Entries from Searchlight Crusade tagged with 'listing agent'
Advertising a Sold Property As Available on MLS
This really ticks me off. I just got done going around about this with a clueless Realtor. According to them, it's not available. It's simply pending contract signatures. But it's showing as "Active" in MLS. This is not a minor...
Earnest Money: Copy of a Check or Proof Of Funds?
There's no question which I'd rather have. It has been traditional for a client to write a check to their broker's escrow account. Sometimes the check is actually deposited, but usually it's just held. It has recently become become a...
Listings from Non-MLS Websites
About once a week, I get an email from a client or prospect asking about a property they found on a site not sourced from MLS. These properties are pretty universally non-existent, at least as far as being for...
"You've Got Something I'm Interested In, But I Don't Want to Pay You"
One of the things I have to deal with on a continuing basis is people calling me because they like something they saw on one of my websites, but they have no intention of doing business with me. Most common...
Listing Agreements: Exclusive Right to Sell Versus Exclusive Agency
There are actually several different kinds of listing agreements. They get their names from the rights conferred when you sign the contract. The vast majority of agreements concluded are either Exclusive Right to Sell or Exclusive Agency. Exclusive Right To...
The Are No Schools That Teach What A Good Agent Needs to Know
I find it fascinating the number of people who will claim that because no college degree is required to become a real estate agent, that agents can't possibly be worth any significant amount of money. The reason no college...
What Buyers Need: What Sellers Should Want to Supply When Selling
(This is a companion article to What Sellers Need: What Buyers Should Want to Supply) Quite often, I hear people talking about the real estate market as if it's all some amorphous blob, and buyers and sellers are no more...
What Sellers Need: What Buyers Should Want to Supply When Making An Offer
(This is a companion article to What Buyers Need: What Sellers Should Want to Supply) Quite often, I hear people talking about the real estate market as if it's all some amorphous blob, and buyers and sellers are no more...
Real Estate: General Education versus Specific Expertise
Hi Dan, Your blogsite is great; I stumbled on it and find you very credible and knowledgeable. I have two questions for you, if you are looking for things to write about: 1) What are your views on the...
Demands Listing Agents Make That Aren't in Their Clients Best Interest
One of the things I see all the time is notations made on the listing that demotivate buyers agents, or give them a reason not to show the property. This practice has had a drastic fall off for a while,...
If You Don't Think Agents Are Valuable, Do It Yourself
And I mean that literally. Do it all yourself with no begging for free property advice, free help, free negotiations help, free real estate location services, free answers to "how do I deal with this problem?" and not least of...
California's Home Equity Sales Contract Act
A while ago a reader gave me a heads up that Illinois HB 4050 was hurting residents of certain poverty stricken Illinois Zip Codes. Now I have to pick on my own state: California law generally requires special handling of...
Real Estate "Pig In a Poke"
Over five hundred years ago in Europe, there was a con game that was more practiced than any other con game in the history of the world. It was simply the thing to try on the new rube in...
Agents "Buying" Listings: Promising the Undeliverable and Hurting Their Clients
Quite a lot of the time when I view a property, I get requests for feedback. Usually it's an automated email. Other times, it's some office assistant who wants to fax me a form which will "only take a...
Is The Good Faith Deposit At Risk?
Many agents seem to answer this question differently depending upon whether their client is the prospective buyer or seller, according to what they think will make the client most comfortable. When their client is making an offer, "No, your...
Top Ten Reasons Your House Isn't Selling
No, I'm not a David Letterman watcher, for reasons having to do with turning into a pumpkin before his show starts. I'm going to treat it a little more seriously than he does, as this is a serious subject,...
A Good Listing Agent's Most Difficult Task
The general public may not understand this, but the most critical parts of a listing agent's job all take place before the property hits the market. The most difficult task of an agent who wants to successfully list property is...
Why You Want To Price Your Property Correctly From Day One
This article is for sellers who want to put their property on the market priced too high "just to see if we can get it." I know where sellers get it. A lot of people are out there hyping...
What Happens When You Over-Price Real Estate?
Short answer: It almost certainly won't sell! The first thing that happens is that when it goes onto the Multiple Listing Service, all the agents who see it know that it's overpriced. Even on the public part of MLS, the...
Sixty Second Public Service Announcement About Selling Real Estate
Here was an idea I had: Pack a list of the most important things consumers need to know about buying real estate, as packed into the words I can say in sixty seconds without sounding like an over-clocked squirrel. Here...
Pretending the Service Equation is Simpler Than It Is
Way back when I was just out of high school, I was doing a lot of things with my time. Working, dating, competing on the fencing team, gaming of various sorts. But every once in a while, I dropped...
Real Estate: Know What Can Be Fixed and What Can't, What's Profitable and What Isn't
It's a well known fact that not all factors in real estate are equally important, and not all property investments perform equally well. A critical part of successfully choosing the right property, whether it's for investment or personal use, lies...
Listing Agents Who Want Both Halves of The Commission
I went out previewing properties a couple days ago. That particular client's situation being what it is, I was concentrating on vacant properties. But over half the vacant properties in that area had restricted showing instructions. "Call agent first," or...
The Ideal Listing Commission and its Structure: Performance Based
Here's the real issue about commissions: They need to be structured to incentivize good results - rewarding those agents who do good work, penalizing those who don't. The current structure, where the brokerage gets a flat percentage of official...
CBB: The Art of Setting Buyer's Agency Compensation on a Listing
First off, let me make something very plain. All a CBB (Cooperating Buyer's Broker compensation) can do is give good agent an incentive or disincentive to look at the property. A high one will not, by itself, sell the...
Steering: The Most Violated Law In Real Estate
I just picked a random ZIP code in my local MLS, and out of the first twenty listings I came to, ten had explicit violations of one or more of the sections of RESPA regarding steering right there in the...
Real Estate and the Four Levels of Competence
People who talk about learning skills tend to discuss a model for learning called the conscious competence learning model. It starts with unconscious incompetence. You not only don't know how to do something, you don't realize that it is...
The Mortgage Loan Market Controls the Real Estate Market
One of the things I keep telling folks about the real estate market, whatever area you live in, is that it is controlled by the loan market. If you want to understand where real estate in general is headed, look...
The Best Way To Solve Problems in Real Estate
The same as in every other area of life: Get out in front and stop it from becoming a problem. I do not understand why many people approach real estate transactions like a casual outing. Go window shopping, decide...
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...
Buyer's Markets: Time for Listing Agents To Earn Their Money
One of the most common things I'm seeing as I roam about the East County looking for bargains: Agents not doing their jobs. Even when there were 40-plus sellers per buyer, single family detached homes that are priced appropriately were...
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...
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...
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...
Asking Price Versus Sales Price
Hard as it may be to believe, I've never done an article comparing asking price to sales price. It's way past time. Asking price is quite simply, a written representation of an offer the seller would be willing to...
The Era of Make Believe Loans and The Law of Unintended Consequences
One of the things I've heard and read other agents complaining about is that they can't find qualified buyers to represent. Welcome to Unintended Consequences 101. The way that the market had been working is this: Young, often unmarried, buyers...
Some Offers Are More Equal Than Others (Even If They Are For Less Money)
The phrasing in parallel with Animal Farm is intentional. Sellers need to understand this, and so do buyers, especially in a hot real estate market. Some offers are more equal than others, and knowing how to choose between competing...
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...
When Selling, You Need To Understand Your Target Market
One of the hard things to get through to sellers is to understand the characteristics of the sort of buyers they need in order to have a successful transaction. If a given set of prospective buyers can't afford the property,...
Short Sale Negotiators and the Interests of Potential Buyers
I am seeing a very disturbing trend these past few months. Rather than do the work they should be doing, listing agents are treating the entire short sale process as a kind of "Black Box", delegating the negotiations with the...
For Sale By Owner (FSBO) and Low Agent Concessions
I want to sell my home for sale by owner. Is 1.5% a good amount to co-broke? Or will agents avoid me? In most of the country, this is a buyer's market right now. You need to compete more strongly...
Why Sellers Should Counter All Reasonable Offers
I just got off the phone with an agent who claims to have three offers on the property, but he doesn't want to counter the offer. He just wants my client to voluntarily throw more money (or more something)...
Failure to Disclose a Known Material Fact to Buyers
My husband and I bought a golf course-view house in DELETED. We closed 5 days ago; moved-in 4 days ago; and 2 days ago found out that the golf course is scheduled to close. It was announced by the golf...
