Most of my postings on short sales have a happy ending. This is not one of those postings. 

In late 2008 my office brought in an offer on a distressed, vacant property I had listed as a short sale in Mount Vernon. We did yeoman’s work. I listed it and one of my agents brought a string buyer. The client, a victim of predatory lending, was desperately trying to avoid a foreclosure. The home was listed at $219,000 after several price reductions. We were listening to the market. We had hardship. We had a buyer. The short sale package was sent to the lender, who summarily rejected the short sale. Their reason: The loss was too large. 

Now, sellers who don’t like the bottom line are a proverb. But the market is ambivalent about those issues. The value is the value. The offer the lender rejected was $180,000. 

The seller contacted the lender herself and was misled: The offer was $120,000, she was told. Yes and no. The net to the lender was 120k. The offer was 180. Back-payments, back taxes and other expenses eroded their bottom line. 

When the listing expired in January, she re-listed it with another company. I spoke with the other agent briefly about getting him the keys. He was a newer agent, enthusiastic and eager. He wasn’t fooling around, he told me. He was going to get this thing sold. I wished him better luck than I had. 

306 days later, after the price had been reduced to $170,000, I saw that the listing had been cancelled. It was relisted as an REO for $169,900. When the lender denied our short sale in 2008, we warned them that they would never get an offer as good as the one on the table. We were right. 

The bank will now be lucky to get $120,000, which will yield them utterly nothing now that they have kept a non-performing loan an additional year, paid the legal fees to repossess, and the property has been vacant & deteriorated another year.  A nice lady’s finances have been ruined, 2 listing agents have put blood sweat and tears into the vacuum of an ungrateful lender’s middle management purgatory, and the neighborhood still has a blighted property. Nobody wins. 

This kind of ineptitude is funded by our TARP tax money. Someone should lose their job over this. Mr. Negotiator, I told you so in 2008. 

Search the MLS like an agent here. New York’s Premier Short Sale REALTOR. Read my short sale bog here. See the New York Photo blog here. J. Philip Serves Briarcliff Manor, Ossining, the River Towns, Westchester County, and the bedroom counties of New York City.

Jennifer Allan has written a blog post entitled Any Idiot Can Give Their House Away…If Price is All that Matters – What do they need us for?   Her point is that price alone isn’t the only thing we can do to get a listing sold, which is true enough, but it has inspired me to list a few things that some unrealistic sellers feel will sell their home instead of addressing the price.  I call these real estate marketing myths, and sellers who put stock in them are in for a long wait.

1. The house will sell if you buy an expensive print display ad in the weekend real estate section or supermarket homes magazine. Because, as we all know, people who are looking for homes don’t sit at a computer and search, they buy homes with their eggs, butter and milk.  
2. Run an ad in the Eskimo newspaper. Sometimes a seller will notice a martian or Venusian at the supermarket and decide that they are the next wave. They are under the impression that Eskimos, Visigoths, or elves don’t look for houses like the rest of humanity does; their only source of information is the weekly newspaper published in another language.
3. The 6-week old photo is the reason people are repelled. The photo you took in April with all the leaves in the trees is awful and outdated. We all know the only reason people buy houses is because of the peonies. 
4. People don’t buy the home for their reasons, just for ours. Just to prove that, we’ll pester the people who really dig our back yard with useless prattle about our close proximity to the highway, not caring that they don’t need a commuter location but do want a quiet back yard far from noise.
5. How can you sell my house if you don’t get feedback? If you don’t get me feedback by 5pm on a 3pm showing you aren’t doing your job.
6. We need better brochures. And a 3-ring binder with 40 pages of data on the town, because anyone already in our kitchen has not done any research about our town or school system. 
7. Sell Sell Sell! How can people decide that the place feels like home if you aren’t pounding them with data about our gutter guards, curtain drain and dry well? 
8. We don’t need to pay a competitive commission. An agent with a buyer isn’t in the driver’s seat in a buyer’s market, he or she should just be happy to make something and not nothing.
9. Nothing sells like top-quality formica. Granite causes cancer. Asbestos is only bad if you eat it. The 2003 bathroom vanity qualifies as a complete update. People can do whatever they wish to address the water in the basement once they buy the house. The zoysia grass  that is green 3 months out of the year is a selling point. 
10. We don’t need to lower the price, people can just make an offer. And who cares that if the house is priced at $509,900, and that the people who are searching up to $500,000 don’t know we exist?           

