There’s always something to howl about.
They’re leaving from multiple launch points, and being seen all over. This is the best news we could hope for. They’re fighting through some very dangerous visual conditions.
For the people who’ve expressed an interest in more in depth info, in real time….
You can go online and listen live to KOGO AM 600 in San Diego.
Let me know if you encounter any problems connecting to the stream. I’ve tested it with no problem.
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Dan Melson continues his regular updates on the San Diego fires from a new post.
From Google Blogoscoped, KPBS has created a Google Maps overlay on the San Diego fires, with information on fires, evacuation centers and closed routes. KBPS also has a live radio stream and a Twitter feed.
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Technorati Tags: blogging, real estate
“I have some good news – and I have some bad news.”
That was what what an agent in a fellow broker’s office stood up to announce at their weekly meeting.
“I just picked up a new listing.”
And the laughter ensued.
Many of you know why… ’cause you get it. For the rest of you – here’s the reason:
Listings cost time and money – make no mistake. Unless you’re one of these agents who take a listing – stab a sign in the yard – hang a lockbox on the door – and then get back to work prospecting for your next listing… you’re going to be spending precious time and money attempting to sell the property.
Another broker was telling me that the number of listings she is holding is at an all-time high. A couple of years ago, this would be welcome news. Today, however, it is not. It is indicative of a slow resale market.
Many listings that were held by good, responsible agents end up expiring – and turned over to the next agent… who – oddly enough – also cannot sell the property at the price the seller wants.
I get many requests for CMA’s (comparable market analysis) each week… and the sellers, for the most part, don’t like the numbers I give them. So sorry. I am not trying to woo anyone with faulty data or promises. The market is what it is.
And the costs for the agents continue to go up. Look at Russell Shaw’s post regarding Realtor.com. Everyone has their hand in the agent or broker’s pocket – tempting us with the latest method to either acquire new business – or sell our inventory.
So to all you sellers out there – I have some good news and some bad news:
The good news is that if you’re serious about selling your home – it can be done.
The bad news is that it probably won’t be at the price you were hoping for.
.
The phone range at 3:44 AM this morning — Mom was calling to tell me she was packing, as she said, “Just in case”.
‘Just in case’ became reality when she answered the knock on her door around 5. It was a concerned neighbor, ensuring herself Mom knew things were getting maybe too close for comfort. She lives in Spring Valley, a community just east and a touch south of where I live, in La Mesa. Her call came as I was still in bed, listening to the radio. She saved me a call, cuz I was about to assert my rights as concerned son, politely insisting she pack a quick bag, and head over to my place.
While writing, from my living room window I can see to the south and east. Spring Valley’s Mt. Miguel is ablaze — I can clearly see the flames. They’ve been visible since I first looked, around 5:10 this morning.
Before continuing, some folks in other parts of the country, have said they’re not getting nearly enough info on San Diego. For those who would like to find out about friends and relatives here, one of our local TV stations has a pretty solid website, giving updates, maps, and overall coverage of the fires.
Also, the San Diego County Emergency Homepage might be of some help for those seeking info.
300,000 San Diegans have been evacuated — fully 10% of the county’s population.
One trivial note: The Charger’s home game appears almost surely to be moved to Glendale Arizona’s new stadium. The team left yesterday for AZ, hoping they’d be able to return for Sunday’s game. That’s a fantasy. They’ll be in AZ until after they’ve played the game there.
Ramona a town in the northeast part of the country, and Fallbrook, located off of the 15, not far from Temecula, have both been completely evacuated, according to news reports.
I called my brother-in-law just after 6. He lives fairly close to the path the fire has been taking in Spring Valley. He says he’s already got several boxes packed, and his pickup ready Read more
Geez, another fire, no, two of the nasty boogers. Santa Ana’s suck. What’s a Santa Ana you ask? It’s when desert winds from the northeast come swooping down into So Cal, bringing super low humidity, and winds blowing the wrong way. It also brings mid-80’s temperatures in late October.
When a few years of dry weather come one after the other, this is never good for San Diego. Add to the mix all kinds of dry dead wood for fuel, and you have the formula for what’s on the news the last few days.
As I write this it’s now too dark to see the more southern of the two fires. I have a southeasterly facing balcony with a gorgeous view in San Diego’s East County. As recently as an 45 minutes ago I could clearly see the Potrero fire’s smoke plume. It appears we’re winning that one. From about 4 PM until 6:30 or so, it was losing size, and depth of color. A great sign, based on my experience with these huge fires.
