Yes, I read some of the bubble blogs. Some are well-written and provide good information for consumers trying to figure out what’s happening with the real estate market. Others spend so much time assigning blame and encouraging readers to hide behind anonymity that they add nothing to the conversation.

Sadly, some of the most read are of the latter variety.

What truly amazes me is the utter lack of responsibility assumed in the posts. Everything that is taking place in real estate is the fault of real-estate professionals.

• Realtors are the reason the market rose.
• Realtors are the reason prices are coming down.
• Realtors are responsible for mortgage fraud, even though the majority of us don’t work on the lending side.
• Realtors sent the speculators out in droves to purchase homes (often from home builders who weren’t co-operating with agents … oh wait, that fact doesn’t belong here.)

Why is it our fault? If you read some of the bubble bloggers it’s because the public as a whole lacks the capacity to fend off a sales pitch. Some agent says “real estate always goes up” and the public buys in sufficient numbers to send prices sky-high.

If this actually was the chain of events, then why is it not still working? Has the mind-meld broken? Telepathy being blocked by a solar flare? Seriously, give me a reason.

It’s moronic. And it should be insulting, and probably would be if anyone would take a pause from the adulation to read between the lines.

Buyers and sellers make the decisions, some with the advice of real estate professionals and some without. I’m fairly confident few real estate transactions have taken place with the real estate agent’s revolver planted in a consumer’s lower back. Or even with a buyer’s arm twisted at an odd angle.

Of course, none of us ought to be surprised. It would take too much work to figure out what actually happened. Better to just blame a group of people for no apparent reason and make them the scapegoat for all ills. There’s no harm in that, right?

UPDATED: I had seen this post earlier and intended to include it in this post but went off on a tangent and never returned. Could a Realtor have helped protect this seller? There’s a good chance …
Technorati tags: phoenix arizona, phoenix arizona real estate, bubble

Popularity: 12% [?]

Share This

Tags: Phoenix Market, General Real Estate, Tips for Sellers, Tips for Buyers by Jonathan Dalton
1 Comment »

Last night I was barbecuing some pork chops - one of these jumbo packs you can pick up at Costco - so there were two rotations of meat. Yes, I was out at the barbecue in 50-degree weather and occasional rain. Such is my contribution to the household’s cooking effort.

When the first batch finished, I put the chops on a plate and, wary of the greedy looks on Tobey’s face, put the plate on the center of our ping-pong table. (Where it nearly was cooler than our refrigerator.) After all, I only had 10 minutes and the second round of chops would be done. And Tobey, despite being the taller of the two types of beagles (not to mention fatter), wouldn’t be able to leap onto a full-size ping-pong table with his stubby beagle legs.

Imagine my surprise a few minutes later when I discover Tobey standing on the ping-pong table with a pork chop in his mouth and two others already down his gullet. He had used the lawn mower as a lamp and climbed onto the table (from which he couldn’t exit without assistance or a broken leg.)

The lesson: he’s a pig. The second lesson: never underestimate the power of an animal.

This second lesson also applies to real estate. For those of us who own dogs or cats or birds of whatever, we rarely think twice about our animal’s presence in our own home. But this may not be the case for a buyer debating whether to purchase your home. Maybe they are one of the millions of folks allergic to cats. Or maybe they just don’t like animals.

It’s going to make your home a tougher sell. Not that you need to get rid of your animals should you list your house, but you need to be aware of the challenge and do everything possible to minimize your pets’ presence.
Animals also can hinder a real-estate sale if they hinder a buyer’s ability to see a home. While in a perfect world we as listing agents and sellers always would receive a couple of hours’ notice that a home’s going to be shown, that often isn’t the case.

And if you’re in a market such as Phoenix, where there are a lot of homes available, a buyer and his agent likely will start with the vacant homes on a lockbox without Cujo waiting behind the front door.

Again, selling your home doesn’t mean your pets have to disappear. But look at your home through a buyers’ eyes - both in terms of the pets’ presence and the convenience (or lack thereof) in viewing your home compared to others - and you may find crating or kenneling your pets may aid your sale.

Technorati tags: phoenix arizona, phoenix arizona real estate, real estate sellers tips, pets and real estate

Popularity: 12% [?]

Share This

Tags: General Real Estate, Tips for Sellers by Jonathan Dalton
1 Comment »

This afternoon I attended a demonstration of Imapp, the new tax-information system replacing Net Value Central’s system. Net Value Central allowed agents using the Arizona Regional Multiple Listing Service to (relatively) quickly access tax, sales and other data about a given home. Like NVC, Imapp uses data from the Maricopa County Assessor’s office but provides a decidedly slicker interface with a number of rather useful upgrades.

Enter a property into Imapp and rather than seeing a basic text-based page, you’re taken to a page anchored by a map highlighting MLS activity in the area. (Right now, anything in the MLS is shown meaning any activity over the last seven years will appear - it’s not a stretch to believe in many neighborhoods almost every house will be flagged for one reason or another. This was one of our group’s upgrade requests.)

