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powayseller
ParticipantIf your mailing address differs from the physical address, you are listed in a separate category titled Unsecured, but on the mailing address street.
ParticipantMy realtor was Pam McCormick, and the broker was Gordon Kane. Pam was new in the business, so Gordon came along to several appointments, as well as reviewing the contracts/offers. I liked him immediately.
ParticipantLooks like many are back to 2004 prices. But when you subtract out your selling costs (see SD Realtor’s post on Net Calculator), you are down 6-8% off your 2004 prices!
ParticipantBugs, what are you implying? The a** word is completely inappropriate here.
SD Realtor, excellent list. It’s fortunate to have a realtor gives us this type of inside information. My Help-U-Sell realtor did all the stuff you recommend for listing agents. I tried first to negotiate the commission with my ReMax agent, who had sold me the house, but she checked with her broker and said the broker could not allow any commissions below 5% due to the Errors and Omission Insurance. What a bunch of lies! The E&O would run at most a few hundred bucks per transaction, not $6,000. The HelpUSell agent has E&O insurance, and the broker laughed when I told him how much ReMax pretended that had to charge to cover it.
Many realtors lie to the seller, and promise a high price, saying their wonderful marketing techniques and flyers will gather the attention to get a big price. Lies! Over 80% of homes are sold because the buyer found the house HIMSELF on the MLS. He tells the realtor which house he wants to see. Who even looks at the real estate ads in the U-T anymore? Maybe a few old people who don’t have internet access. Anyway, Jim the Realtor had this on his website: agents promise a high price, and after a few weeks, start bringing it down. Meanwhile Jim, who promised a realistic market price, lost the listing. To the shady talker.
SD Realtor, you covered the most obvious scams out there today. Buyers need this kind of knowledge to protect themselves. Good job, good list! Fair to all!
ParticipantThat’s how they make their living. So they have a rental in Poway, and one in Palm Springs. Both are cash flow positive, and a little cash left over.
They make $70K/year flipping properties, maybe hoping to eventually hire a crew and increase that? It’s a lot cheaper to live in Phoenix, and they can live for that. Plus he is doing what he loves, so he is happy.
But I think this is not a sustainable business. I don’t think they will keep finding properties undervalued by $60K each. Even if they did, by the time they fixed it up, the market is down more, and it is undervalued by only $20K or $30K.
They are in denial, as is my friend the RE lawyer. So here wer have people actually in the business, as is murray, who are in denial!!! It boggles the mind. The masses are completely unaware of what is about to happen, if the investors and RE lawyer don’t even know.
That is the fascinating part of the story, the denial among investors.
ParticipantI agree that a good realtor will help you get the best buy. Perhaps someday buyers will have the information needed to determine a fair market value.
A good realtor shows you the homes you selected, and in addition, takes you to other homes which you may not even have considered, because they are a good buy and similar to what you like. They tell you the fair market value of the home you want to buy, based on the market trends. You cannot rely on past comps or zillow or the median to tell you the fair market value of a home. Without a realtor, how will a buyer know how much to offer? 10% under list price? How do you know if the list price is right? Get an appraisal? Can you trust that is accurate?
Realtors can negotiate a better deal than a buyer alone. For example, how many buyers would have thought to write up 3 offers, send out one at a time with a 24 hour expiration, and say “firm and final”. How many buyers can make it through the purchase process with a cool head, when emotions come up in regard to contingencies and repairs? How many buyers know what is the current common thing to ask for, i.e. closing costs, # of days for inspection, who pays the title report fees, if they should demand seller pays half of escrow fees or all of it. There are so many things in the contract…
How does a buyer know they are getting all the disclosures that are required? Can they bargain with the seller to get their side fairly represented?
I think buyers should ask their realtor for a refund, as SD Realtor suggested. I don’t think a buyer saves money by going alone. Sellers will not reduce their asking price just because you don’t have a realtor. They will try to split that savings, or pocket it themselves. They think since you have no realtor, that savings can go to them. So they will be harder on the repair list, thinking the buyer has so much extra money saved by not having a realtor. The seller’s realtor will take advantage of the inexperienced buyer in the contract. Why shouldn’t they? Perhaps the buyer has a lawyer who reviews the contract, but how knowledgeable is the lawyer about current RE practices, and what is paid by each side? That is not their specialty.
Ultimately, using a GOOD realtor will save the buyer more money, than trying to go it alone. I believe that, but I am willing to have my opinion changed.
I know there are people on this forum who do not like realtors, and I wonder if any of them would prefer to buy a house without a realtor, and what the advantages are that they see.
