That is my take on the NAR settlement: Losing buyer’s agent’s compensation from the MLS is a terrible thing for buyers, which in turn will hurt sellers.
But: Even so: Because the buyer’s agent’s commission is now a marketing differentiator, placing the ad you see above in a flyer frame in each of my listed homes will give my sellers a leg up on their competition.
It’s against the rules for buyer’s agents to shop by commission, but it is my perfect right to let them know that Bloodhound Realty, at least, has them covered.
I wrote about the NAR settlement in greater depth in an article I sent to the Independent. If they don’t care for it, I’ll post it here.
Meanwhile: A good listing agent is the best bargain in real estate, surfacing for the seller the highest attainable net return from the buyer least likely to fail to perform, all in the least amount of time – the highest/safest/soonest offer.
And the second-best bargain in residential real estate is an experienced buyer’s agent: Literally paid just for the introduction to their buyers, yet shepherding them through every step of the process, startling long before we sign a contract, and then making sure every hurdle in the escrow process is overleapt on time.
The bottom line is the bottom line: If you got less than you wanted – of anything! – you overpaid. If your results were better than you expected – tell your friends and family!
“The opposite of anarchy is warfare, and the war is on at Duffeeland Dog Park.”
A Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Willie story
Sun City, June 27, 2013
This is a story about how the world gets shittier and shittier – utterly unnecessarily – one stinky little turd at a time.
“Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?” Thus spake Commandante Clipboard, the Sun City Recreation Center’s micro-minion charged with annoying people and their dogs at the Duffeeland Dog Park.
His is not my first clipboard – hell is heaven after it was reorganized by busybodies with clipboards – so I said, “I think I need to pass on that opportunity.”
“Okaythen,” he forged ahead obliviously, “Can I ask where–uh… Wuh– ?”
“I said, no, I would rather you did not ask me any questions.”
I was there with Naso, of course, and we had stayed too late in the day. It used to be that the park was open twenty-four hours a day, but since the Rec Center took it over locks and chains and orders backed by threats are the order of the day.
“But I have to know if you belong here.”
“Now there’s a topic fit for a philosopher. I am imminent, surely, but does my imminence make me immanent? But, really, practically speaking, addressing such subjects is no path to eminence, much less prominence, and I speak from a lifetime of experience.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Commandante Clipboard was getting steamed, and I confess to taking a certain satisfaction from this particular flavor of petty vengeance.
“I’m trying to help you determine if I belong here. I would argue that my presence is an existential instantiation of a contingent, temporary inevitability: I am here by my own free choice, but while I am here I am incontrovertibly here, I am not anywhere else, and no one else is where I am. If that doesn’t equate to belonging here, then you’ll have to do your own homework.”
“Sir. What is your full name?”
I said, “Nescio Nomen” – which means ‘I don’t know my name’ in Latin. I was helpful enough to spell things out for him.
But the trouble with being a smart ass is that people can get the idea you’re cooperating with them. “Can I see your Rec Center card?”
“I expect you can. You don’t show any signs of impaired vision.” That was a canard on my part. I tried being formally polite. I tried being a smart ass. What could be an easier sell in Sun City than an addle-pated old geezer?
“Mister Nomen, will you please show me your Recreation Centers of Sun City membership card?”
“Nope. I don’t have my wallet with me, but I don’t have your card in there, anyway. And I would not choose to show it to you if I had it plastered to my ass and could kill two birds with one stone. If you want to put me off this land, go get a gun or a cop. Until you do, I’ll thank you to leave me alone.”
What puts the shit into a little turd? Authority without accountability. What brings the shit out of that little turd by the geyserload? Holding him accountable anyway. Before he could latch onto a handle to fly off of, I said, “Let me talk for a minute, and then let’s see if we can make a deal, okay?”
