Negotiation/Sales Strategy
I love her sales strategy here, and we should adapt something similar!
The estate sale is next weekend, October 16, 17, and 18th:
Open House
Agents who say that open houses are a waste of time either fall asleep while watching the game on TV, or have never done an open house for a listing that was priced right:
Despite all the changes technology has made in how houses are bought and sold, one standard feature of the process remains: the Sunday open house.
Shortly after a house goes on the market, the listing agent will set aside a Sunday afternoon to welcome prospective buyers (plus nosy neighbors) to see the house at its best.
But has the open house gone the way of the landline and outlived its usefulness? It depends whom you ask. Some agents believe modern life has rendered open houses unnecessary, while others believe they are more important than ever.
“It’s very, very important you have open houses, especially the first few weeks when [the home is] on the market,” says Steven Aaron, head of the Steven Aaron Realtor Group at Keller Williams Beverly Hills. “It makes it convenient for the buyers to come and see the house without an appointment.
Craig McClelland, COO of Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate Metro Brokers in Atlanta, agrees about the importance of open houses.
“I think it’s a great way to expose the house to people who are driving around,” McClelland says. “People want that instant gratification. … People want to see it now.”
Read full article here:
Carlsbad New
The new development at Cannon and El Camino Real in NE Carlsbad is taking shape, though the first move-ins won’t be until mid-2016 – and the high-enders won’t be until 2017. But in the meantime, these houses will occupy the minds of buyers, so any sellers nearby will be affected.
In SE Carlsbad, we saw how Davidson’s Arterro tract helped to elevate prices throughout La Costa Oaks. But those were all similar and newer McMansions – the older homes near RR will take a backseat to the new stock.
When first announced as a 672-home development, it sounded huge – but less than half are houses. There are 308 single-family homes, 364 condominiums, 175,000 square feet of commercial development and 88 acres of open space including five neighborhood parks.
The condos are being called apartments, and are in the gray area on the map. Like many builders, they are probably hoping to rent them for ten years, and then sell them later to avoid any construction-defect lawsuits. But that high-density look will be interesting right in the middle of higher-end houses.
There is a little something for everyone – and that’s probably good because the builder has had over 4,000 inquiries so far:
The Ridge will be 1,600sf to 3,000sf houses, but those lots look smaller. Prices start in the mid-$600,000s, and they will be opening in Spring, 2016.
The Vistas will be 2,100sf to 3,900sf, and start in the $700,000s, but I think most will be in the $800,000s and $900,000s. They’ve gotten started on a piece of the existing neighborhood in the bottom right corner on the map and are taking reservations.
The Terraces will be 2,900sf to 4,600sf houses on lots that will average 6,000sf. They will start in the mid-$900,000s, and be opening n Summer, 2016.
The Bluffs will be the big bombers on the hill, though no ocean view. The houses will be 3,200sf to 4,900sf on lots that average 8,500sf. Prices aren’t announced yet, but should be over a million.
You can see here that the lots in the Vistas are brief. This is a 3,900sf house going on a lot with a 15-ft. backyard – max. It is 11.2-ft on the other side, and I think that includes the slope. The price is $934,995.
Click on the photos to enlarge the images.
Sentiment Index
Only 1,003 people surveyed but they were asked 100 questions. From MND:
http://www.mortgagenewsdaily.com/10082015_national_housing_survey.asp
In case you missed it, last month Fannie Mae began to transition the multi-graph and narrative report detailing results of its National Housing Survey (NHS) into a different format, the Home Purchase Sentiment Index (HPSI). The Index distills responses to six survey questions about consumers’ home purchase sentiment into a single number which the company says “reflects current and forward-looking housing market outcomes and complements existing data sources to inform housing related analysis and decision making.”
The HPSI summarizes consumers attitudes about whether it is a good or bad time to buy or to sell a house, what direction they expect home prices and mortgage interest rates to move, how concerned they are about losing their jobs, and whether their incomes are higher than they were a year earlier.
Read full article here:
http://www.mortgagenewsdaily.com/10082015_national_housing_survey.asp
Eric Clapton
A favorite from the 8-track days!
Agents Switching Firms
The grass always looks greener somewhere else. From wsj.com:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-rise-of-the-mercenary-real-estate-agent-1444225224
The hottest free agents this season are real-estate agents.
In pursuit of more deals and commissions, real-estate agents—most of whom are independent contractors—are increasingly switching brokerage firms. And just like in the big leagues, when these players move, egos can clash.
“There’s not a lot of brand loyalty,” said Billy Rose, an agent and co-founder of the Agency in Beverly Hills, Calif. “A lot of times they become mercenaries,” he said about agents, because they’re getting recruitment offers all the time.
