Posts Tagged ‘St. Augustine Homes for sale’

« Older Entries

St. Augustine Homes for Sale: What do Realtors do to Market a House Beyond the MLS?

Friday, August 13th, 2010

by Sean Hess (www.SeanHess.com), Broker and Manager for St. Augustine Team Realty (www.StAugustineTeamRealty.com).   Follow us on Facebook.

What do Realtors do to “market” a house beyond putting it on the MLS…

I found this question while trolling the real estate blogs this morning.  It’s a good question.

I can’t speak for other Realtors, but I can speak for us.  To dumb it down a bit there are four different ways to market a home for sale: networking, print advertising, online advertising, and “other.”

Networking is the most important of the four, and I would include MLS (multiple listing service) in this group. 

Buyers use Realtors to buy homes.  Realtors use the MLS to find those homes.  So when I create a listing in MLS, great care is used in speaking to the Realtor as well as the Buyer.  It affects the headlines I use, the copy, and even the sequence of photos.  Since the Realtors often create the final short list they give to their customers, we pay a lot of attention to their needs. 

The other side of networking is the face-to-face part, and it is just as important.  Certain agents work with certain buyers or certain types of properties.  We make sure they know us and know our properties, so they feel comfortable coming to us with offers and questions.  Most importantly, when we get one of “their type” properties we put a bug in their ear and make sure they know it’s out there.

Print advertising is the thing we wish would all go away…it’s expensive and ineffective for selling homes.  So why do we and other companies plunk down hundreds if not thousands on print?  Because it is effective for attracting sellers and agents.   Sellers live in a market day to day, get the paper every day, and they see so and so advertises.  Must be successful, right?  Possibly.  Companies, ours included, use print to tell other agents, “hey, we’re in business and spending money, come work for us.”  But for the most part it won’t sell your home.

Online advertising is how we find the buyers, so it’s the thing we pay the most attention to (equally with networking).   While we feed our listings to something like 73 different sites, it’s how we do it that’s important.  We structure a lot of these feeds differently, and these are structured strictly for the buyer, to catch their attention, so hopefully they will contact us about buying your home.  We don’t post listings willy-nilly, but are very calculated in how we do it: we want our online advertising to make sense to the buyer so they find what they’re looking for fast and without a hassle.  We use things like social media and blogs as well to accomplish this.

“Other” is more the institutional advertising we do with logo decals, race sponsorships, bike team sponsorships, television, radio, etc.  We’re hoping to catch a customer’s eye or ear.  It’s an indirect way to get the properties we list sold by attracting customers to our firm.  If they have a list of wants and needs we’ll help them find it, and we’ll make sure they see our listings that meet those needs as well.  One of those could be your home.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in St. Augustine Homes for sale, St. Augustine Real Estate, marketing besides MLS, marketing plan, realtor marketing | 3 Comments »

Homes for Sale in St. Augustine: Are You Paying EXTRA Commission?

Thursday, July 15th, 2010

by Sean Hess (www.SeanHess.com), Broker and Manager for St. Augustine Team Realty (www.StAugustineTeamRealty.com).   Follow us on Facebook.

Line 89-Extra Commission on Standard Florida Contract

Line 89-Extra Commission on Standard Florida Contract

 

If you want to see something ugly, just take a look at line 89 (a) of the standard Florida Association of Realtors Listing Contract pictured to the right.

The first part of line 89 (a) is normal…it spells out the commission percentage in the listing agreement.  Whether you love commission or hate commission, it’s how deals get done.  But then it goes on to add “plus $___________ ” .

This tiny little addition in the contract is there to charge you an extra commission.  If someone tries to get you to pay an extra commission, like Nancy Reagan famously said, “Just Say No.”

Back in the days of the boom market some real estate agencies felt that they weren’t raking in enough cash.  There were some real world reasons for this: commission percentages were declining a bit due to market competition, and to attract agents companies had to give the agents a better cut.  So they invented something called a “transaction fee” which was basically just an add-fee of a few hundred bucks that the seller and buyer got hit with at closing, and that was paid directly to the borkerage.  Some people would protest the fee but most people just went ahead and closed.

Then the federal government stepped in and said, “you can’t do that,” because the fee wasn’t part of any real work directly related to a real estate closing.  So the real estate agencies have to put it in the actual listing contract now.