Price isn’t everything. In the mind of consumers, especially in this market, it is everything. Obviously, we have to tidy up, stage, take good photos, write good marketing material, and do anything and everything to get the home sold.  That said, there is nothing-absolutely nothing- that the best agent on the planet can do if the home is not priced competitively except hope and pray for dumb luck. 

One of the lowest things an agent can do in this day and age is to blame the agent on the other side when he or she screws up. Here’s one recent event. 

I listed a single family home for lease earlier this month. The date of availability was August 1 due to the current tenant’s schedule to move out. Two families cannot live in the same house at the same time in my experience. We got a number of offers, but many put down June 15 as the proposed start date. All were told that we could not accommodate that. After asking the current tenant when the earliest was that they could vacate, we were told mid-July. We therefore informed all the June people that mid July was the soonest we could offer occupancy.

One agent in particular called me quite a few times about his client’s desire to rent the place as soon as possible. He was told the same thing as the others: mid July was the best we could do for him. Other than the June start date, his clients were good prospects, and he was told that if he could confirm that July would work for his people that my landlord would send them a lease. He was “pretty sure” that would work, but he promised to call the wife and get back to me with confirmation. We had this conversation at least twice. 

He did not get back to me. 

We agreed to lease to someone else. 

About a week later, the disappearing agent reappeared. He asked where the lease was. Now, everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts: it is a fact that the ball was in his court to confirm that his clients would be able to start their lease in mid July and not June, as they had originally proposed. I reminded him of this. He did not disagree, but was disappointed I didn’t call him to tell him we were going to go with someone else (something I neither promised not was obligated to do) and voiced a concern that his people had not yet found a place. I told him I didn’t hear from him for a week, and figured that he found them something else. 

That is where it should have ended. It didn’t. This agent begged me to ask my client to reconsider. My client did not want to, for obvious reasons.

In an email last week and then a phone message this week,  I had to hear what a bad job I did. It didn’t sit well with him. I got the sense that this was being done more as a rump-covering measure than advocacy. He screwed up, yet I was the bad guy. It didn’t add up, unless his client was blind copied on that email or present in his office when he called. Not happy with the inconsistency, I sent him a rather detailed email earlier today reminded him that HE screwed up, not me. His response was strangely magnanimous, not really that of a chastened guy, but one who wasn’t grandstanding. Am I certain he’s throwing me under the bus to deflect responsibility? Not 100%, but I know where I’d put my chips if I were betting. If I am right about this, that is a big shame. If you screw up, man up and deal. Don’t deflect. 

I was contacted by an Associated Press reporter who was writing a story on the housing market in the Northeast, and the story ran yesterday. This is the 2nd time in a month I have been contacted by a national news outlet with a subsequently appearance in their venue. Last month it was ABC World News. You should have seen my 2-year old son go nuts when he saw Daddy on the TV. 

This time around, I asked the reporter how she found me, and she said “Active Rain.” 

The only appropriate thing to say is THANK YOU, Active Rain. 

One of my clients was also interviewed, and she is quoted in the story. Since the object of all marketing is to get found, it is a powerful testimony to consistent blogging that if a reporter can find me, so can a consumer. And they are. 

Search the MLS like an agent here. New York’s Premier Short Sale REALTOR. Read my short sale bog here. See the New York Photo blog here. J. Philip Serves Briarcliff Manor, Ossining, the River Towns, Westchester County, and the bedroom counties of New York City.

