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Are you looking for an experienced agent to help you buy or sell a home? Contact Jim the Realtor!

Jim Klinge
Cell/Text: (858) 997-3801
klingerealty@gmail.com
701 Palomar Airport Road, Suite 300
Carlsbad, CA 92011


Most recent articles

Make It Up In Volume

Flipping homes for no profit, just to make money the fees?  And VC money jumping at the chance to back him, in hopes of making billions before the market turns?  Could they provide enough market support to avoid a downturn?

Eric Wu is a house flipper, but unlike other real estate investors, he says he isn’t trying to land a profit by selling for more than he paid.

The windfall, he said, will come from transaction fees.

Opendoor wants to come out even on its deals.  “We try to have the average be exactly zero,” Wu said in an interview last week at Planet Hollywood Resort while attending a National Association of Real Estate Editors conference.

He said the goal isn’t to buy and sell quickly, although Opendoor does just that. And, as he indicated, the price spread on its transactions can be thin.

Opendoor bought a two-story house in North Las Vegas in February for $263,000, property records show, and sold it three months later for just $3,000 more.

The key to making money, he said, is lowering transaction costs.

Opendoor’s fee for sellers is reportedly 1 to 1.5 percent above a typical real estate agent’s. According to Wu, its fee currently mirrors its transaction costs — “We don’t make a profit today on customers,” he said — but he eventually wants to slash his expenses while maintaining the fee.

“That becomes our profit,” he said.

The company is under contract to buy more than 100 homes in Las Vegas and has 60 on the market to sell, according to spokeswoman Cristin Culver. Nationwide each month, it buys around 1,300 to 1,400 homes and sells almost 1,000, Wu said.

He said the company has raised $645 million in equity investments and another $1.5 billion in debt.

Link to Full Article

Posted by on Jun 23, 2018 in ibuyer, Jim's Take on the Market | 1 comment

A State-Load of Haters

This guy popped off at the DOJ hearing a couple of weeks ago, and the story has kept making the rounds:

So you think things don’t get rough in real estate and feathers don’t fly when agents’ commission money is at stake? Ha. Listen to what Joshua Hunt, founder and CEO of discount-fee realty brokerage Trelora recently said here at a meeting of the Federal Trade Commission and Justice Department.

Trelora, which is based in Denver, charges home sellers a flat $2,500 to list their home and allows them to pay agents another $2,500 for bringing in buyers, no matter the price of the house. Hunt told the meeting, which was organized to examine the present state of competition in the real-estate market, that competing brokers and agents loathe his firm’s business model because it reduces the total commissions they receive.

“We’ve had bricks thrown through car windows,” he said, “we’ve had our cars egged, we’ve had hate mail sent to our sellers” — all because Trelora clients don’t pay enough in commission dollars, split between the listing agent and the buyer’s agent.

Many competitors won’t even show Trelora-listed homes, said Hunt. “I’ve got a list here of 719 brokerages in Denver” that will not show Trelora properties unless the seller agrees to pay the buyer’s agent 2.8 percent to 3 percent of the sale price as commission. On a $500,000 house that’s a big difference — $2,500 versus $14,000 or $15,000.

Hunt has also fought pitched battles with local Multiple Listing Services insisting that they allow consumers — not just agents — to see the full commission splits on listings. That means disclosing the buyer’s agent’s cut of the pie — which many buyers don’t know and don’t ask about — as well as the listing agent’s.

I called the Denver Metro Association of Realtors today.  They have a little over 500 real estate offices in Denver.  So every single brokerage – including those that charge less than Trelora – won’t show his listings, plus another 200 phantom brokerages.

Virtually every agent in the state hates him?

https://therealdeal.com/2018/06/22/paying-the-right-commission-is-ultimately-up-to-you/

Posted by on Jun 22, 2018 in Jim's Take on the Market, Realtor | 3 comments

Aging Boomers = Fewer Moves

It looks like the low-inventory era will be here for a while….

The statistics about the waves of baby boomers turning 65 each day are old news to anyone who works in a senior-focused industry.

