by Jim the Realtor | Jan 15, 2019 | Coming Soon, Jim's Take on the Market, Realtor, Why You Should List With Jim |
It’s been widely accepted for years that off-market sales are part of the real estate landscape. After the (fraudulent) short sales went away, realtors needed another sexy lure to attract new clients, and rather than crafting the high demand and bidding wars into an auction-like experience, we went the other way and are using restricted access as our ploy.
None of the industry players want to even talk about it, let alone do anything.
In the meantime, it’s the way the business is trending.
With no public objections and so many off-market deals happening right before our eyes, every agent and brokerage wants to take advantage and create an effective off-market strategy.
It restores control of the inventory to the agents – we decide who gets exposed to the listings, and when. It will also turn the MLS into the website of last resort, used only when a listing agent can’t find their own buyer. The real estate portals will suffer, and full access for consumers won’t be the same.
We might as well go back to the MLS books!
Many agents claim it’s just ‘pre-marketing’, but what happens if a buyer makes an offer before the listing hits the open market? Are you going to turn it down? Or are you going to make a quick deal and move on to the next one?
The phase underway now is the building of realtor clubs.
There’s the PLS, as well as the Top Agent Network, which is operating in 31 markets and should be coming to San Diego soon. They offer club membership to the top 10% of producing agents in each region so they can network and market their listings to each other. I’m also a member of 4-5 groups on Facebook, where the focus is pre-MLS exposure of listings and ‘making deals’, plus there are several realtor meet-ups around town too.
The shift to private, off-market deal-making isn’t just coming soon – it’s here.
I think we should just admit it to ourselves and to the consumers, and then find a way to make the best of it – because it’s not going away.
by Jim the Realtor | Jan 8, 2019 | Coming Soon, Ethics, Jim's Take on the Market, Realtor, Realtor Training |
Yesterday we heard from Gov Hutchinson, the assistant general counsel for the California Association of Realtors. He travels around the state to inform realtors of the basic changes to forms, and helps define other aspects of the business – here’s a summary of what we heard:
- Transfer Disclosure Statement – The buyer has a five-day rescission period after receiving the completed TDS from the seller (the form where the sellers disclose pertinent facts about the property). If the form is delivered to the buyer’s agent late, incomplete, or unsigned, the buyer can still cancel the transaction even if they have already released their other contingencies.
- The CA Department of Real Estate is unhappy with compliance to the rule that realtors need to have their license number on every flyer, business card, sign, social-media account, etc. They have hired additional personnel to chase us around.
- It’s acceptable for landlords to say ‘no pets’, but they must accept tenants with service animal (seeing-eye dog) or emotional-support animal with a note from a licensed caregiver – as long as it is reasonable. If the animal affects the landlord’s insurance, or is a threat, the landlord can say no. The law supersedes HOA, C,C,&Rs, and city codes, and the landlord cannot require a pet deposit or higher rent for these animals.
- A landlord cannot require tenant insurance.
- A landlord cannot be compelled to take a Section 8 tenant.
- Low-flow plumbing is required in all homes throughout the state. Sellers don’t have to fix/update if the buyers will accept as-is.
- If a house for sale has hidden cameras, there should be a sign near the front door to alert buyers and agents who are showing the property that the house is under surveillance.
- No laws, rules, or guidance on Coming Soons – it is a local MLS issue.
I think we can say that the Coming Soon dilemma has been decided – nobody wants to address it globally, so it will be left up to the agents.
Realtors love the Coming Soons, and are now pitching them as a vital part of the marketing program. But with no rules or guidelines, what happens when a buyer wants to see the home? Do you show it during the Coming Soon period? Do you field offers? If you do get an offer, do you throw the listing on the MLS to give everyone a chance too? Or do you just make the deal and hurry off to the next one? How do you know if you got full value? (you don’t know)
Virtually every listing will go this route in 2019, and then most will be uploaded to the MLS with diminished urgency because the motivated buyers already saw the sign two weeks ago, and forgot about it.
Instead of relying on instant market data from the internet, we’ll need drivers to patrol for new Coming-Soon signs, and rely on word-of-mouth between agents to make these off-market deals we now crave for some reason.
This business is going backwards!
by Jim the Realtor | Dec 5, 2018 | Coming Soon, Jim's Take on the Market, North County Coastal, Sales and Price Check |
If sellers were feeling a sense of panic about the market – and prices – we would be seeing more new listings hit the market.
Let’s boil it down to one simple comparison.
Are there more listings than usual coming to market?
