Flip side: Pimco, NY Fed Said to Seek BofA Repurchase of Mortgages.
Category: Real Estate (page 50 of 266)
I had buyers back out of a purchase contract at the last minute, earlier this year. They got cold feet, and they had no remaining contingencies, so they understood they were losing their earnest deposit. The seller’s agent wanted to fight about it, making a lot of noise about specific performance. But here is what was interesting to me, thinking about the legal issues in the abstract:
The deal was a short sale.
In other words, had the sale proceeded to closing, the seller’s actual material gain would have been zero dollars and zero cents.
Taking account that we cancelled the contract, the seller’s actual material loss was — wait for it — zero dollars and zero cents.
Arguably, the seller might have suffered financial damages as a result of losing the home to foreclosure, rather than losing it in a short sale, but these consequences could never have been subject to my buyers’ control.
In other words, though we did not go to court, I could not see a way for the seller to claim any sort of material injury by the cancellation of the contract. He had no real, actual, material consideration at stake.
Why bring this up?
Because I think this is the end of the road in the so-called “Foreclosuregate” “scandal.”
To bring us up to speed, the Wall Street Journal wonders if we’re headed for housing armageddon. Not to be outdone, CNBC insists that foreclosure fraud is worse than you think.
Here’s what I think: If there were procedural laxities in the handling of paperwork, there was no intent to defraud. And laying that aside, there are no former homeowners who can claim that they were avoidably injured by mis-handled paperwork.
Why was your mortgage foreclosed? Because you stopped paying it. Did you have any rational reason to believe that you could keep your house once you had stopped paying your mortgage? No. If the paperwork that led to your foreclosure was not prepared to perfection, does that give you the right to retain possession of a home you are not paying for? No.
Voters are fools, of course, and the Attorneys General of the many states Read more
I just posted a quick note about this blog post that was posted by Roost on Real Estate Industry Watch, but wanted to throw in a quick observation or two as well.
First the facts, then my opinion. Roost has decided apparently to shift 100% of their effort away from generating “blind internet leads” (their words, not mine) and towards their social media efforts. Ok. That was the facts part.
Here comes my opinion. 😉
I am sure that there will be a fair amount of folks saying “You should defend what you do! (search engine marketing)”. Actually I think they made a very calcualted and shrewd business decision. There are too many agents in this business. There are too many brokers. And there are too many online lead generators. 😉 (in my opinion). They decided to try and pick a fight they could win. (Probably a good call.)
As for the search marketing vs social media arguments…they are two DIFFERENT games. They have two different sets of rule. In any given city you can win at either, neither or both. If your game is to see how much you can sell to how many agents, social media is a more attractive play. It is warm and fuzzy and has the bright and shiny objects that so many agents are mesmerized by…
If you are in the search marketing business, it is a play for less agents, because you really are better of being the lead generator for only one or a couple or two in a given town. You just need a person you trust and who is gifted as a closer to close the leads.
Oh crud…I would LOVE to stay and explain more about the differences between the two, but I am actually really busy getting business CLOSED off of the internet… 😉
I wish the folks at Roost the best in this change of direction.
PS – Jeff Brown is right…his last couple of posts are really well written…ah heck, his stuff is almost always great. (grin)
Most marketing and branding efforts fail miserably. We all know a ton of so-called talented folks who’ve failed — and they worked their asses off. How’s that possible? I used to ask myself that question all the time. Then one day Dad pointed out a guy in the office who looked completely average. One might even say he blended into his surroundings. He made beige exciting.
He’d been a teacher for 20+ years, was in his 40’s, and had been licensed about three years. He was the fourth highest producer in terms of commission dollars in the highest volume real estate brokerage in San Diego. I was 16 at the time. Dad said to watch him and learn whenever I was cleaning the office. (I was company janitor.)
Watchin’ this guy was beyond boring. All he did was make practice calls to FSBOs. Then he practiced cold calling. Then he practiced listing presentations. Then he practiced showing property — all in the office. It was irritating. His name was Bob, and since I was still in school at the time, I could only imagine how terminally bored his students must’ve been.
In his third year, 1967, he made over $35,000. To put that in perspective, the median income for the nation then was about $7,500 or so. In today’s figures, and adjusting for currently available splits, his earnings would be roughly $700,000. More about Bob later.
Many times after monthly TechTard meetings adjourn, I walk across the hall to attend similar get-togethers with those equally handicapped in the disciplines of marketing and branding. No real point here, except to establish street cred when it comes to my lack of expertise when it comes to these subjects.
For the purpose of this post we’ll leave out selling, which is a stand-alone skill, generally not reliant on marketing or branding. Yeah, I realize bad marketing or branding can significantly hinder selling.
I hereby publicly plead guilty to multiple counts of Marketing By the Seat of My Pants, and Branding By Default.
If you know how to sell, great. If you suspect you could improve, do so. Read more
The title is an analogy — for the .150 hitter, substitute a real estate agent who couldn’t sell a house for a nickel to a homeless person — and for ‘runners left on base’ a sales board filled with prospects but no sales. Though unmentioned, it’s the manager penciling the .150 hitter into the lineup on a daily basis, who gives him 4-5 at-bats game after game. Continuing the analogy, the ‘manager’ in real estate in this case is technology, which often gives .150 hitters far more opportunities to strike out with the bases loaded.
What managers learn early on, that is if they wish to remain managers, is that continually sending .150 hitters up to the plate with runners in scoring position leads to losin’ a bunch more than winnin’ — the last loss being their job.
Just as .150 hitters often think more at-bats will improve their average, real estate agents often believe that if they only had the technology to give them more at-bats, they’d be drivin’ a Ferrari in no time.
This is what passes for wisdom in the world of real estate brokerage.
The reality is that the lousy hitter needs to learn how to hit, and the starving real estate agent needs to learn how to sell. Why is that concept so elusive?
BawldGuy Axiom: The next time you master a skill by continually doing it wrong, but more often, will be the first. Duh
A Simple Example
As a hitting coach in youth baseball for several years, I learned to spot the flaws in hitters’ swings. We had a strong kid join our team in the middle of the season once, who wanted with all his heart to be a great hitter, but had never been taught. He struck out over half the time, and weakly popped up or grounded out otherwise. His mom told me he’d never been actually coached, one on one. After practice that day, Mom looking on, I had a couple of our pitchers throw him fast balls right down Main St. After about 20 swings, he was frustrated. Turns out more Read more
I am at the Council of MLS’s meeting in Chicago on behalf of a client, and it is surreal. How is it possible, in the age of Craigslist, that it takes this many people to manage a relatively straightforward database?
I just watched Stefan Swanepoel tell the MLS people, to his credit, that it is in their best interest to advocate raising the bar of professionalism in real estate, a subject that has been prevalent on this blog for as long as I’ve been reading it.
Its hard to see the MLS and RE Assoc. people taking that message to heart, considering that raising the bar = fewer dues paying members, but if you are going to tilt and windmills, you might as well go for it and speak truthiness to power, I guess.
Still, the problem of standards is no joke — except that it is.
Good Morning America was on over breakfast at the hotel today, and they started a new “Where are they now?” segment with Lorena Bobbit — remember her?
At about 2:49 in the story, the reporter tells us that Lorena makes her living now “..as a part time hairdresser — and real estate agent.”
As John Bobbit once surely said — “Ouch.”
Jeff Brown wants to know if real estate bar camps are a waste of his time. My view is that they probably are, at least in terms of making maximum productive use of time taken away from money-making work. Jeff is a chatty guy, so I expect he can have a good time with any random group of real estate practitioners, but in terms of epiphanies major and minor — or even just an a-ha! or two to cover the cost of the gasoline — there’s just not that much there there.
First a caveat — thus to give you a chance to dismiss me if your mind runs easily to thoughts of thoughtlessness: I’ve only been to one real estate bar camp. Brian Brady and I did a half-day BloodhoundBlog Unchained event at Zillow.com’s headquarters in Seattle, and the first (I think) Seattle REBC was held the next day. Brian and I did a session that day with Ardell Dellaloggia, then I used Al Lorenz’ Windows laptop to do a session on Scenius — with the latter being of benefit to no one, I think. I spent much of the day in a conference room, conferring with anyone who would dare to talk to me, and that was reasonably productive. I taught much more than I learned, but I got to spend quite a bit of time with Al, and that man knows a lot of interesting stuff.
