There are two very good reasons to take extreme care in mixing clients and your Facebook friends. You may not want to grant certain people access, and you may see certain things you wish you hadn’t. 

First, the access thing. Recently, I posted about a client that I had to let go. I didn’t post it on my outside blog, so it didn’t hit my Facebook page. I never would have fired them if he was as motivated as she was, but he is in la la land, and after 2 years enough was enough. Still, I did my best to let her down easy. I had no choice.

A day or two ago, I wrote a post entitled 2 Ways to Kill the Sale of Your Home. Like most of my posts, it went to my outside blog and my Facebook page. I was greeted this morning to the following, since deleted:

This was pure sour grapes. I bear no ill will, but my Facebook page isn’t the forum for working out your frustration that your husband can’t commit to a home purchase. 

What I see on other people’s Facebook pages tells me a great deal also. For instance, if I am chasing you down for documents for your mortgage or short sale and you explain that you’ve been out of commission due to illness, it is bad for you to then post all your “Mafia Wars” conquests from the day prior, complete with full conversations with fellow Mafia War people. If you can reach level 17,495,736,363 in online games you can get me bank statements. 

Another instance was when I was interviewing a young lady who was considering getting her real estate license. She added me as a friend and I was then privy to hundreds of photos of her partying with her friends. I love the sight of attractive young women in cocktail dresses (and less) holding drinks. But would I want that as my agent? 

Facebook is a fantastic tool for networking and building our businesses. I have already gotten a deal from it. However, it is like atomic energy. It can do great good and it can also do great damage. So, like atomic energy, proceed with caution. 

It was a bizarre phone call this afternoon. The lady on the phone swore that her home had just come off the market with another broker, but I couldn’t find it on the MLS. I changed statuses, spellings of the address (1st? First?), and anything else I could think of. Nothing. The home is in Yonkers, so I asked if it could be on a corner and have another address. Nope, middle of the block. 

I asked who the broker was, and she didn’t know. Her brother and co-owner was handling that. Then, she finally gave me the clue I needed. The broker was in Queens. After a quick check, I had my answer.

The broker listed her Yonkers home on the Long Island MLS. Yonkers is not in the Long Island area. It belongs on the Westchester-Putnam MLS. 

No wonder there were no calls. No wonder there were no showings. The house was, for all intents and purposes, not listed, at least not on the local market. It might as well have been on the California MLS.

So, if you are selling your home, I guess you need to add to track record, references and other advisable queries, if the agent will actually put the property on the correct MLS. Not that you want the local brokers and buyers to be aware of it. I mean, if you did that, it might actually sell.

Oh, and here’s another little detail. The house doesn’t expire on the Long Island MLS until August, 2010!

Next! 

I can’t speak for every agent, but if I were your broker and I advised you to lower your price it is because you need to reduce your price. Most of my clients see the light; I’ve given them the market data as well as our showing and feedback logs. Some sellers don’t get it, and they are the ones who eventually go stale. What is sad is that a stale listing sells for less than it would have if the seller took my advice because the public sees the days on market and assumes there is something wrong with the place. I get 2 main answers from sellers who won’t reduce. One is a rationalization, another is a lame alternative. Both ideas will kill the sale.

1. “People can make an offer.” This is an irrational thought costumed as a rationality. If you’ve been for sale for 90 days and had two showings, this is absurd. People don’t make offers on a home they won’t bother to see. If you’ve been for sale for 6 months and had 50 showings, what makes you think the 51st will be different? Buyers will not make an offer (or, in some cases, even see) a property that strikes them as overpriced. Moreover, the only people that will make an offer on an overpriced home are the type who would offer less than a fair-minded person who can’t reconcile price and property.
2. “I’ll pay a bonus to the selling agent” or “I’ll help with closing costs.” This is offered instead of simply reducing the price. Look, if you are going to throw more money into the deal, take it off the price where everyone can see it! This is an invisible benefit. People that need help with closing costs will ask for it even if it isn’t offered. Worse, you still have a price point problem.

Defining success is almost like talking politics or religion. Everyone has their own view. 

I gave it some thought last night, and here is what success means for me:

You know what you are made of, you like what you see in the mirror, and you like what you do every day.

Simple. Self knowledge, self esteem, and enjoying your endeavors. You don’t need a mansion, you don’t need an ambassadorship, and you aren’t trading drudgery for material gain. It is a fairly simplistic definition, but I think it is profound. Given how people in this industry strive, work and deal with adversity as part of our daily routine, I think it puts things into perspective.

Do you want to get a bidding war going on your home, even in this slow market? Do you want to get multiple buyers, all competing against each other over your home, driving the price to tens of thousands above asking price? It can be done, you know. Is that what you want?

Are you sure? Fine. Here’s what you do.

Drop your price 20-30%. You’ll get a bidding war. An appraiser in this New York Times article on bidding wars has it right. In a market where most properties are still overpriced, correctly priced homes will attract the buyers. “Correctly priced,” according to the article, means 20-30% less than last year. The article focuses on Manhattan apartments, but the same rings true for homes for sale in Westchester County and the surrounding areas.

In a market where there is still inventory which is overpriced, it isn’t insane. If your home is worth 420 and you are still floating around at 499k hoping for a miracle, dropping the price to 400 might get all those lurkers out there who are watching properties online, waiting for a price drop, to get off their rear ends and make an offer. You just have to get your mind around the fact that your house is worth 420,000.

Banks do this all the time. REO foreclosures are priced at or below  market value and they sell quickly. They have one thing going for them: the assett manager has no emotional connection to the house, unlike most sellers who still occupy their home. Divorce yourself from the emotions and look at the numbers. Even if you don’t use the “bidding war” strategy, a price drop will help in almost all cases of a stale listing.