NSDCC Listings, November
| Year |
November Listings |
Median List Price |
# Sold |
Percentage Sold |
| 2013 |
223 |
$1,159,000 |
137 |
61% |
| 2014 |
267 |
$1,199,000 |
167 |
63% |
| 2015 |
299 |
$1,399,000 |
163 |
55% |
| 2016 |
284 |
$1,354,999 |
163 |
57% |
| 2017 |
252 |
$1,600,000 |
162 |
64% |
| 2018 |
292 |
$1,499,500 |
– |
– |
I wouldn’t be too concerned about the median list price being lower. The list prices don’t mean much, and if it weren’t for an extra 13 lower-end listings then the 2018 median LP would have matched last year’s.
More listings, longer market times, and higher failure rates are in our future – and we can handle it!
There have already been ten listings from last month close escrow – five were sold off-market – and another 54 are pending, so somebody’s buying something. Here are three examples:
1. This 2-br house sold for $1,400,000 in March, 2018, and then was advertised as a Coming Soon for $1,695,000. It closed for $1,650,000 a month ago:
Link to Listing
2. Amy and Susan sold this CV house for $51,000 over list, and closed this week:
Link to Listing
3. This Cardiff house backs to the freeway but it does have ocean view – it just closed this week for $1,950,000, which was above the high-end of the range:
Link to Listing
Here is the sales history of the same house:
If sales dropped 20%, we’d still have 80%!
by Jim the Realtor | Oct 24, 2018 | Coming Soon, Compass, Jim's Take on the Market, Listing Agent Practices, Pocket Listings, Realtor, Realtors Talking Shop |
More tip-toeing around the Coming Soon topic in Realtor Magazine yesterday:
The surge in off-market “pocket listings”—those held off the MLS in favor of secret channels and networks between agents or within a brokerage—is a growing issue in the real estate industry.
In markets starved for inventory, real estate professionals are struggling with being kept out of these secret dealings for homes that their buyers could potentially want.
In markets such as Los Angeles, for example, reports say that up to 30 percent of sales are being withheld from the MLS for the sake of more private channels, according to some brokerage estimates.
In response, some brokerages—and even MLSs—are looking for ways to expose these listings to a larger audience. One of many recent launches in the past month came from the brokerage Compass, which allows its real estate agents to post their listings to Compass’ website days before sharing them with the local MLS and third-party portals, like realtor.com®. “Compass Coming Soon” is available nationwide in markets where the brokerage operates.
“This will help our agents get a head start on marketing while still getting the property ready for market,” Compass CEO Robert Reffkin reportedly shared with Compass real estate professionals in an email. “By harnessing the power of pre-marketing, [the listing] actually shows up twice in everyone’s alerts: once when it hits Compass.com, and again when it hits the open market, doubling potential exposure.”
Pacific Union International, which Compass acquired in late August, had launched its own solution to handling the disruption from the growing prevalence of pocket listings in May with “Private View,” debuting $400 million worth of exclusive property offerings. But its portal of off-MLS listings can be viewed by any registered users—real estate professionals from other brokerages as well as the general public. Registered users can see exclusively signed listings before they’re publicized on the MLS. The portal is currently available in northern and southern California.
In September, Long & Foster launched its own exclusive Coming Soon Portal to promote upcoming listings to its agents before they are on the market. It’s a way to gauge interest and create early demand for a property before it hits the MLS.
“Our agent-to-agent portal allows our sales associates exclusive access to Long & Foster properties that are not yet in the MLS,” Barry Redler, chief marketing officer for The Long & Foster Companies, said in a statement announcing the portal. “Having this platform not only allows us to respond to certain seller requests but also gives our agents a leg up on the competition by helping their buyers more easily find a home in a tight inventory market.”
MLSs are searching for the answer to expose these homes listed for sale, which the seller may wish to keep secret. The Chicago area MLS, Midwest Real Estate Data, launched the Private Listing Network in 2016 as a separate feed to share information to registered brokers about “coming soon” listings. These are not displayed publicly. MRED officials cite it as a way for real estate professionals in their area to premarket listings that aren’t ready to show yet or that are in the process of being renovated, repaired, or staged prior to being marketed publicly. It’s also a way to test the price, as a range can be entered.
But some brokerages and MLSs are taking a firm stance against the practice of pocket listings or “coming soon” forms of premarketing. Since 2013, Northwest Multiple Listing Service—serving the Seattle area—has prohibited its members from promoting or advertising a property until it is listed in the MLS.
Off-MLS deals amplify concerns about limiting exposure of the property “to a select group of agents to the detriment of the seller and other MLS members,” Tom Hurdelbrink, president and CEO of NWMLS, told REALTOR® Magazine.
Nobody wants to project how this will play out, but it seems obvious. Every brokerage will operate a Coming Soon program, and the MLS will become the marketplace of last resort.
https://magazine.realtor/daily-news/2018/10/23/brokerages-wrestle-with-growth-of-pocket-listings
The photo from the article:
