Entries from Dan Melson's La Mesa Real Estate and Mortgage Website tagged with 'listing agent'
New Consumer Article: Asking Price Versus Sales Price
The new consumer article for today is Asking Price Versus Sales Price, a short discussion of what they are and the relationship between them. Many agents have forgotten this stuff, but it really is very basic stuff everyone should keep...
New Consumer Article: Some Offers Are More Equal Than Others
The new consumer article for today is Some Offers Are More Equal Than Others, talking about how to evaluate two different purchase offers even though they may be for the same or similar amounts of money. This is primarily important...
New Consumer Article: How To Keep Listing Agents From Filtering Out Offers
The new consumer article for today is How To Keep Listing Agents From Filtering Out Offers. This is a real, major, and once again increasing problem within the real estate industry. You need to take steps to prevent it from...
New Consumer Article: "I'm Working With Someone Else, But Could You Just Help Me With..."
The new consumer article for today is "I'm Working With Someone Else, But Could You Just Help Me With..." talking about requests for free work from real estate agents. I'm perfectly happy to give general information to non-clients and...
New Consumer Article: I'm Competing Against Multiple Offers. How Do I Proceed?
The new consumer article for today is I'm Competing Against Multiple Offers. How Do I Proceed?. It's an article directed at consumers, not real estate professionals, so it doesn't go over some things such as alternatives to money that are...
New Consumer Article: You Want an Agency That Can Pay ENOUGH Attention to YOU
The new consumer article for today is You Want an Agency That Can Pay ENOUGH Attention to YOU. It really doesn't benefit you to list with an agency that is too busy to pay proper attention to your property, nor...
State of the La Mesa and East County 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...
New Consumer Article: How Agents Should Respond To An Appraisal Below Purchase Price
The new consumer article for today is How Agents Should Respond To An Appraisal Below Purchase Price. The appraisal is a significant client protection, and trying to manipulate the appraisal to make the transaction happen is not in a buyer's...
New Consumer Article: Online Real Estate Photographs
The new consumer article for today is Online Real Estate Photographs. I know why people want to see online photographs, but I don't understand why they obsess about them to the degree they do, even after they assure me that...
New Consumer Article: The Difference Between a Reliable and Unreliable Prequalification or Preapproval Letter
The new consumer article for today is The Difference Between a Reliable and Unreliable Prequalification or Preapproval Letter. Whether you're a buyer or a seller, having the right lender letter is a good thing. If you're a seller, you know...
New Consumer Article: Selling the Property You Should Never Have Bought
The new consumer article for today is Lipstick on a Pig: Selling the Property You Should Never Have Bought. It talks about general techniques for selling properties with issues that make them less attractive to buyers....
New Consumer Article: Transaction Coordinator: For The Agent's Benefit, Not The Consumers
The new consumer article for today is Transaction Coordinator: For The Agent's Benefit, Not The Consumers. Transaction coordinators are mostly a good thing, helping agents ensure compliance and coordinating between various parties to the transaction. But asking consumers to pay...
New Consumer Article: Termite Work, Wood Destroying Pest Agreements, and Lender Requirements
The new consumer article for today is Termite Work, Wood Destroying Pest Agreements, and Lender Requirements. If you know about work that needs to be done, concealing it from the buyer's lender is fraud. Lots of agents are putting their...
New Consumer Article: Why You Don't Want A "Top Producer" Listing Your Property
The new consumer article for today is Why You Don't Want A "Top Producer" Listing Your Property. The agent makes money hand over fist, but they haven't got the attention to spare for getting the best price on your property,...
New Consumer Article: It Is Illegal Under RESPA to Require Even Prequalification With a Particular Lender
The new consumer article for today is It Is Illegal Under RESPA to Require Even Prequalification With a Particular Lender, debunks the legality of a practice that listing agents are trying to bring back or institute with the increase in...
New Consumer Article: Multiple Offers: Weak But Increasingly Common, And It's Your Listing Agent's Fault
The new consumer article for today is Multiple Offers: Weak But Increasingly Common, And It's Your Listing Agent's Fault, talks about multiple offer situations, what they mean to buyers, and what they mean to sellers....
New Consumer Article: Buyer's Agents Presenting An Offer In Person
The new consumer article for today is Buyer's Agents Presenting An Offer In Person, where I cover the ins and outs of presenting an offer in person, why buyer's agents should do it, why listing agents should prefer it, and...
New Consumer Article: Cash to Close - A Basic Primer
The new consumer article for today is Cash to Close - A Basic Primer. The article discusses how much cash a buyer of real estate has to have in order to make the transaction happen. Proving that you have this...
New Consumer Article: Stop Short Sale Bait and Switch
The new consumer article for the day is Stop Short Sale Bait and Switch. I am sick and tired of the fraudulent way that lazy incompetent agents have taken to marketing short sale properties - and it's going to start...
New Consumer Article: You've Got a Great Offer, But Can The Buyer Consummate It? (Cash to Close)
The new consumer article for the day is You've Got a Great Offer, But Can The Buyer Consummate It? (Cash to Close). These days, you have to pay attention to details like the limits of how much lenders are willing...
New Consumer Article: Offers Where The Buyer Knows About A Problem With Your Property
Today's new consumer article is Offers Where The Buyer Knows About A Problem With Your Property, in which I consider the differences between an offer where the buyer knows about a defect with the property, versus an offer where they...
