#and i have to ring the estate agent landlord people to find out if i can just move upstairs or what. cs that'd be my first choice honestly | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

incarnateirony · 3 years

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Gotta admit, I'm a bit anti Jarpad. Just because he comes off as entitled. BUT given how he and his wife have their hands in the fans pockets EVERY SINGLE DAY, I'd have thought he was far more minted going forward than Jensen. Neither have anything to worry about.

Corollary of that is Jarpad seems to know how to spend, his wife dresses in 10 grand of clothes daily and he wears 200k of watch on his wrist. Investment watches are usually kept pristine, not worn daily. His wife wears a 1.5m engagement ring. They frequently put pictures of the house on her blog and it's stuffed full of expensive crap. I'd feel claustrophobic living there, seriously.

Please correct my points, cos I'm really interested!

1. Lol-jackles (who is a bit of an arsehole IMHO) said JP would be getting the same for Walker as for SPN and extra (cut of profits as exec), so that's around $200,000 dollars per episode. The ensemble cast of Walker looks really expensive so that surprised me. Do you think that's true?

2. He shoves his overpriced vitamins #Mantrafamily down his fans throat and they are EXPENSIVE. He's an investor, though he's changed his story on his position several times. How much do you get from them?

3. He apparently owns a lot of property, including student housing in Austin.

4. He is owner or part owner of San Jac and Stereophonic in Austin.

5. His wife shills products daily on her blog

FYI, I HATE the "family" tag. The family is the fans not the stars. My test, I know my family's phone number and they wouldn't get an injunction if I went to anyone of their houses. Apply that test to J2?

Fans are PRODUCT to actors and definitely to Jarpad "I care so much I want you to feel better so buy my yellow vitamin wee"

I mean I never said Jared would end up homeless in a box. You can be blackballed and have money in the bank, these two statements have nothing to do with each other.

I haven't checked the Walker payrole. That statement could be true, but I'd say to take it with a grain of salt until you see a receipt about his paygrade. For example, on SPN last I knew he was making about 125K per episode (Jensen was 175K, Misha was just over 100K).

Jensen's value was higher due to a mix of... well, quality, quality of his representation, and the fact he had a few other skills in his pocket on access like directing.

Jared being a producer on Walker likely is worth a paygrade boost, and he headlines the show, truly. It's a matter of how his agent negotiated his worth.

On the other hand, it would be INCREDIBLY stupid for CBS/CW to accept a pitch that high on Jared on a show that hadn't been tested for its success. If Walker was still running its 0.3X in appropriate follow-up to SPN on the same TV season, sure. I guess. But with its fairly stable 0.15 for the last bazillion episodes that is rounding it up or down to 0.1 or 0.2 depending on its thousandths, that is baaaad. The first season should have been more conservative on its paygrades, but CW isn't known for the wisest business decisions and may have highly overestimated its potential appeal, in which case--LOL.

There is some wiggle room on potential budget because at a base, Walker is not a very expensive show to shoot, as it can just drop a camera in real world locations and roll from there. Very little CGI and the like. Again, I'd have to review what the show budget is to see what's going on.

Now to clear up some other things:

Jared does not actually own Stereotype. His friend owns Stereotype. He supported them early on with a small investment but his respective share is not enough to be a decision maker or an "owner" any more than anybody else that owns some stock in a company does. San Jac he is one of the owners of. One of. He holds far larger investment in it with several friends, so he is one of a few co-owners.

Things Jared owns:

Several empty lots

His fancy ass house everybody knows about worth about 5 million (Gen's been given power of attorney)

The "student housing" is:

a 4 bed, 2.5 bath home also for families, that can be arranged like a multifamily unit if needed. If you saw it from the street, you'd go "awww, that's a cute house." (some dude nobody knows has power of attorney--he owns a building company, not gonna be more specific)

a 3 bed, 2 bath home (power of attorney guy has this too)

A funky little duplex with 4 bedrooms per unit, best I can tell. (power of attorney guy has this too)

A singlefamily 3 bed home (different power of attorney guy)

One random suite in a business building with like 200 suites granted to him by a family member

The three with matching "power of attorney" is basically the three rentable ones so Jared himself doesn't have to be your landlord. In total there's 15 bedrooms between three properties (one truly multifamily, one arrangeable-as). These properties aren't located anywhere near each other. There's another 3 bedroom home in there that may be rentable. And some office space that got passed to him and basic cross searching in the past brought up a billion bankruptcy filings so I'm pretty sure it was "quick, Jared, take this".

jared doesn't own some giant mega campus complex. Jared owns a few homes that in theory could be rented out to students. This isn't unusual nor is this something the Ackles don't have too. Jared is the equivalent of that dude you find that owns a couple of houses and rents them out, but he goes through a property management agency by proxy of a building company that does the renovations that puts it in there for him, on 3/4 homes. He's not a landlord titan. He's a guy with a fraction of side income by the time it gets to him on a few properties.

So let's get that set straight before anybody makes it sound like Jared floats the student housing business in some lucrative scooby doo real estate scheme.

AND THEN THERE'S MANTRA:

Yes, Jared is a co-founder of Mantra. Which is honestly... god, don't get me started on why Jared Padalecki should not be simultaneously broadcasting for mental health and then packing nootropics down people's throats. (x for general nootropics) (x for phenibut in particular, which might explain his outburst on SM)

(That's just the one that jumps out as most problematic but the cocktails involved could really just not go over well with the wrong person, some of these things are like mixing OTC ritalin and SSRIs)

At the end of the day, regardless of the ethicality of mantra, I mean, sure, it's a business decision. It makes money. At the end of the day, though, this is not a career move.

Again, nobody ever said Jared's gonna end up living homeless in a box eating beans out of a can. The discussion is whether or not he has arranged himself a viable career forward in media.

Renting out a couple homes by proxy isn't gonna land him roles.

Selling miracle water that turns people into paranoid messes (but with great memory!!) isn't gonna land him roles.

Owning a bar isn't going to land him roles.

None of this actually adds any content to the discussion of Jared Padalecki's professional media career, which his stans keep trying to enter to the conversation to offset discussion of Ackles' business acumen in the acting field.

These are nonstarters in the conversation, at the end of the day. I just wanted to set straight some general details about them.

Jared has a future with an INCOME, but that doesn't mean he's arranged a future in MEDIA. And leave it from Jarpad stans to try to fuck up that conversation.

News flash: Rich White Man Bought Stuff To Make Money. More at 11.

The inability to see how this isn't the same as like. Owning a production company. And owning a record label. And owning a publisher (mostly for vinyls but other potential). And having establishment across multiple distributors and production hubs (WB, Amazon) as a path forward in media is B A F F L I N G.

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akoehler · 4 years

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Good Time to Buy?

And the hits just keep coming …

Was it someone at Motown who came up with that line, or was it a radio disc jockey? Either way, the phrase certainly sums up 2020 for a lot of people. The year hit like a boxer or MMA (mixed martial arts) fighter, slamming health and finances in ways many have never seen in their lifetime.

I had to go out yesterday and I was shocked at the new developments being built in what seems like every nook and cranny. Rumor has it that a shopping complex is coming to my neighborhood (all I could think about was the increase in traffic … good for some businesses I suppose but that one traffic light is already a nightmare) and several other spots I passed are sporting new homes, with signs brightly suggesting that now is a good time to give up the rent contract and buy.

The pandemic and other national and global issues (technology breaches, U.S. elections, anyone?) have caused many swings in the market and in people’s minds. Since we’re friends, I’ll let you in on a little secret: I started checking out properties in Costa Rica. Seriously. I mean, have you seen the views from some of the villas — I could be lounging by the pool whilst looking at the ocean as breezes blow gently through the foliage and monkeys scamper through the trees, sipping from fresh springs flowing down from the mountains that ring my multi-acre estate. And all for the price of a fraction of the property I own now. No, really.

I count myself in the group of fortunate people who can even consider selling their property to move somewhere else. Early in the days of the pandemic, businesses were shuttering and people were out of work. Unemployment benefits, a temporary stop-gap, is usually not enough. According to CNBC, those receiving such benefits will receive an increase and will be allowed to collect for a total of 50 weeks. The Centers for Disease Control also stepped in to ask landlords not to evict renters who’ve fallen behind on payments, but many indicate that unemployment hasn’t been enough to avoid eviction or foreclosure. According to the Census Bureau, 35% of the population is struggling to pay bills right now.

It’s been said that it’s often cheaper to buy than to rent. I’ve owned three homes in my life so far and rented five (three homes and two apartments). My mortgages were certainly nicer to my pocket than rent. Plus, I’m able to have pets as a homeowner, and yelling ‘Get off my lawn’ feels like it carries more weight, since I own the place, right?

But there’s still the question: is it a good time to buy, especially for folks who’ve had some challenges during the pandemic due to reduced work hours, eliminated jobs, or past due rent?

The answer might not be so simple as yes or no.

Back in September, Forbes reported it was a terrible time to buy property, suggesting it was a seller’s market. In early December, the forecast was pretty similar.

But the outlook isn’t totally bleak. Several mortgage giants like Fannie Mae have responded to the pandemic by eliminating certain fees and not enacting foreclosure processes. There are reports that the federal government might cut mortgage rates.

So all that is great news!

However, there are some things to keep in mind before jumping into the deep end of the house-buying pool. I’ve done that and while I was able to get what I thought was the house of my dreams, I could have been a lot wiser through the process.

One thing I didn’t do the first time around was to use a good mortgage calculator. If you aren’t familiar. there are a bunch of different ones and it’s always good to check several angles before approaching a seller or agent.

In my case, I wish I’d checked my debt-to-income ratios, identified how much house I could afford, double-checked if I was better off renting than buying at the times I was looking and in the areas I was hunting for, and even identifying how quickly I could pay off my home loan with regular and extra payments.

At the time of my first home purchase back in the mid-1990s, assessing those things would have meant a lot of work. And math. Have I mentioned how much I am not a fan of math? However, there are some great mortgage calculators out there where you can find all these tools and more in one place. I was checking out MortgageCalculators.info (yes, that’s easy to remember, isn’t it?) and was so surprised to see that even without logging in, I could check interest rates in my area as well as connect to lenders. All that in addition to letting someone else do the math!

Bottom line is, the answer to whether it’s a good time to buy a home is it depends. It’s all about what each person’s bandwidth is right now, and the only way to get an idea is to start asking the right questions. The mortgage calculator is a great way to understand what’s out there.

#real estate; home; mortgages

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davidoespailla · 6 years

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Kim Kardashian West Is Paying a Former Prisoner’s Rent—and We Found Him a Landlord

Jared Siskin/amfAR/Getty Images

Kim Kardashian West is making real estate headlines once again, but this time, it’s not for her haunting interior decor or luxury beachside condo. Instead, it’s because Kardashian West is working to help Matthew Charles, a former convict who was released from prison in January and has been rejected in his attempts to rent an apartment in Nashville, TN.

Kardashian West has offered to pay five years’ worth of Charles’ rent to help him get back on his feet. According to CNN, Charles served 21 years in prison for drug-related charges and was recently released after the First Step Act was signed into law.

This law “reformed sentencing laws that have wrongly and disproportionately harmed the African American community,” according to President Donald Trump.

Charles first applied for an apartment after his release and was rejected. After learning that his lease application had been turned down again, Kardashian West took to Twitter to find him a housing opportunity in Nashville.

Matthew Charles’s lease application was rejected again bc of his criminal record (even w me paying his rent in advance). If there are any landlords w a 2 bedroom in Nashville willing to give Mr Charles a 2nd chance, contact [email protected] Serious inquiries only, thank you

— Kim Kardashian West (@KimKardashian) March 15, 2019

After hearing about this case, we couldn’t help but wonder: Is it even legal for landlords to reject an applicant for having a criminal background? And if so, how hard would it be for Kardashian West to find Charles a new home? Here’s what to know about Kardashian West’s latest real estate endeavor.

Is it legal for a landlord to deny housing to a former convict?

The short answer? Yes, landlords are free to deny housing to prospective tenants based on a criminal record, according to Albert Anderson, a real estate agent with REAL New York, in New York City.

