Agent Teams Under Scrutiny
The California Bureau of Real Estate has decided to clamp down on the agent teams and groups – more on it from Rob Hahn:
http://www.notorious-rob.com/2015/09/calbre-to-keller-williams-drop-dead/
Price Will Fix Anything
Cliff Failure
For those tempted by the liquid enchantress, take heed – thanks daytrip:
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-cliff-crumbles-la-jolla-20150911-story.html
TV footage of the collapse showed a pool in the backyard of a home slightly hanging over the edge of the cliff in north Pacific Beach near La Jolla. Fire officials initially said the collapse occurred in La Jolla.
Today’s Home Buyers
A great summary of today’s home buyers provided by John Burns. Interesting to note that 65% of buyers are childless, which must mean that many couples are buying their home before having kids?
http://realestateconsulting.com/some-facts-regarding-todays-changing-home-buyer/
An excerpt:
Let me summarize for you some of the key findings from an NAR report on home buyer and seller generational trends. So often, useful facts get lost in big reports.
Household Compositions
- 13% multigenerational living. 13% of buyers have multiple generations over the age of 18, with 21% of those buyers headed by someone aged in their 50s. This ties in nicely with our last Consumer Insights survey of more than 20K home shoppers, where 50% of those in their 50s said they planned on living multigenerationally, either with a parent or a child. 37% of multigenerational buyers had an adult child, while 21% of buyers had an aging parent.
- 73% couples. Married people buy 65% of all homes sold, with unmarried couples buying 8%.
- 16% single women double the men. Single women are almost twice as likely to buy as single men, purchasing 16% of all homes sold compared to 9% of all homes for single men. After the age of 50, purchases by single females rise even more.
- 65% childless. Homes designed for adults rather than families make more sense, as 65% of all home buyers do not have children. Resale homes were primarily designed with families in mind.
- 11% foreign born. Consistent with our demographic findings that 23% of those born in the 1970s were born abroad and that foreign born buyers are less prone to purchase, foreign purchases are heavily skewed to those born in the 1970s. 17% of buyers aged 35–49 are foreign born—nearly double the percentage of any other age cohort.
Read full article here:
http://realestateconsulting.com/some-facts-regarding-todays-changing-home-buyer/
Live Home Tours
There are new gadgets for real estate coming at us every day, but this one has some promise if it can live-stream without interruptions. From FT:
http://journal.firsttuesday.us/tech-corner-reallync-hosts-virtual-home-tours/45666/
Have you ever given a client a tour using FaceTime or other video chat app? The results can be frustrating when it freezes mid-frame or the client doesn’t answer your video chat — even though you have arranged your schedule to show them the property.
RealLync offers a solution, and some extra features to go along with it.
RealLync is a virtual home tour app. Its features include the ability to:
- pre-record a home tour;
- stream a live home tour with individual clients;
- stream a virtual “open house” where you provide tours to multiple clients at once;
- search for potential clients who are signed up on RealLync;
- send tour invitations, including links to the tour;
- create a property profile;
- create a RealLync agent profile; and
- chat and send messages with clients via RealLync.
For pre-recorded videos, agents can add notes and commentary to the presentation that pop up during the tour, giving this app an edge in terms of increasing the production value of your videos. This is a particularly helpful feature when a client has to cancel their live tour, as you can record the full tour and include helpful commentary for them to view later. Or, if you are the seller’s agent, you can link to the recorded tour on the listing site, providing prospective buyers an attractive and dynamic way of becoming more familiar with the property.
Home Design in 2015
Hat tip to daytrip for sending this in:
http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20150901-luxury-for-the-pinterest-crowd
For the Pinterest generation, which is used to browsing and pinning glamorous photos of home decor, showcasing their own magazine-worthy spaces online is now a must. And with good design easily accessible online on home decor sites such as Houzz.com, there’s an increased interest in a DIY approach. Furniture and other items are also more easily sourced than ever before, as some start-ups now cater directly to the consumer by selling wares online that were once only available to the trade.