I didn’t wait for him to respond, I just launched into my schtick. “This park used to be the perfect anarchy, a little piece of paradise in the midst of the mundane. One man owned it as his own private property, and he shared it with his neighbors – with anyone who loves dogs and wants what’s best for them. And the people and their dogs loved him and they loved this park and they took care of it like it was their own.
“And this is the only dog park in all of Phoenix where there is decent shade. And Duffeeland was the cleanest dog park in The Valley, even though most of the people who come here aren’t all that spry. And the park was open all hours, and it was safe to come here anytime. We’ve met a lot of interesting people here after midnight, and more than once my wife and I have made out on a bench while Naso here took in her late-night sniff.
“But then the owner sold the land and the Rec Center bought it, and everything has been downhill since then. Chained up all night, right away, even though the night-time is the right time for a desert dog to take exercise. And then the signs came and the threats and the fines and recriminations. It’s not ours any longer, it’s yours – and it shows. The dog shit’s starting to pile up, but that’s just a symptom. The people here used to be a ‘we’ – a loose-knit family. Now they’re an ‘us’ – because you’re ‘them.’ The opposite of anarchy is warfare, and the war is on at Duffeeland Dog Park.
“But think: Before one man owned the park and everyone valued it. Now everyone owns it and no one values it. Before a group of people who got along perfectly worked together joyously in pursuit of the values they shared together. Now there are spoils up for grabs and power to be seized and innocent people to be shamed and bullied and milked and pit against each other, and the spirit of family – this thing that we do together means more to me than something else I might do instead – that spirit is all but gone from Duffeeland. It vanishes every time people try to supplant force for persuasion, coercion for cooperation, warfare for anarchy…”
To this he said nothing. My guess is he was bored. Sun City is full of amazing people – people who built business empires, people who won wars – but the young idiots who do the scut work around here quite literally have no way of comprehending that greatness. An ant could climb all the way to the top of a skyscraper and yet never catch a clue of what he’s doing, so it just won’t do to ask him to evaluate giants.
I said, “Here’s my thinking: The Rec Center is essentially a homeowner’s association, so its real job is to sustain the value of the real estate. How would you do that? By making people feel welcome, at home, delighted to be here. Is there anything in the ways that people react to you that makes you think they are delighted to see you show up?”
I held up my hand. “Don’t answer. I’m over my quota on lies for the day. In the long run, warfare will win here. You will drive people so crazy, they’ll stop coming to Duffeeland, and then the Rec Center will sell the land as a matter of fiscal prudence. In five years, this will just be another drive-through pharmacy, with access from both directions. Sic transit gloria mundi.
“But here’s my deal: My dog is dying. I’m here until she dies, and then I’m gone with the monsoon winds. I’ll be back to Sun City, but I’ll never be back to Duffeeland. Now it happens that this big, gangly Bloodhound bitch is the queen of this particular dog park. Everyone loves her, and she loves everyone. If you want to make a big show of throwing your weight around, you can endure the shrieks of three-dozen angry grannies. Or, instead, you can forget all about me for two more weeks, and then we’ll both work hard to forget each other forever. Sound like a plan?”
He was looking away, deliberately not making eye contact. Nobody likes to back down, but I’m betting he could guess how much more he had to lose in a dog park war than I ever would. After a long time he turned to me and said, “You have yourself a nice evening, Mister Nomen.”
I didn’t fix anything, don’t kid yourself. I’ve talked my way out of the endless shit that oozes out of officious shitheads all my life, but I’m sure it’s because I just don’t look quite like food to them. But warfare is conducted by people, and people can be swayed. I don’t love it that I have to defend myself from petty thugs, but I love it that I can do it when I need to.
So I smiled, and I really tried to put some warmth into it. “Happy Independence Day.”
]]>The Sun City Business is a topic I want to return to: How Sun City’s citizens get taken. Of immediate moment is the advice in the headline.
Here is why you should carefully read the super-secret real estate agent’s print-out of the listing for your home: There are six Active listings in Sun City right now that are not denoted as being Age-Restricted, even though they are, of course.
Why does that matter? Anyone who is searching for homes by Age-Restricted status is not seeing those listings at all.
There are Gemini/Twin homes marketed as Single-Family Detached houses and an enormous number of Town/Patio homes listed as Apartment Style condos.
Agents will typically search within a subdivision or by using a map-based search, so they are likely to see everything. But people making their choices about which homes to see from Zillow or another portal can filter badly-listed homes right out of their visibility.
Everything counts, and any mistakes will be paid for by you, not your listing agent – in money but most especially in time. Take the time to read your home’s listing carefully.
I have a hotsheet for the first time in my career – a daily report on real estate activity in a specific place – in my case within that odd blue shape in the illustration. I call that space 99 Bells, everything age-restricted west of 99th Avenue to the river, south of Bell Road but north of Grand Avenue.
That’s where I live, where I ‘farm’ for listings and where I am most interested in what is going on. So now I get up in the wee hours every morning to see what happened yesterday.
It’s been an eye-opener, to say the truth. I am an avid student of listing mistakes, so there is plenty for me to work with every day. I’ve been studying Sun City listing agents for months, but the hotsheet focuses my attention where – and upon whom – it matters.
So here’s a simple mistake, literally repeated daily, one you can use to test potential agents:
“What’s the best day of the week to post a new listing – or to make a price reduction, should that be necessary?”
There is a right answer, and worse than not knowing it is showing that you don’t know it by making those MLS entries on the worst possible days.
If you follow along with me, I will show you how to get your own home sold faster and for more money. Half the battle, at least, is knowing what not to do…
]]>Come see us Saturday. We have no Bloodhounds, alas, but Cleo the Adorable French Bulldog will be out greeting people.
Here’s a 30-day live look into the MLS listing.
This is a great property. Someone you know should buy it. Better still, you should hire me to market your Sun City home with the same thoughtful attention.
I am Cassandra: I wrote a long thread on Twitter last fall on how to list a home so it will sell for top-dollar on the first weekend. The response? Crickets. The truth is that most real estate agents are very bad at selling homes, by my standards, and yet all of them are convinced they have nothing new to learn.
Here’s the way the world works: The only remaining marketing channel for a residential listing is the MLS – by way of sites like Zillow and Realtor.com. I do everything I can think of to supplement the listing, but, in a world where no one looks up from the cell phone, the cell phone is the only way you have to reach buyers.
Hence: More than ever, real estate is not just a marketing praxis but a publishing job: To be effective, the listing must make your home’s ultimate buyer crave the property. The analogy of the Christmas Wish Book is spot on: If I can get you to peruse my listing over and over again – you’re not looking at anyone else’s.
And that’s my job. Over time, we’ll talk more about how I work; as noted, I have no fear of my competitors learning anything from me. For now, take this away: The listing is the invitation to the showing, and the showing to the offer. The marketing strategy that works is the one that gets buyers off their phones and into your home – before anyone else can steal it away.
Urgency. Fear of Missing Out. Sold. And it all starts with the MLS listing…
This post marks a soft relaunch of this web site. I’m marketing for new business for the first time in 14 years, and we’ll celebrate with a new Sun City listing later this week.
Jump over to the About page to see what’s what. The Cliff’s Notes is simply this: I want to list your Sun City home, when you’re ready to sell, and I would love to have the opportunity to show you why I am the better choice: Better results in time and money, yielding better net returns in your pocket at Closing.
Call me: 602-740-7531. I can do better, and I can prove it.
Arizona is reopening – like it or don’t. We never shut down as much as other states, and businesses are opening back up now, with the leader of our V-formation of geese racing to keep up.
So far, we have had no notices of tenants in trouble. That’s day-to-day until things settle down, but we’re over 25% guaranteed income, and we shop hard for income stability on the way in. Cross your fingers, we won’t have a problem.
