre lot was a very common size. There are still thousands of acre lots in Phoenix, vast and lush.

But most new homes are built 6, 8, 10, 12 or more homes to the acre. Why is that?

Land isn’t cheap, for one thing. But neither is landscaping. If you work in town and commute 45 minutes each way, you may find that your enthusiasm for yard work in the 115-degree heat is not as robust as it could be.

The bottom line is: New home buyers don’t want larger lots enough to pay for them. They might say they do, but when it comes time to write a purchase contract, they tend to buy more house for their money, or a pool, instead.

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September 26, 2006

Blogoff Post #15: How to steal your way into the hearts of your readership . . .

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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From the seminal SEOBook article “101 Ways to Build Link Popularity in 2006”, here is a sure-fire way to get no inbound links:

Steal content published by well known names. Strip out any attribution. Aggregate many popular channels and just wait for them to start talking about you.

This one makes me nuts. There are some amazingly great real estate weblogs out there. But there are many, many more than consist of nothing but stolen content. Some rip-off RSS feeds and re-syndicate them without permission, usually as pretend-content to cover their own splogging ads.

But still worse are the hand-crafted plagiarist sites: Actual real estate licensees, stealing weblog content or ripping-off newspaper or magazine articles, presenting them in full, often without even attribution. Presumably, most of these creeps don’t even know how sleazy they’re being, simply because honest webloggers aren’t even talking to them, much less linking to them…

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September 26, 2006

Blogoff Post #14: FSBO without fizzling out . . . ?

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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From the Problogger ‘How To…’ Group Writing Project, Pittsburgh Homes Daily teaches sacrilege: How to sell your own home ‘by owner’:

1. Fix up your home before you put it on the market.

2. Read up

3. Set your level of involvement.

4. Set a price.

5. Prepare for the finish.

6. Market it!

Details abound, but there’s nothing about praying, crying or spending every weekend at home.

Here’s an even better how-to: Hire a Realtor and gripe about the costs, never knowing what you missed by skirting the outskirts of FSBO hell…

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