But a new report from Harvard University adds a new twist to measuring the coming wave of American seniors: In 2035, households with members aged 65 and older will account for a full third of the homes in the country.

That’s one of the conclusions from a new report published by the Joint Center for Housing Studies (JCHS) at Harvard, which releases an annual look at the complexion of the U.S. housing market. And this year, the researchers specifically pointed out the ways elders will dominate the market for decades to come.

At present, 65-and-olders represent about one in four U.S. households, up from one in five just 10 years ago — thanks to a gain of 7 million senior households over that span. And in a little over 15 years, that number will grow to one in three.

“The aging of the U.S. population has also boosted the number of older households because the baby-boom generation is so much larger than the preceding generation,” the JCHS observed.

Homes headed by those 65 and older were also the only age group that had a higher rate of homeownership in 2017 than they did in 1987.

That growth is coming at the expense of the younger millennial generation, which despite reaching the age that their predecessors were when they began buying homes and starting families, still lags behind.

“In fact, household headship rates among young adults are still declining, albeit more slowly than after the recession,” the JCHS wrote in its report. “Indeed, 26% of adults aged 25-34 were living with parents or other relatives in 2017, while 9% were doubling up with non-family members — both shares all-time highs.”

In addition, adults of all ages are far less likely to move than in years past. While the greatest declines in household mobility have been concentrated among the young, the 65-and-older set has also become increasingly more entrenched in their existing properties.

“Many of the growing number of older households are staying in their homes longer than previous generations at their ages, rather than downsizing or moving to rentals,” the JCHS observed.

Demographic shifts also play a role: Even though the move rate for Americans aged 65 and older dropped by just a percentage point, the sheer volume of aging baby boomers means that change represents “significantly fewer residential moves.”

“There is no doubt that the number of older adults will reach an unprecedented high over the next two decades,” the Harvard team concluded. “With this growth will come different demands, challenges, and stresses on the housing stock.”

Link to Article

Posted by on Jun 22, 2018 in Boomer Liquidations, Boomers, Jim's Take on the Market, Market Conditions | 9 comments

Listing Agent’s Fiduciary Duty

In hopes of finding some legal clarity on the listing agents who practice the Coming Soons and Sold Before Processings, I came across this example at the DRE website – we see these happen regularly:

The requirements of law governing the relationship between agent and principal is to the effect that the agent cannot be allowed to profit at the expense of the agent’s principal, no matter whether the result is reached by misrepresentation, concealment or other fraudulent device.

In the case of Rempel v. Kells the court held that an agent obtaining profits by fraudulent conduct and concealment from the principal is not even entitled to recover expenses incurred by the agent in connection with the transaction. The duty of a real estate broker to disclose material facts known by him to the seller employing him was again confirmed in the appellate court case, Jorgensen v. Beach ‘n’ Bay Realty, Inc., (1981) (125 Cal. App. 3d 155)

In Jorgensen, the listing broker presented an offer to his seller that was only about 7 percent less than the listing price. The broker presented the offer on behalf of a speculator for whom the broker hoped to act in future transactions. When the broker presented the offer, he informed the seller that he was also acting on behalf of the offeror and was therefore a dual agent in the transaction.

The seller wished to counter offer on the price, but the broker recommended that the seller not do so. The seller followed this recommendation. The sale was consummated. Shortly thereafter the purchaser resold the property through the broker at a 13.5 percent profit.

In reversing a nonsuit for the broker, the appellate court held that the broker did not fully discharge his fiduciary obligation to the seller by simply disclosing that he was acting as a dual agent in the transaction.

It was the broker’s duty to disclose all material facts known to him which might have affected the seller’s decision to accept the offer. The court suggested that the facts known to the broker which might have affected the seller’s decision included (l) the fact that the buyer was acquiring the property for investment purposes and (2) the fact that the broker had a substantial personal stake in negotiating a bargain purchase for the buyer. (Field v. Century 21 Klowden-Forness Realty (1998) 63 Cal.App.4th 18).

Link to DRE (pages 182-183)

Posted by on Jun 21, 2018 in Ethics, Jim's Take on the Market, Listing Agent Practices | 3 comments