“Landlords have the right to legally deny an applicant on any grounds of which the identifiers are not protected by the Fair Housing Act,” Anderson says. “Conversely, landlords cannot discriminate while choosing whom to rent to on the basis of the renter’s inclusion in any of the seven federally protected classes—namely race, color, national origin, religion, sex, familial status, or disability.”

Many states and some localities also protect other classes (e.g., sexual orientation and citizenship status) from discrimination. Because a criminal record status is not protected in Tennessee, “technically, a landlord in that state could legally discriminate against an applicant with a record,” Anderson adds.

However, landlords are required by law to apply the same standard of treatment to different classes of protected applicants, says landlord Domenick Tiziano of AccidentalRental.com.

“The classic example is the landlord who denies a Hispanic applicant for having a criminal record and then allows a white applicant with a similar criminal past,” Tiziano points out. “This is discrimination against a protected class and is prohibited by law.”

Will Kim Kardashian West’s help really make a difference?

Despite Nashville’s competitive real estate market, our experts predict that Kardashian West will be able find a landlord who will rent an apartment to Charles.

“A celebrity’s clout and financial support will without a doubt help the man secure housing,” Anderson says. “The landlord might just be a big fan, but having Kim Kardashian as the guarantor with five years’ rent upfront doesn’t hurt.”

Plus, landlords who do rent to folks with criminal backgrounds typically accept applications based on the severity of the crime committed, and Janis Benstock, broker and owner of Settle Down Philadelphia, in Philadelphia, anticipates that Charles’ nonviolent drug offenses won’t be a deal breaker.

“Assuming he did not land in jail for manufacturing and running a drug ring, I would probably rent to him,” Benstock says. “If he wants to come to Philadelphia, I will probably be able to place him in a home. I hope that people will use fairness and common sense and give this man a chance to rebuild his life.”

The post Kim Kardashian West Is Paying a Former Prisoner’s Rent—and We Found Him a Landlord appeared first on Real Estate News & Insights | realtor.com®.

Kim Kardashian West Is Paying a Former Prisoner’s Rent—and We Found Him a Landlord

#TRUSTED LOCAL REALTOR #Kim Kardashian West Is Paying a Former Prisoner’s Rent—and We Found Him a Lan

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pnwdoodlesreads · 8 years

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The year-long 50th-birthday party for this pioneering suburb on Long Island is winding down. The parade drew 5,000 marchers. Crowds came for candlelight church services, an antique-car show, exhibits, seminars and tours of the fabled Levitt houses that started it all.

There were even Potato Day festivities honoring the flat farmland here where Levitt & Sons began mass-producing single-family tract homes in 1947, heralding the wave of migration from cities that lasted for decades.

But not everyone touched by the Levittown experience has been celebrating.

''The anniversary leaves me cold,'' said Eugene Burnett, who was among thousands of military veterans who lined up for their green patch of the American dream here after World War II. But he was turned away because he is black. ''It's symbolic of segregation in America,'' he said. ''That's the legacy of Levittown.

''When I hear 'Levittown,' what rings in my mind is when the salesman said: 'It's not me, you see, but the owners of this development have not as yet decided whether they're going to sell these homes to Negroes,' '' Mr. Burnett, now a retired Suffolk County police sergeant, recalled. He said he still stings from ''the feeling of rejection on that long ride back to Harlem.''

The salesman was not honest with Mr. Burnett. Blacks and other minorities had no chance of getting in, because Levitt had decided from the start to admit only whites.

Housing denied

Delano Stewart, editor of The Point of View, a Long Island biweekly on black affairs, said of Levittown: ''It's something we'd like to forget rather than celebrate. It's a black mark on the Island, or maybe I should say a white mark.''

The whites-only policy was not some unspoken gentlemen's agreement. It was cast in bold capital letters in clause 25 of the standard lease for the first Levitt houses, which included an option to buy.

It stated that the home could not ''be used or occupied by any person other than members of the Caucasian race.''

That clause was dropped in 1948 after the United States Supreme Court, ruling on another case, declared such restrictions to be ''unenforceable as law and contrary to public policy.''

Ignoring the law of the land, however, Levitt continued adhering to its racial bar. Levittown quickly filled up with young white families. Minority residents trickled in during the 1950's, but the pattern was set.

Today Levittown has changed, but only a little. While the community has more minority residents than ever, it remains overwhelmingly white -- 97.37 percent in the 1990 census.

''It's certainly not a melting pot, but it is a community in transition,'' said James A. Edmondson, the chief executive of the Yours, Ours, Mine Community Center in Levittown, who is black. ''Ethnically it's changing every day, and in 25 years it won't look like it does today.''

Although blacks account for 8 percent of Long Island's population, they are scarce here. Of Levittown's 53,286 residents in 1990, there were 51,883 whites, 2,184 Hispanic people, 950 Asians and Pacific Islanders, 137 blacks (0.26 percent), 31 American Indians and Aleuts and 285 ''other.''

Most blacks intent on moving to Long Island ended up in the few ''open housing'' communities, which became predominantly minority pockets. ''We didn't have many other choices,'' said Mr. Burnett, who lives in Wyandanch, in Suffolk County.

As a result, ''Nassau County is the most segregated suburban county in the United States,'' said Dr. Andrew A. Beveridge, a sociology professor at Queens College. He based that view on a computer study of national census data, in which he calculated what portion of the population of each county would have to move to achieve racial integration.

Living by Rules They Did Not Make

Whenever historians, planners and sociologists plumb the lessons of Levittown, race always looms. The debate is not simple or comfortable, especially for people here. Early Levittowners moved here under rules favoring them that they did not make. Later arrivals inherited a history that they did not create.

''There is a sensitivity to it, because the community has for many years tried to overcome that image,'' said Louise Cassano, a co-chairwoman of the Levittown 50th-Anniversary Committee and a resident since 1951. ''There was that lingering prejudice,'' she said, ''but I think we've come a long way.''

At the outset, some whites here fought racism, forming the Committee to End Discrimination in Levittown. There were protests and a leaflet against ''Jim Crowism,'' Mrs. Cassano said. ''Some people moved in very unaware of the Caucasian clause and were disturbed when they found out,'' she said.

In the second Levittown, near Philadelphia, angry white mobs threw rocks in 1957 to protest the prospect of blacks moving in. In the response back here, the Levittown Democratic Club, Jewish War Veterans and a Protestant minister all spoke up for open housing.

But this Levittown has had its share of bigots. The Levittown Historical Society's president, Polly Dwyer, recalled one incident: ''An Asian family moved in, and some people moved out because of them. It's so silly. They were good, quiet, decent people.''

A Hofstra University political science professor, Dr. Herbert D. Rosenbaum, who lived here from 1953 to 1965, said: ''In those years, even liberal people like ourselves tended to take residential segregation for granted, without approving it. None of us went out into the street to change it.''

Levittown's history seems especially jarring, experts say, because the community was founded as segregation was beginning to crumble. While the first Levitt houses were being built, Jackie Robinson was breaking the color barrier in baseball. A year later, President Harry S. Truman integrated the military.

Hopes Dissipated For Black Americans

Another paradox was that although Levittown was built for World War II veterans, who had fought tyranny and racism, its doors were opened to at least one former German U-boat sailor, while black American soldiers were turned away.

The role of the developer, the late William J. Levitt, is debated. He defended his actions as following the social customs of the era.

''The Negroes in America are trying to do in 400 years what the Jews in the world have not wholly accomplished in 600 years,'' he once wrote. ''As a Jew, I have no room in my mind or heart for racial prejudice. But I have come to know that if we sell one house to a Negro family, then 90 or 95 percent of our white customers will not buy into the community. This is their attitude, not ours. As a company, our position is simply this: We can solve a housing problem, or we can try to solve a racial problem, but we cannot combine the two.''

Indeed, the official Federal Housing Administration policy back then called for ''suitable restrictive covenants'' to avoid ''inharmonious racial or nationality groups'' in housing.

''To paint Levitt as a villain would be unfair: the whole system was villainous,'' said Dr. Herbert Gans, a Columbia University sociology professor who lived in Levittown, N.J., and wrote ''The Levittowners.'' ''Levitt strictly reflected the times,'' he said.

Dr. Kelly said, ''To single Levittown out on racial covenants, as if it weren't going on everywhere else, is unfair.''

But critics say Mr. Levitt was no passive bystander. His company branded integrationists as Communist rabble-rousers and barred them from meeting on Levittown property. It also evicted two residents who had invited black children from a neighboring community to their homes.

Building the third Levittown in New Jersey, the company openly defied that state's antibias laws and opposed a lawsuit from two blacks seeking to buy homes. Levitt capitulated to integration there in 1960, though by then much of the development was sold out.

As late as the mid-1960's, Mr. Levitt was still defending segregated housing, at that time in Maryland. And blacks were not the only targets. Although he was the grandson of a rabbi, Mr. Levitt also built housing on Long Island that excluded Jews.

Assembly-line houses

No one disputes William Levitt's visionary talent in applying assembly-line methods on a grand scale. Called the Henry Ford of housing, he spurned unions to organize an army of 15,000 workers into dozens of specialized crews, including one to apply red paint and another, white. His company made its own nails and bought forests to supply lumber.

At its peak, Levitt built 36 houses a day, each on a 60-foot-by-100-foot plot. The original Cape Cods had two bedrooms and an unfinished attic. Some models had a 12-inch Admiral television set built into the staircase. Drawn by prices of about $7,000, or monthly payments of around $60, hundreds of buyers flocked here. When the last nail was driven in 1951, Levitt had created 17,447 homes.

But critics say that Levittown could also have been integrated, endowing suburbia and the nation with a social vision as innovative as Levitt's construction technology and marketing.

''Levittown was an opportunity tragically lost,'' said Dr. Kenneth T. Jackson, a history professor at Columbia. ''There was such a demand for houses -- they had people waiting on lines -- that even if they had said there will be some blacks living there, white people would still have moved in.''

Whatever the past concerns or prejudices, there is scant evidence of problems involving the minority residents who finally trickled in.

''First there's fear, then there's somebody who makes friends with the new family and says they're very human, they keep nice houses,'' said John A. Juliano, a real estate agent here for 32 years.

He chuckled about finding a rental for a black woman whose absent landlord did not learn her race till three years later. When the landlord found out, Mr. Juliano recalled: ''He said, 'John, she's black.' I said, 'Yeah?' He said, 'She's a terrific tenant.' If I had mentioned it at first, there might have been a problem.''

Few blacks in Levittown are eager to talk publicly. A couple who lived here for 20 years agreed to comment if their names were not printed. ''We had a problem getting in,'' said the husband. But his wife added, ''After we moved in, we didn't actually have any trouble. I never felt excluded.'' Since retiring, they have left the state, but return every year to visit their Levittown friends.

George Nager, a lawyer and longtime local activist, welcomes the growing mix of black, Hispanic and Asian Americans. ''These are mostly upward-bound, entrepreneurial people,'' he said. ''They're absolutely great neighbors. There are no rednecks here and never any cross burnings, I can tell you that, and I go back almost to the Year One here.''

The Levittown Tribune's new editor, David Mock, is black. He said that although race may lurk as an issue, he has been accepted as a professional. ''They opened up to me,'' he said of the residents. ''I don't have any problem at all; it's been an absolute pleasure.''

Mr. Edmondson, the black community center official, stood out when he started working here 28 years ago.

''I can't tell you the bad words that were scrawled on the walls,'' he recalled, and the police sometimes stopped him to ask why he was in the neighborhood. Although he never moved to Levittown, living instead in Hempstead, he became a respected community leader here.

''The black families I know here have not had a bad experience,'' he said. ''The thing is, I've watched the children. They really get along in a most fantastic way.''

''Because Levittown promised affordable housing, with no down payment, it offered hope to the African-American working class when no other community did -- but that hope was quashed,'' said Dr. Barbara M. Kelly, Hofstra University's director of Long Island Studies. ''After the war, blacks thought things had changed, but they hadn't, and Levittown became a microcosm of that frustration.''

