Entries from Dan Melson's La Mesa Real Estate and Mortgage Website tagged with 'negotiation'
New Consumer Article: Two Things Sellers Need To Understand About Buyers
The new consumer article for today is Two Things Sellers Need To Understand About Buyers, a discussion of two things both important and basic that sellers do not seem to understand about buyers, and judging by the available evidence, most...
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: Assuming Seller Concessions On Loan Quotes
The new consumer article for today is Assuming Seller Concessions On Loan Quotes, which discusses why lenders do this: To make an expensive loan look not so expensive. But there is no way to get seller concessions (Seller Paid Closing...
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: Short Sale Negotiators and the Interests of Potential Buyers
The new consumer article for today is Short Sale Negotiators and the Interests of Potential Buyers. An awful lot of nonsense gets tried with short sales, most of it for the benefit of lazy listing agents who shouldn't have taken...
New Consumer Article: Why Sellers Should Counter All Reasonable Offers
The new consumer article for today is Why Sellers Should Counter All Reasonable Offers. It really isn't rocket science. If your agent advises you otherwise, something is wrong....
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: The Sperm Donor Theory of Buyer's Agents
The new consumer article for today is The Sperm Donor Theory of Buyer's Agents. The real estate industry is built around the listing of property. Okay, it's actually built around the care and feeding of real estate brokerages, but...
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: The Measurement Unit For Desirability Is Dollars
The new consumer article for today is The Measurement Unit For Desirability Is Dollars. It really is that simple. A good agent can make a difference, but a property that has more will cost more. It isn't rocket science, but...
New Consumer Article: Buying Real Estate Isn't Simple
The new consumer article for today is Buying Real Estate Isn't Simple. You can pretend it's simple, and hope you get outrageously lucky. Or you can prepare and do the work, and come out reliably enough better to more than...
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: Stretching Your Budget Means Compromise
The new consumer article for today is Buyers: Stretching Your Budget Means Compromise. It's something too rarely covered by the press, and by real estate agents. There are tradeoffs in every choice a buyer makes, and unless they have a...
New Consumer Article: Top Twelve Things That Help You Buy a Bargain Property
The new consumer article for today is Top Twelve Things That Help You Buy a Bargain Property. If you're looking to buy a good property at a bargain price, put as many of these on your side as possible....
State of the San Diego Real Estate Market March 2009
Reminds me of this gold rush movie (one that I recommend watching if you have a chance) Okay, it's not quite like that, but correctly priced properties are flying into "Pending". It has to do with supply and demand. At...
New Consumer Article: Reasons Why You Want A Buyer's Agent
The new consumer article for today is Reasons Why You Want A Buyer's Agent. Lots of people don't believe how much difference it makes, but it does. My goal on every transaction is to make a difference of ten percent...
New Consumer Article: There Is Always A Reason For A Low Asking Price
The new consumer article for today is There Is Always A Reason For A Low Asking Price. Sellers are not looking for people to sell their property to below market price. Usually, low asking prices should be even lower than...
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: 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: Mortgage Fraud Is Still Happening - What To Do About It
The new consumer article for the day is Mortgage Fraud Is Still Happening - What To Do About It. There are still tricks that the less scrupulous agents and loan officers are pulling that are just as fraudulent as at...
New Consumer Article: When Loan Modification Will Not Help, or Is Not Appropriate
Today's new consumer article is When Loan Modification Will Not Help, or Is Not Appropriate, in which I write about the major situations where trying for a mortgage loan modification will not help you....
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 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 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 September 8, 2008
Today's new consumer article is Negotiation Requires More Than Dueling Ultimatums, which discusses and suggests improvements to the common model of faxing over bare offers and counter-offers. I don't understand why anyone who wants a transaction to succeed would do...
New Consumer Article August 28th, 2008
Today's new consumer article is Rent to Own and Lease With Option to Buy, which talks about one alternative to the traditional sale that usually gets a seller a higher price, while not requiring a buyer to come up with...
New Consumer Article August 25th, 2008
Today's new consumer article is Negotiation Basics: On What to Offer and Whether to Offer, Which talks about the process of putting in an offer and negotiation, and what effects a couple of common things have upon the process....
New Consumer Article August 12, 2008
Today's new consumer article is What Buyers Need: What Sellers Should Want to Supply, a companion article to yesterday's, helping sellers to be successful by thinking like buyers....
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....
New Consumer Article July 22, 2008
Today's new consumer article is What Does It Mean To Fall Out Of Escrow?, which talks about the process of escrow and what really causes escrows to fall apart - and that it is not something to fear....
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...
Protecting My Buyer Clients Good Faith Deposit
As I wrote a few days ago, the buyer's deposit is always at risk. This is just a fact of real estate transactions. I could pretend it's not so, but that wouldn't keep the deposit from being at risk...
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...
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...
Dangers of a Poorly Written Real Estate Purchase Offer
There's an old literary tradition that cautions the reader to "Be careful what you ask for. You may get it." Many real estate purchase offers are good illustrations of that principle. The rule followed by good agents is, "Never...
Loan Assumption and Assumable Loans
Every once in a while, the subject of assumable loans comes up. An assumable loan is one where the owner of a property has the ability to pass the loan along with the property in a sale. In other...
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...
Writing Real Estate Purchase Offers to Beat Higher Competing Offers
I just last week closed a transaction where my clients did not make the high bid (or even close), but did get the fully negotiated purchase contract and the property. By building an airtight case that this client was...
Contingent Sales in a Buyer's Market
I am buying a house. I signed the contract but the seller said contingent to sell until she buys new house? Is that normal? People do it. It's smarter to avoid the stress and complications of dealing with both...
Why Buyers Should Avoid Short Sales
I've been saying this for a long time: Short sales are poison for buyers. I don't know why people encourage buyers to look at short sales, because there is no advantage for buyers that I am aware of. In...
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...
Real Estate: Giving Someone a Monopoly Does Not Encourage Top Performance
From an e-mail I've been talking to agents lately and I ask them about the things I've learned about from your site. I thought I would say things like "I want to apply for a backup loan" and they would...
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...
My Sixty Second Public Service Announcement about Buying 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...
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...
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...
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...
Down Payment Assistance: Buying FHA With No Money Down Doesn't Require 100% Financing!
Somebody who's only looked at the specifications for the FHA purchase program will ask me if I'm on drugs. The answer is yes, I have taken my allergy medication today, but there really are ways to purchase a property...
Real Estate Liquidation Auctions
With the market turndown, Liquidation auctions are becoming a big thing. They were just advertising one on all the stations around here. The other agents in my office asked if I was going, and I told them, "There will...
Greed Envy, or the Tale of Aesop's Dog
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...
"Contractor's Specials"
I was looking through some real estate listings and saw one property described as: "Contractor's special, first time buyers and investors. House needs TLC." Does contractor's special mean u better be a contractor if you wanna buy this place? It...
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