Over the past year, I’ve warned that we were nearing the top of our market, so the choice was to sell or risk another turn of the wheel. We haven’t actually crested even yet, but Notices of Default will start hitting mailboxes soon, so we could be looking at another glut of listings shortly. Still a good market to sell into, but that may not last long from here, and, sadly, we may be looking at bargain-basement buys again before long.
And yet: The future’s so bright… Vertical, high-density, transit-dependent real estate development will suffer nationwide from here, where the kind of Arizona homes you already own will profit immensely from America’s rediscovery of open spaces, fresh air and unlimited (ahem!) sunlight. I anticipate much higher than normal population growth over the next few years – to the benefit of every current property owner.
So you know, my biggest day-to-day concern is the ongoing landscaping problem, and that’s a good way to manage your worries from afar: The virus and the response have hurt the state, but not us, and our concerns are largely unchanged from two months ago.
I hope every bit of news in your life is this good.
Best,
Greg
]]>They’re anarchic linear urban forests, profiting best from neglect, but they are an accessible wilderness in the city. Just breathe…
]]>Here’s a sample to get us started: iBuyers can’t close. Their ineptitude is your opportunity.
]]>What goes down will come back up – perhaps costing you tens of thousands of dollars on your loan qualification amount.
Ready to commit? Cathleen and Maddie have time available for a few motivated buyers: 602-740-7531.
There are always good reasons for waiting. The inevitable turning of the mortgage interest rate tide is a strong goad to act now. If you miss out on this opportunity, you might not see another one like it for a long time.
]]>Everything that makes homes seem so affordable right now is a reflection of our insanely low interest rates. Every bump in those rates will cut the amount of house you can afford to buy – or commit more of your income to housing and less to the rest of your life.
If you’ve been thinking about making your move – tick tock.
]]>Because the mortgage interest-rate trend illustrated in that chart won’t last forever. There are other good reasons to make your move now, if moving’s on your mind, but these rates make a $200,000 home cheaper than the rent on half that much house.
There’s this, too: When rates turn upward, that will put a damper on already wilted demand, so we may be at the de facto top of this market swing. Prices have been stalled, as best, over the last year.
Washington does want to re-inflate the housing bubble. That’s the reasoning behind all the everything-old-is-new-again exotic loan products, including 3% FHA-beaters from Fannie and Freddie.
But at the same time, both mortgage-interest-deductibility and residential capital-gains deferment are political footballs always in play.
As matters of abstract economics, all of this is destructive, market machinations devised to churn the residential real estate market to no productive benefit.
But as matters of personal financial strategy, events like these provide a useful guide of when and how to act.
Ergo: If you plan to move up in the near future, the future is now:
1. If you have a house to sell, low interest rates increase your buyer pool. It’s a buyer’s market, so you’re going to sell for what you can get, but qualified buyers are out there for turn-key-livable homes,
2. Whatever mortgage you qualify for, you qualify for a lot of house. To be a seller in a buyer’s market is no fun. To be a buyer is a delight. The house you’re looking for is the one that can be home to you for a long time, if necessary. Your payment will be very low. You’re looking for a home that will make you love that loan payment just that much more.
3. Manage your cash. Low-down loans are bad for the economy, long-term, but they may be very good for you. You don’t want more house than you can afford, but you may want the house that will be perfect for you after a few years of concentrated rehab. In this golden moment, you have options about where to put your money, with Uncle Sam practically begging you to put your accumulated equity into other investments.
My take? Let’s dance. We list strong, to get our houses under contract quickly and for top dollar. We work with great lenders who can get you the most money for you money. And we can get you moved into the home you know you’ll be needing for your family in the years ahead.
There may not be another move-up moment this perfect anytime soon. Call me at 602-740-7531 and let’s get busy today.
]]>The holidays mean different things to different people, but they mean something special to well-prepared home-buyers:
When holly is in the air, it’s a great time to pick off bargains from motivated sellers.