When Jen Bailey, 33, moved in with her boyfriend, she was eager to incorporate both of their ideas when decorating their new Los Angeles home. But they faced a challenge: Bailey’s boyfriend held frequent American football parties, which didn’t exactly mix with her sophisticated tastes.
“Having 15 guys over watching football [was our] design issue,” Bailey said.
The couple turned to Laurel & Wolf, a one-year-old interior design start-up that allows customers to choose from at least four high-end interior designers who submit “first looks” of their ideas.
Customers choose the design they like and pay from $199 to $499 per room for design advice. Bailey and her boyfriend paid $299 for a package and communicated with their designer via an online platform that allowed them to chat and send photos during the process.
Call it high-style luxury for the masses.
Read full article here:
http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20150901-luxury-for-the-pinterest-crowd
Jimmy Buffett
Jimmy driving an old Chevy truck in this video:
Wild Wild West
Readers may think that this business may have a few bad apples, but overall, won’t any agent do? How bad can it be? Here’s a story heard recently – and this is typical of the insanity that goes on every day:
An agent who was a professed ‘neighborhood specialist’ asked a homeowner if he would consider selling if the price was right.
The homeowner said ‘Yes, maybe’, and they sign an agreement but the house doesn’t go into the MLS. The next thing you know the agent is bringing over a buyer represented by their own agent from a different office. As a result, the neighborhood specialist represents the sellers only.
They agree on price, and open escrow. The buyers conduct their home inspection, and on Day 16 of the 17-day contingency period they cancel the transaction.
The seller asks his agent, the neighborhood specialist, to produce a copy of their lender pre-qual and proof of funds. The listing agent refused, and belittled the seller instead.
The seller told the agent that he wasn’t going to sign the cancellation form, and that his wife wouldn’t sign it until he did.
The listing agent – whose sole duty is to properly represent the sellers – takes the cancellation form to the sellers’ house, and finds the garage door open.
He walks right into the house, and tells the wife to sign the cancellation form, and to forge her husband’s signature on it as well.
When Mr. Seller found out later, he complained to the agent’s supervising broker. The broker refused to do anything.
Get Good Help!
Hiring a Realtor
Hat tip to the reader who sent this in:
Today’s post about discounting realtors dove tails nicely with my neighbor.
He was adamant about doing the sale himself in order to save on commission. However, when his sale blew up in escrow he relented, and now he has hired a realtor.
How did he hire his realtor?
He went with the first agent that rang his door.
So no……consumers will never be thorough in their screening process. His reasoning for not being thorough was that he had the power to “fire his realtor at any time because I didn’t sign a contract.”
This is one of my first videos – from nine years ago! But it is still applicable – Get Good Help!
Discounting Realtors
Tom Ferry is real estate’s #1 educator, and he and his staff are coaching realtors around the world. He was gracious enough to allow me to run his latest video below, where he discusses the developing trends in the business:
Right off the bat, he mentions Commission Compression, and that he thinks 60% of the agents will soon be discounters.
I totally agree, and would like to expand on that point.
We’re not talking about the agent who shaves a half-point to bring a buyer and seller together. Instead, it’s those who are ‘buying the business’ – the agents who advertise their reduced commission rate to attract new clients.
In the internet age (where you can get pretty much any product you want with a couple of clicks), the consumer’s investigation time tends to be much quicker – and less thorough, especially in the house-selling business that is loaded down with pre-conceived ideas about how it works.
Will consumers be more thorough about investigating agents?
They haven’t been, and it’s doubtful that will change now.
Discounters could blame the consumers – people want a discounted rate! But regardless of the commission rate, agents have a fiduciary duty to the sellers to explain the whole picture.
We already saw last week that the NBER guys think there is a conspiracy by other agents about not showing homes with discounted commissions. Not mentioned was whether those listings agents who openly advertise their discounts are despised by others in the industry.
In the haste to hire an agent – or to get hired – the fiduciary duty to explain the benefits and burdens to the seller will likely get trampled.
Click below for more Tom Ferry videos and blog – which are fantastic for realtors (I’m not a TF client):
