If you’ve been a broker for 5 years or more you’ve probably come across the “OVER-THE-TOP” home inspector. Either your Buyer received a referral from someone around the water-cooler at work, or it is your listing that is being subjected to an unusual approach to home inspections. We understand that home inspectors look for competitive advantages to obtain more business the …
Solution To The Home Inspection Contingency And Inherent Problems aka “MLW”
Home inspections are the most crucial juncture of every residential property transaction. When a Seller and Buyer finalize negotiations on the terms of a purchase and sale agreement, everybody’s happy. As brokers, we explain to our clients that what they’ve accomplished is no more than “agree to try to agree”. The inspection contingency contained in virtually every transaction is where the …
Anonymous Complaints aka When Our Government Empowers Whiners
Depending on the business that you are in, at some point in your career you may hear from your employer, “we’ve had an anonymous complaint”. Chances are your employer heard from a State or County government agency, who in turn is “processing” an anonymous complaint. Let’s think about this for a moment. What comes to mind when you envision an …
THE MARKET HAS SHIFTED…
I will present graphical evidence in subsequent posts to support this audacious claim, but right now I am interested in a different aspect of this market shift: “mental shift”. I have run into several buyer/shoppers the past month who, for various reasons, have been unable to shift with the market. Here is a sampling of what I have heard: It’s just not …
Get Rid Of the Negativity Already
We refuse to succumb to the relentless diatribes of agents and buyers citing every listing as “overpriced”. These lightly informed opinions have become so ubiquitous we are eliminating “what do you think of the price?” from our showing/previewing email follow-up questionnaires for all of our listings. If the answer is always the same, why ask the question? Things were quite …
Diana Moves Her License to Prudential NW Real Estate
Diana moved to Prudential a few months ago. Why? Well, as many of you know, Diana’s specialty par excellence is relocation. It is a strength at Prudential, a national company. Not quite so at Windermere, a regional company. But as Diana has been indoctrinated into the Prudential system, we’ve been introduced to some surprisingly refreshing ideas pertaining to residential real …
Federal Way Sign Ordinance: Not Rocket Science
I’ll be brief: Real estate open house signs are a time honored tradition. The regulation thereof should be simple and straightforward. Her is how I would propose that any municipal and/or county sign ordinance should read. Open house signs shall be no larger than 24″ by 24″; Said signs shall bear the name of the licensed real estate brokerage that …
California Dreamin’/Burnin’
We set out for the Los Angeles area last week to get a little first hand knowledge from local real estate agents on the state of their market. I was fortunate enough to meet Denine Kerns, CRS of Prudential California located at Corona del Mar, a toney oceanside community about 40 minutes South of L.A. Denine specializes in estate properties and …
Professionalism Lacking Among Local Agents: Cost To The Sellers…..
Diana and I thought we would take advantage of a nice day to preview some of the listings being held open in the Madison Park and Broadmoor neighborhoods. We viewed some nice listings, but were taken aback at how we were, or were not, greeted by the respective listing agents. Listing No. 1: A beautiful $1.8M home in Madison Park. …