Not long ago, we read about a judge throwing out a foreclosure case, resulting in a mortgage being de-facto-cancelled, due to the plaintiff not being able to produce documented ownership of the mortgage. 

What is being done on the secondary market is not overseen and may well be rife with shenanigans. 

Pay attention to this issue- You know who services your mortgage. Who is the actual investor? That is a much harder question to answer. 

Carol Culkin, whom I had the pleasure of meeting in person recently, wrote a very thoughtful post on listing agent-accompanied showings that prompted me to finish and revise a draft I had. We work the same market, and my thoughts are for Westchester County, New York and the Hudson Valley. Your results may vary. 

The idea of having the listing agent present in my view is the fallacy that the harder the listing agent “tries” in some cases, the more likely the house is to sell. The root of that fallacy is that some people think we pocket the whole commission while not really working too hard for it. We talk a little, take some photos, wait, someone else brings an offer, we take our cut. Voila. 

Therefore, these sellers want the agent to be on showings, jumping up and down “selling” the house to the buyers; pimping the 3 year old furnace, the landscaping, the radiant heat under the sun room floor (look Mom, no baseboards!) and so forth. These people do not understand how to sell. They do not understand what motivates buyers in this economy to make buying decisions. And it isn’t because we “try hard.”

• People don’t buy the house because the listing agent was informative. They buy it because it feels like home. 
• People don’t buy a home because the listing agent tried harder. They buy it because it feels like home. 
• People don’t buy a home because the listing agent was able to pounce on their questions and give rapid, granular answers. They buy it because it feels like home. 

I have meant to post this earlier. On September 16 the Wall Street Journal posted 10 reasons to Buy a Home, and the article is sound advice. What is good about it is the even keeled nature of the piece- real estate isn’t a 1-way ticket to dreamsville, but it is a savvy move for more than just financial reasons. Finally! Some sanity.

My favorite reason to buy a home was number 3: You’ll save on your taxes. They’ll repeal the mortgage interest tax deduction on the 12th of never, believe me.  

My favorite non-financial reason to buy a home: It’s yours. That is a powerful thing, ownership, and if you doubt me go check out a home that has been rented for the past 5 years as opposed to an owner occupant. 

In a world where online financial advice is a cesspool of garbage like “what your agent hope you’ll never find out” and other assorted nonsense of that vintage, this was refreshing, true, and timely. 

Let me preface my remarks by making it clear that, all things being equal, I’d choose an agent from my own town over an agent half the county away…if all things were equal.

Things are seldom equal in this market. Here are a few facts:

• Westchester County Home Buyers window shopped on Main Street in the 80’s. Today they window shop on the Internet. This is especially the case in higher priced markets. I’ll be clear: Buyers almost never drive up to your town from Manhattan, walk along your downtown, and step in to a real estate brokers office and ask what they have. That was decades ago. Nobody gets in their car these days without a manila folder filled with research and printed emails from brokers answering their questions on the properties they found online. The agents positioned to meet this need have a strong Internet presence and a superior follow up system. They get the buyers’ attention. You want that agent. 
• Home buyers in Westchester County could care less who lists the property. They care about location, price, condition, and how the home meets their needs. Only sellers care for firms with names that sound like law firms, coats of arms on their sign, and a perception of prestige. They should care about terms we seldom hear but are the nomenclature of real estate success in 2010: IDX, SEO, Syndication, Desktop Underwriter, price points and other things that entered the market as window dressing years ago, but now make or break transactions in the current market. If your agent doesn’t sleep, wash and rinse with those terms daily, you have a problem.   
• ANY broker or agent who would suggest that listing your home with a firm 2 zip codes away might result in fewer showings, a soft boycott by local agents (the local “mafia”), or inferior marketing exposure is not only lying, they are committing a serious ethics violation. The fact is that in a market where there is about 1 sale for every 15 licensees, any agent with a live buyer will show them anything and everything they can to make a sale. The competition to make a deal is brutal. No one would steer their client away from a home they liked and undermine their chances of earning a commission. It is antithetical to economic sanity. 

If an agent’s value proposition to you is that they are down the street and they don’t live and breathe my 2nd bullet point as well as half a dozen other terms, they are blowing smoke. Buyers don’t care where your listing agent’s cubicle is any more than they care where you’ll live after the closing. They want to know what’s in it for them, and if the listing agent cannot deliver on that question, you don’t move. 

Broker opens, free coffee in the lounge, office caravans, and glossy brochures were done in the 80’s. They are not the solution to get buyers to act in 2010. If you want to sell in 2010, you need to get re-educated about what works in this market. The days of licensees picking the low-hanging fruit, kissing yours but not breaking theirs are done. 

