Here are a few useful tips for all agents, both new and old, in the proper care and feeding of the guy who owns and runs the brokerage where you ply your trade. 

I will be quick to add that many of the things I suggest here are things my team already does well, and it is rare when I have to practice tough love. But I certainly talk with my share of fellow brokers, owners and managers, and premature gray or the odd eye twitch are certainly a problem for the ones who care. 

So consider this a  guideline for keeping your broker, be it myself or anyone else, a little happier, a little saner, and a lot less stressed. 

• When you are emailed a customer or client inquiry, acknowledge getting it. A quick email back that says “got it” or “thanks” or even “got it, thanks” will do. 
• Check your email. There may be an opportunity waiting. 
• Check your voicemail. There may be an opportunity waiting. 
• When you go out of town, get someone to cover for you. 
• We’re probably friends on Facebook. HINT HINT 
• When you screw up, tell me. It is better for me to hear it from you than another broker, another agent, or the nice folks at the board (which has never happened to my guys). 
• Learn the paperwork and fill it in completely. 
• When you need help, ask for it. 
• If there is an accounting issue, do your best to resolve it quickly. Never let that sort of thing hang in the air for days or weeks. 
• If another agent, customer or client mistreats you, tell me immediately so we can address the issue. Otherwise, it defines matters the rest of the time you deal with them. 
• Kidding us about what we did to earn our split is as gauche as members of the public who tease you about yours. Moreover, you might not get how hard we work behind the scenes. 
• Nothing happens automatically. You have to make it happen. And NEVER shrug your shoulders and say “let the lawyers work it out.” Lawyers don’t work things out. Their solution is to have the brokerages throw money at a problem.  

Our team is growing, which is good, but the quality of people we are adding to our family of producers is very high, and that is great.

Anton Gromov has joined our team, and he’s not your average story. Anton is from Russia, and is therefore fluent in Russian. He’s a new licensee, and when he was researching firms to join, came to conclude that he should talk to me about our brokerage. We clicked. Anton is a family man with two young ones, and cut his teeth in Manhattan property managment for the past decade. It is not surprising that he’d gravitate toward the investment property niche, an area that is near and dear to my own heart as well.

Husband, father with youngters, investment properties…yeah, I’d say we could relate to each other.

Anton will cover Westchester County residential real estate and is a great resource for anyone seeking a Russian speaking real estate agent. We look forward to watching him grow a book of happy buyers, sellers and investors.

To reach Anton, call him directly on his cell at (212) 300-5115 or email him at anton@jphilip.com.

 “How to succeed in the real estate business without even trying…”
How to succeed in the real estate business without even trying. Yeah. You let me know if there is a way to succeed in the real estate business without even trying and I’ll be your best friend. There is no easy way to succeed, you have to work hard and long to get big, especially if you want happy, satisfied clients who will refer more business your way. 

The numbers are in for September real estate closings in the Ossining School district, and they show a significant improvement over the prior September. All information is for single family homes and is sourced by the Empire Access MLS, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Westchester Putnam Association of Realtors. 

In September 2011, 17 single family homes sold at a median sale price of $395,000. 

In the same period last year, 9 single family homes sold at a median sale price of $345,000. 

That is almost a 90% jump in transaction totals and a 14% rise in median sale price. It is also the best September transaction total enjoyed by the Ossining market since 2006. Median price is still down almost 20% off the peak of 2005, however, and we are a long way from a full recovery off the high water marks of the last decade. 

There are currently 19 homes under contract with a buyer at this point in time, at a median list price of $429,500. This is a good sign that the trend of improvement is contunuing into the Autumn market. 

136 homes remain on the market as active and available at a similar median list price of $425,000. Buyers still have ample choices from the available inventory, and the asking prices are not far from those that are making it to the closing table. 

As a broker, my interpretation of the data is that the sellers are adapting to the new reality of lower prices. If the median asking price were higher, perhaps $475,000, we would likely have far fewer homes under contract, and of course fewer closings. So long as home sellers continue to price their homes to reflect the sensiblities of the buying public, we are likely to see an organic, sustainable recovery going forward. 

Prior posts on Ossining.

Find a home in Ossining with the Listingbook Home Search!

Redfin has laid their Scouting Report program to rest after less than a week. CEO Glenn Kelman posted a poignant announcement today on why he pulled the plug on the program, and among his statements, which I agree with, was the following: 

But I still think the folks most violently opposed to Scouting Report didn’t hate it because it was wrong but because it was right. 

I was not among those who was opposed to scouting reports philosophically. I just wanted reliable data. Because I belong to multiple MLS systems, my own report was incomplete, and this presented a problem for me. Of the 40+ deals that I brokered in the past 12 months, Redfin’s report had only 2. I felt forced to post my own report just a day ago: Redfin Can’t Get my Full Scouting Report Right. So I’ll Give it to You Here.

We can argue all we want about whether or not a broker has the right to publish the production of another brokerage’s sales data. What we as licensees need to understand, and I have said this before, is that this was a long time coming, and it will not go away. With information technology progressing, consumers will soon know who did what where and when, and for how much. Why shouldn’t they? It would certainly weed out the obfuscators who mislead consumers with false claims about their production, which, in my view, is a collosal problem today. 

Unfortunately, the program was poorly executed. No broker can expect an IDX feed meant for a consumer home search to tell them, for example, when an agent with both sides of a transaction was a dual agent, or that 120 days on market in one MLS is worse than 90 days on market in another, when one counts days under contract and one doesn’t. Someone else is bound to pick up the ball. 

But at the end of the day, whoever does this has to get the data right, period. If you can’t, don’t do it. I learned a long time ago that the best thing a brokerage-any brokerage- can do is play its position. In 2007 I elected to never originate a loan again because the industry had changed too much for me to add value. And Redfin should stick to being a kickass home search site that gives consumers an option they didn’t have before. 