#discrimination

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drtanstravels · 4 years

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Note: This post was written over the course of many months, beginning on Friday, May 3, 2019. To document as accurately as possible the entire excruciating process, I just kept adding more and more to it as events unfolded. I was initially going to cover both our experiences with buying and selling an apartment in Singapore, however, as we encountered seemingly perpetual red tape, endless delays, and the process as a whole dragged on, this piece got painfully long so I decided to edit into two separate parts, thus far resulting in this still rather lengthy first chapter solely about selling our apartment. Enjoy.

We decided quite a while ago to buy a new apartment and, despite how long it has taken, we initially thought it would be a lengthier process, because the plan was to also keep our current place and rent it out. If we sell our current apartment, we achieve our goals about two years earlier and don’t have to deal with the stress that coincides with being landlords, however, that doesn’t free us of the burden of dealing with real estate agents. The bulk of these people in Singapore are just awful, plain and simple. Okay, we initially encountered a couple while selling that weren’t too bad and the pair that ultimately got the job done were fantastic. I have previously written about what we went through to simply rent an apartment in New York City, but selling one and buying another in Singapore isn’t a whole lot of fun, either. So, what makes dealing with the bulk of Singaporean real estate agents so bad? Well, there are the obvious lies and deception that come hand-in-hand with making major secondhand purchases, but it’s usually used car dealers who get the bad rap, however, as you keep reading, particularly when I’ve finished writing the next chapter about buying an apartment, you’ll learn that the word “room” can mean almost anything to a Singaporean estate agent. Then there are the endless personal questions and comments that these awkward, giggling, little socially-stunted people make that have absolutely nothing to do with them or the process of buying or selling a house. Add to this them ignoring all regular communal time constraints when calling or messaging you, and you’ll be pulling your hair out within days.

Anna initially put our house on the market on Tuesday, April 23, 2019 and I was originally going to begin writing this piece when the entire process was completed, but in under two weeks I had accrued so many weird anecdotes and tidbits that I felt I was going to forget some nugget of gold that had occured during this entire course of action. Instead, I compiled the stories that took place as they happened instead of just putting them into the notes on my phone, until this entire debacle was completed. As you will find out, we painfully tolerated some real estate agents when we were looking at apartments to buy, which was almost immediately after we had put our place on the market. However, the only way these people can get any worse is when you have something of which they know they can make a nice little commission, the standard market rate in Singapore being 2%. When Anna first listed our place for sale she used my phone number as the main point of contact. Now, here I sit, writing this portion over two weeks later on Friday, May 10, 2019 and I have kept my phone on silent the entire time due to the constant calls and messages from real estate agents that were late to the party, yet still want a piece of the action. Here’s an example of one I received yesterday:

So much to decipher there; is his or her name Adnic? Anna told me that PN stands for PropNex, “Singapore’s largest listed real estate agency,” but why would I want this person coming over on a Saturday morning when each entire week spent dealing with these people leads to a big Friday night being required in order to de-stress and unwind? And who the hell is this Angie to whom they wish to speak? Anyway, Anna had dinner with some of her family on the Wednesday, the day after listing the property, and her auntie has bought and sold many apartments in Singapore, as well as overseas, so she gave Anna some advice and also listed our place in Singapore’s national daily newspaper, The Straits Times. Needless to say my phone blew up the next day and these people are like the hybrid of a vulture and a leech. My day consisted of just constant calls and messages, the calls mostly impossible to understand speed-mumbling and the messages indecipherable and full of typos, the example above being par for the course. Some would call four or five times in a row, hoping to get an answer, others would send a followup message just minutes after their initial message just to see if I had received it, because they still hadn’t heard back from me yet. In fact, one of them even sent me a bunch of articles about himself, some of them in Mandarin and from almost four years prior:

His mother definitely has this on the fridge

You know he has this framed somewhere

Anna was home when the phone first started ringing and it was her suggestion that I should ignore the calls and just respond to messages, which suited me fine. Still, real estate agents here want exclusive rights to your apartment, meaning that they can be the only person to market it, but we didn’t want that so Anna and myself had to devise a standard response to each of these messages that I was receiving in order to find the agents that were at least attempting to be legit. This is what Anna came up with and saved it in the notes in my phone so I just had to copy and paste the the top portion as a reply to each message:

Hi, in order for us to authorise you as our agent;

Please advise if you are an exclusive agent or can do open market, and

What is your lowest commission rate?

In the interest of convenience, please continue to communicate via message/WhatsApp.

(If they say non-exclusive and can offer a rate in writing of 2% or less, we can send them the pics and unit no.

Asking price $XXX,XXX)

I was copying and pasting this reply so frequently that I made the mistake of copying the entire thing, including the section in brackets, and sending it to a couple of agents before realising my mistake and quickly deleting it. If we received the answer from an agent as outlined in the underlined section that was intended for my eyes only, they would then receive the following message:

Thanks for your interest, we will be free to let you view our apartment and take photos on Tuesday or Thursday, 1-5pm. Please SMS to confirm viewing.

It was all getting a bit much and we would need to clean up before people viewed our apartment the following week so I went out shopping to get some of the supplies we would need. While I was out I received a phone call and figured it would just be Anna so I answered without looking. It turned out to be one of the vulture-leeches, he was in the area and wanted to speak to us personally. I told him I would be home in 30 minutes and he agreed to meet me at our place for what I assumed was an opportunity to have a look through the apartment and get some pictures early. Nope, he just wanted to give me his spiel on letting him have exclusive rights to the apartment, however, he did raise some good points. I let him know that Anna is the main breadwinner and decision maker in this process so it would be best if he spoke to her, but he’d need to wait until she returned home from work. He hung out alone at the nearby shopping mall until Anna was home and then went through his exclusivity speech again to Anna, pointing out that open market sale wasn’t an option for him, he only does exclusive sales. We said we would talk over his offer, which had its pros and cons, and then get back to him, but after discussing it we decided against his offer of exclusivity. He messaged me the following night, Friday, to ask if we had talked about it, and this was where I learnt two valuable lessons about him and most other real estate agents trying to sell properties:

He was full of shit.

He truly couldn’t care less what time he contacted me.

Despite previously saying that he only does exclusive sales, he had no problem with trying to sell on the open market when he realised we wouldn’t use him otherwise. Also, he would continue to hassle me the entire weekend, going as far as messaging me at 11:00pm on Sunday night! Here are some of the highlights of what I continued to receive over the course of the weekend, check out the times of some of them:

Desperation is a stinky cologne! I wouldn’t even message my own parents that late on a Sunday night, and you can see that there is a deleted message toward the end, because this guy was pissing me off so badly that I initially responded a little less diplomatically so Anna ultimately wrote that final reply. Still, when someone tries to point out that you don’t appreciate being contacted on that day or at that time, it takes a special kind of stupid to reply to the message. On a later occasion he texted me at 3:30am, beginning his message with an apology for contacting me at that time, but he was worried he’d forget what he wanted to ask me if he waited. Just write it down and inquire later in our agreed upon timeframe!

Monday was just as stressful, constantly dealing with real estate agents’ phone calls and messages, as well as cleaning up the place, trying to rearrange the clutter. I also cooked dinner that night and accidentally knocked a bottle of olive oil off our extremely small bench, smashing it on the ground and covering the floor with oil and shards of glass. To make matters worse, we had run out of floor cleaner so after I finished picking up as much broken glass as I could find without slipping over, I had to find a place that sold floor cleaner at 9:30pm and mop the house, putting me in a rather bad mood that ultimately scared the dog.

Tuesday was finally here and I started getting our place into the best shape I could quite early. Nobody was supposed to arrive until 1:00pm, however, the first agent showed up at 12:30pm and complained about why I hadn’t finished cleaning and that I wasn’t ready for him. I politely reminded him that I wasn’t expecting anyone for at least another 30 minutes, but he just told me he could give me tips on tidying and then started to unplug all of our devices and rearrange our furniture until I put a stop to that. He said our apartment needed to look “less cluttered, less lived in,” so I then passive-aggressively explained to him that, unfortunately for him, we still do live in it and the reason we are selling is that, although we love our current apartment, we have just outgrown it and the place simply isn’t big enough, there isn’t space for everything, but we’ll need to continue to live there until it is sold and achieving that is his role in the whole situation. It’s a nice apartment at a decent price in a highly-sought after part of town, if he can’t sell it, maybe he should try another line of work. Anyway, he spent the next hour filming our property and taking photos, not letting me in the same room as him and not allowing any of the agents that came at the correct time to enter the apartment, instead forcing them to stand in the stairwell in the heat. He even whined that out house is too dark and I need to find a way to make it lighter, especially the bedroom. Yes, that’s because we sleep in there, not use it as a photo-booth, and it’s kind of ironic that he described the place as “bright” in his video. He was an obnoxious douche and was more than a little liberal with the truth, but the video he put together (which is no longer available) wasn’t too bad and if he one day allows me to teach him pronunciation, grammar, and sentence structure, I may just take some of his decluttering tips.

Many more real estate agents arrived over the course of the day, most of them polite, some quite critical, and pretty much all of them trying to make the same jokes and starting the same conversations; “How’s the weather up there?” and, “Have you eaten?” were all questions I had to answer multiple times, as was making up excuses for where Anna was and that’s where I made my biggest faux pas. The agents always try to get personal information out of you, especially about income, which is none of their business when we’re using them to sell our apartment. There was no problem with me telling any agents that I’m a freelance writer, but Anna didn’t want any of them knowing what she does for a living, because they might try to lowball us on our place if they knew she was a surgeon. The first time an agent asked where she worked, I kind of panicked, leading to this exchange:

Agent: “So, where is your wife?” Me: “At work.” Agent: “Oh, where does she work?” Me: “Near the hospital.” Agent: “Oh, what does she do, is she a nurse? A doctor?” Me (kind of panicking): “Canteen.”

It didn’t help that Anna used to do pole dancing for exercise a few years ago and we still have the pole in our house. “So, is your wife a dancer, too?” she asked in a very judging manner. Yes, now this particular real estate agent thinks that I’m married to a stripper that also needs to work in a hospital canteen during the day to make ends meet. Another agent asked if the pole was to hold the ceiling up and could it be removed. God, some of them are dumb, we live on the third floor of a four-storey building, I’d be equally worried for the people that live above us if that were the case!

It’s now the first week of June, 2019 and we’ve had some agents bring people to check out our apartment. We’ve had around 10 different potential buyers look through, but it only seems to be the same two or three real estate agents out of all of the ones marketing it that are getting the people in. Our apartment clearly has an industrial design, however, one of the first agents who showed people through described it as “countrysides look.” Firstly, I don’t think the word ‘countryside’ can be pluralised and secondly, a countryside design would be the complete opposite of industrial. When I hear “countryside” I picture lace curtains, doilies, vases of flowers, floorboards, that type of thing, not exposed bricks and beams to go with the mostly cement floor. He also told the people that we had vinyl flooring in the living room when that portion is clearly marble, one of the only remaining original features of the entire apartment from before we renovated it when we first purchased the place seven years ago. Was he even trying? The agent who made the video of our house, a film that was apparently based on a true story, contacted me on Friday, June 7 to tell me that he had some people who wanted to look through our apartment the following day and was wondering if our place had two bathrooms. It took all of my energy to refrain from telling him that the answer is in that stupid little movie that he made and instead told him it has only one. He then asked how many bathrooms our neighbour’s place had! I wouldn’t recognise my neighbours if I saw them in the street, let alone know how many toilets they have, but I assume it would be the same amount as us, as all of the apartments in our building were built with an identical floor-plan. He also asked what time on Saturday suited me best so I told him 3:00pm, but on Saturday morning I received a message saying that he would see me at 2:30, half an hour earlier again, but at least he told me this time, unlike the day he made his home movie. Before long it was 2:20pm and my stomach was starting to cramp, I had to go to our only bathroom urgently, but I was also worried that he may arrive earlier than the agreed upon time again, on this occasion while I was in a rather compromising situation. Fortunately, I managed to complete my business quickly with enough time remaining for the aroma to adequately dissipate and the viewing went off without a hitch, however, the agent had grown a really bad moustache since we had last met.

When you’re looking at spending every cent you have on an apartment, there is an endless list of questions you could ask — Does the traffic get noisy? How much hot water does the current tank give? Have any murders ever been committed there? For some reason though, we kept getting asked the same two questions time and time again from potential buyers;

Which direction does the apartment face?

What race are our neighbours?

The second question seems to be a real selling point in Singapore and the potential buyers asking this are always relieved to find out that our neighbours are all Singaporean-Chinese. People here can be a tad biased at times and I still have no idea why, but many in this country don’t want to live anywhere near members of particular races or nationalities. I’m sure, though, that they wouldn’t have any problems with the eccentric, old Singaporean-Chinese guy that lives behind us who usually wears nothing but a faded old towel or sometimes his clothes on backwards, meditating outside on mouldy, discarded office furniture, testicles swaying in the breeze, surrounded by a fort of more hanging towels, as well as having banana peels, clam shells, and other meticulously arranged, but ultimately unusable food items drying on the ground outside his apartment full of clutter, trash, and plastic bags. His joint is constantly infested with rats and they are always running around the general vicinity of his apartment, but he’s fine:

A visit from some government officials while resplendent in a faded towel, as seen from our kitchen window

Maybe he got in a fight with the rats and they kicked him out on this particular night

The irony is that his place is worth a fortune!

From his point of view

I really wish I had a marker at the time to draw a moustache

Today is Monday, July 29, 2019 and we’ve had quite a few people look at our apartment, but no official offers, the main complaint being that, despite being listed as a “walk-up” apartment, it doesn’t have an elevator, some viewers even perplexed at this exclusion, because climbing two small flights of stairs is just too much effort for many. Why bother even looking at it at all? We also realised that it has been the same four or five agents getting people to look at our apartment and they suggested that we get the agents that haven’t done anything to take their listings down from property websites to avoid saturation, which isn’t a bad idea. This morning I sent those agents the following message:

Hi _____,

My wife and I own the property you have listed at 20 Tiong Bahru Rd. I am writing to request that, due to a complete lack of viewers, that you cease to list our property. This is not open to negotiation.

Thank you, Tim Abel

Most of them just did it and replied to let me know, which was appreciated, but one decided to call me and try to weasel his way out of it, which went something like this:

Agent: “Good day, sir, in reference to your message, what I’ve been doing is collating all of the offers on your property in order to ascertain what –” Me: “YOU HAVEN’T BROUGHT A SINGLE PERSON TO OUR PLACE IN THREE MONTHS, TAKE THE LISTING DOWN!” *click*

These guys are terrified of complaints that will damage their reputation so almost immediately after I hung up on him I received a text message that said:

Hi tim.will abide. Apologise n tks

I think that translates into “Hi, Tim, I will take the listing down as per your request. Apologies and thank you.”

Fast forward to what is now mid-December, 2019 and we’re still sitting here, waiting to sell our apartment. We ended up going with one of the female agents as an exclusive agent and she initially brought a reasonable amount of people around to our place to have a look, but even her interest waned over time to the point where she didn’t even have our place listed toward the end. Fortunately her contracted period as our exclusive agent expired. We did receive a couple of offers, but they were either quite low or rescinded after the people who made them opted for a different apartment. We ultimately chose to go with a pair of other agents at the recommendation of a friend who was able to sell her place quite quickly, instead of going through all of this hassle. To try to make the process go even smoother with these guys, I went on a crazy decluttering spree, spending many hours of many days going through certain areas of the apartment and just throwing stuff out, much to the behest of my lower back. Anna chipped in on the day the agents came to take photos and videos, managing to throw out five shopping bags full of old shoes alone, as well as several boxes of books. This cleaning process resulted in us finding some items we had completely forgotten about or didn’t even know we had. A good example is that we can never find a pen that works when we need one, yet I found three unused and rather expensive pens still in their boxes that were gifts at some of Anna’s conferences. The absolute highlight for me though, had to be two books Anna wrote in primary school, the first when she was about seven years old, detailing her family’s trip to California with interesting tidbits such as finding her cousin’s bra, her friend playing with it, and then putting it on her soft-toys. The other book was a mystery about a kidnapping and ransom, written when she was roughly eleven or so:

Anna’s artistic abilities haven’t really evolved

This might help explain why we watch so much Law & Order: SVU

As a result of all of this cleaning and carrying so many loads of heavy items down to the bins downstairs, I was barely been able to stand upright properly for a few days, plus all of the dust that had been stirred up as a result had us constantly sneezing, but it did feel nice having less crap around the place. As a result I wasn’t looking forward to the whole moving process, but that wouldn’t happening anytime soon.

The agents came around on Saturday, December 13, 2019, took their photos and videos, as well as sat down and had a chat to us, these guys actually asking questions and showing a genuine interest, so that was a good sign. They also informed us that this time of year isn’t a good one for the housing market so it probably wouldn’t be until January or February until we hear anything, but an online virtual walkthrough of our place was still put up on their website on Monday, December 15, 2019. From Saturday, January 4, 2020 we had a steady flow of viewers for our house and it wasn’t just people who were bored on the weekend and had decided to spend it snooping through other people’s apartments, these ones seemed genuinely interested in purchasing, and by Tuesday, January 21, 2020 we had accepted an offer and sold our place! What nobody else could achieve in eight months, our new agents pulled off in one, a month that happened to include the Christmas and New Year period, as well as being just prior to Chinese New Year. Pretty impressive.

This now left us with the headache of dealing with banking procedures and bureaucracy in order to finalise the sale of our apartment, as well as sort out the place we wanted to buy and it was the second one that would prove the most frustrating, but that’s a story for next time. Stay tuned for the story, whenever it is eventually finalised, that coincided directly with this one; The Hell That We Experienced In The Real Estate Process In Singapore — Buying.

Boy, that was nine months of fun Note: This post was written over the course of many months, beginning on Friday, May 3, 2019.

#agents #apartments #buying #hdb #property #real estate

0 notes

cleancutpage · 6 years

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November Monthly Radar

[Note from editor: We publish a Weekly Radar for Geek Estate Mastermind members that’s more like Reader’s Digest or a college radio station than it’s like reading TMZ or watching the news. Our recommendations and synthesis come out every Friday morning along with member news to peruse. This is a wrap-up for the month of November with a couple articles from each week.]

Mastermind Message

In addition to the Thanksgiving holiday, November included a member lunch in Seattle and our first gathering of folks in Chicago.

New Product

We launched a new series for members. Category product reviews. The first segment: Small Landlord Property Management Software.

New Members

Max Colls from Estated

Scott Drexel from Rentl

Kristina McCann from Off-Market-Homes

Grier Allen from BoomTown

James Green from OffertoClose.com

David Steckel from Setter

Nathan Miller from Rentec Direct

Ben Clark from Realigned

Pierre Calzadilla from Local Logic

Vincent Harris from Hoozip

Teevan McManus from Greendoor

Member News

Estated Upgrades Property Data API with RESO Compliance and Parcel Search for Proptech Industry

Ebby Halliday rolled out Buyside company-wide

FlyHomes revealed their new logo

TRIBUS becomes the first to send Solds to Zillow

Remine announces Contactually integration.

Greg joined the executive team of a Denver brokerage

Congrats to Pete Flint / NFX for pulling off their first Proptech CEO Summit in San Francisco. Several Geek Estate members attended

Caroline Pinal of Giveback Homes: Five Years of Giving. What I’ve Learned & How You Can Apply it to Real Estate

Brett Hagler at New Story is hiring an Innovation Fund Manager

Ryan Coon from Avail was featured in a piece about rentals on Curbed

BoomTown acquired lead qualification tool Real Contact

Transmission Topics

Vendor sales strategies at the broker level

Background on the rentals category product review

The underwhelming rentals search experience

Why showings data creates a true network effect

How brokerages can compete with iBuyers

When removing friction isn’t always a good thing

Real Estate

COZY ACQUIRED BY COSTAR FOR $68M

Big news out of the small landlord property management space with the news that CoStar (operator of Apartments.com) acquired Cozy for $68 Million. Congratulations to Gino and the team. The company was founded after their time at Flickr, who’s co-founder Stewart Butterfield joined Cozy’s board of directors and went on to launch the popular work collaboration tool Slack. I’ve been a customer since 2013 and worked with Cozy on integration during my time at Move. We’ll cover the announcement and its implications more in our newly launched series on Small Landlord Property Management Software. There are so many implications with this deal, but something to think about over the next few days is how it affects the portal space. Independent landlord listings comprise a unique set of rentals content not yet democratized on the web. While portals have become a necessary channel for large portfolios of apartment communities and mid-sized property management firms – many independent landlords still get the results they want from a red and white yard sign coupled with a Craigslist posting. Capturing those users via free software could be a massive win for CoStar, whose primary product line is business intelligence reporting. Also, while capturing that listing inventory could be an enormous win for Apartments.com, it could mean an even more significant loss for Zillow, realtor.com, and Apartment List. Bonus: my hometown investors from Bend, Seven Peak Ventures, were early investors in Cozy. -Greg

THE CONSUMER VIEW ON A BILLION DOLLARS IN SELLER LEADS

Mike Del Prete believes Zillow is sitting on a billion-dollar opportunity from their Offers business in seller leads alone. “Zillow says that since launch, nearly 20,000 homeowners have taken direct action on its platform to sell their home. Of those, it has purchased just about 1 percent of homes (around 200).” The company has a goal of 5% national market share for Offers which would require purchasing 10% of the requests it fields, though Mike says, “A more realistic target would be to only purchase around 1 percent of requests.”

The seller’s perspective: “If I know there is a 99% chance that Zillow will NOT buy my house, why exactly should I waste my time?”

Can a consumer product/service with a 99% rejection rate stand the test of time? It seems like a House of Cards scenario that will inevitably crumble. If you have a counterpoint, by all means, I’m all ears. -Drew

Startups

REFLECTIONS ON A FAILED APP LAUNCH

I learned that it wasn’t worth documenting features that we passed on in favor of focusing solely on those that we shipped. Secretly, I never fully bought into this mantra and tried to chronicle as many of the ideas tabled over the years. While agile teams shouldn’t spend development time looking backward – a retrospective centered on what didn’t work might be even more valuable than one focused on what did. That’s why I was happy to read App mistakes: the ten lessons we learned launching (& killing) our $200K mobile app. The product lead for Hotjar (a user experience and analytics application) breaks down the failure of one of their failed product launches in a step by step guide which even includes what they would have done differently the second time around. Those steps include: find out if your idea is something customers want, validate the concept, validate the user experience, consider the costs, define the MVP, get the MVP in front of users. Sounds simple when distilled into one sentence, but for anyone that works in product, this is a short read and worth your time. -Greg

LETTING THE DOOR HIT PEOPLE ON THE WAY OUT

I stumbled across this post from Mathilde Collin, the founder of Front, as people were tweeting out their favorites. But in her piece 9 Most Useful Pieces of Advice I’ve Received, the most relevant snippet for me right now came from Daniel Yanisse of the company Checkr: “Give generous packages when you let people go.” Mathilde argues that “Not only is it good for the person leaving, but it will also help your managers make tough decisions. It’s always hard to let go people, but if the organization needs it, then you have to make sure managers are empowered to make these calls.” I’m inspired by companies who are quick to move on from bad fits but do with generosity, empathy, and tact.