Buyers today are savvy, careful, and methodical. They make 3-4 visits. They bring their parents or advisors. They have inspections with granular scrutiny. How your agent handles them, and their own agent, is life or death to your sale. 

And that’s why just being down the street alone just doesn’t cut it. If you want to sell your home in Westchester County, your agent doesn’t have to live nearby, but they must live in 2010. 

No, we weren’t expecting another one- I’m a BLOGGING dad!

This morning, as I perused the Active Rain features, I almost fell off my chair. I am so used to seeing Tom’s face that I almost didn’t notice, but there, 6 posts down the page from my own post, was Tom Ricapito, licensed agent with none other than J. Philip Real Estate, FEATURED!!! 

My guy was featured!!!

OKOK now take it easy Phil, so many thoughts -don’t make it about you – OK maybe just a little-

I’ve been telling this SO- um encouraging Tom to blog for so long and OH! Can I call him? no no it’s 7am on a Sunday he’ll kill you, now inhale, inhale, wait EXHALE, inhale, exhale- Wake Ann up? who is awake? 

Is anyone awake? 

Nobody is awake this sucks. Text? TEXT YES Text him! perfect! Email him! get a screenshot!! Will it fit? Adjust DPI to make it fit? It fits! OK…saaaaaave. Screenshot saved. 

BWAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!

Control yorself Phil 

what to say what to say ok He’s a GOOD guy…first agent I hired, very honorable, team player, hard worker, good attitude, breathe, breathe would SOMEONE wake up before I have an aneurysm over here? 

Was my comment OK? Don’t be a jerk and take him down a peg  be nice, be nice, I remember those people he’s writing about, yes, I recall we spoke, not about me, not about me….

Ann is up? Stirring upstairs? No? I can’t call Tom? Common sense? B-b-ut but. NO! No I didn’t call him. I DIDN’T call him I said. I texted him. I emailed. Of course I got a screenshot. NO! They must have done it at like 4am, this is the first I saw it. 

****************************

Yes. Tom was the first agent I ever hired, I think it was back in 2006. I have encouraged him, like many other agents in the firm, to follow my lead and blog. He has blogged himself some and is, in my estimation, a good, thoughtful observer with a sense of irony that mirrors my own. He is a team player, a great listener, an extremely likable guy, has a ethics compass powered by a 220 line with a backup generator, and is smart enough to call me whenever he has a question. 

And his blog got featured this morning. His broker is pretty proud of him and very excited. 

My apologies to the other good folks on whose good work I smeared red pixels. I couldn’t contain myself, and I want to hand out cigars. 

As the beads of persipration gathered on my furrowed brow, I –

Wait, this is a market report. Sorry. *ahem*

Yorktown is a large town in northern Westchester County served by both the Yorktown and Lakeland School districts. It is is very post-war suburban in character- the vast majority of homes are 60’s and 70’s era ranches, splits and raised ranches, with larger colonials in the newer developments. 

This data is for the Yorktown school district only and is taken from the Westchester-Putnam Multiple Listing Service. It compares the sales of single family homes from August of 2010 to August of 2009.

As my grandfather would say, Yorktown’s August market was not-ah so good. Transactions were about half of last August’s closed volume, and the median price was down over $61,000.  July was also a rather lean 8 closings, so buyers are sitting on their hands right now. One instructive thing is that the average asking price of the 19 pending sales is only $389,000, so the public is not looking to spend as much in Yorktown as much as before. 

As with Croton on Hudson, prices are on a downward trend in Yorktown. When prices do fall, transactions will bounce back. We just got an accepted offer in Yorktown this past week, and it was a tough time getting the sellers to accept the buyer’s offer. There is still some resistance to the downward pressure on pricing. Human nature I suppose, but when sellers adjust they’ll move. Until then, they wait. 

To check out the 137 available properties Yorktown has to offer, register yourself for a free Listingbook account. 

This post is inspired by Brittany Rollins thought provoking post. It struck a chord. 

Real estate is  a hard business, especially right now. You have to love it. If you don’t, you should probably get out, or at least get out of the part of the industry you don’t love. I know many people in the industry who were once licensed salespeople who found their niche in other parts of the business: loan officers, title, and stagers, to name a few. There is no law that says after a year of being a licensed salesperson that if you don’t stick it out you are a failure. This is especially the case if you aren’t the primary breadwinner. 

If one of my agents walked into my office and said “I have been doing this business 9 months. I’m pretty good, but I hate it. I get nauseous when the phone rings. It isn’t fun,” I’d ask them what part isn’t fun and see if there is something they can do that is fun. Maybe they love marketing and can keep their license and get a referral fee if they market and I follow up. There are tons of possibilities. 

