The Odysseus Medal: “We can see the bottom through clearing water”

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Actions have consequences. When we became a group weblog, I set my sights on the very best writers. We haven’t recruited actively until recently, but, even so, a lot of the most talented voices in the RE.net have ended up writing here. Three of this week’s short list of thirteen nominated posts came from BloodhoundBlog, and I cut mercilessly to get down to three. Worse (better!), four more of the thirteen were written by BloodhoundBlog contributors working from their home weblogs. And this week — for the first but probably not the last time — all three winners come from the Bloodhound kennel. I would apologize for that, except that would require me to apologize for having the wit to pick out good writers in the first place!

All that said, The Odysseus Medal this week goes to Brian Brady for 2008 Housing Market Outlook For U.S. Investors:

While astute investors will have a virtual plethora of homes to buy, in the first half of 2008, they shouldn’t be PAINFULLY picky. Investors should be judicious but painfully picky is a sure-fire way to ensure that no deal will ever make sense. The shift in housing next year will put an upward pressure on rents, over the next five years, as the percentage of home ownership declines from its national high. It is conceivable, in the transition markets of Southern California, Arizona, Nevada, and Florida, that rents could rise as much as 20%, in the next five years, as those former homeowners lease homes. The long-term fundamentals of these markets still make sense. More people move to those locales than leave each year so steady population growth is on an investor’s side.

While the forecast for 2008 is grim, there are silver linings amidst this black cloud. Investors will have opportunities to own great properties if they understand that while we may not be touching the bottom, we can see the bottom through clearing water. Investors should analyze property investments and consider purchase offers with both economic and utilitarian values in mind. In the aforementioned Phoenix example, digging your heels in and proclaiming that "the property ain’t worth a dime over $130,000" is futile. Understanding that a range of $130,000 to $170,000 is reasonable will allow an investor to negotiate towards the middle of the range and pick up a bargain.

Rather than leverage investments with low down payments, property investors should consider 20% or even as much as 25% down payments to limit negative cash flow. As rents expand and prices firm up, lending guidelines will loosen and remortgaging to withdraw cash, for another property investment, will be available in 2-3 years.

Today, we can feel the bottom amidst the muddy waters. Tomorrow, we’ll be able to see it as those waters clear. Next year, we may very well have touched bottom and will be floating towards the surface; we just won’t know it until we’ve come up for air.

This week’s Black Pearl Award was won by Kris Berg for The Real Reason Your Agent Should be Blogging:

In the good old days, a large part of the agent’s value was his network, and this network was entirely of the terra firma variety; office meetings, broker pitch sessions and flesh-to-flesh encounters were how the relationships were built. An agent’s network still has value today, make no mistake, and these traditional ways of establishing professional relationships still apply, but our networking capability is virtually unlimited as we move online.

The MLS is no longer functionally proprietary, so we network for different reasons. No longer is it necessary for us to deal our listings from our secret deck to other agents in order to match our respective buyer and seller clients, and this is a good thing. It is forcing us to reconsider where our true value is, and actually has always been – in our intellectual property.

If you see blogging as purely a lead generation tool, then you will argue that a blog which attracts a large number of industry eyes and involves primarily discussion among agents is a self-absorbed waste of time. On the contrary, this is modern day networking at its finest. We share our unique philosophies, systems, business approaches, and our experiences. My knowledge base has become infinitely broader as a result of this shop talk, and consumers following the conversation not only learn along with me but gain insight into my qualifications and commitment to my work. They are not leads; they are potential employers, and this is my resume.

Cathleen Collins is my wife, as essential to my being as my eyes or my hands. Even so, faithfulness to me means fidelity to principle, not to people. To be loyal to a person is a practical expression of loyalty to the idea. Anything else is corruption. So I would not have a problem giving my wife one of these awards, should the circumstances warrant it. But I don’t have to in this circumstance, because y’all did it for me: The winner of this week’s People’s Choice Award is Cathleen Collins for Memories of my Dad in the house he never got to see:

I thought about last summer, when we were making our plans to list this house. We had already seen the house and were just waiting for the tenants to move out on August 15. I knew it wanted a mid-century modern theme and had been watching craigslist for just the right accessories. I described my scavenger hunt to my father to pass the time while we waited in the ER the Thursday before the house was free to start our work. And the week we started preparing Oregon for market, the same week my dad slipped into an unconsciousness he’d never recover from, I’d spend the nights at the VA, describing my day’s work, convinced that my words would find their way into his memory and comfort him with the familiarity of their sound. Until I sat down to write this post I had forgotten that I hadn’t actually discussed the house with my father, that the “conversation” had been my voice alone.

It was raining — as it is today — the Saturday before our first open house on Oregon. My crew and I had been out in the neighborhood as the day dawned. I needed to finish distributing the invitations before my one o’clock meeting with the head of MICU. I sat there muddy from the morning’s work as the doctor told my family that Dad would never come home again, even if he miraculously lived. Summer ended the day my dad was buried. Five more open houses and the house was under contract. My memories of the last days of my father’s life will forever be tied up in my memories of that smart little house. I guess the melding of stories like the death of my dad and the sale of the house on Oregon is how family legends develop. The legends that families everywhere remember as they empty and ready their old homes for the new buyers to create memories of their own.

Nota bene: If you didn’t check out this week’s nominees for The Odysseus Medal, you should. As always, if you stumble onto the grace of the ages, nominate it.

Deadline for next week’s competition is Sunday at 12 Noon MST. You can nominate your own work or any post you admire here.

Congratulations to the winners — and to everyone who participated.

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