I noticed this week that the residential real estate brokerage office culture is infected by so much drama around where agents choose to work. I get that small business owners take employee (er, independent contractor) relationships seriously and personally – but the culture is in need of a dramatic shift to a place in which agents feel comfortable switching brokerages if it makes the most sense for them. You’d be surprised at how much pain brokers are willing to inflict emotionally and financially on agents who no longer want to work for them. It’s embarrassing and gross. -Greg

Built World

VACASA TO HELP MULTI-FAMILY OWNERS REACH TRAVELERS

One possible route to monetize multi-family vacancies is by putting inventory into the vacation rental marketplace. Joining Stay Alfred, Lyric, and Domicile, Vacasa is throwing their hat in the ring with a new apartment leasing offering to help multi-family owners and operate access traveler dollars. Transforming long-term inventory into sublets and short-term rentals are ripe with opportunity (though city regulators won’t like it much). Vacasa has a first mover advantage on the traveler demand side, they have a hard road ahead in the increasingly competitive landlord tech landscape. Vacation rental behemoth Airbnb has been in rentals since 2013. Once they go into rentals publicly, which is inevitable if they are maximizing shareholder value, they will be beyond a formidable foe. That said, Vacasa is smart to take the risk for the potential outcome to emerge as a power broker. -Drew

BOUTIQUE LODGING FOR THE WIN

My interest in the intersection of travel and real estate led me to notice Curbed’s article on a Silicon Valley-backed hotel startup with a mission of offering boutique lodging for less (in Miami to start). Life House delivers a boutique hotel experience at a discount price. They don’t own the supply, but instead work with “property owners [who] turn their buildings over to Life House, which then renovates, reopens, and reintroduces a new ‘locally rooted lifestyle hotel’ to the market.” As a direct-to-consumer travel brand, they have their work cut out for them on the acquisition side of a ruthlessly competitive industry. A big part of what excites me about the model is Life House serves as an alternative approach for building owners to consider when contemplating whether to sell or set up shop as a property manager. -Drew

Out of the Box

FANTASY FRANCHISES AS A HOOK

HBO has Game of Thrones. Amazon is developing Lord of the Rings. And now Netflix has a major fantasy franchise of its own to compete: Chronicles of Narnia. Millions and millions of people love these shows and will drop everything to spend a few hours, or days, to watch. They’ll even watch multiple seasons in their entirety a second time. These iconic brands are “must have” hooks that prompt fans to open their pocketbooks even if they don’t watch anything else from streaming service X.

What is a real estate brokerage’s “must have” user hook? A CMA? The chance to see one of the 20 listings a buyer is interested in today rather than two days from now when the next agent can show it? A market report for a ZIP code? All are pretty weak hooks in my book. What can brokers offer prospective and current clients that they will truly love? I don’t have the answer, but I offer that up as a challenge to brokers/agents reading. -Drew

BOURDAIN BUSINESS BRILLIANCE

Writing about Bourdain is like remembering the puppy I had to give away to friends when I moved to New York City. I try not to do it too often. When I moved to New York in 2014, Anthony Bourdain had just announced plans to open an international food stall market at Pier 57, and I started making plans to visit every single day. Ultimately, the concept was abandoned, and then we lost Bourdain forever. However, it’s worth keeping his memory alive. “Not giving a shit has been a very successful business model for me.” “[Not having] a reputation to lose, is a huge advantage. From Kitchen Confidential on I made a really determined effort to not fuck up. I was very aware of that tendency. I’m a little more organized, my work is a little more rigorous than it needs to be because that was a regular feature of my whole life up until that point.” Read more in A Dozen Lessons about Business from Anthony Bourdain. -Greg

Geek Estate Mastermind

A PRIVATE GROUP OF INDEPENDENT THINKERS, FREE FROM SPONSORED MESSAGES AND NOISE

In addition to connecting you with like-minded entrepreneurs, the Mastermind is where you’ll read the best exclusive content from Geek Estate’s curators, Drew Meyers and Greg Fischer. Each are publishing an original piece every week via The Weekly Transmission, covering the spectrum from shipping container co-living spaces to the battle for listing acquisition in the first iBuyer world war. 55+ Weekly Transmissions have been delivered straight to the inbox every week.

Membership is $97 / quarter

Our Member Promise:

We’ll deliver an exclusive, objective lens into the trends, companies, people, and ideas shaping real estate technology with thought-provoking analysis and conversations that keep you inspired every week.

We’ll help you make better, more well-informed decisions to help grow and support people and companies making a difference in real estate.

We’ll enable discovery and meeting others with shared interests online and in person (whether they live near you or are traveling to the same conference).

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The post November Monthly Radar appeared first on GeekEstate Blog.

November Monthly Radar published first on https://greatlivinghomespage.tumblr.com/

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yourchoicepage · 6 years

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November Monthly Radar

Mastermind Message

In addition to the Thanksgiving holiday, November included a member lunch in Seattle and our first gathering of folks in Chicago.

New Product

We launched a new series for members. Category product reviews. The first segment: Small Landlord Property Management Software.

New Members

Max Colls from Estated

Scott Drexel from Rentl

Kristina McCann from Off-Market-Homes

Grier Allen from BoomTown

James Green from OffertoClose.com

David Steckel from Setter

Nathan Miller from Rentec Direct

Ben Clark from Realigned

Pierre Calzadilla from Local Logic

Vincent Harris from Hoozip

Teevan McManus from Greendoor

Member News

Estated Upgrades Property Data API with RESO Compliance and Parcel Search for Proptech Industry

Ebby Halliday rolled out Buyside company-wide

FlyHomes revealed their new logo

TRIBUS becomes the first to send Solds to Zillow

Remine announces Contactually integration.

Greg joined the executive team of a Denver brokerage

Congrats to Pete Flint / NFX for pulling off their first Proptech CEO Summit in San Francisco. Several Geek Estate members attended

Caroline Pinal of Giveback Homes: Five Years of Giving. What I’ve Learned & How You Can Apply it to Real Estate

Brett Hagler at New Story is hiring an Innovation Fund Manager

Ryan Coon from Avail was featured in a piece about rentals on Curbed

BoomTown acquired lead qualification tool Real Contact

Transmission Topics

Vendor sales strategies at the broker level

Background on the rentals category product review

The underwhelming rentals search experience

Why showings data creates a true network effect

How brokerages can compete with iBuyers

When removing friction isn’t always a good thing

Real Estate

COZY ACQUIRED BY COSTAR FOR $68M

THE CONSUMER VIEW ON A BILLION DOLLARS IN SELLER LEADS

The seller’s perspective: “If I know there is a 99% chance that Zillow will NOT buy my house, why exactly should I waste my time?”

Startups

REFLECTIONS ON A FAILED APP LAUNCH

LETTING THE DOOR HIT PEOPLE ON THE WAY OUT

Built World

VACASA TO HELP MULTI-FAMILY OWNERS REACH TRAVELERS

BOUTIQUE LODGING FOR THE WIN

Out of the Box

FANTASY FRANCHISES AS A HOOK

BOURDAIN BUSINESS BRILLIANCE

Geek Estate Mastermind

A PRIVATE GROUP OF INDEPENDENT THINKERS, FREE FROM SPONSORED MESSAGES AND NOISE

Membership is $97 / quarter

Our Member Promise:

We’ll help you make better, more well-informed decisions to help grow and support people and companies making a difference in real estate.

We’ll enable discovery and meeting others with shared interests online and in person (whether they live near you or are traveling to the same conference).

Apply for Membership

Update Settings

The post November Monthly Radar appeared first on GeekEstate Blog.

November Monthly Radar published first on https://medium.com/@YourChoice

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brettseaton · 6 years

Text

November Monthly Radar

Mastermind Message

In addition to the Thanksgiving holiday, November included a member lunch in Seattle and our first gathering of folks in Chicago.

New Product

We launched a new series for members. Category product reviews. The first segment: Small Landlord Property Management Software.

New Members

Max Colls from Estated

Scott Drexel from Rentl

Kristina McCann from Off-Market-Homes

Grier Allen from BoomTown

James Green from OffertoClose.com

David Steckel from Setter

Nathan Miller from Rentec Direct

Ben Clark from Realigned

Pierre Calzadilla from Local Logic

Vincent Harris from Hoozip

Teevan McManus from Greendoor

Member News

Estated Upgrades Property Data API with RESO Compliance and Parcel Search for Proptech Industry

Ebby Halliday rolled out Buyside company-wide

FlyHomes revealed their new logo

TRIBUS becomes the first to send Solds to Zillow

Remine announces Contactually integration.

Greg joined the executive team of a Denver brokerage

Congrats to Pete Flint / NFX for pulling off their first Proptech CEO Summit in San Francisco. Several Geek Estate members attended

Caroline Pinal of Giveback Homes: Five Years of Giving. What I’ve Learned & How You Can Apply it to Real Estate

Brett Hagler at New Story is hiring an Innovation Fund Manager

Ryan Coon from Avail was featured in a piece about rentals on Curbed

BoomTown acquired lead qualification tool Real Contact

Transmission Topics

Vendor sales strategies at the broker level

Background on the rentals category product review

The underwhelming rentals search experience

Why showings data creates a true network effect

How brokerages can compete with iBuyers

When removing friction isn’t always a good thing

Real Estate

COZY ACQUIRED BY COSTAR FOR $68M

THE CONSUMER VIEW ON A BILLION DOLLARS IN SELLER LEADS

The seller’s perspective: “If I know there is a 99% chance that Zillow will NOT buy my house, why exactly should I waste my time?”

Startups

REFLECTIONS ON A FAILED APP LAUNCH

LETTING THE DOOR HIT PEOPLE ON THE WAY OUT

Built World

VACASA TO HELP MULTI-FAMILY OWNERS REACH TRAVELERS

BOUTIQUE LODGING FOR THE WIN

Out of the Box

FANTASY FRANCHISES AS A HOOK

BOURDAIN BUSINESS BRILLIANCE

Geek Estate Mastermind

A PRIVATE GROUP OF INDEPENDENT THINKERS, FREE FROM SPONSORED MESSAGES AND NOISE

Membership is $97 / quarter

Our Member Promise:

We’ll help you make better, more well-informed decisions to help grow and support people and companies making a difference in real estate.

We’ll enable discovery and meeting others with shared interests online and in person (whether they live near you or are traveling to the same conference).

Apply for Membership

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The post November Monthly Radar appeared first on GeekEstate Blog.

November Monthly Radar syndicated from https://oicrealestate.wordpress.com/

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theokbrowne · 6 years

Text

November Monthly Radar

Mastermind Message

In addition to the Thanksgiving holiday, November included a member lunch in Seattle and our first gathering of folks in Chicago.

New Product

We launched a new series for members. Category product reviews. The first segment: Small Landlord Property Management Software.

New Members

Max Colls from Estated

Scott Drexel from Rentl

Kristina McCann from Off-Market-Homes

Grier Allen from BoomTown

James Green from OffertoClose.com

David Steckel from Setter

Nathan Miller from Rentec Direct

Ben Clark from Realigned

Pierre Calzadilla from Local Logic

Vincent Harris from Hoozip

Teevan McManus from Greendoor

Member News

Estated Upgrades Property Data API with RESO Compliance and Parcel Search for Proptech Industry

Ebby Halliday rolled out Buyside company-wide

FlyHomes revealed their new logo

TRIBUS becomes the first to send Solds to Zillow

Remine announces Contactually integration.

Greg joined the executive team of a Denver brokerage

Congrats to Pete Flint / NFX for pulling off their first Proptech CEO Summit in San Francisco. Several Geek Estate members attended

Caroline Pinal of Giveback Homes: Five Years of Giving. What I’ve Learned & How You Can Apply it to Real Estate

Brett Hagler at New Story is hiring an Innovation Fund Manager

Ryan Coon from Avail was featured in a piece about rentals on Curbed

BoomTown acquired lead qualification tool Real Contact

Transmission Topics

Vendor sales strategies at the broker level

Background on the rentals category product review

The underwhelming rentals search experience

Why showings data creates a true network effect

How brokerages can compete with iBuyers

When removing friction isn’t always a good thing

Real Estate

COZY ACQUIRED BY COSTAR FOR $68M

THE CONSUMER VIEW ON A BILLION DOLLARS IN SELLER LEADS

The seller’s perspective: “If I know there is a 99% chance that Zillow will NOT buy my house, why exactly should I waste my time?”

Startups

REFLECTIONS ON A FAILED APP LAUNCH

LETTING THE DOOR HIT PEOPLE ON THE WAY OUT

Built World

VACASA TO HELP MULTI-FAMILY OWNERS REACH TRAVELERS

BOUTIQUE LODGING FOR THE WIN

Out of the Box

FANTASY FRANCHISES AS A HOOK

BOURDAIN BUSINESS BRILLIANCE

Geek Estate Mastermind

A PRIVATE GROUP OF INDEPENDENT THINKERS, FREE FROM SPONSORED MESSAGES AND NOISE

Membership is $97 / quarter

Our Member Promise:

We’ll help you make better, more well-informed decisions to help grow and support people and companies making a difference in real estate.