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...
"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...
Some Secrets to Good Transactions
Be prepared for trouble before it happens, know how strong your position is or isn't, and don't ever overplay your hand. Real estate transactions are the largest transactions most folks get involved in. Even small percentages of $500,000 or more...
Don't Rely On Reputation - There Are No Silver Bullets
On a regular basis, I get emails that ask me what I think of a particular company. When I check out public forums, I see questions about particular companies every time. "What do you think of X Realty, or Y...
I'm Competing Against Multiple Offers. How Do I Proceed?
The first thing to consider is that maybe you shouldn't. You never want to get involved in a bidding war. There's a classic riddle I ask every single one of my buyer clients at least once. "How often does...
Why the Real Estate Buyers Agent's Commission is Paid by the Seller
I have to admit I'm uncomfortable with it and don't like it. As a buyer's agent, here I am getting paid by someone who not only is not my client, but whose interests are aligned, in most issues, opposite to...
You Want an Agency That Can Pay ENOUGH Attention to YOU
A lot of advice gets given to choose a "top producing" agent. These highly corporate offices may have the name of an individual agent attached to them, but they are in fact transaction mills. They have done pretty well for...
Will Agents List My Property if I Owe More Than It's Worth?
The answer is yes. This situation is called a short sale. As with everything else pertaining to real estate, there are potential upsides and downsides. First of all, lenders in short sale situations often demand agents reduce their commission, so...
Realtor and Loan Officer Responsibility: Can the Client Afford The Property?
Every so often, I write about professional responsibility. Every month I get a couple of magazines because I'm a Realtor. There was a letter from someone who was proud of the fact that he had never asked someone if they...
Listing Agents Claiming There Are Multiple Offers
Once upon a time, this was a good way to get more money for your listing. This led to a classic tragedy of the commons. Because it didn't take hardly any extra time, and there was no reason not to...
There's Nothing Sacred About Asking Price in Real Estate - Variable Range or Regular
A few days ago, I had an agent get angry at me about an offer below a range asking price. I had submitted the offer with extensive justification as to why it was an appropriate offer. Basically, this clown had...
Variable or Range Pricing of Real Estate
About half the listings around here do not have a single number asking price, but rather a range in which "offers will be considered". Even many agents have trouble understanding range pricing. I've seen and heard more than one agent...
Listing Agents and Pre-Approvals or Pre-Qualifications
It has become very trendy to ask for pre-approvals on loans, because so many escrows are falling through. Unfortunately, as I have explained in the past, Loan Pre-Approval Means Nothing, and prequalification means even less. Both are literally wasted paper....
How Agents Should Respond To An Appraisal Below Purchase Price
It really helps my perspective in a lot of ways to be both a Realtor and a loan officer. Just the other day, I had a loan only client where they were already under contract to buy a property...
What Can A Seller Do To Find Out if A Buyer Is Qualified
A high percentage of buyers out there have no idea of how qualified they really are themselves. They have no clue as to any of the major factors in determining credit-worthiness. To be fair, there are dozens, if not hundreds,...
Online Real Estate Photographs - You Have Heard of Photoshop?
When Israel invaded southern Lebanon a few years ago, this picture from Reuters ran worldwide The problem was that it was heavily photoshopped by a Palestinian stringer trying to make it appear like the Israelis were setting the entire...
The Difference Between a Reliable and Unreliable Prequalification or Preapproval Letter
If you don't know, chances are your agent doesn't either. Even if you know, chances are that your agent is as clueless as a newborn about loans. I and my clients get asked for all kinds of nonsense (to put...
Lipstick on a Pig: Selling the Property You Should Never Have Bought
Lots of properties have some kind of problem with them. Maybe you bought in full recognizance because of something else about the property, but probably not. Mostly it's directly a result of not spending the effort to find a good...
Real Estate is More Local Than Most People Think
When I'm doing my initial automated search for properties for my buyer clients, I always pay close attention to listings represented by agents out of the immediate area. Why? Because an agent from fifteen or twenty miles away probably has...
Transaction Coordinator: For The Agent's Benefit, Not The Consumers
The last few years, real estate agents and brokerages have begun charging a transaction coordination fee in addition to whatever their share of the sales commission was. The purpose of this is to pay a transaction coordinator, so your...