But: The event was opened by a vendor, and the vendorslut influence was an oozing slime everywhere. It was obvious to me that the ordinary punters were completely lost, and it was equally obvious that the vendors were “befriending” folks who had learned nothing — except that they were scared and clueless — picking them off like drunken sorority pledges at a fraternity mixer.
I’ve not done anything with the bar camps that have been held in Phoenix, second because the wired Realtors in town seem to want to have nothing to do with me, but first because the wired Realtors in town don’t seem to know very much that I’m interested in learning. If Read more
We’re adding Las Vegas Realtor Tony Sena to our roster of contributors today. Tony is a well-known force in the world of internet real estate marketing, having founded the popular industry weblog WannaNetwork.com. Tony’s current focus is building a property management practice in Las Vegas, as is evidenced in his bio:
Tony Sena, a licensed Real Estate Broker/Salesperson since 2001 in Las Vegas, NV, is the owner of the property management division at North American Realty of Nevada and currently manages over 150 residential properties.
Tony’s former law enforcement experience as a Henderson Police Officer gives him a unique sense of awareness about the potential concerns for crime and safety in neighborhoods.
With 9 years of Internet marketing experience, as well as multiple top ranking web sites, Tony is able to provide his team of agents, listing clients and landlords a competitive advantage for getting in front of thousands of buyers and renters online every month.
If you were at BloodhoundBlog Unchained in Phoenix in 2009, you had a chance to meet Tony in person. I’m eager to see the insights he brings to our discussions here.
From The New York Post:
The latest numbers suggest we’re finally at the beginning of the end of the housing correction — no thanks to Washington.
Last Thursday’s numbers from Realtytrac seemed like bad news. In August, foreclosure auctions hit their second-highest monthly total in the report’s history: 147,003, up 9 percent over the month before and up 2 percent over August last year. That’s 7 percent below the peak month, March of this year.
And the immediate precursor to foreclosure sales — bank repossessions — hit their all-time high in August: 95,364, up just 3 percent over July but 25 percent over August 2009. That makes the ninth straight month repos have increased on a year-over-year basis. But foreclosure is a pipeline — and those numbers are the outflow end of it.
On the inflow end, things are slower. August saw 96,469 default or foreclosure notices go out, a 1 percent drop from July and a 30 percent fall from August 2009. And that marks the seventh straight month new foreclosures have fallen on a year-over-year basis. This trend — increased “outflow” and slightly reduced “inflow” foreclosure activity — means that lenders and loan servicers are 1) giving up on modifying mortgages when the borrower can’t pay, and instead repossessing homes and auctioning them off, but also 2) trying to manage the foreclosure pipeline to minimize the downward pressure on home prices.
Why isn’t this bad news? For starters, a multiyear tidal wave of foreclosure sales has been inevitable ever since the housing bubble burst: Too many people had mortgages they couldn’t afford to pay, mortgages with a face value higher than the home’s new market price. There’s never been any way for prices to start heading back up until they first find their bottom — which won’t happen until those bad mortgages are cleared away.
President Obama’s $75 billion mortgage-modification program was always going to be a huge failure — you just can’t keep people in homes they can’t afford — but now the markets are admitting it.
From the Wall Street Journal, complete with video, is Brett Arends take on why now might be a great time to buy a home. This is the action item to follow Greg’s last post on Why Housing will come back. I’m in a very seasonal, resort type of market. A buyer’s negotiating position right now, when a seller who doesn’t have a deal is likely going to still own their home next spring, is amazing. Make that reason eleven.
Enough with the doom and gloom about homeownership.
Sure, maybe there’s more pain to come in the housing market. But when Time magazine starts running covers that declare “Owning a home may no longer make economic sense,” it’s time to say: Enough is enough. This is what “capitulation” looks like. Everyone has given up.
The Sept. 6 cover of Time magazine: This is what capitulation looks like.
After all, at the peak of the bubble five years ago, Time had a different take. “Home Sweet Home,” declared its cover then, as it celebrated the boom and asked: “Will your house make your rich?”