It’s easy to understand why: All the other buyers are tied up with their holiday preprations. Inventories have been rising for more than a year, and some sellers need to make a deal NOW.
Who?
• Folks who want to account for their proceeds on this year’s taxes, not next year’s.
• New home builders who want their spec homes closed out on this year’s books.
• People who are sick of waiting and want to get on to the next chapter in their lives.
A well-crafted aggressive offer can make all the difference in a market like this one. Little things to take away the seller’s fears can make a huge difference.
As with everything in real estate, strategy matters. Give us a call – 602-740-7531 – and let’s talk about getting you moved.
]]>No. In a few months, when the wildflowers bloom, it will be even more breathtaking…
Live where it snows? Had enough? Isn’t it time to get your Winter back?
]]>How can this be so? The long answer is long and boring, but the short answer yields a comprehensive truth in only two words: Market volatility.
We were a slow leak on the way down, until all of a sudden we were a fast leak. And then, just as suddenly, the market surged upward, gaining back a lot of lost price-pressure very quickly.
The result? If you bought a house in Phoenix or its suburbs within the past two or three years, it could be possible for you to sell that home and actually pocket some cash on the deal.
How much money could you scrape off the table?
It could be a lot, actually. We’re getting ready to list a property where we expect the sellers to more than double their 20% down-payment in less than 15 months, total, since they closed on the home.
Your mileage will vary, of course, but you only need to beat your original purchase price by 7% or so to put yourself in the black — and home values are up more than 30% over the past year.
Okay, so you might be able to sell at a profit. Why would you do it? And why now?
The why is your question to answer: To move up to a better home, to move down to a house you can own free-and-clear, to move on to another part of the country, to get your money out of housing and put it into a business — your reasons are your own.
But why now? Because supplies of homes are very low, demand is insanely high — and because neither of these circumstances can last forever.
It could be that we’re back on the appreciation track for the foreseeable future, in which case holding out for higher prices makes sense.
But it also could be that the recent upsurge in prices is the eye of the hurricane, and continued foreclosures combined with other bad economic news could push home values down yet again.
I don’t know which will happen — but I know that no one else knows either.
But if you have a reason to sell your Phoenix-area home, we can make it sell quickly and for top dollar right now. If you want to explore your possibilities — and calculate your potential profits — drop me a line.
]]>Lender-owned homes are sold like a grab-bag of garbage, take it or leave it. And while short-sellers might want to do a better job of marketing, typically they just don’t have the cash needed to do the job properly.
But now many homeowners in Phoenix, Scottsdale, Paradise Valley and the suburbs of Metropolitan Phoenix have equity in their homes. They have a chance to make some money when they put their homes up for sale.
And that little fact makes all the difference…
Why would you want to mount a serious marketing effort to sell your home? To sell it faster, for more money, with less hassle and to a better-qualified buyer.
Marketing always matters, but when the seller has equity on the closing table, a good marketing effort can pay off at $10 to $1 — or better.
We wrote the book on selling homes in Phoenix, a comprehensive, deeply detailed guide on what works and what doesn’t. If you’re thinking about selling, let’s talk about why marketing your home for sale can make all the difference.
]]>Meanwhile, the town is being picked clean, with prices being bid up by buyers convinced that houses are going out of style — a story we’ve heard before, yes?
As an example, my BargainBot search, which is shared with hundreds of investors all over the world, is at less than 5% of it’s peak. A search I use to select premium rental homes produces one listing this morning, where it stood at 45 homes in April of 2011.
If Fannie and Freddie “sell” the homes they own to politically-connected “investors,” the rental market in Phoenix will be slaughtered.
And if they release the homes they have been hoarding into the MLS, Phoenix will hit a third bottom before the market can finally recover.
You can call the news media idiots or you can call them liars. But any news from any official source about Phoenix real estate is dangerously misleading.
Meanwhile, if you need to sell, your house will go for top-dollar at blinding speed.
