Entries from Searchlight Crusade tagged with 'prevention'

Why You Shouldn't Have All Your Money In Real Estate

Is there any problems with having all your money in only real estate? That was a question I saw. The answer is YES there are problems! 1) No diversification. The real estate market tanks and you are hosed. The...

How to Sell Your Home Quickly and For The Best Possible Price

There's really nothing mysterious about this. There are some subsidiary tricks and issues, but the most important thing is obvious. The economic games theory is crystal clear, as is the research into what really happens. But most people don't like...

Real Estate Agents and Mortgage Loan Officers Don't Want to Compete

It's the same reason the phone company doesn't want to compete, General Motors doesn't want to compete, Wal-Mart doesn't want to compete, Disney doesn't want to compete, and Microsoft will do everything in its power to appear as if it...

In Real Estate, You're Better Off Doing One Thing At A Time

Hi--I just found your site today. The best I've ever seen/read, etc. Thank You!! I do have a question I didn't see addressed regarding our current situation/dilemma: Our present home, which we've lived in for 8 years, is worth...

The Future of Real Estate Agency is Expert Consultants, Not Controlling Market Access

Expertise and attitude, not control of an informational chokepoint, is the way that things are going. Let's analyze this from both sides of the problem. The current owner looking to sell really needs a marketer. For better or worse, most...

Buyer's Markets Are A Great Time For Moving Up

I have said repeatedly that buyer's markets are not the time to be selling a property if you have any choice. There is one exception: People looking to turn around and buy a more expensive property. If you're looking to...

Full Service Agent For Discount Price? Demand Specifics!

There is no such thing as a free lunch, but lots of people will pretend there is. It seems to me that many people consider compensation earned by real estate agents as paying some kind of toll. They think of...

Real Estate and the Tale of Aesop's Dog (Greed Envy)

At a very young age, my parents bought me a book of Aesop's Tales. Aesop has gone out of style, probably because these are stories with a moral lesson, and it seems the modern society is actively averse to moral...

Should I Buy A Home? Part 2: Process

Continued from Part 1: Preparation I am considering buying a home, although I have not made up my mind on the subject. This is not due to indecision, but rather due to a lack of necessary information. There are many...

Which Makes More Difference To Your Future - Buyer's Agent or Listing Agent?

Having done both, there's no question in my mind. For the average person and the average transaction, the buyer's agent makes a lot more difference. In the aggregate, a good buyer's agent has the opportunity to make a lot more...

Nightmare Mortgages and Self-Destructive Behavior

This article started with another one of those desperate consumer fishing calls a while ago. Loan standards have tightened since then (In my considered opinion, over-tightened and the lenders and Wall Street will figure it out within a couple years)....

How to Avoid A Repeat of the Housing Market Mess

Scapegoating mortgage brokers or anyone else is not the answer, nor is prohibiting yield spread. We've been here before (in the early 1990s), congress did something remarkably similar except a little bit more sane. It didn't work then. Why would...

The Lender's Rule of Mortgage Payments

Every so often, someone who thinks they're a wit sends me a copy of The Rules For Relationships According To Women. Unlike those rules, which might have been funny around the time Nefertiti was a debutante, there are very few...

The Loan Shopping Koan

It's very easy for loan providers to talk about a much better loan when you're shopping than they have any intention of delivering. Then you give them thirty to sixty days after you sign up, and you're put into a...

How To Keep Listing Agents From Filtering Out Offers

This is a real, major and pervasive problem in the industry. For a while, it mostly went away as listing agents were desperate for any offer, but it has come back. At least two properties my buyer clients have...

Real Estate and "Priced for Perfection"

The stock market has a phenomenon where a company's stock is "Priced for perfection." It may sound nice, but "priced for perfection" is emphatically not a good thing. It's where the stock price of a company has been bid...

The Tollbooth Model of Real Estate Agency

Over the last couple of decades, there's been a rising movement, mostly on the part of those who want a piece of real estate agents business, to sell agents as a toll booth. Tollbooths sit there, guarding the entry to...

There Is No Fairy Godmother for Loans

Really. I know that most people who read that title are replying "no kidding" but you would be amazed at how many people act like there is such a fairy godmother. I got an email yesterday that said, basically, "Help...

"I'm Working With Someone Else, But Could You Just Help Me With..."

I recently got an email from a reader that was coming into a property as I left. I dropped my card and we did the lockbox shuffle thing, then there was an email when I got back to the...

The Sperm Donor Theory of Buyer's Agents

Some fathers, sad to say, are not involved in their children's life beyond conception. Maybe it was just a one night stand and they have no idea they even have a child, maybe they were involved with the mother on...