We’ll enable discovery and meeting others with shared interests online and in person (whether they live near you or are traveling to the same conference).

Apply for Membership

Update Settings

The post November Monthly Radar appeared first on GeekEstate Blog.

from theokbrowne digest https://geekestateblog.com/november-monthly-radar/

#theokbrowne digest

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alexevagora · 6 years

Text

What a day in the life of a Sales/Lettings Negotiator SHOULD look like in this market.

I hear a lot of 'dead market' chat these days which is quite frankly getting on my nerves.

Did you guys not learn how to create activity? To create the market? To create urgency or generate leads?

If not, luckily you came across my post.

Are you finding it impossible to find applicants or to even book in a viewing and thus get a deal? Do you think Brexit is the reason why your estate agency or your office is not doing well? Are you finding yourself on Facebook all day waiting for the phone to ring? Or have you found yourself scrolling through the Daily Mail for the 27th time? Look no further.

This is what you do:

Tonight when you get home, after you've had your tea and spent some time with your other half (unless you're single, count yourself lucky - you can get stuck in straight away): get a piece of paper and write down:

9.00 - 9.10 - Confirm viewings and sort diary.

9.15 -12.00 - TIME BLOCK - LEAD GENERATION.

12.00 - 14.00 - Back to back to back viewings.

14.00 - 15.00 - TIME BLOCK - paperwork/emails.

15.00 - 17.30 - Back to back to back viewings.

17.30-19.00 - Emails (unless you have a viewing).

You're now probably wondering what the above magical formula actually means.

So this is it:

If your office opens at 9, I want you on the chair of your desk at 8.29 LATEST. If you are there at 8.30, you've already failed, go back to your old ways and scour the Daily Mail, this article is for winners only.

From 8.29 - 8.59: I want you sifting through Rightmove and looking at all of the new instructions in your 'patch' (I will come to why, later), you can have your breakfast whilst doing this. After this - many of you may have a morning team meeting so preparation for that is also fine, once the above is complete. If you find yourself with more time, feel free to also go through the other portals, industry news can also be useful. LettingAgentToday.co.uk, EstateAgentToday.com and LonRes are good for this.

9.00 - 9.10: - When you're confirming your viewings: DO NOT say the following: "just confirming our 3pm?" or, "just making sure you can still make the viewing at 1pm?" If you you're finding your applicants cancelling your viewings, THIS IS WHY! You might as well say - "just giving you 1 last chance to cancel, are you sure you want to come out in the rain and see this property?" (rain is actually good for our job but I will come to this later too!) Not to worry - remember, you came across this article. So that's the old you, this is what you say tomorrow: "Hi Tony, it's Alex from xxxx, just making sure you got the address of where to meet me at 3pm later? Perfect - there wouldn't be any reason why you'd be late would there? OK that's great - just because I have to be somewhere at 3.30pm so pleeaassee do let me know if you're running late" (something called tone, pitch, pace and tonality also come into this which I will talk about another time). Remember - confirming your appointments is NOT to give them the option to cancel. This is to remind them of the appointment and also to make sure they're prompt because you are a busy Negotiator (it is also another opportunity to instil urgency but again I will touch on this another time as it is a whole other article within itself).

9.10/15 - 12.00: You NEED to block out time in your diary for lead-gen. Some companies name it 'call out' time, which is too vague for me. Between the hours of 9am and 12.00 midday, you cannot text your girlfriend, look at Instagram, email anyone unless it is a prospect about an offer or a viewing. If you must, close down your emails or put an out-of-office on so that people know you are in a meeting or busy until midday. If you have an office with a door, put a sign on it saying: 'busy until 12.00' or 'do not disturb'. I cannot stress the importance of this time enough. It is paramount. If you tell me that you have no leads to call or you've run out of applicants, you're probably not looking hard enough - go through your colleagues' applicants. If your colleague is based in another office, ask the applicants if they'd look in your patch. Swap a few cold apps with your colleagues so that they hear a different voice and a different number on their phone. If you really and truly have gone through every single app (which is probably a lie), call some concierges, porters and building managers - see how they're doing. You should've built up enough rapport when collecting keys from them for your viewings, to tell them something along the lines of: "Haven't seen you in ages! How've you been? Do you know of any Landlords in the block looking to rent out their flats? / Anyone in the block looking to sell their flat?". No worries if the answer is no! Ask them kindly to bear you in mind and that you have a referral scheme in place which they could benefit from should a referral become successful - you'll be surprised! During Lead-Gen time, make sure you are selling your calendar space and not your properties. You cannot sell a property over the phone. It isn't a stock and you aren't Jordan Belfort. You need to get that person on the other end of the phone, inside your client's property, only then can you start selling and using your negative interrogatives (wtf is a NI I hear you cry? More on this later ;-)). The only way to do this is to sell your calendar space. Give people 2 options when booking viewings: "what's best for you? AM or PM?" ... "OK I only have 3pm or 4.30pm tomorrow - which is best for you?". Done. Send them a follow-up email INSTANTANEOUSLY. Other agents are so bad at this so this is your time to shine. Luckily, our industry is filled with people who fell into the job and don't really want to do it, so it is very easy to stand out. Standing out is by doing this like this - sending a viewing confirmation email instantly upon hanging up the phone. Have you every enquired about a property and had to beg/email or call them a few times before you get that email with the address of where to meet them? Annoying isn't it! It's important you do this - you're selling yourself at this stage and the idea of going into a business relationship with that person. Be quick. Be responsive - make sure they have your mobile number, which should be underneath your name on the email footer. Let them know that you're happy to answer any questions whenever they like and that you're always on your mobile if they need to catch you as you're out and about on viewings all day.

14.00- 15.00: This is your time to answer the backlog of emails, do your admin. and paperwork i.e. tenant referencing, contract drafting, offer letters etc.

Do this again the next day, and the next day, and the next day.

I really do hope this helps. Let me know how you get on.

I've promised you a lot of 'I'll go into this later' chat, so watch this space.

Alex Evagora.

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garynsmith · 7 years

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Making Real Estate Personal Again: LaVerne Pike, Windermere Real Estate

In a business where technology can easily take center stage, LaVerne Pike, an award-winning veteran agent with Seattle’s Windermere Real Estate, stands apart by focusing on the person-to-person connection and a level of service that puts him—not the internet—at the center of the relationship. In this interview, Pike explains how his detailed knowledge of the market, along with his genuine desire to help people, combine to guide clients through the highly competitive Seattle real estate scene.

Maria Patterson: Please briefly describe your career path in real estate and how you got to where you are today. LaVerne Pike: I was a chef in the restaurant business in Seattle for quite some time. A real estate managing broker, who I had gone to school with, kept coming into the restaurant and would say, “Gosh, for as hard as you work, you should be in real estate. You’re great with people and service-oriented—in real estate, you’d realize more impact and a better lifestyle for others, as well as yourself.” I really liked the service end of the restaurant business and the energy. After four years, he finally convinced me into it, and now I’ve been in real estate with Windermere for more than 20 years.

MP: What regions do you currently serve? LP: I serve all of King County. Being a Seattle native, I understand the nooks and crannies of the Puget Sound area, and I’ve been able to create relationships, connections and family all the way from Graham to Island County. If someone needs service, I will take care of them to ensure they’re making a solid and successful decision.

MP: How would you describe current market conditions? LP: Inventory is the lowest it’s ever been—and there are 15 percent more buyers than the previous year. Part of the issue is that we’ve had a lot of buyers coming into the area for jobs with the tech industry—Google, Amazon, Expedia and Microsoft, to name a few. In addition, cash buyers are changing the way we do business. I’ve seen 89 offers on a particular home and I’ve seen prices go from $10,000 above asking price to $350,000 above asking price. Cash offers that need no appraisal and waive many contingencies are common, and properties are closing in two weeks. This has been going on for 14 months now, and I don’t see any end in sight. The median price for a single-family residence in Seattle/Bellevue is above $800,000.

MP: What’s the current status of new construction? LP: It’s not keeping up with demand. The municipalities are granting permits at a slower or downsized pace, cautiously to prevent overbuilding. Currently there are a few zoning authorities in the process of creating a moratorium on permits for new construction community start-ups for 90 days or more, with well permits also being held back. That keeps our market inventory low, with pricing pushed to the top of the scale, leaving the market unbalanced.

MP: What are you doing to work with first-time homebuyers then? Are there any options for that group? LP: I’ve connected with a couple of lenders offering a few programs where buyers can put 0-1 percent down on a first-time home purchase. There are some requirements and certifications needed. You have to go a little bit out of the area to find this price range, but I can find them. I’m in three transactions right now (at press time) under $300,000. It’s considerably more work than working on a high-end home sale, but it motivates me when someone is renting a 600-square-foot, $1,500-per-month apartment in downtown Seattle…and that’s considered a bargain. Ask yourself, “Why not buy a house and get the tax benefits and invest in yourself?” When you’re renting, there’s no benefit—plus, the landlord can raise the rent. When you buy a home, you regain control. It’s important to me to educate folks to take control of their lives and invest in themselves.

MP: Tell us about some of the highlights of your more than two decades in the business. LP: In 1997, I was voted one of Windermere’s best agents, which was voted on by my peers who represent the top drawer of the area’s REALTORS®. Their work ethic, standards and practices are very high. In multiple-offer situations, people typically go with the offer that is strong, comprehensive and credible over most others. Windermere will get it done. When people list houses with us, they know having the Windermere sign in their yard represents the quality of the real estate professional they’re working with. The proven stability, reputation and marketshare performance of Windermere has been, and still is, the highlight of my real estate business. That’s why I’ve been here for more than 20 years.

I’ve also been recognized as a Five-Star professional by Seattle magazine for the past 10 years.

MP: How do you differentiate yourself in today’s competitive market? LP: It can be tough because the internet takes all the personality out of everything. You lose 55 percent of a person when you’re reading the written word because you’re losing eye contact and body language. That’s why I always suggest to people who come in as internet leads, if you’re serious, contact me; text, call or email…I’ll respond with a call.

I believe in having a quality experience over having a quantity of experiences. As a Seattle native, I know the area, and that keeps me abreast of what’s going on in different communities. I know that you can drive three blocks in one direction and be in a completely different type of atmosphere. And people need to know the distinctions among neighborhoods. If you’re putting your money in a house and the values have gone down, or you don’t feel safe going out at night, then you’ve made a bad investment. I want to safeguard my clients, so my approach is to adopt all my clients. I have a really good time with them and I don’t pressure them. I don’t mind being silent in the car when we’re driving around because they have a lot to think through. I’m open if there are questions, concerns or input. There’s truly no need for constant chatter. I’m here for my clients, and, as a team, we will realize their goals.

MP: What have been the keys to growing your business and becoming a successful real estate professional? LP: Being personal and authentic. I don’t like to be insincere. It’s all about the client. This is their biggest investment. They don’t need to hear about me. If I can help fulfill any part of their dream, I’m more than happy to do that—in fact, I get joy out of that. My daughter used to tell me I was too giving of myself, but I told her that’s okay—it will all come back around.

MP: What are some of the biggest challenges you are facing, and how are you tackling them? LP: Currently, I would have to say the lack of inventory. When we went into the downturn, people didn’t want to buy or sell because their house wasn’t as valuable. People were having to short sell, and I felt terrible. One short sale cost me $2,500 and took me two-and-a-half years to sell. But the upswing can be almost as severe, with multiple and cash offers, which makes us work two to three times as hard trying to put accurate numbers together. Forty-three percent of the houses here sold over full price and 20 percent were under full price and had to do multiple price changes. If the house is priced correctly, it will sell quickly. If not, it can languish for some time.

MP: How do you stay educated and equipped to best serve clients and prospects? LP: I do my research every day. I stay on top of what’s new and exciting. In the past 20 years, real estate professionals have gone from being the only access to knowledge to now having the internet. Now everyone knows everything about everything. The Information Age has created as many challenges as benefits, so I focus on continued education, classes and constant upgrading of my knowledge and understanding. I ask myself daily, “How can I best be a benefit?”