New Consumer Article: Advertising a Sold Property As Available on MLS
Today's new consumer article is Advertising a Sold Property As Available on MLS, talking about the basics of what forms that these loans take, the Home Equity Loan and Home Equity Line of Credit. Had some kind of stomach flu...
New Consumer Article September 22, 2008
Today's new consumer article is Earnest Money: Copy of a Check or Proof Of Funds?, talking about what good various sorts of evidence of deposit do....
New Consumer Article September 17, 2008
Today's new consumer article is Listings Not Sourced on MLS, in which I discuss the limits that a system checked for facts imposes upon those claiming to have a property for sale, and why it is good to have those...
New Consumer Article September 10, 2008
Today's new consumer article is The Are No Schools That Teach What A Good Agent Needs to Know, which directly takes on the canard that since being an agent doesn't require a college degree, therefore there's nothing special about it...
New Consumer Article August 11, 2008
Today's new consumer article is What Sellers Need: What Buyers Should Want to Supply, which talks about thinking like a seller for buyers....
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 of late, with...
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...
Clients a Good Agent Does Not Want
This email exchange is worth another article on a different subject. Everything down to "Afterwards" is a straight out of the email except that I deleted any information that might identify a particular individual or company. The context was that...
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. When their client is making an offer, "No, your deposit could never possibly be at risk," while when their client...
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...
Top Ten Reasons Your Home 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 Important Responsibility
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 important responsibility of an agent who wants to successfully list property is...
Buyers, Asking Price and Days on Market
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...
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...
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...
Buyers Who Don't Want A Buyer's Agent
You see it all the time at open houses and elsewhere. People who desperately need buyer's agents, but think of Buyer's Agents in the same way they think of automobile sales folk, and that's the complete opposite of the way...
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...
Buyer's Markets: Do You Need to Sell Or Are You Part of The Problem?
One of the things that sticks out about buyer's markets is that there are two sorts of listings: Those who are willing to do whatever it takes, anything it takes, to get the property sold, and the other who apparently...
CBB: The Art of Setting Buyer's Agency Compensation on a Listing
First off, let me make something very plain. All a CBB can do is give good agent an incentive or disincentive to look at the property. A high one will not, by itself, sell the property. A low one...
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...
Dual Agency: Using the Seller's Agent as Your Buyer's Agent
Is it unwise to use the listing realtor as your purchase realtor? A house I'm interested in purchasing is being sold by the realtor selling my house. Although she's done a decent job selling my house, I fear she...
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...
The Future of Real Estate Agency: Expert Consultants, Not 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...
Bundling Agent Services: What Services Do You Want and Need?
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...
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. Now single family detached homes that are priced appropriately are selling, and for appropriate prices, even at...
Which Makes More Difference - 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...
Move Up Transactions Don't Just Happen
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...
Listing: Understand Your Target Market
One of the hard things to get through to sellers is 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, they might...
Sellers Cutting Their Own Throat In A Buyer's Market
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...
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...
Failure to Disclose a Material Known Fact to a Buyer
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...
Facts Of Life On Buying and Selling "Without an Agent"
I saw your article on about exclusive buyers agents and I have a couple follow up questions pertaining to my own situation that I am hoping you could shed some light on. I don't have any buyers agent (currently)....
The 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...
Problems with Exclusive Listings
There's been a great deal of jawboning in the real estate community recently over "divorcing the commissions", changing the current practice of the seller paying the commission of the buyer's agent. Well, I've said my piece on that, why I...
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...
Will Agents List My Property if I Owe More Than It's Worth?
The answer is yes. 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 the agents are not likely to start...
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. In one of this months, was a letter from someone who was proud of the fact that he had never...
Listing Agents Claiming There Are Multiple Offers in a Buyer's Market
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 Range Pricing in Real Estate
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...
Competing Offers From The Same Agent
I wouldn't have believed this one if I hadn't been there when it happened. Another agent has a listing where the property went into default. We just happened to find out about it; the seller tried to keep it a...
Disclosure Issues and Failure to Disclose
One of the most important things for the buyer in any transaction is confidence that the seller has disclosed all known problems. One of the things most people don't realize, or act like they don't realize, is that it's at...
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...
Missing a Deadline to Counter
One of the best ways I have of telling how good a listing agent is is whether they get the counter to me before the offer has expired. Not that someone who gets the counter back to me quickly is...
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...
There's No Such Thing as Full Service Agency for a Discount Price
The local dog target gave discounters several hundred thousand dollars of free puffery recently. I'm not against discounters. I'm perfectly willing to do a discounters work for a discounter's price. Fifty percent for the pay for less than ten percent...
Short Payoffs
A while ago I wrote an article called, "What Happens When You Can't Make Your Real Estate Loan Payment." This is kind of a continuation of that, as I got a search that asked, "What is necessary to persuade a...
Hourly Pay Instead of Commission For Agents
This was a comment on an article on my other site, 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...
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. A discount broker has consciously chosen a business model whose economics do not permit them to give the same...
For Sale By Owner
I've been taking a long look at the world of For Sale By Owner and similar concepts lately. With the digital revolution, you always want to be watching the tide to figure out if you're in a business that's about...
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...
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...
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...
Feed Subscription
If you use an RSS reader, you can subscribe to a feed of all future entries tagged 'listing agent'. [What is this?]