The ‘Witch’ fire is another story altogether. It’s not looking good. As of yesterday, it had already burned over 8,000 acres. Personally, my home isn’t in danger. My aunt and uncle, plus a cousin and his wife, living in La Costa (North San Diego County) have fled to Dana Point. Mom, who lives near me, has been my ‘stringer’, reporting on all the affected family members. My sister and her husband almost left their La Costa home, but when, at the last minute the order to leave was downgraded to voluntary they stayed. My brother-in-law is prone to severe asthma, so traveling to their downtown condo through all the muck was deemed far too risky.
Brian Brady, a good friend and almost neighbor, was the gracious host for five families from a community nearby his coastal home, which is close to Del Mar. They were from the Carmel Valley area, which was under mandatory orders to get outa Dodge.
I spoke to Brian an hour ago, finding him in the parking lot, J-3 to be specific, Read more
…Dan Melson is doing regular updates…
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Technorati Tags: blogging, real estate
I’m a busy boy. We’re busy with money work, but Cathleen has been sick, sicker, pneumoniated. The good news is, you don’t have to cut off your ear to take great pictures, you just have to hack like Selma on the Simpsons. I’m picking up the slack, plus I have a great new idea for BloodhoundBlog that we’ll be rolling out shortly. In any case, I might seem abrupt here, but that is no stain on the quality of today’s winning posts.
Jim Duncan was one of the first real estate webloggers I became aware of when we started BloodhoundBlog. We discovered the power of the long tail together in posts about dual agency. He is always to be found on the side of righteousness in real estate — ethics, education, putting the client first with first-rate service. He’s a great blogger, too, as he demonstrates with this week’s Odysseus Medal winner, Wither false blame?, an extended riposte to a particularly lame lamentation about imaginary offenses by the sub-agents who no longer exist in most states:
The author and professors make one accurate argument accidentally – until the real estate industry, mortgage industry, HUD, etc. embrace divorced commissions, we have a long way to go. Divorced commissions means simply that the buyer pays the buyer’s agent and the seller pays the seller’s agent. Until this is fixed, the perception will exist amongst those who don’t know any better – whether by unfamiliarity or neglect (as would seem to be the case in the Wharton professors’ cases) – that true representation does not exist.
I come not to condemn the professors (I have read the Mortgage Professor site for years), but to enlighten them to the wonderful world known as the 21st century and Buyer Brokerage. While the seller may pay my commission now, the loyalty and trust I am earning is the buyers’.
Here’s a proposal – First, apologize and clarify. Second, invite a guest speaker write a guest post on your blog and to explain to your classes what real estate agency and buyer/seller representation are. Explain how much the profession has changed in Read more
You guessed it. Seattle, San Diego and the rest of the country had better get off the dime.
Technorati Tags: real estate, real estate marketing
…but you still have time. Cut-off is today at 12 Noon PDT/MST. If you know of something worthy of recognition, your own work or someone else’s, nominate it now while it’s on your mind.
Technorati Tags: blogging, real estate, real estate marketing
Not so much, despite a prank posting on the realty.bot’s forums:
Zillow will be shut down on Nov 2nd
Their revenue stream is in concert with the real estate market. They simply ran out of money.
Hence no price updates for over a month.
The Cluetrain runs on Saturdays in Seattle, so David Gibbons rushed in to quash the rumor (once I had asked for a comment, I should add):
OK, OK – Zillow is not shutting down.
Quite the contrary. I’m sorry that Zestimate updates are delayed – there’s a sticky post in the Zillow forum that explains this further. The short story is that we’re preparing for a massive update to Zestimates and data – and have had to freeze site data while that project is ongoing. I understand that it’s frustrating and ask for your patience for a little while longer.
Financially, the company is very healthy – but thanks for your concern. Yep, Homer; we did just raise a 3rd round of venture Capital – $30M – for a total of $89M to date. Ad sales at Zillow are better than expected – please remember to support our advertisers!
New data will be on the site shortly – and much more cool stuff will launch over the next 3 months. We’re not going anywhere.
The rumor was obvious bunk, but it’s cool that it shook some news loose from the Zillowtree.
Technorati Tags: disintermediation, real estate, real estate marketing, Zillow.com
These are photos from the listing I was working on last night. Cathleen took all the photos for this house. I can do a house a lot faster than she can, but she comes home with photos that are just stunning.
Can poetic copy sell houses? Maybe not. Custom signs? It’s a long shot — but we do get a lot of sign calls. Elaborate web sites? You tell me. Photos like these? Everything’s a crap shoot, and, of course, nothing works if the price is wrong.
But: If you assume that more than one house could be a good fit for that elusive buyer, then what should you do to make sure that it’s your listing and not the other guy’s that sells?
Our answer: Whatever it takes. Dramatic photos can’t win the war alone, but they’re one more weapon in our arsenal.