]]>The photo is from a house Cathy closed on Wednesday, a get-away-from-it-all mini-mansion way out in the desert. That’s what they call a street, when you get that far out. You can measure how clean the air is by the definition of my shadow, maybe sixty feet away. On the way home, we saw a yearling coyote on Dear Valley Road.
Our annual late summer “monsoon” is being pushed out of the Valley of the Sun by very hot, dry weather rolling in from the Mohave Desert. Within the next couple of weeks, we will shift back to the dry heat that makes Phoenix so perfect all winter long.
]]>That’s a pretty simple ethic, a hard target to miss. And it is the philosophy we will deploy as we enter the property management business.
Despite many requests from our investors over the years, we’ve avoided doing this, primarily because we have never liked the way that other companies handle property management. Real estate is an active pursuit, best undertaken out in the world, where property managers have always seemed to me to be much too interested in working office hours and taking weekends and holidays off.
But that creates a market niche, doesn’t it?
We bring years of careful thinking to our representation of suburban Phoenix rental home investors. We go to great pains to find the right houses in the right neighborhoods, homes that will rent easily and stay rented to premium tenants, and then we prepare those homes to make sure they will be appealing to those tenants. I don’t blow smoke up anyone’s nose, and I don’t let the investors I work with make profit-killing mistakes. We have gotten so good at this, over the years, that the homes we are involved in routinely command the highest tier of rents, among comparable properties, attracting their first tenants in less than twenty days on market.
And we want to bring that same level of commitment to the property management business. We know what we don’t like, in the way this business has been done until now in metropolitan Phoenix, and we know what we would want done, if we were the landlords or the tenants. So now we’re going to put our philosophy to the test, to see if we can’t reinvent property management, just as we have reinvented investor representation.
We’re starting with one house, a four-bedroom ranch home in Avondale’s Coldwater Springs. We represented the buyer in the purchase of the home, and we got it at a deeply discounted price, because no one else wanted it.
Handyman of Phoenix Mark Deermer whipped the home into shape, and we were able to put in on the MLS system just a week after we had closed escrow.
Do you want to take a moment to sharpen your pencil? The home was leased for two years at full price in twelve days on market. We got $1,050 per month in rent, even though there are two competing homes in Coldwater Springs in that exact same floorplan languishing on the market at $995 and $895 a month. We had our choice of applicants, and the house was showing so much I took the lockbox off once we signed the lease.
Your mileage may vary, of course. Every house is unique, and no one hits a home-run every time at bat. But we’ve always been able to select and prepare houses that rent well and stay rented, and we are confident that we can apply the same kind of intelligence and diligence to the job of keeping our tenants happy and our landlords profitable.
Even so, this is a work-in-progress, and we’re boot-strapping the business, rather than trying to take on hundreds of properties all at once. But the systems we’re putting in place will be unprecedented in the Phoenix real estate market. As an example, every landlord and every tenant will have a page on our computer system. Tenants can log-on to post maintenance requests — or to pay their rent electronically. Landlords can check into the system to see an up-to-the-minute accounting of their funds. Every dollar of inflow and outflow will be accounted for on-line, with instantaneous posting. No more waiting to find out where your money is. No more float games with your proceeds.
There’s more — and more to come. You can see our Property Management Agreement by clicking this link. We’ll be working with the court-tested Arizona Association of Realtors Rental Lease, modifying its terms with our custom Lease Addendum, which you can review by clicking this link. The bottom line is, we’re going to do property management the way it’s never been done in greater Phoenix — happy landlords, happy tenants, happy neighbors.
I would love to talk to you more about this. We can discuss taking on the management of your existing rental properties, when their current management contracts come up for renewal. Better yet, we can go out shopping for suburban Phoenix rental homes and put them under Bloodhound Realty’s management from the first tenant. If you want to explore your opportunities, contact me by email or give me a call at 602-740-7531.
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