Jen Winston left Hilton & Hyland last October to join the Agency. For her, one of the biggest factors was marketing support. Whereas many brokerages may have one or two dedicated marketing people, the Agency has a team of 20 to do everything from posting listing photos online to sending branded bottles of Pinot Noir to clients—all of which frees agents to close more deals.
Ms. Winston, 30, entered real estate in 2012. She said she appreciates the culture at the firm, where agents are collaborative and share commissions. “A little bit of something is better than all of nothing,” she said.
Before the move, she said she earned “just under six figures” as an assistant to more senior agents. Now, with an estimated annual sales volume of $25 million, she says she will triple her income. Hilton & Hyland declined to comment.
Read full article here:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-rise-of-the-mercenary-real-estate-agent-1444225224
Scapegoat
Hat tip to daytrip for sending in this story:
Rebecca Mairone scarcely deserves a mention in the annals of finance, except for this: She’s the only executive of a major U.S. mortgage lender found liable for her part in the 2008 financial crisis.
Mairone was chief operating officer for a division of Countrywide Financial Corp., the California giant that came to symbolize the excesses of the subprime era. While top executives there and elsewhere walked away, Mairone, now 48, was targeted in a civil case by federal prosecutors. In October 2013, a Manhattan jury found her liable for misrepresenting the quality of mortgages her company sold to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff called her testimony “implausible” and slapped her with a $1 million fine. Bloggers said she helped destroy the U.S. economy and should be jailed or worse.
Two years later, Mairone is heading back to court in an attempt to overturn that ruling and restore her reputation. As she has all along, she maintains she did nothing wrong. Years after the housing bust, her case reminds Americans yet again that not a single senior executive has been held accountable for a mortgage meltdown that cost millions of people their homes, livelihoods and savings.
“She’s not uniquely responsible,” said Brad Miller, a Democratic congressman from North Carolina from 2003 to 2013 who served on the House Financial Services Committee. “But the question isn’t whether there should’ve been a claim brought against Rebecca Mairone. It’s why weren’t a lot more brought?”
Read the full article here:
Sandbagging
The blog post linked below points out the percentages of total realtor listings on Zillow. The Z Group didn’t take too kindly to such exposure, and they issued a cease-and-desist order, so I’m not sure how long this link will be working:
https://www.buildzoom.com/blog/zillow-realtor-listing-war
Zillow and the San Diego MLS do not have an agreement to automatically upload the realtor listings, so those seen on Zillow are manually-uploaded, or by private agreement. The blog post shows that Zillow has about 90% of the San Diego realtor listings, but the same chart has four cities that show over 100% of the realtor listings.
How can Zillow have more than 100% of the listings shown on realtor.com?
The authors suggest that it could be due to quality issues, but let’s face it, it more likely due to sandbagging – realtors putting listings on Zillow to find their own buyers to double-end the deal, but not sharing them on the MLS.
Now You Step Up
Now that he is has left the Fed and has written his book, Bernanke says more individuals should have gone to prison:
With publication of his memoir, The Courage to Act, on Tuesday by W.W. Norton & Co., Bernanke has some thoughts about what went right and what went wrong. For one thing, he says that more corporate executives should have gone to jail for their misdeeds. The Justice Department and other law-enforcement agencies focused on indicting or threatening to indict financial firms, he notes, “but it would have been my preference to have more investigation of individual action, since obviously everything what went wrong or was illegal was done by some individual, not by an abstract firm.”
Latest Real Estate Scam
A sophisticated scam by fraudsters hacking into realtor accounts:
http://www.turnto10.com/story/30190372/real-estate-scam-costs-ri-couple-13k
There’s a consumer alert about an apparent scam targeting families in Rhode Island after a local couple lost $13,000.
Experts say this scheme is very sophisticated, and anyone who’s in the market for a new home needs to be on alert.
It’s a simple idea: pose as a real estate agent online and target home buyers. But in reality, it is anything but simple.
“The goal is to hack into the real estate agent’s email account,” said Connor Dowd, a broker with Keller Williams Realty of Newport. “Once they’re in, they try to learn about any real estate transactions that are currently going.”
http://www.turnto10.com/story/30190372/real-estate-scam-costs-ri-couple-13k
Jim Klinge
Klinge Realty Group
Broker-Associate, Compass
Are you looking for an experienced agent to help you buy or sell a home?
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- 682 S. Coast Hwy 101, Suite #110
Encinitas, CA 92024 - (858) 997-3801 call or text
- klingerealty@gmail.com
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