MP: How do you generate new business and cultivate relationships with today’s consumers? LP: I dive deep on the personal and emotional level and focus on being of service. I build business by being authentic and sincere and being there for people.

Most people perceive a real estate agent as sitting there with his feet up on the desk, waiting for the phone to ring. Everything I do is an education, and it’s not all rote or standard. Whether it’s a good handshake or a good hug, a good conversation or silence in the car, it’s all about whatever deepens that connection with people. You’re garnering leads off the internet, so you have to create credibility with people and build trust. They’ve eaten pancakes and ramen for a year to save up enough money to buy a home—so that’s a lot of responsibility on my part. Listing a home is extremely emotional given the emotional ties and changes.

MP: How do you stay involved in your community? LP: Through Windermere, we’re involved with several activities. For example, every Christmas, Windermere teams up with Target for what we call, “Windermere for Kids.” On a Saturday morning prior to Christmas, we have an underprivileged boy or girl shop for their family members. We wrap all the gifts and they get to take them home in a big bag. Little do they know we’ve already bought gifts for the little shopper, as well.

We also work with a variety of non-profit programs. Being a Windermere agent, with every transaction, there’s a contribution made to our non-profit (Windermere Foundation) to give back to our community. Since 1989, we have contributed more than $34 million, all of which goes right back into the community. There’s a particular day where we go out into the community and do whatever is needed for a particular organization—landscaping, maintenance, painting. Every Windermere office has a charity or place they go that day—an army of agents out there doing community service, donating the time, doing the labor, giving back to the community. Our title, escrow companies and lenders participate, too, as assorted vendors contribute and/or donate materials.

MP: What are the biggest concerns for today’s real estate consumers, and how do you help guide them through these concerns? LP: I understand why some people appear to be a little gun-shy thinking that there will be another bubble. With the influx of 1.2 million people coming into King County alone in the next six years, it doesn’t appear that there will be a downturn. If anything, it will flatten out.

You have to pay to live somewhere no matter what, so why not invest in yourself and safeguard yourself with today’s market? Even if the market levels off, you’ll still have equity and a level of stability. What do you have with an apartment, with your depreciating car or your clothes that are wearing out? The longer you wait, the less your money will be worth. The appreciation in Seattle/Bellevue is 1.3 percent a month. Will you get that kind of raise at your job?

MP: What do you see as the biggest opportunities in the year ahead? LP: Making more people’s dreams come true. That’s where my heart is. Finding success for more people, gaining trust from more people. Getting out there and making things happen. As for myself, taking all those challenges and getting smarter and wiser. Part of my vision statement says, “I wake up to the future every day.” Be the change you want to see in the world. That’s where the rewards come in. Strangers are just friends we haven’t met yet. Let’s get serious and get results…it’s your move!

For more information, please visit http://ift.tt/2kzbBWZ or bellevuearearealestate.com.

Maria Patterson is RISMedia’s executive editor. Email her your real estate news ideas at [email protected].

For the latest real estate news and trends, bookmark RISMedia.com.

The post Making Real Estate Personal Again: LaVerne Pike, Windermere Real Estate appeared first on RISMedia.

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yourdigitalmarketingguru-blog · 7 years

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Who Is A "Rogue or Dubious" Estate or Lettings Agent?

Each association hold to the claim that their primary objectives are usually to support and streamline members' professional competence through an associated code of conduct, newsletters and training opportunities.

This principle is laudable. But if the mantra behind one association and another is more or less similar, then there would be cohesion to deliver the best service for its membership. There wouldn't be the need for splinter groups. Would there?

Let's now explore a little further what the words "rogue", "dubious" really mean.

Common English definition describes "rogue" as a dishonest or unprincipled person. This accommodates any act construed as insincere, unethical and not playing within set rules of engagement by any person or group.

Dubious, on the other hand is a qualifying adjective for any act that would cause doubt; of doubtful quality or propriety; questionable!

Simply put, both words suggest dodgy, deceitful behavioural act either by commission or intent.

With a broad definition as this, who then is a rouge or dubious agent? And what qualifies a safe agent?

There is none more suitable candidate to provide such unbiased appraisal than the last client who actually used the service on offer.

Every client deserves a reasonable level of good service. But since there is no such thing as a definitive perfect service, someone somewhere would always have a rant and a moan, even if it's only for the heck of it. That's human behaviour!

Then again, there are very bad services around. So to try and convince a client who strongly believes that they have been poorly served by an agent would be like asking the proverbial mountain to move to the left.

Justified or prejudiced, each client reserves the right to have an opinion of the service they received, as long as it is fair and does not cross the mudslinging slander/libel line. However, mere perception is not proof enough. Why? Unless you have used a service, your opinion could only be based on third party information, not your personal experience.

Service in this context is reminiscent to having agreed with applicable terms and conditions of that service, the subsequent signing of a binding contract and accepting keys for possession at check-in. To phone an agent for the purpose of comparing service charges would therefore not count as a fulfilled service. It's only a conduit for information gathering.

If then you have never used a particular agent's service, how would you determine whether they're the best or rubbish in what they do? Are all service levels the same across estate/letting agencies? Absolutely not!

Same goes for every other commercial business model, whether it's a Doctors' surgery, or a fish mongers. You can only make like-for-like comparisons in order to obtain a fair conclusion.

Anyone with some sort of reasoning and intent could presently set up an estate or letting agency and consequently make success of the business. Similarly, any one could set up a used car lot. They don't have to gain any 'superior' qualification to make a success of that business model either.

Reasoning, in this context is the ability to interpret the right thing, as opposed to that which is not right. Intent is the ideal to make a profit, possibly provide employment and potentially enjoy the eventual benefits which success brings.

So why do property agents have so much head battering in the public domain as 'rogues with dubious intent,' while the very important role they play is genuinely to strive to bridge and more often than not, hasten the process of providing essential accommodation in a professional manner for those who need it, and for a service fee?

There is currently no legislation determining minimum entry level qualification as base requirement to be identified as a scrupulous estate/letting agent, or to set one up. There is none for the motor trade either. Should there be one? Most agents who have been through any committed level of study and written examination would drum its benefits. Reason being that such dedicated study affords invaluable depth of knowledge that is essential to stay at par with the ever changing regulations covering the UK housing act. Currently it looks like a mine-field.

The onus therefore rests with the industry's Mr Bigs to initiate a collective framework necessary to formulate and implement industry accepted minimum entry levels.

Currently, associations like the RICS (Royal institution of chartered surveyors,) National Association of Estate Agents (NAEA), Association of Residential Letting Agents Surbiton, UK Association of Letting Agents (UKALA), The Guild of Property Professionals (TGP), National Approved Letting Scheme (NALS), Association of British Property Professionals (ABPP), provide some sort of leadership initiatives on matters concerning the industry.

Membership is not cheap though. What really is being paid for in disguise is this 'great opportunity' to use affiliation branded stickers as identification marks of participation on shop-fronts, printed materials or websites. What is being missed but equally important is the fact that registration with the property ombudsman (TPO) and adhering to its code of conduct is even a better option. Where there's a dispute, a contesting client tends to feel more confident bringing matters to a head with an independent redress scheme than to a member only association.

The fact that some associations appear to be tougher in executing the principles of their applicable code of conduct, bottom-line is - most are in it to make a profit. Unfortunately, profits are not ploughed back necessarily to support the general membership.

Die hard members would affirm, even swear to the beneficial sentiment what joining one association or another has brought to their balance sheet. Others may tell of significant increase in their portfolio or landlord/vendor clients. However, based only on the simple matter of joining a pressure group? It would be difficult to prove.

Association membership has its place in the wider scheme of things. It serves a purpose for people wishing to belong to a group. It may also be a good place for networking and passage of industry news, encourage structured training opportunities and maybe more.

What it doesn't do is; stop the agent with dishonest intent to defraud, regardless of how many membership stickers they display on shop windows. It all comes down primarily to that simple matter of honesty, fair play and decency. All things being equal, (they never usually are) nobody really needs the whip of a certain code of conduct hanging over them to do the right thing. If you ever find yourself at the point where you must, it would be worth reappraising your intentions.

The question that bothers me though is this; if the common goal is geared toward the benefit of their members, especially for the small independents, why are there so many property associations? And how is it that over the last twenty-five years or more, none of them have been able to come together as a strong force to combat the rip-off advertising portals? Surely this is what most agents would want. Why have agents continually paid high prices to keep property portals afloat? Agents keep portals in business. Without agents feeding portals, portals have no business. That's fact. With the money wasted by those running NFOPP, shame Property live didn't work for its members.

Regardless of spurious claims of influencing government policies on industry specific matters, the property sector with its numerous pressure groups, time and again have failed to make any significant gains either by standing up against the monopolistic pride of portals or influence any policy changes to legislation that may allow those who operate within the private rental sector boot out defaulting tenants without costing the landlord a fortune in lost revenue while the lengthy judicial process slowly grinds to obtain possession.

Why is it that all the associations covering lettings have failed to stem the tide where recalcitrant tenants are being encouraged in certain quarters to remain in properties, rack-up rental arrears and in some cases cause damages, until the day the bailiff turns up at the door.

The real losers are not the associations, nor the portals, but the long suffering landlord client and the distressed agent.

All said, how then do you then define a rouge agent?

Is he the one who levies a potential tenant a necessary administration fee to process their application, which generally involves obtaining the tenant client to complete a tenancy questionnaire, send out for references, check IDs and proof of addresses just to make sure people are who they claim to be? Agents should be highly commended for this sort of due diligence. The point remains, it is a payable service. Is it the one who charges for services rendered to cover his ever rising operation cost?

How about the agent who slips a note wherever there's a notice, indicative of an empty property available for sale or for let, and tries to steal custom from another agent? Would this deplorable agent fall into the rogue agent classification? Think about it. Some agents are worse at this than others!

Is it the one who trawls the internet seeking out recently advertised stock from the competition, then rings up pretending to be an interested party just to obtain the property's address, and then deceitfully tries to plunder the lead?

Oh, how about the agent who liberally offers over inflated property appraisal in order to obtain an instruction? If he does not achieve the quoted price, does he qualify as a rogue agent or will he just walk away with a dishonest badge?

Now, as a customer, you probably wouldn't have given this a serious thought. You probably have followed the trend and scorned off on the usual suspects. But with a little insight to the daily duties of an estate/letting agent, I am sure you may have a different opinion as to who a rogue agent might really be, or do you?

Who's a safe agent? More like asking who is a safe goal-keeper. There's no such thing. Good agents know their craft and always eager to support their clients with knowledgeable advice to help. No bull-crap, just plain raw honesty based on fact. Funny thing is; most clients still prefer the bull-crap with a smile than be told what they'd prefer not to hear - the truth. But that's life!

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/8635411

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pretty-prima-blog · 7 years

Text

How to Sell Your Pennsylvania House yourself Quickly and Keep Thousands in Your Pocket!

New Post has been published on http://app2chart.com/how-to-sell-your-pennsylvania-house-yourself-quickly-and-keep-thousands-in-your-pocket/

How to Sell Your Pennsylvania House yourself Quickly and Keep Thousands in Your Pocket!

Ok folks, here it is, the down and dirty on how to sell your PA house yourself quickly and keep thousands in your pocket (by not paying real estate commissions!)

First and foremost, you’re probably wondering how the heck do I know what I’m talking about, right?

I’ve been investing in Pennsylvania real estate for 9 years now and I’ve invested in all different facets of real estate from buying and financing mobile homes to buying bank-owned properties and fixing them up and renting them out to just helping folks get rid of an ugly, fixer-upper house that they didn’t want. I’ve been a landlord (still am,) I’ve fixed and flipped properties (still do,) I’ve fixed and kept properties (still do,) and I’ve wholesaled properties (still do.)

Also, I’m a licensed real estate agent with the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and I’ve been licensed for 5 years plus now with Keller Williams Realty Group (now located in Limerick, PA.) And I’m also a member of the National Association of Realtors, the Pennsylvania Association of Realtors and the Surban West Realtors Association. Sooooo that makes me, yep you guessed it, a Realtor as well (Didn’t know there was a difference between being a real estate agent and a Realtor, huh?)