You might also examine whether the company you are docked with is the right fit. I interviewed a lady recently who didn’t fit into a rigid, meeting oriented office laden with paperwork and protocol. All she wanted to do was run leads and operate a small scale with a mentor available. She was in the wrong place. Smart for her to be looking. 

There are, of course, other possibilities: The convent, teaching, art, grad school, insurance, home remodeling, and dog grooming, to name a few. There is no rule you have to be in the industry. Follow your heart. 

I am blessed because, in large degree, I am where I wanted to be as a teenager- my own boss. I even live in the neighborhood I rode through on my 5-speed in the 70’s, daydreaming that I’d bump up here someday. My wife is different- although she has an artists’s heart, her parents pushed her in other directions: first pre-med, then an MBA. Not long ago, my mother in law admitted she should have let Ann pursue art. In Korean culture you can’t question your parents. In America, we rebel. Ann couldn’t win, and her mother’s admission was small solace. 

So the point is that this isn’t your practice life. Carpe diem. If you like real estate but hate real estate sales, go walk into a title company. Find out what it takes to be an underwriter or loan processor. Look into staging. See if being a marketing assistant or marketing consultant works. Don’t be miserable! Look for your niche. Don’t be a square peg in a round hole. 

A brief observation prompted by nothing in particular. 

One of the biggest ironies of government solutions to housing problems is how heavily regulated the foot soldiers (agents, loan officers) have become while the executives in the glass tower can build billion dollar ponzi schemes and get away with it. 

I can’t have a discussion about where a church is located, school districts, crime and many other things without being accused of steering or a fair housing violation. Agents have been heavily fined, suspended or lost their license over things like this. Many times, it has been deserved. We can’t go there. 

If I write a bogus lease to help a borrower qualify for a mortgage, it is bank fraud. I can’t go there. 

HOWEVER: If I came up with a scheme to loan billions in bad mortgages, fund them with worthless mortgage backed securities I sell to institutional investors like pensions and retirement funds, then the whole thing falls like the house of cards it is, I can retire to the Caribbean. 

I’m not saying the guys in the field shouldn’t be regulated the way we are; I am saying that those up top in the corporate Ivory Tower who destroyed the economy ought to be held accountable for their wrongdoing as well. 

If the regulating authorities examined the complete unsustainability of the mortgage products being hawked from 2003-2007 and spent a little less time measuring the font of my name compared to that of my company, we’d all be far better off. Regulate the guys on the bottom; fine. But keep your eye on the fellows at the top too, please Uncle Sam? 

I seldom reblog, but this is an important message. September is Realtor Safety Month. 

This is not a minor thing. We meet strangers in strange places for a living. There are news stories of our colleagues being assaulted and killed. I was once assaulted- by a client- an imbalanced one- and there was a huge theft at an open house I hosted once. 

There are bad people out there. Precautions should be taken, and that is not a sometimes thing, it is an always thing. Read on. 

I am often asked why I blog. Clients wonder, fellow agents ask, and many who have read my words are curious why I produce all this commentary. There are a number of reasons: it is therapeutic, I have a big mouth, I like to write, it keeps my company visible, and many other motivations come to mind. A big one for me is Referrals. I love referrals. I love doing a good job when I get a referral. 

Magic happens when you are committed. Late in August, I committed to Karen Bernetti’s 30 day challenge contest, where I pledged to blog at least once a day for 30 days. Perhaps not a stretch for me, but some days I might not blog and other days I could write 3 or 4 posts. At any rate, I committed to 30 consecutive days, and, more importantly, my promise to myself was that I wouldn’t be a robot- I’d try and write good stuff. This post will fulfill my 30th consecutive day, but that’s not the best thing. Here’s the magic:

In late August, I was contacted by Elyse Berman and referred a listing. Elyse is in Florida, as was her friend, but she had a house to sell in my area. I called her and orchestrated a meeting when she returned to New York, and just this past week we signed papers and the house is active on the market as one of my newest listings. Elyse’s friend is happy, I’m ecstatic, and of course I look forward to the day when I can close the deal and mail Elyse’s referral fee. I am very honored she reached out to me, and I will do all I can to take great care of the client. 

Last week, I saw another referral on the Active Rain Referral Exchange. I applied for it, and was told by Dana Voelzke that she had called me the day prior about referring her client to me! She thought of me first! This client was different- they needed a rental with some special circumstances and they needed it quickly. I never overpromise, and I have a terrific team, so I placed the client with one of my very best associate brokers who specializes in the locale that was targeted. The leases are already signed. 

Two referrals in less than 30 days. That is a big deal, and it is better than all the other little accolades I got from blogging; I got some features, added some new subscribers, and met quite a few ‘Rainers at a local ReBar camp. All great. But to me, the referrals are the magic- and 2 in one month is spectacular. I am grateful for their trust and am humbled.  

And I am going for 56 now, so 26 to go!