But it’s not enough just to be contrarian. So here are 10 reasons why it’s good to buy a home.
1. You can get a good deal. Especially if you play hardball. This is a buyer’s market. Most of the other buyers have now vanished, as the tax credits on purchases have just expired. We’re four to five years into the biggest housing bust in modern history. And prices have come down a long way– about 30% from their peak, according to Standard & Poor’s Case-Shiller Index, which tracks home prices in 20 big cities. Yes, it’s mixed. New York is only down 20%. Arizona has halved. Will prices fall further? Sure, they could. You’ll never catch the bottom. It doesn’t really matter so much in the long haul.
Where is fair value? Fund manager Jeremy Grantham at GMO, who predicted the bust with remarkable accuracy, said two years ago that home prices needed to fall another 17% to reach fair Read more
Urban savant Joel Kotkin in Forbes magazine:
What we are going through now is not a sea change but a correction from insane government and business practices. The rise in homeownership from 44% in 1944 to nearly 70% at the height of the bubble reflected a great social democratic achievement. But by the mid-2000s government attempts to expand ownership–eagerly embraced by Wall Street speculators–brought in buyers who would have historically been disqualified.
In some markets, prices exploded as people moved up too quickly into ever more expensive housing. Housing inflation was further exacerbated by “smart growth” policies, which limited new home construction in suburban areas and instead promoted dense, “transit oriented” housing with limited market appeal and economic logic.
Rather than artificially constraining supply and protecting irresponsible borrowers, we should let nature take its course. Home values need to readjust historic balance between incomes and prices. Over the past 60 years, notes demographer Wendell Cox, it took two to three years or less of median household income to purchase a median-priced home. At the peak of the boom, that ratio had ballooned to 4.6.
The disequilibrium was the worst in regions like Los Angeles, Las Vegas, San Bernardino-Riverside and Miami. At the peak of the bubble, between 2006 and 2008, according to the National Homebuilders Association- Wells Fargo “Housing Opportunity Index,” barely 2% of families with a median income households in Los Angeles could afford to buy a median priced home; even in the traditionally affordable Riverside area, the number was roughly 7%. In Miami, barely 10% could afford such a purchase; in Las Vegas, often seen as one of the cheaper markets, only 15%.
What a difference a market correction makes. The affordability number for Los Angeles is now 34%, 17 times better than two years ago, while Riverside is now near 70%. Miami’s affordability picture has improved to over 60% while in Las Vegas, it’s back over 80%.
These lower prices–not Wall Street or federal gimmickry–will lure new buyers to the places that some new urbanists have predicted will be “the next slums.” Already there’s evidence in places like Miami of a renewed interest in Read more
I wrote an offer for a young couple who wished to purchase the home they were renting. The buyer and seller had already discussed a price of $400,000 before agents got involved. (The seller thought it wise that both parties be represented, which is when I came into the picture along with an agent for the seller.) I comp’d the home and the area: $400,000 was a stretch. But the buyers liked the property, wanted an extra large master bedroom (which this home had) and wanted to avoid the cost and hassle of moving. Fair enough; I’ve fulfilled my responsibility of providing accurate and professional counsel regarding value and the buyers have made an informed and justifiable decision.
We wrote the offer for $400,000 with 3% seller concessions for the repairs that the seller had already acknowledged. The listing agent scoffed. It seems she had advised her client the property, with a little cosmetic improvement, would sell for the mid $400s. Brilliant. Real Estate is by no means rocket science, but the ability to properly value a property and understand comparables is a skill and not every agent is adept. I sent along a 3 page analysis of comparables and pricing to buttress our offer. Seller came back at $410,000 with $10,000 in concessions. Once again I advised my clients that, in my professional opinion, the price was greater than the value, but the mitigating factors were enough for them to justify accepting the contract. Which they did. I agreed to a 2% commission as my work load was less and the listing agent admitted to me that she was working for only 1% as her work load was greatly diminished. And we all lived happily ever after, right? No…
In California, the standard contract calls for the loan contingency to be removed in 17 days. (This bit of paint-by-numbers idiocy came about during the hey-day of real estate when anyone with a pulse could get a loan. In the current economic market, it’s only purpose is to expose which agents are inexperienced and clueless enough to put their clients at risk.) The buyers needed roughly three weeks for their funds to fully season so Read more
For those who want the Campbell’s Soup version of this post:
Not Really. It actually makes keyword research a little EASIER. 😉
For those inquiring minds who want to know why I am saying that, here’s my take. Google Instant does one thing and does it pretty well. As a person enters in a keyword phrase into Google, it suggests possible phrases based on the most common searches that have been done to date AND it shows the relevant results for that search on the fly. Here’s a screen shot or two of what I am talking about.
