You can’t even make some of this stuff up.

Someone asked on Trulia Voices whether they’re better off purchasing a detached home or a townhouse here in the Phoenix real estate market, whether the townhouse “is less of an investment” than a single-family detached home.

Here’s an extremely helpful answer from an agent in Virginia …

your local real estate agent can advise you. do you have one? do you need a referral?

And you wonder why people don’t trust real estate agents. “I don’t have a real answer for you but can refer you to someone who can. Of course, I’ll make them pay me a portion of their commission for doing nothing more than making it clear that I’m a bottom feeder.”

Dignity, people. That’s all I’m saying.

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One of my favorite folks from Trulia Voices made another appearance the past couple of days. It seems the search for a bank owned property in Verrado has not gone well for Jane. Eight-six single-family detached homes have sold in Verrado, a master-planned community on Buckeye’s eastern edge, but Jane has not yet been able to get a home under contract after several months of trying.

The reason? Not the lowball offers, even as the bank owned market quickly became a sellers’ market with multiple offers. No, the issue here is the listing agents themselves.

EVERY time a foreclosure pops up for sale in this neighborhood, it seems like there are SEVERAL offers already made on the house BEFORE ANYONE else even gets the chance to bid. AND, I’m pretty sure MOST of the one’s that have SOLD that are REO, have been sold to the Listing Agent’s Clients so that the LA can get ALL the commission. I KNOW it’s ILLEGAL AND UNETHICAL, but I’m tellin ya, IT’S HAPPENING HERE, sad as that is.

Checking the Arizona Regional MLS, though, there were 25 sales of bank owned homes in Verrado. Want to know how many homes were sold by the listing agent to his or her own clients?

Three.

Bank owned homes in Verrado are remaining on the market an average of 31 days and are selling within a few thousand dollars of list price on average. Contrast that with a strategy that in the past has involved offering substantially below list price.

For several months I’ve wondered why Jane keeps asking the plebicite advice on how she should purchase a house, even once comparing the philosophy to trying to win a car on The Price is Right. Jane has an agent. I presume she even listens to her agent though it’s never been clear whether the agent’s advice matches that coming from the hoards hoping to pick up a scrap of business by helping the agent be cuckolded.

But she is right … Trulia Voices is a Q&A Forum by design. Agents need only choose not to answer should they realize they’re interfering with another agent’s relationship with his or her client, but that doesn’t happen. Instead, one can sit back and watch folks who presumably have other clients running full comps for someone working with another.

Bank owned homes are a different beast at the moment. I’ve written as much not so long ago when confronted with nine offers on one house in one day.

Still, one Canadian buyer just closed on a bank owned home in Goodyear. Another young couple will be moving into their soon-to-be-former REO property in Tolleson within the next couple of weeks. Another young couple moved into their former REO in April.

There’s no mass conspiracy to only sell bank owned properties to our own clients. Most agents here are so desperate for a sale that they’ll be more than happy with their own side of the commission without greedily lunging like the dog and the bone peering into the stream.

Before casting wild (and thoroughly incorrect) accusations about why a purchase has not been successful, perhaps it would be better to heed Albert Einstein …

“The definition of insanity,” Einstein said, “is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”.

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This one courtesy of Dee Johnson, an agent in Prescott Valley.

Someone in Indianapolis asks about “Fontana Lakes” in Peoria. What they really meant was “Ventana Lakes” which I happen to know a thing or two about.

Given the choice between remaining silent on a topic about which she knows nothing or sallying forth in hopes of convincing someone that they don’t really want what they’re asking about, Dee chooses the latter …

I have not heard of Fontana Lakes, but if you want a great place to retire in Arizona consider Prescott or Prescott Valley, about 1 1/2 hours north of Phoenix.

I’ll spare you the rest.

Thumbs down are a remarkably useless deterrent to agents who have no concept of providing value while begging for business. Still, if you happen to have an account there and have the time to provide a thumbs down, please do.

I’ve ventured back to Trulia Voices in hopes of being able to do what my friend Rudy has urged me and others to do … serve as a role model and provide value to the public when possible and remain silent when that’s not possible.

It’s hard to do when you’re throwing up in your mouth a little bit reading other answers.

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If you feel a Trulia Voices post coming on, you’re absolutely right!

Here’s the set up … a prospective investor from Italy asks about the Tucson real estate market and the feasibility of taking advantage of the Euro’s strength against the dollar to invest in a home in the Old Pueblo and turn it into a rental property.

Like clockwise, “helpful” agents come out of the woodwork from across the country not to add the slightest bit of value to the conversation but merely to ask why this person isn’t looking in their neck of their woods.

• “I sell Real Estate in Orange County California”
• ” Why just Tucson? Have you checked out the Western North Carolina area?”
• “I am not familiar with the Toucson area but I can tell you that in the Northwest panhandle of Florida along the Gulf of Mexico your dollars could purchase a small beach side home or condominimum[sp]”

Of course, the last answer assumes Mother Nature doesn’t relocate your home to an inland part of the state. But that’s another argument for another time.

Do any of these folks truly believe their look professional ignoring the question and blatantly pandering for business? Even Tobey shows a little more dignity than this when begging for table scraps - not much, but at least a little bit.

It’s times like this that I’m almost ashamed to be in the same profession as these types. If anything, the transparency in real estate has been most successful in exposing the lack of depth and absence of either logic or empathy that many agents bring to the table.

Oh, well … back to marking the answers as spam, not that it seems to have much impact on the ability to post future drivel on Trulia Voices.

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I know the author of this answer on Trulia Voices and he’s a really good person. He’s also a fairly knowledgeable agent. But sometimes in the quest to provide answers to those asking questions, it’s possible to lose track of what we as real estate professionals can and cannot say.

Here was a response to a question about a certain area of the Phoenix real estate market:

“In Gilbert it is not the Subdivisions, or zip codes. It`s the School district.”

As Mike Sexton World Poker Tour would say on the World Poker Tour,  he’s heading for white water right here.

“If I have to pick a subdivision, anything in Stonecreek, not under the wires, Close to Freestone ) there are a few good deals in Neely ranch, off of Cooper & Elliot, and of course Val Vista Lakes was the neighborhood of the year 2007.”

He didn’t have to pick a subdivision. In fact, he’s more or less prohibited from doing so by the Fair Housing Act. The Fair Housing Act prohibits agents from steering clients to or from any particular neighborhood without specific instruction from the seller. And we still can’t do it if the sellers’ specific instructions contain any reference to protected classes.

It’s a source of endless frustration for buyers who, when told about the Fair Housing Act, start to reword their questions:

• “Is that a high crime area?” I don’t know your definition of high. Here’s a link to the crime stats and you can make your own determination.
• “Would you live there?” I’m not you so the answer, even if legal, is irrelevant.
• “Is that a good area?” Not to get Clinton-esque, but what does good mean?

It’s been argued that Active Rain is a breeding ground for anti-trust and Fair Housing Violations. Trulia Voices often goes down the exact same road, even when the author of an answer had no intention to do so.

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