Dual Agency and Sellers Wanting to Keep a Buyer's Deposit
What can a seller do to get the deposit when the buyer backed out after the time limit and just won't sign off on the money? My real estate agent is not helping at all. The real estate office...
The Best Way To Create Problems For Yourself In Real Estate
Have a "looking for cheap" attitude, especially on services meant to protect you. It's great to have a "looking for value" attitude. If I cost more than someone else, it is in your best interest to ask why, and ask...
Do I Need A Deposit With 100% Financing Offers?
The answer is yes. Mind you, the only generally available 100% financing left is the VA loan, but few sellers are going to be willing to consider any offer that doesn't have a significant deposit. Consider the situation from the...
What Type of Real Estate Listing Agent to Choose
On a regular basis, I see advertisements for real estate offices that say "discount broker - full service". This is nonsense. Actually, it is a calculated lie. A discount broker has consciously chosen a business model whose economics do not...
There's No Such Thing as Full Service Agency for a Discount Price
You might get what you pay for. You don't get what you don't pay for, despite the fact that the local dog target loves giving discounters free puffery. I'm not against discounters. I'm very happy to do a discounters work...
Termite Work, Wood Destroying Pest Agreements: Avoiding Fraud
Every purchase contract I write includes an addendum for Wood Destroying Pests. In California, this is accomplished via form WPA, a one page addendum that requires an inspection and details responsibility for who makes repairs. The work needed is separated...
Find An Agent With Enough Time To Devote To Selling YOUR Property
Not very long ago, the purchase market in many areas of San Diego went through a phase that could only be described as "piranha feeding frenzy". This sort of market reinforces several pieces of advice I have given here....
RESPA Forbids Steering - Even "Just For Prequalification"
Agents rationalize this in all sorts of interesting ways, so let's just start by quoting the cold hard federal law. It's pretty damned clear: RESPA no person shall give and no person shall accept any fee, kickback, or thing of...
Property Advertisements: Trolling for Clients and Not Very Truthful
The first thing you need to understand in reading any property advertisements is that agents write them to get people to call. They are trolling for clients, not sales. Except in the case of someone who doesn't accept dual agency...
Multiple Offers: Weak But Increasingly Common, And It's Your Listing Agent's Fault
Listing Agents say they hate it when prospective buyers (of their listings) make offers on multiple properties, but they keep doing things to encourage it. It is both legal and simple for buyers to make multiple offers. All I have...
Properties With Accepted Contracts Aren't Available
This is one of the hardest things to get across to many people - agents included. A property with a fully negotiated purchase contract is not one you can buy. They have a legal agreement binding them to sell it...
Buyer's Agents Presenting An Offer In Person
This is a right given to buyers agents by my local MLS, and it's a good one, that I like to take advantage of whenever it is practical. The actual property owner - not the listing agent - does have...
Fake Agent Scams
I am selling my home to this couple and from day one I wanted this to be strictly a buy-owner sale and they knew this but they brought in a Realtor and wanted me to give her 1% for paperwork...
Cash to Close - A Basic Primer
Cash to close has always been an underwriting standard, but more people are running into it as a reason why they cannot buy that property, why their buyers cannot perform, and why they can't get that refinance approved. With...
Hourly Pay Instead of Commission For Agents
This was a comment on Real Estate Sellers Giving A Buyer Cash Back. The interesting thing is proposing hourly pay instead of commission for agents. That makes a lot of sense. Disclosing (net) cash back to the lender changes the...
You've Got a Great Offer, But Can The Buyer Consummate It? (Cash to Close and Appraised Value)
A Purchase offer is not money in your pocket. As a matter of fact, accepting the wrong purchase offer can cost you tens of thousands of dollars if the buyers can't consummate. I recently dealt with clients making an...
Misplaced Improvements in Real Estate
Every so often I'll say something about misplaced improvements. You may be wondering what a misplaced improvement is. Simply put, it's something that stands out above the surrounding properties so far that they pull it down. Like having a mansion...
Picking an Agent: Production Metrics versus Consumer Metrics
This is a reprint from an older article that talks about a very important distinction between an agent doing well for themselves versus doing well for their clients. It originally ran in August 2005. Every day I pass by another...