Participanths, when you go on ziprealty to do a search, you have to enter your email address and zip code to get details on the properties. Then they assign a Ziprealty agent to you, based on your zip code where you live. It is just a marketing tool for ZipRealty. The “assigned agent” emails you and tries to establish a relationship. It is the agent that ZipRealty assigns to you. But you can just tell them you are not seriously interested, and they stop sending you e-mails.
ParticipantSan Antonio has 369 foreclosures, 570 preforeclosures, 1662 bankruptcies. Is this higher than year 2000?
San Diego has 167 foreclosures, 1464 preforeclosures, 646 bankruptcies.
Omaha has 176 forecl, 108 prefore, and 757 bankrupt.
Looks like things are not so good in San Antonio either. It’s worse than Omaha.
Ames, Iowa has only 3 forecl, 0 preforec, 11 bankruptcies. Looks like farmland Iowa is holding up well.
Any other cities I should look up? Find a straight-laced conservative town somewhere, and let’s see how they’re holding up.
ParticipantTheir one foreclosure sale gained a profit, and they think this second purchase was a low enough price to gather a profit. It remains to be seen if they are really chasing the market down. The only person she knows in the Phoenix market is her cousin, who builds high end homes, and as we discussed, that market is still hot. So she has a very limited and rosy colored view. My guess is by December, their most recent purchase will be a loss, after improvements, because prices are dropping so fast. They are Rich Dad Poor Dad followers, but I think they stopped reading him after he got sour on RE.
By the way, I have very good friends in Phoenix who were just visiting. He is a RE lawyer, and he is involved in big transactions. His view is that residential sales have really slowed, will plateau throughout 2006, and will pick up again in 2007. Meanwhile, his commercial and retail projects are going strong. So he is a little bit worried, but he is so busy with this big client who keeps developing, that he doesn’t have any major worries. Since they are on vacation, I didn’t want to upset him by telling him that retail development lags the economic slowdown by up to 9 months. My belief is that by next summer, we will no longer have any retail or commercial projects starting, sicne the recession will be in full swing.
I told his wife that he should diversify. Get in foreclosure and REO deals, or defend builders who will get sued, lenders, etc. It’s time to diversify so he can keep supporting his family.
ParticipantI agree in protecting people’s privacy. I do snoop on realtytrac and the assessor database to gauge the market. When I post this stuff, I don’t use the indivdual’s names. I’ve written about Poway homes bought in the 1980’s, where they refied out the equity and are now in foreclosure, and that one neighbor is late on taxes. It was not necessary to give the names of those families to make the points I was making. Once, I posted the address and name, so people could see if someone they actually knew was in foreclosure, and I was told this was a bad idea, and I can see that now.
So we have to learn how we can make a point about the market turning without humiliating. Remember the book The Scarlet Letter? In Hawthorne’s book, adulteresses had to wear a sewn-on scarlet large letter (Capital A?) on their clothes, so everybody would know they committed adultery. Nobody should have to wear a scarlet letter.
ParticipantI was informed I cannot go by that table.
” Every time a home is relisted it counts as a new listing and we have homes that have been listed 2 or 3 times this
year. Remember 42% of this years listings have expired,
cancelled or withdrawn from the market and the overwhelming majority of these re-list as new listings.The poor newspapers get their information from this report and we wonder why they report the way that they do!
The growth in inventory has come from reduced sales not more homes being put on the market. That is why it keeps going up and by the end of the summer we could be approaching 25,000. The holiday season will take homes off the market and we probably will see some decline but the sales will drop as well, if they can go any lower.”
ParticipantThey bet their entire net worth on buying distressed property in Phoenix and flipping it. So she is in denial.
Before they moved, she avoided me for a while, after I sent her the piggington links and economic data, told her we were selling and renting. After a while, she talked to me again, and she asked me surprised why we would sell. She never once asked me, as a rational investor would, what might be the downside of her plan.
She was real excited about her husband’s prospects, and this is something he’s always wanted to do. So she is definitely emotional about this.
I still wonder how they are able to make money flipping, and how long it will take for her to realize that the gig is up.
Participantrankandfile – you also have to publish your intent to file for bankruptcy. That is invasive too.
I see Bugs and sdr’s views, because their professions require the safeguarding of this info. But we don’t have that same oath. We can print the address, but not the name. We don’t want to cause more humiliation to certain individuals. We can make a point without printing the name.
peace – updated daily? I checked a neighbor who was overdue last week, and this week it shows she has paid.
ParticipantWhat a liar. “If the economy stays healthy and creates jobs, you might actually see the foreclosure rate go down in some of these cities”.
You can create a million jobs in SD and FL, but unless they are HIGHER paying jobs, the foreclosure rate is gonna keep going UP.
I can tell he’s lying. His pupils are small. He knows he is spinning a story.
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