Couldn’t Resist This Trulia Voices Question
… especially coming from a Canadian citizen. You can check the answer here. How say you, fair readers. Thumbs up? Thumbs down?
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What Did My Mom Say About Cows Giving Away Milk?
Actually that speech went to my sister. Being blessed with a Y chromosome I usually was search of the milk-givers and less concerned with those situations where purchasing the cow was a requirement.
Still, the analogy came to mind the last two days after viewing two questions on Trulia Voices:
“How do I find a tenant to rent out my downtown Phoenix condo when there are many other units available on craigslist?”
Some questions I’ll answer here. This one I won’t answer in either place for the simple reason that I’m being asked to give away my product - my expertise - for nothing. To me the question reads,
“I have no intention of hiring a real estate agent because I don’t want to surrender a small percentage of my gross rents but I want one to tell me how to rent our my condo when faced with competition.”
Thanks, but I’ll pass. Hire me and we’ll get it rented and probably not through craigslist.
Here’s another:
“Hi, I am looking for house at Gilbert. I got one for $300,000 - 2,000 square feet and it is a spec home. I want to confirm whether the value is okay or high at the market value.”
Read another way …
“Hi. I didn’t want to be troubled with hiring an agent to represent my best interests at a new build, instead trusting the sales people working for the builder to look out for me, too, as illogical as that may be, even though working with a buyers’ agent would have cost me nothing out of pocket.
“Now that I’m in this contract I’m not sure that I got the best possible price and would like someone, most likely a real estate agent, to tell me now if I got a good price even though their advice and expertise was useless to me before I got under contract.”
Again, best of luck to you.
Am I jaded? Perhaps. But it amazes me how many of those asking questions on Trulia Voices don’t see value in working with a real estate professional until discovering that it’s not always as easy as it seems. They won’t work with us up front but want one of us to help bail them out.
It doesn’t work that way. Our advice is no better later than it was at the beginning. Either decide you want that expertise or commit to going it alone. It’s almost like me trying to scale Mt. Humphreys solo before realizing halfway up that it’s a lot steeper than it looks. An experienced guide could have taken one look at me and the mountain and told me the truth, but I didn’t want that. I was convinced I knew what I was doing.
Now that realize I didn’t I want the same folks I had no use for before to effect a rescue.
Um, sorry. If you contact me directly, maybe I’ll do the same. But if you’re asking the question in such a public forum where it’s clear you only want the milk for free but still don’t really see the value, at least not enough value to pay for it, I’ll take the pass.
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Carnival of Real Estate 68
… is up at A Better Mortgage. We got a nod for our post, The Truth About NAR and Real Estate Licensing.
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What I’ve Learned from Canadian Real Estate Buyers in Phoenix
Culture often is derived from function. Such seems to be the case with much of what I’ve learned from my Canadian buyers over the past couple of weeks.
The first hint came a couple of weeks back when meeting one of my buyers’ folks at a property. There was a sign by the door asking everyone to remove their shoes. Jim pointed at the sign and said, “You Americans never have learned to take your shoes off.”
Growing up we had friends from our synagogue who wouldn’t allow shoes inside. They also tended to keep all the plastic wrap on their furniture, as did my grandmother. But the “no shoe” rule is due more to one fact of life in Canada unknown in the desert - precipitation, as well as it’s direct result, mud.
(One terrific side effect of the “no shoe” rule - seeing my buyer disappear into a bedroom and return wearing Lamb Chop slippers. That, my dear readers, was a first.)
Tracking mud through your neighbor’s home is a faux pas. Again, not something I’d think about here except maybe Thursday when it was raining on us every time we left the car.
Mud also leads to different views on floor plans. Most homes have some sort of small entry, usually tile but sometimes linoleum, just inside the front door. Maybe we’ll place a welcome mat on it but that’s as far as it goes. Not so for our northerly neighbors, where the entry becomes the eventual location of visitors’ shoes.
Coat closets also seem to have added importance for the exact same reason.
It also appears a beer fridge comes in handy for the Coors Light (not Labatt’s?), though given my personal ownership of said fridge (primarily for soda for the kids … really!) that may be a bit more universal.
If you happen to be one of the local agents who read this, feel free to disregard everything I’ve said here as the fanciful musings of a tired mind. In the interim, I’ve got to go find a good pair of sandals before my next two appointments this week.
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