When Selling, ALWAYS Be Willing to Show Your Property
I went out looking at properties for clients. It's still a very strong buyer's market. From the showing attitudes I got, though, you'd think it was still 2003 and sellers were lords of the earth, not in a buyer's market...
Offers Where The Buyer Knows About A Problem With Your Property
Every once in a while, a listing agent will get an offer in where the Buyer's Agent did their research, got lucky, or both, and the offer indicates that the buyer is aware of one or more problems that really...
How to Effectively Shop For A Listing Agent (Part II)
Continued from Part I Interview lots of agents. Once again, my experience is that the agents at small independent brokerages tend to be sharper than the ones at large chains, but that's only true in the aggregate, and the large...
How to Effectively Shop For A Listing Agent (Part I)
This is the final article in this series, and the most difficult. The reason is very simple: Unlike shopping for buyer's agents or shopping for loans, you have to make a binding choice - it is in your best interest...
Asking Price Versus Sales Price
Hard as it may be to believe, I've never done an article comparing asking price to sales price. It's way past time. Asking price is quite simply, a written representation of an offer the seller would be willing to...
Some Offers Are More Equal Than Others
The phrasing in parallel with Animal Farm is intentional. Sellers need to understand this, and so do buyers, especially in a hot real estate market like San Diego has currently become. Some offers are more equal than others, and...
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 in recent months. At least two properties my...
Short Sale Negotiators and the Interests of Potential Buyers
I am seeing a very disturbing trend these past few months. Rather than do the work they should be doing, listing agents are treating the entire short sale process as a kind of "Black Box", delegating the negotiations with the...
Why Sellers Should Counter All Reasonable Offers
I just got off the phone with an agent who claims to have three offers on the property, but he doesn't want to counter the offer. He just wants my client to voluntarily throw more money (or more something)...
I'm Competing Against Multiple Offers. How Do I Proceed?
The first thing to consider is that maybe you shouldn't. You never want to get involved in a bidding war. There's a classic riddle I ask every single one of my buyer clients at least once. "How often does...
You Want an Agency That Can Pay ENOUGH Attention to YOU
A lot of advice gets given to choose a "top producing" agent. These highly corporate offices may have the name of an individual agent attached to them, but they are in fact transaction mills. They have done pretty well for...
State of the San Diego Real Estate Market April 2009
We were ready for a strong turn in the market, but the strength of what we've gotten in the last six weeks is amazing. It has been, if anything, worse that a few years ago. What caused it? People...
How Agents Should Respond To An Appraisal Below Purchase Price
It really helps my perspective in a lot of ways to be both a Realtor and a loan officer. Just the other day, I had a loan only client where they were already under contract to buy a property...
Online Real Estate Photographs
When Israel invaded southern Lebanon a couple years ago, this picture from Reuters ran worldwide The problem was that it was heavily photoshopped by a Palestinian stringer trying to make it appear like the Israelis were setting the entire...
The Difference Between a Reliable and Unreliable Prequalification or Preapproval Letter
If you don't know, chances are your agent doesn't either. Even if you know, chances are that your agent is as clueless as a newborn about loans. I and my clients get asked for all kinds of nonsense (to put...
Lipstick on a Pig: Selling the Property You Should Never Have Bought
Lots of properties have some kind of problem with them. Maybe you bought in full recognizance because of something else about the property, but probably not. Mostly it's directly a result of not spending the effort to find a good...
Transaction Coordinator: For The Agent's Benefit, Not The Consumers
The last few years, real estate agents and brokerages have begun charging a transaction coordination fee in addition to whatever their share of the sales commission was. The purpose of this is to pay a transaction coordinator, so your...
Termite Work, Wood Destroying Pest Agreements, and Lender Requirements
Every purchase contract I write includes an addendum for Wood Destroying Pests. In California, this is accomplished via form WPA, a one page addendum that requires an inspection and details responsibility for who makes repairs. The work needed is separated...
Why You Don't Want A "Top Producer" Listing Your Property
The completely frenzied micro-market currently manifesting in the Eastlake area of San Diego is a wonderful illustration of several pieces of advice I consistently give. First, What Happens When You Over-Price Real Estate?: properties priced correctly are getting multiple...
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