If Redfin is truly the *answer” to the real estate industry they claim is broken, then their model will gain traction and grow organically. My company never grew because I antagonized the competition. It grew because I worked hard and did the right thing. Redfin will grow or not depending on how well they broker real estate. 

Redfin is now offering scouting reports (“Complete performance metrics”) on 1 million real estate agents! This is causing quite a kerfuffle in the real estate world, but I have to say that I don’t mind my numbers being published by Redfin or anyone else. 

That is, so long as they are accurate. If you click on my scouting report, it is missing over 90% of my data, and a curious regular guy who searches for me will not find a top-10 producer in Westchester, but rather two lonely transactions in Queens and Nassau county. They’ll also see a banner ad for two Redfin agents, with curiously higher sales figures right next to their names, and a statement on the bottom of the page that says the following: 

So, a regular guy will conclude that my transactions for the MLS of Long Island (MLSLI) and my local Empire Access MLS (EAMLS, highlighted) are included, and that I have sold 2 houses in the last 12 months. That sure makes the Redfin agents in the banner ad look far better than I look. 

NOW…IF that regular guy were to log in to Redfin (I am not sure how many people register and log in every time), he’d see another disclaimer saying the following: 

This scouting report is missing some data.

IF you log in, you’ll see that. If you don’t, you’ll conclude from the first disclaimer that the statistics have my EAMLS sales. It does not. 

So, I’ll publish my EAMLS data right here, with my sales and rental statistics for the last 12 months. Here it is:

That paints a different picture, doesn’t it? I think that’s more than two sales. My broker code is JPHILI. My agent ID is 15689. Even this data is not complete, as several of the transactions only credit me with 50% of the dollar volume because I co-listed or co-sold the property with one of my company’s agents. For example, on the last transaction, 28 Waterview Drive, the actual sale price was $741,000. EAMLS credits me with half the dollar volume because Leslie Miller was my co-listing agent.  On 178 North Regent a few rows up, the sale was actually $375,000, and I co-sold the house with Stephanie Solano, also known as agent 26482.

This also does not include sales I made that were not on EAMLS that I sold in other MLS systems. If you were to account for the full dollar volume and deals outside the EAMLS, the dollar volume is probably closer to $15,000,000 and another half dozen transactions. I am no stranger to high dollar, 7 figure transactions, and I proudly broker rentals. I am all about putting a roof over your head regardless of your checking account balance. So are my 20+ agents. 

On at least 4 transactions, I am both the listing and selling/renting agent, but in none of those deals was I a dual agent, as Redfin’s metrics would claim. This is important to clarify. Redfin doesn’t have access to my confidential files, and even though they say they can report deals where I was supposedly a dual agent, they can’t unless they saw my files and signed agency disclosures. They have not. 

If Redfin wants to publish my data, I have no issue with that whatsoever. Like they like to say all the time, I am all for transparency. However, if they are going to publish the data, they ought to get it right, and it might even be wise to hold off on ill-advised tweets like CEO Glenn Kelman’s “Live by the sword, die by the sword” line from September 29 until they can publish credible data. That goes for dual agency as well. I have met Glenn and like him, but he’s wrong here. 

So there you have it. Redfin says they have my data, but they don’t. But I’ll give it to you anyway, because I have nothing to hide, and I stand by my numbers. 

The September edition of Real Estate In Depth, the official publication of the Westchester Putnam Association of Realtors, has an announcement that WPAR is in discussions with neighboring organizations on the possibility of a merger. The other associations are the Rockland County Board of Realtors and the Orange County Association of Realtors, and the idea also includes the WPAR-owned Empire Access MLS and the OCAR-owned Greater Hudson Valley MLS. A work group of the five entities has met a number of times to discuss how the possible merger might be achieved, what the advantages would be, and what potential issues might have to be addressed. As Vice President of the EAMLS, I am in that work group.

Given the economy and the recent trend of mergers of other associations around the country, there are some considerable advantages to a merger. For me, the eventual consolidation of the MLS systems is a big one, and one that I made a call for in the past. I have always worked both sides of the Hudson and belong to both MLS systems, and I have long wished that there would be just one MLS serving the region instead of the current fragmented (and expensive) arrangement. The MLS consolidation would not be instantaneous and would likely take effect a year or two after the merger of the Realtor associations, but the light at the end of the tunnel is encouraging. 

There are other advantages. smaller associations have fixed overhead and fewer resources to support their members. The idea of a strong 9000+ member association with a streamlined infrastructure and single set of overhead considerations is an attactive one. 

Of course, like any “marriage,” there are also questions that need answers. Three sets of governance, a new name, lockbox systems, the eventual MLS mergers and other necessary changes mean growing pains and possibly tough decisions. No binding decision has been made yet.

Is it a good idea? I think so– a great idea as a matter of fact. Membership will have to decide, but I can say with some confidence that with what I have seen thus far, this is a very good idea whose time has come. 

Realtor associations often say that they are the “voice of real estate” for their areas. This consolidation and pooling of strengths and resources will give our trade organization a voice that is stronger and more unified. That is good for members, and ultimately good for the public we serve. 

Stay tuned. 

Milky Way
        Earth                                                                               
             USA                                                                        
                 New York                                                     
                      Westchester                                      
                               Briacliff Manor
                                          Chilmark
                                                The Faranda House

Seoul, Korea, to Rego Park, Queens, to Ossining, NY to Briarcliff

Ossining to 7 other places in 4 other states to Ossining again to Briarcliff

10 years, 4 kids, one moderately sovent business, a dog, and a million bajillion gajillion dollars in debt later, we still smile.