Ok so now that all of that is out of the way, let me tell you how you can sell your Pennsylvania house yourself quickly and keep thousands of money in your pocket. I’m going to give you an outline to follow and if you follow it to the T, you should be alright!

Do Your Research About Your Homes Value You need to find out what your house is worth so you can put a price tag on it. How can you find this out?

-Interview a handful of real estate agents (at least 3) and get Comps (Comparables of houses that have sold like yours) from them. Do not tell them what YOU think your house is worth, just let them do their thing and present you with their evidence of what they feel your house is worth.

-Check public records if you have online access or if you know how to do this at the courthouse yourself (or if you have a real estate agent friend that will allow you to look over their shoulder as they access their public records on the MLS.)

-Drive around your neighborhood and call on ALL of the for sale signs that you see. If they are having open houses too then GO TO THEM.

-Research your local papers classified section for houses for sale in your area. Call the numbers and get the facts on the house (remember, you’re comparing all of these houses to yours.)

-Hop on craigslist.org and reseach the real estate for sale ads there that are in your area. Alot of times folks will have pictures and even videos in here, so you can actually see the houses. If there isn’t much info then email or call the person who is selling their house.

-Go to Realtor.com and research houses that are for sale in your area. Again, if there isn’t much info, then call the agent up and ask for some info about the house.

-Check out zillow and cyberhomes and see what they come up with as values for your house. Also, the comps that they list, drive past the houses to compare at least the outside of your house and the sold house. (I wouldn’t put as much weight on these 2 sites, but there is definitely more information here for you.)

Now, you should have a good idea of what you could sell your house for. By the way, when looking at public records, comps from agents and places like zillow and cyberhomes you only really want to look at sold houses within the past 6 months. Some folks will tell you to go back a year, but I think that’s even too far. Honestly, in this market, I’d say look at them in the past 3 months!

Ok so you have a value in mind. Well I need you to be honest with yourself about the value and how you came up with it, ok? Does the value indicate a house that is in pristine condition and your house isn’t that pristine? Does the value indicate a fixer-upper price and your house doesn’t need any work? Those are the things you have to think about when getting the comps from all of your resources above.

Make note of the condition and location of all of the comps that you get from your resources above then you have to HONESTLY compare it to your house. Honestly being the keyword here. If your house smells like dog, well admit that to yourself and know that it’s going to lower the price of your house. If your house is right next to an active railroad track, well don’t ignore the obvious and know that it will lower the price of your house as well. If your house is totally trashed and needs a lot of work, please, please, please don’t think that you are going to get maybe a couple thousand less than what a pristine house sold for. That is UNREALISTIC!

And always keep in mind the type of real estate market we are in. Right now at the writing of this blog posting, here in Pennsylvania we are in a BUYERS MARKET. Please recognize that and adjust your gameplan (and more importantly) your thinking accordingly. If you don’t adjust your gameplan and thinking accordingly, believe me your house will sit there and it will NOT sell (until you come to your senses.)

Market Your House Like Crazy Your house being for sale at the prefect price doesn’t mean anything if nobody in the world knows that it’s for sale, does it?

So here’s what you need to do to market your house and to tell the entire world (or at least folks in the Pennsylvania area) that it’s for sale.

– Break out your digital camera, cell phone, disposable camera or what you have and take pics of your house. Outside front, back, side, yard, living room, dining room, kitchen, etc. you get the picture. If you have a video camera, you can do a walk-thru of your place with a video camera too. The pictures are a NECESSITY but the video is not. Upload them to your computer and resize them because you’re going to need them in future steps.

– Place a for sale sign in your front yard and rear and side yards if you have them. I get mine from banditsigns.com Make sure you get the 18 x 24’s and make sure you pick up some metal stakes (get extra to use in the next step) so you can stick them into the ground. By the way, please do not under any circumstances forget to put your phone number on your signs when you get them home. (Sounds silly to say that doesn’t it? But some folks have done it.)

– Now here is a tactic that will get your phone to ring off the hook of potential buyers. You need to buy anywhere from 10 to 50 blank corrugated plastic signs (you can get these from banditsigns.com too.) They should be 18 x 12 in size and they can be any color you want, but white probably works the best and is the cheapest. After you get them home you’ll need to get a thick, black, permanent marker. When you have that you want to write in your own handwriting with the marker on the signs the following:

3 bed/2 bath House Must Sell! Pottstown Area, $150k 610-555-1212

Of course, you’re going to change out the information above with your appropriate information for your home. If you house is a fixer upper try something like this:

3 bed/2 bath Needs Work! Must Sell Quickly. Area, Price, Phone Number

You can use any combination of wording, but make it seem URGENT that you need to sell. Now you need to place these signs all around your neighborhood. Put them at popular intersections, at popular stores (like Walmart, WaWa, etc.) and just put them in heavy traffic locations. You want extras because some of these will get taken down, some will blow away and some will just become dirty and ugly so you’ll want to replace them with fresh ones. I promise you that you will get calls.

– Next you’re going to want to create what’s called a Postlet. Go to Postlets.com and create an account. It is free. You’ll want to create a postlet about your house. Post your pictures, list all of the features, write up a nice description. People want to know about square footage, school districts, beds and baths, taxes, etc. You can upgrade to Postlets Plus and this will allow you to post more pictures on your postlet and also allow you to post a video, but honestly, I don’t think it’s necessary. But it can only help you market your house.

– Now, you want to go to craigslist.org and post your house for sale there too. This is free also. You’re going to want to post in the portion of Craigslist that’s for your area. Most of you will be either posting in the Philadelphia section or the Reading section of craigslist. You then go to housing and real estate for sale. Follow the steps, it’s pretty easy. Also, there is a craigslist section in your Postlets, so you can merely click that link and copy and paste the code they give you into your craigslist post and a nice little ad will appear. Don’t forget that you’re craigslist ad is NOT posted until you get the email from them and publish it. That is the final step.

Those few things should get your phone ringing, but since you are saving thousands by not using a real estate agent you should really market even more. So here are some extra things you can do that will cost some money.

– Place a classified ad in your local paper. There are all kinds of papers that will work. You can place an ad in a daily paper, weekly paper, monthly paper, throw away papers like the Penny Pincher, etc. You can even try them all if you like. The smaller papers will be more cost effective. And keep in mind that you do not want to just run the ad for a day. That’s a waste of time and money. I suggest running it at least from Thursday to Monday for a month. See what kind of action you get and go from there. If you are under major budget constraints then you can work out a game plan that works with your pocket book. Generally, your ad will look something like this:

Downingtown, 3 bd/2 ba twin for sale by owner. New roof, central air. Must sell. 610-555-1212

Of course, insert the info that is appropriate to your home. You can even use the same type of ad that you handwrote on your blank corrugated plastic signs. Remember that with classified ads you are pretty much paying per word. One word of caution: don’t try to create crazy abbreviations for your ad so you can fit more words in. A lot of folks may not know what your abbreviation means so it may confuse them and keep them from calling. The classified ad rep from the paper will sometimes suggest abbreviations for words to make things fit, just be cautious that it is a standard abbreviation that most folks know what it means like br for bedrooms or ba for bathrooms. Don’t get fancy with abbreviations, trust me.

– Post an ad on ForSaleByOwner.com (or any other type of FSBO site) They have all different pricing levels starting at $89.95 (which I don’t like because it’s a monthly fee) all the way up to an $899 one time fee. The basic plan is pretty decent, it gets you an unlimited listing on their site until it’s sold and an awesome thing about their ads is that you get a private voicemail system (so you don’t have to give out your home phone number!) Just so you know, the Gold package for a $699 one time fee is definitely worth checking out. It’s the cheapest of the packages that gets you listed on the MLS (multiple listing service, which is what all real estate agents use to list properties and find properties for their buyers) and on realtor.com Please keep in mind though, if you got with an MLS option, you are going to have to pay a commission to the agent that brings you a buyer (typically between 2 to 3%, but commissions are negotiable and you state when you pick your package the commission you are willing to pay.) Keep in mind, if you make the commission for the agent with a potential buyer they may not even show your house. So, personally, I’d stay within the 2 to 3% mark.

If you’re wondering do you have to list your property on the MLS for sale, the answer is no. I just want to make you aware that the MLS is what over 32,000 real estate professionals in this area use to view properties for sale. That’s a HUGE market that you’d be missing. But it’s ok, the basic package will at least get you in front of folks who are searching for a house to buy for themselves.

– This marketing method may be a little more than most of you want to get in to, but you can send out postcards to either folks in your area or to renters in your area. At vistaprint.com you can get some free postcards and more for relatively cheap.

You’re going to most likely want to purchase a list of renters or homeowners in your area from a list broker (you can search on google or look in your phone book.) For homeowners in your area you can get their names and addresses from public records and that is free, especially if you go to the courthouse. Just get a simple House For Sale postcard or Why Rent When You Can Own Postcard? And send them out.

– A free alternative to use is the same kind of House for Sale or Why Rent When You Can Own ad for the postcard above but print it out and make flyers at home. (Btw, if you are savvy with your computer you can even print out postcards.) A flyer that I like to put together to hand out to the neighbors on the same block as a house I have for sale is the “Pick Your Own Neighbor” flyer. Folks love that and you never know? They could have a friend or family member that is looking to move into the neigborhood. Your general flyers you can post in laundromats, grocery stores, around rental apartments, etc.

– One last free marketing tip that I forgot to mention is word of mouth. Don’t forget to tell everyone you know that your house is for sale. You never know who knows someone that is looking to buy.

When You Get The Calls Coming In A lot of folks are just gonna wanna know the price at first if you don’t have it listed already. Then they may want to set up an appointment to check the house out. If you’re not careful you could be wasting ALOT of time. Here’s what I do:

– First I tell interested folks to do a drive-by of the house. If they like it after driving by I tell them to call me back to set up an appointment.

– If they call me back to set up an appointment I ask them if they are pre-approved for a mortgage. If they say yes, I inform them that they must send me their pre-approval letter before I will set up an appointment to show them the inside of the home (be nice about this, not rude.) If they say no, then I tell them that they must be pre-approved before I will set up an appointment to show the inside of the home. I generally will refer them to a mortgage person or a small, local bank that I use. (You should do the same. Hook yourself up with a small, local bank in your area that will get people pre-approved to buy your house. You can do this with a mortgage person too, if you have one in mind.)

– If they pass all of the above then I will set up an appointment. PLEASE BE CAUTIOUS. These are strangers that you are letting into your home. Always have more than one adult home when having showings and it’s a good idea to have a sign-in sheet for folks to sign and you should make them even show their driver’s license or some form of i.d. I know that you may feel uneasy asking this stuff, but it’s for your own protection.

Word of Caution: If you ever, ever feel uneasy about someone that you are talking to on the phone, do not, under any circumstances let them into your home, especially when you are alone. Women..use that women’s intuition that you have. Fellas, use that gut feeling that you can get. (This is probably the scariest part about selling your house yourself, in my opinion.)

– If folks are interested in your house then write up an agreement with them! (we’ll get into that in a few.)

– If they aren’t interested, ask them if they could give you some feedback so that you can improve your chances of selling your home. Tell them to be honest as you won’t be upset or take anything personally (and hold true to that!)

When You Find A Qualified Buyer After you find a qualified buyer you want to write up an agreement of sale. I’m going to assume that you don’t know anything about an agreement of sale or about how to fill one out. With that in mind, my advice is to then NOT DO IT.

– You should have a competent real estate attorney that you use to help you draw up an agreement of sale and that helps you with all of the rules and laws associated with selling your house (like fair housing laws, seller disclosure forms, etc.) The real estate attorney can even do the closing for you and your buyer (they will take care of EVERYTHING associated with getting your transaction done and getting you your check in your hand.)

– If you know how to fill out an agreement of sale then you should have a title company that you want to work with to get your transaction to the closing table and get your check in your hand. They can help you with any questions that you may have, but they may not be permitted to give you legal advice in regards to rules and laws regarding selling your house, but ask, because a lot of them have real estate lawyers within their company that will be happy to help.

Now take you big check to the bank baby and you can now say “I can save tons of money on commissions because I can sell my house myself in Pennsylvania!”

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thereaderscafenetwork-blog · 7 years