“Luck is when Opportunity meets Preparedness”

-Branch Rickey

After one of my more difficult meetings with a seller today, I had an appointment at a Yonkers condominium that had expired previously with another broker. Not long into out interview, the lady’s cell phone rang and she informed me that she was not actually the owner.

Strike one.

The real owner was her brother, who was on the phone just then. He asked to speak with me, and I was happy to speak with him. It is always better to speak with the principal, you know? Initially, he wondered who I was and what I was doing over there.

Strike two.

I can’t say that I blame him. If I were in his shoes I’d want to know who is trying to list my home with my sister who doesn’t own it. I told him that very same thing. I asked, now that I’d seen the unit, if he and I could get together to speak about how I could help. He had more questions for me, and I guess I said the right things. He said he’d be over in 10 minutes. “Prepare the paperwork, we need to sell this thing.”

Boom. It is high, it is far, it is gone.

10 minutes later, he was over, we hit it off as well in person as we did on the phone, and the condo was listed at a $25,000 price reduction. Pretty lucky, given other possible outcomes. But things like this don’t happen unless you are out there and prepared for curve balls. He got that I wanted to do business, he meant business too, and we clicked. Just like that. Sometimes you get lucky.

Stay tuned.

* Branch Rickey was the GM of the Brooklyn Dodgers who signed Jackie Robinson and broke baseball’s color barrier. Also the inventor of the minor league farm system, he is considered one of the most innovative baseball executives ever. Moreover, he changed the world.

First, a little Kipling. This is one of my favorite poems:

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream-and not make dreams your master,
If you can think-and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings-nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And-which is more-you’ll be a Man, my son!

 -Rudyard Kipling

Now, Max:

Let me tell you what tough is.

Tough is being a single mother and putting your son through Yale.

Tough is being an animal lover with multiple dogs, cats and a horse and having to lose 2 cats in 2 days.

Tough is being put in between a battle axe listing agent and demanding, New York City clients and getting the $400,000  battle axe listing to accept $350,000 in those 2 same days.

Tiffany represented a builder when I met her and I recruited her for a year before she joined the firm. She’s a good team player, very protective of her clients, and firmly commmited to doing the right thing in business. She’s also Max’s godmother, having found him on German Sheperd rescue for me when she knew I was looking for a dog.

This has been a tough year for most of us, and she has had to endure a very rough week. One of those cats was 17. I’ve lost pets before. It sucks. A 17 year family member is truly family. You mourn. You are tempted to stay in bed.

Tough people, however, do what they have to do, and Tiffany gave a virtuoso real estate performance with difficult parties to please on both sides in the midst of grief and adversity. As Yankee fans would say, she hit one into the monuments.

I’m not surprised.

This is the kind of person I am proud to have on the team. We don’t shuffle rolodexes around here. We make things happen in spite of circumstances, and Tiffany embodies that. If you are in Dutchess County, NY and you need a good agent, you need to add her to your short list.

New York real estate closings take forever compared to other areas. There are too many attorneys and too much red tape, but you can’t control the weather. What you can control is how you approach your purchase and expedite the transaction. Is a 30 day closing possible? Yes, but you have to have all your oars in the water:

• Have all your mortgage documentation complete. Everything. If your loan processor says they want all bank statement pages, front and back, including advertisements, give it to them. This is perhaps the most imprtant thing you can do.
• Be reachable. If I need an answer, answer your email or call me back at lunch so we don’t lose a day.
• Reach out to your attorney! Hint: If the attorney can’t come to the phone, handle it with the paralegal. That’s their job. The biggest legal hangup is title. Have it ordered fast. Some lawyers wait for the comitment to come in, which sets us back 2-3 weeks. Chew gum and breath.
• Reach out to your Loan officer. Ask questions. Was the appraisal submitted? Were there issues to handle? Make sure they have all they asked for. Ask what the next step is what what has to happen to get there.
• Settle disputes fast. You can either live with the drapes or you get your own. Talk it over and make a choice. Don’t hold up a half million dollar deal for 3 days while you agonize over a few hundred dolalrs in window treatments.
• Get your homeowner insurance! You’d be surprised how many Friday closings become “next Wednesday” closings because you don’t have the binder.

If you have your act together and we work as a team, we can get you into underwriting and have mortgage commitment in hand within a few weeks.  When you show the seller the money, the onus is now on them to move forward and close. Assuming they are as on point as you are, a fast closing can be achieved.

The following is, in part, an email I just wrote to a former prospective buyer. For reasons unknown to me he started working with another agent a while ago, and I heard over the grapevine that he was a “no show” at a contract signing recently, which is not the first time he’s gotten cold feet. 

I don’t think he’s a bad guy. I think he’s worried sick over making the wrong decision, and there is no one in his life telling him what he needs to hear. So, given my insomnia and the fact that I have no financial interest in what he does, I hope my words resonate with him. 

_________________________________________

It happened again. I won’t elaborate on where, although it is tempting to ask what is in the water there, but, yet again, I open my email and have to handle it. Again. And it is my fault because I have a newer agent whom I did not prepare.

For the umpteenth time in my career, a buyer who contacted us on touring a home, has played footsie with us getting an appointment confirmed, and seemed refreshingly eager to see the place, has dropped the bomb we ought to have avoided.

There it was in my inbox at 6:26 AM:

Hi, we’re going to view the property with our RE agent <name>  at 7pm today. Are we going to meet you there?

Here’s the kicker. It isn’t our listing. The buyer inquired via an IDX site, so the only way to earn a living with them was to represent them on the buying side. So, yet again, I am reminded to teach my buyer agents to ask the following question at first contact:

“Are you working with an agent?”

Had we asked, we would have saved time, money, and a headache. Forewarned is forearmed!