Technorati Tags: real estate, real estate marketing, real estate photography
Commercial Real Estate Finance Expert
Structured Debt and Equity
Licensed Real Estate Broker in AL, CA, and FL
Sub prime mortgage are defaulting at record proportions. Lenders are closing their doors and confidence is waning on Wall Street. Greed, corruption, and irresponsibility have all been cited as the reasons for this contraction and collapse. While these factors might be contributing reasons, they are all byproducts from the underlying reason:
The real estate markets behaved better than were expected.
Understanding this concept will require a mastery of Dan Green’s presentation proving that real estate data is granular and not mosaic. Dan said:
But real estate is not a national story, folks. It’s highly, highly local.
To beat the point home, when you buy your next home, it won’t be a home that exists in all 50 states. It will be a home that exists in one state, in one town, in one neighborhood, on one street and that has its own character and economics. Much like the small pictures above.
And that’s what real estate is — it’s a series of very, very small pictures.
Lending developed into a national, or to use Dan’s analogy, mosaic, business. Local factors weren’t considered in the modeling when Wall Street developed the guidelines for Alt-A and sub prime loans. The Wall Street forecasters were correct in their assumptions that real estate was undervalued… nationally. The aging baby boomers and short supply would apply steady pressure on prices in the first decade of this millennium. Nationally, they expected properties to appreciate faster than the prior appreciation rate; they just didn’t anticipate that local markets would behave outside of their model.
Let’s set “ground zero” to Y2K. Wall Street forecasters expected real estate to appreciate at a rate exceeding 6% per annum. It did. They loosened loan guidelines, in a quest for yield, protected by rapidly appreciating collateral. Desirable areas, like Southern California Vegas, South Florida, and Phoenix, led the appreciation wave at rates that were double the expected appreciation rate. Other parts of the country, Idaho, Utah, and Texas, didn’t follow the boom until 3-5 years later. Nationally, the numbers made sense to Wall Street.
The Read more
When we list, as late as I have to…
First off, I’m gonna say right up front, I’m not a house agent, and haven’t been since President Jimmy was in office tellin’ all of us our attitudes sucked. Of course, becoming an ‘investment agent‘ back then wasn’t what one would call prescient timing. About the time I’d learned enough to become dangerous, we had what we now call a correction.
Since everyone’s all excited these days about transparency, I thought I’d disclose I’m not a house agent, even though I’m about to give a boatload of house agent advice. Furthermore, the advice I’m about to give, isn’t new — it’s just my angle on things.
I was a house guy for my first seven years. My main source of business was generated by farming activities. I’d read a few books, and was unimpressed. Then I was given one by my broker, and after reading it, I’d thought he’d given me the key to the vault. 🙂
It was written by the owner of the well known real estate licensing school, Lumbleau. He was the founder, John J. Lumbleau. It told about a concept called Farming, which really furrowed my brow. Remember, this was the early ’70’s — farming? In real estate?
Even though it involves a little technology, I guarantee you, if I can handle it, your Aunt Fannie can do it. My son Josh’s favorite question for me is, “You made that up, right? You can’t be serious, asking me that question!” It’s almost always a software or a basic computer question, so honest, the hi-tech will be easy.
I’ve been speaking to a few agents around the country this year. I’ve said the same thing to all of them: Build a hyper-local farm as a website/blog.
See? Told ya it wasn’t anything new.
The problem as I see it, is nobody (that I’ve found so far) does it the way I think would work like gangbusters. I keep hearing agents, a couple whom I know, say they tried it, but there just wasn’t any traction. In my opinion they didn’t give it even half a chance to take its first Read more
The poet gets the girl — and sells the house:
Our homes are structures, shelters, domiciles. But the idea of a residence encompasses so much more than mere tentage, mere respite from heat and cold and wind and rain and the relentless summer sun. If all we needed was a place to escape the elements, we might just as well live in insulated barns.
But your home — your residence — is much more than that. It’s love and marriage and family, of course, home and hearth, kith and kin. But at a more fundamental level it is a reflection of who you are, an enduring stake stuck into the earth that declares to all: This is who we are, this is what we believe in and stand for and cherish.
This is not where we live, not how we live. This structure, this shelter, this domicile — this home — is our lives, as much an essential part of what we are as our heads, our hands, our hearts.
Home is where the heart is? A home like this is the beating heart of lives lived wisely and well.
Like love poetry, if you’re not right there, it’s treacle. But for people swept up in the swirling emotions of a home search, this is warm butterscotch syrup for the soul. This is the kind of stuff that puts us completely beyond the reach of the listers we compete against.
Technorati Tags: real estate, real estate marketing
