The selling season is underway! We have had roughly twice as many new listings as new pendings in each of the last three weeks, which is about right. Either we will have bursts of new pendings over the next two months, or eventually those unsold listings will begin to stack up.
Click on the ‘Read More’ link below for the NSDCC active-inventory data:
How do you know when your offer isn’t going to go too far?
When the listing agent tells you, “I sent your offer to my sellers”.
Come on Jim, don’t you expect the sellers to read it? Yes, I do, but it would be nice if the agent also offered some advice. I always include my own opinion on why they should take the offer, because I know the other agent probably won’t.
As a result, this is the phone call the following day:
Agent: Did you receive the offer?
Sellers: Yes.
Agent: What did you think?
Sellers: We didn’t like it.
Agent: OK, thanks, have a nice day!
Of course, they didn’t like it because it was less than full price.
After all the showings during the first week on the market, the sellers were telling all their friends and family that they were going to have a bidding war, and sell for over list price.
But nothing materialized, and a few days or weeks later this snot-filled punk has the audacity to offer less than list price?
It reminds me of the Realtor Facts of Life.
It is best to be:
Once sellers hear the same thing three times, they might start believing it.
It is easy to forget or ignore the truth about real estate. A property’s value is defined by what a ready, willing, and able buyer will pay for it.
Instead, we convince sellers that they determine the sales price.
I might have a solution though – stay tuned!
Whether you are part of the multi-gen craze or not, it has impact on the choices available – virtually all builders are going for the big bombers, and hope buyers will adjust. These cost $2 million or more by the time you’re done:
Warren Buffett is selling his Emerald Bay vacation home….with an agent who doesn’t work at Berkshire Hathaway! H/T Richard.
Billionaire investor Warren Buffett is putting his longtime California beach house on the market for $11 million.
If it sells anywhere near its asking price, Mr. Buffett will score a decent return: He bought the Laguna Beach home in 1971 for $150,000. Mr. Buffett said he bought the house because his then-wife liked it, without giving a thought to its potential as an investment.
At the time Laguna Beach “wasn’t fully developed,” he said, but since then the area “just took off.” He added that he’s put a considerable amount of money into renovating the home over the years.
The 86-year-old Berkshire Hathaway chairman, who lives primarily in Omaha, Neb., said he used the property for years as a beach house for his family, spending summers and Christmases there. But since his first wife, Susan, died in 2004, he hasn’t spent much time there, which is why he’s putting the home on the market.
It won’t be long now – they are going to move the house:
What can a home seller do to help make a sale?
Respond to an offer in less than 24 hours.
Here’s what happens if you don’t:
On the other hand, when a seller does respond quickly, it gives the buyer the impression that the seller cares, and wants to make a deal. Buyers respond more favorably to those!
I had buyers make an offer on Monday that was within 4% of the new list price (sellers raised their list price – our offer was $250,000 over their original list) and here we are on Friday with no answer.
In a different case this week, my buyers offered more than twice what the seller paid in 2002, and three days later it wasn’t good enough – the sellers had to have another $10,000. This is a house that has been on the market for 100 days with no offers.
In both cases, we were sick of waiting around, and even a more favorable response wouldn’t have gone over that well.
Listing agents are notorious for not preparing their sellers on how to respond to offers. You can predict the chances of a deal coming together purely by how quick the sellers respond. If they are adequately motivated and the listing agent has their act together, you will get a response within 24 hours.
If not, there probably wasn’t much of a chance of buying it anyway.
Are fixers out of the question?
Are you willing to pay a premium for a reno? How much extra?
Realtors are mounting an effort to participate in the real estate portal business. The Broker Public Portal will be the national collection of listings, much like realtor.com was designed to be.
To those who thought Zillow had already won, this was welcome news.
All we have to do is build a consumer-facing website with more bells and whistles than Zillow or Trulia, and advertise it coast to coast! Yahtzee!
Not so fast.
Here is the link to what the Chairman thinks about the Broker Public Portal after two years of work:
http://geekestateblog.com/brokers-support-broker-portal/
An excerpt:
There has been a lot of discussion about the Broker Public Portal’s ability to compete with the existing national portals. Someday we may get there, but that is not our short-term goal today. Our goal is to join in the development of the best national MLS consumer search experience. Some believe we are competing against local MLS consumer websites. but we think that the BPP offers a national reach that is complementary and unprecedented, and that will help brokers and agents dramatically increase their connections with online consumers.
Great – maybe if we don’t mention them by name, and don’t compete with existing national portals, they will just go away!
Zillow is wagging the dog now, and they will determine our destiny.
When thinking about Al Jarreau, who died in Los Angeles on Sunday at age 76, one word comes insistently to mind: Smooth.
Much like his longtime friend and kindred spirit George Duke, who died in August 2013, Jarreau owned that free-flowing and often breezy subgenre somewhat derisively known as “smooth jazz.” In reality, it was a cross-pollination of jazz with funk, pop and R&B; that his voice helped establish in the ’70s and ’80s. From the nimble, rounded style that allowed him to glide from note to note in his biggest hit “We’re in This Love Together” to the feeling evoked by the sound of his name itself, Jarreau became synonymous with a bright sort of cool that soared beyond jazz’s often sharp corners.
Also like Duke — who counted Frank Zappa and Miles Davis among his collaborators — Jarreau’s 50-year career defied such simple categorization. A Midwestern native, Jarreau cut his teeth at Bay Area clubs like the Half Note and Gatsby’s before moving to Los Angeles, where he appeared on the city’s club and talk-show circuit.
In the early ’70s, when his career began to take off, Jarreau earned comparisons to jazz greats such as Billy Eckstein, but his breakout 1975 album “We Got By” could evoke soul great Bill Withers, most notably on the album’s bawdy and bluesy title track, in which Jarreau was backed by subtle strings and keyboards. From the same recording, “You Don’t See Me” offered a showcase for Jarreau’s acrobatic scat vocals playing off a spare funk backdrop.
The subsequent live double-album “Look to the Rainbow,” released in 1977, offered a similarly fierce display of vocal invention. His percolating interpretation of Paul Desmond’s “Take Five” — a song most commonly associated with Dave Brubeck — is a rapid-fire tour-de-force as Jarreau breathlessly emulates three or four different instruments over the course of seven and a half propulsive, improvisation-rich minutes. Jarreau eventually came to be synonymous with a seeming imperviousness to rough edges, but here, it certainly wasn’t for want of stretching himself in search of them. “Look to the Rainbow” also earned Jarreau his first Grammy for jazz vocal performance.
Are you looking for an experienced agent to help you buy or sell a home?
Contact Jim the Realtor!
CA DRE #01527365, CA DRE #00873197