The basic property information is the same as on NVC but the design of the page is much more user-friendly. Users can delete certain portions of the report, include others and also access information such as Flood Zones not currently available. And again, maps remain the page’s dominant feature.

As for searching capabilities, agents will be able to search for data either on the tax system or on the MLS while logged into the Imapp system - a duplication of effort, but not surprising from a group that has the local MLS contracts elsewhere nationally.

Best of all (at least to me and a few others), the system was designed by teckies who program with Mozilla Firefox in mind so there should be few to zero issues of pages and forms only working halfway before conking out.

What does this mean for agents? Once everyone gets the hang of the new system, there should be some definite efficiencies - for example, the new system culls comps for a user-defined time period and can offer raw suggested home valuations. (Zillow, anyone?) Agents would have to adjust for the usual factors but there’s a built-in starting point for a significant number of properties.

And for the general public? The ability to easily print and e-mail maps and data should add some transparency to the pricing process, helping sellers view the market more realistically and helping agents justify their pricing recommendations a little more easily.

We’ll add screen shots in a couple of days when they start to appear. I, for one can’t wait for the change to take effect.

imapp, phoenix arizona, phoenix arizona real estate, mls, armls, net value central, zillow, property valuation

Popularity: 15% [?]

Share This

Tags: Phoenix Market, General Real Estate, MLS, Tips for Sellers, Technology by Jonathan Dalton
2 Comments »

It’s a rainy day here in the Valley of the … um … Sun. Not nearly as dramatic as last week’s brief flirtation with snow (other areas actually had accumulations on the ground and not just the hair) but grey and dreary nevertheless.

A virtual tour photo shoot was scheduled for one of my listings this afternoon but almost certainly will be postponed. One of the truths of selling real estate in Phoenix is it helps if the pictures don’t make the home look like it’s in Seattle. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.)

Fortunately, in this case I have an understanding seller who realizes I’m not responsible for the weather. In other circumstances, I’ve not been as fortunate …

• The seller upset first at the lack of showings and then, once an agent shows the home, upset that the agent and buyer stayed only a minute before leaving (the floor plan wasn’t what the buyer wanted)
• The seller frustrated that the water stain on the living room ceiling killed a deal, even after they’d been advised to get the now-cosmetic damage fixed
• The seller frustrated that the buyer didn’t close on time because the lender didn’t have the loan docs to title on time (legitimate, but the seller’s only recourse was to cancel - not an option for someone already driving a moving truck)
• The seller upset that an agent knocked first, then started using the key in the lockbox only to find the seller really was home

All are legitimate frustrations but all are in some way out of a listing’s agent control. And they will remain so, at least until I perfect the Jedi mind trick.

The RealtyBaron recently posted Are All Realtors Liars and Cheats?, a creative hook to an article describing one agent’s customer service survey results. Though the article went a different direction, there likely were folks who saw the title and screamed “hell yeah!”

Many of them likely were members of the REBC - Real Estate Bubble Complex. (Trademark pending … if I’m going to be lumped in the REIC, dammit, they’re getting lumped too.)
Others, though, were simply folks who had a bad experience with their agent. Or at least perceived they did. Yes, there absolutely are some terrible examples of what an agent can and has done wrong in “assisting” their client. But perception often is colored by a buyer or sellers’ own expectations, right or wrong.

I once had a buyer who had a home inspection completed on a property but declined to ask for any repairs. After the close, he wanted the evaporative cooler to be fixed. The home warranty company declined. Why? There was a bird’s nest in the unit - this one had not been working for a very, very long time.

In this respect, real estate is like parenting. We can advise and share our experience but we can’t force a client to listen. We can’t even send them to their rooms or make them stand in a corner.

Of course, I haven’t tried it so maybe we can …

Technorati tags: phoenix arizona, phoenix arizona real estate, sellers, client expectations

Popularity: 13% [?]

Share This

Tags: Phoenix Market, General Real Estate, Tips for Sellers, Tips for Buyers by Jonathan Dalton
No Comments »

The latest edition of the Carnival of Real Estate has posted at My 1st Million at 33. Unfortunately, unbeknown to the carnival host, the article earning the top nod originally came from a Smart Money article and was plagiarized on the submitting blog. Add this to the ongoing debate about ownership of blog content and what constitutes legitimate republication.

As for the original content, there was a wide selection from which to choose:

• Maureen Francis tells us everything can be found on the Internet
• Mike’s Corner Web 2.0 has an interview with Ken Brand, who uses his blog as a management tool
• Real Estate Convergence says the glut of inventory gives buyers an upper hand. (No, really?)
• Renthusiast provides info on a UK company giving their definition of RE 2.0
• Transparent RE discusses the future for Cyberhomes
• Salt Lake Real Estate asks if Housing Panic is disingenuous
• And Bloodhound has The Right Time to Buy, an Investor’s Perspective

There were several others not mentioned here, so head over to My 1stM and check them out! (We’re not there … Tobey didn’t submit anything this week.)
Technorati tags: carnival of real estate, blogging

Popularity: 26% [?]

Share This

Tags: Real Estate Blogging, General Real Estate by Jonathan Dalton
5 Comments »