and then this one:
Okayfine. Let’s look at the finer details. I asked more than a few people to go to a search engine and start looking for a home in the Louisville area. Here are some things that I found out that they typically do. Mind you, I told these folks IN ADVANCE that Google had made a change and was suggesting phrases (and providing results) as they typed them in…
The results? The main behavior difference among them was that they would stop after a WORD and look to see what Google had suggested. NOT after a letter. That makes sense to me. So when someone starts typing “Louisville r “into the search bar in pursuit of Louisville real estate, they see Louisville Riverbats (our AAA team). When they type in the complete word Louisville real, it shows them the search results (and they REMARKABLY similar to Louisville Real Estates’ results)
So this would tend to suggest the effect that Chris Johnson indicated in his comment on John’s post…heading for shorter, more expensive KWs for those doing PPC. For those optimizing their site this is WAY too micro of a thing to worry about. The one percent of folks that truncate their search isn’t going to make or break more than a few clicks at most and CERTAINLY nothing in my opinion to sweat.
Let the dogs bark, the caravan moves on.
Another observation leading to this conclusion. Try typing in your city followed by homes. IF you hit the space bar AFTER homes, you will likely Read more
Say hello to Google Instant, launched overnight.
Go to Google. Type the letter “R” and Realtor.com appears in the search result list.No button click required. Keep typing and the search results change on the fly.
My first impression as a user is positive. It is just neat. As a geek, I marvel at the engineering and infrastructure required to pull this off for millions of simultaneous users. As a guy who helps real estate companies with SEO and SEM — I’m still figuring it out.
What is clear is that Google has fundamentally changed search, and quite possibly has raised the bar for search user experience — unless the novelty wears off and it becomes annoying.
What is far less clear is what this means for SEO and SEM.
TechCrunch has one of the more level and least speculative write ups on that….
SearchEngineLand, on the other hand, seem to be trying not to wet its pants…
“But a deed cannot be both wise and unintended.” Greg Swann
Substitute goal for deed, and it’s still a profoundly affecting thought. In the context of Greg’s post, one could reasonably assume deed could be construed as goal.
The thrust of the post talks about the tactic of exposing your goals to the ‘public’, or at least a person(s) you know. The thinking is that you will tend to be more motivated by the fear of others knowing you not only failed, but failed by lack of commitment or best effort.
Clearly their are two schools of thought on this.
One is the unstated but obvious conclusion that using fear in a positive manner, as a motivator, will keep some folks on track to achieve the announced goal. Others go farther than a mere announcement — they set up fiercely painful penalties for failure. One such case was the woman who’d failed spectacularly time after time to lose weight which was life threatening.
Apparently she gathered her closest friends together to tell them the penalty for failure — running naked down the street in front of her neighbors. In other words, she established a penalty so severe, that would cause so much pain, her motivation to avoid the pain superseded her motivation to extend her life by losin’ the damn weight.
Though not my approach, whatever works, right?
As I commented in Greg’s post, I am in some ways, almost, but not quite against my will, my father’s son. I’m a pretty private guy, but he was extremely so. When he set goals his wife was fortunate to be in the know. Not kidding.
It was his preference, and now mine too, that if one doesn’t have a strong enough desire to bring about what the achievement of any particular goal brings, they shouldn’t set the goal in the first place. It’s not a value judgment on others. It’s like losing weight, gettin’ in shape, and eating a healthy, well rounded diet. There’s no one correct way.
I believe in keepin’ my personal and business goals to myself because I don’t set goals Read more