According REALIST, to the public data provider for the Westchester -Putnam Multiple Listing Service, the median price for a single family home in April of 2009 was $491,250. After peaking at over $700,000 in 2005, this is the first time in a long time the median price has fallen below half a million dollars. 

We are also at a low ebb for transaction totals; 2008 was a deplorable year, with fewer than 4000 titles transferred. 2009 is on pace for fewer than 2500 single family homes sold. In 2005 there were over 6000 sales. 

This means that home values have dropped almost 30% from their peak and transaction totals are down almost 60%. 

The available inventory remains high thanks to the flood of REO’s entering the market weekly. As unsustainable as the Bubble may have been, the decline in wealth is staggering. We aren’t out of the woods by a long shot, my friends. 

Search the MLS like an agent here. New York’s Premier Short Sale REALTOR. Read my short sale bog here. See the New York Photo blog here. J. Philip Serves Briarcliff Manor, Ossining, the River Towns, Westchester County, and the bedroom counties of New York City.

I was contacted by someone out of the blue asking me to show them a home for sale in Eastchester. They found it on Zillow, which isn’t uncommon. I looked up the address on the MLS and it came back with “no properties found.” Checking Zillow revealed that the home was for sale by owner. So I called the owner and set up an appointment as if I were calling any other home listed for sale. No sheepish query if they were cooperating with brokers or explanation of my intentions. “When can I show it.”

Thursday. So I showed it Thursday. The outcome is irrelevant to my point (no interest from the buyer if you are keeping score), but these people are smart to cooperate with brokers. I don’t think I was the only one to contact them, so maybe someone else primed the pump. The more eyeballs on the house, the more likely it will sell. And people working with agents are the more serious (and qualified) buyers.

Will the people save money selling themselves? I highly doubt it. The sale of real estate has too many moving parts to be reduced to a bottom line increased by the addition of a broker fee. I recall, for instance, a home seller whose ineptitude killed half a dozen deals for over $700,000 who finally sold after a year for $600,000. But he saved on the commission. Forget that he lost tens of thousands of dollars in the process! 

Search the MLS like an agent here. New York’s Premier Short Sale REALTOR. Read my short sale bog here. See the New York Photo blog here. J. Philip Serves Briarcliff Manor, Ossining, the River Towns, Westchester County, and the bedroom counties of New York City.

I have blogged before about the difficulties Zillow has caused. Typically, their “Zestimate” has caused people to 2nd guess the more accurate evidence on the ground and either over or undervalue a home, killing a possible transaction. The galling thing about it is that the more compelling evidence is right under their nose from the MLS, but that one number on a zillow page (which, by Zillow’s own admission is typically off by 11% or more in Westchester County) has killed everything. 

However, this past week, Zillow zigged instead of zagged. My seller clients were agonizing over whether or not to accept an offer; the buyer on the other side was a parent buying a home for their son and his family. Pre approval letters help, but after several stops and starts in a 9-month odyssey, nothing could be taken at face value. I saw accepting the offer as an acceptable risk; my clients were once-bitten and twice shy and sought more certainty about the buyer. 

It is a daunting question. Is the buyer for real? Is the buyer qualified? Can this person really afford to buy a home for their son? Just where do they live now? That question resonated. I was asked if I could look the prospective buyer’s address on Zillow for some insight. The address was on the binder, so we looked it up. Since Zillow’s median margin of error in Rockland county is under 10%, we could expect a reasonable ballpark figure, as well as ascertain whether or not the buyer lived in a van by the river, a garden apartment, or a mansion.

According to Zillow, the buyer lived in a 5 bedroom, 3 bath, 3100 square foot home with an estimated value of about $650,000. Definitely not a van by the river. Still a skeptic, I ran the address on the MLS and found a 2004 sale for $800,000. Why did I need Zillow when I have the MLS and public records? I don’t. But my clients don’t have the MLS. If they had thought of that question hours after I left, they would have gotten the confirmation they were looking for. Lord knows I have seen enough deals die when people looked something up on Zillow, so it is about time. As Zillow gets more accurate, I have less to fear. 

Zillow still isn’t off the hook for me. However, I have to give credit where it is due, and whether or not I was present at the time, they helped me make a sale. I hope it isn’t an anomaly. 

Search the MLS like an agent here. New York’s Premier Short Sale REALTOR. Read my short sale bog here. See the New York Photo blog here. J. Philip Serves Briarcliff Manor, Ossining, the River Towns, Westchester County, and the bedroom counties of New York City.

According to Inman News, Wisconsin’s largest real estate brokerage has adopted a policy of excluding the listings of non-traditional brokers from appearing on it’s site in home searches. This is not good in my view, for several reasons. 

• After a long battle with the Department of Justice is finally over for the NAR, one of it’s members is now virtually inviting another case to be filed. The last case did not exactly go well for the NAR, and was bad for the public’s perception of REALTORS.
• When a consumer searches for homes online on a broker’s site, they expect to see the search criteria set up in a way that benefits them. They want to see all the available listings, not just the profitable ones. The move is therefore anti-consumer. 
• It could easily be construed as an anti-competitive maneuver by the Department of Justice. The DOJ prohibits policies which are solely in the interest of brokerage and not consumers, and I can see an argument to the contrary. 
• Can you say “bully?” Non-traditional brokers in Wisconsin pose no threat to the state’s largets brokerage. This strikes me as an ad-hominem attack. Home sellers who are cost-conscious are more likely to go For Sale By Owner in the absence of discounters, so it isn’t like the firm is protecting their most likely prospect base. Wisconsin, by the way, has one of the largest local For Sale by Owner websites in the USA. Coincidence? You decide. 
• Too many people already view the real estate industry, especially NAR members, as running a cabal. I hear accusations of collusion, price-fixing and other anti-consumer practices far too often. 

Search the MLS like an agent here. New York’s Premier Short Sale REALTOR. Read my short sale bog here. See the New York Photo blog here. J. Philip Serves Briarcliff Manor, Ossining, the River Towns, Westchester County, and the bedroom counties of New York City.

The words jumped off the page:

 “It troubles me that I am not identified as the listing agent. The way this listing is displayed it looks like you are. I feel taken advantage of.”

This was an email sent to one of my agents from a competing agent in our MLS who googled the address of one of his listings,  and lo and behold, saw my agent’s photo in the sidebar as the showing contact on a search page. He was indeed troubled. I decided to call him and see if I could turn that frown upside down. 

I asked him if his website had a home search feature. It did. I asked him if I were to find my own listing on his site whether or not it put me down as the contact or him. It was, after all, his site; would he want it to make my phone ring or his? The truth was that if I went to his company’s site or his personal site that my listing would have my information buried in the small print for compliance and his or his firm’s contact information would be prominent. That’s just the way it works. “It,” by the way, is IDX, or Internet Data Exchange. IDX is the means by which MLS data is supplied to real estate broker websites for home searches. Any broker website you search for a home on is probably an IDX type of platform.  

Moreover, the site he found his listing on was one that people would go to in order to find a buyer agent, not deal with the listing broker; it was antithetical to the site’s purpose to suggest the contact agent was the listing agent. Of course, the whole thing was foreign to him, and without more of a basic underpinning of knowledge of IDX he couldn’t know that. 

This must be how wars begin; that pesky lack of understanding. So I took the time to tell him as much as I could, because you never know when we might cross paths again. I want to build bridges, not burn them. 

The upshot is that a very experienced, honorable agent simply misunderstood the direction the Internet was taking in this growing spur of the Information Highway. He’s still getting his mind around it, but more importantly I am fairly certain that I won a cold shoulder over to a warm colleague. 

Search the MLS like an agent here. New York’s Premier Short Sale REALTOR. Read my short sale bog here. See the New York Photo blog here. J. Philip Serves Briarcliff Manor, Ossining, the River Towns, Westchester County, and the bedroom counties of New York City.