My best advice is: don’t agree to any Extra Commission.  Any company that would turn down your listing because you won’t pay a few hundred bucks is not making sound business decisions.  AND, the listing agent and the agent who brings the buyer don’t see any of that money anyway, so it bypasses the purpose of commission…which is to motivate agents to do all the work in selling the home without getting paid a single dime upfront, or at all, until the house closes.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in St. Augustine Homes for sale, St. Augustine Real Estate, transaction fees | 1 Comment »

Homes for Sale in St. Augustine: Your Home Got Showed, Then It Got Trashed

Wednesday, July 7th, 2010

by Sean Hess (www.SeanHess.com), Broker and Manager for St. Augustine Team Realty (www.StAugustineTeamRealty.com).   Follow us on Facebook.

So your home got showed, then it got trashed.  Okay, not really trashed, but someone left a door open, or the lights on…they trashed common courtesy in other words. 

Here’s some agent stories I found on the web recently:

“I had a listing once and a buyer’s agent left the side door of the house open and my client’s cat escaped. She found the cat, but I lost the listing and I don’t blame the client for canceling our contract. I’m lucky that her house wasn’t robbed. I contacted the buyer’s agent to let them know how displeased I was, but unfortunately didn’t get much remorse.”

“Recently after I returned to my condo after a viewing I found a large coffee stain on my white carpet.  Either the agent or the people viewing the house spilled coffee on the carpet and did not bother to even clean it up. Now I have to get my carpets cleaned…”

In a regular year we might see one door left open (this year I’ve seen three…a fourth turned out to be a faulty lock), and we might see one lockbox left open (we’ve seen four since December of last year).  But for the grace of God we haven’t seen any coffee stains or damage.   

What is a seller or their agent to do?

Unfortunately not much. 

The real estate business is built on networking.  The agent that leaves your door open today may sell your listing tomorrow.  Most agents alive today have to be good or they wouldn’t still be in business, so protecting the sale is more important than unloading on someone for leaving a door open.

And in most cases it’s unintentional anyway.

We know who the agents are showing our listings.  Usually when something happens I’ll call them and just let them know a door got left open, or a lockbox wasn’t closed…they are usually mortified.  These are professionals after all.  They were usually distracted by their buyers, answering questions, trying to make sure all the lights were turned off, etc. 

 Agents so cavalier and so bad that they do this routinely find themselves fired out of the business, and fast.

And look, if someone I knew left my own door open I wouldn’t unload on them.  In fact, someone I know (myself) closed the office last week, turned on the alarm, and forgot to lock the door…if I can do that to my own property I’m certainly capable of doing it at someone else’s.

So, yes it’s bad form, and it trashes common courtesy.  But it’s not intentional, and you’re trying to sell your house, right?  So, be thankful for the buyer chance and let it roll.

Tags: , ,
Posted in St. Augustine Real Estate, bad realtors, buying in st. augustine, moving to st. augustine | 2 Comments »

Selling St. Augustine Homes: Good Realtor? Here’s the Buyer You Dump…

Wednesday, June 9th, 2010

by Sean Hess (www.SeanHess.com), Broker and Manager for St. Augustine Team Realty (www.StAugustineTeamRealty.com).   Follow us on Facebook.

One of the Weichert franchise sales reps stopped by the office yesterday to chat, a real nice guy. 

 We got into a conversation about salespeople.  He had me envision a scenario where I hand a sales lead (a retiree from Ohio two years away from moving down here) to two different agents.  The first agent says, “I only deal with people in the market today,” and slams the phone down.  The other agent says, “Here, let’s see what your looking for and we’ll try and find something.”

I think the Weichert guy wanted me to be horrified at the first agent blowing off the customer.  Presumably, if I became a Weichert franchisee, the company would have a system for treating all leads equally, and in this case, incubating them over the two years it takes the retiree to move down here.

Instead, I said, “If I had a choice of the first agent (who blew off the customer) or the second (who was nice), I would take the first agent every time.”

Here’s why, but before that a quick lesson on how real estate agents get paid.  Real estate agents don’t get paid a salary and they don’t get paid by the hour.  They don’t get paid if they spend three months or three years on a project, they only get paid at the closing table, and only when the property sells:

  • Real estate is sales.  It is the here and now.  A buyer who is retiring in two years isn’t moving for two years.  The prices will be different in two years.  Interest rates will be different in two years.  There will be completely different homes on the market.  A real estate agent that recognizes this and focuses on the here and now will succeed.  A real estate agent that tries to “incubate” leads two years out is destined to starve. 

 

  • Money is important, but TIME is the real estate agent’s most valuable commodity.  I’m taking time today to write this blog post.  I write these posts so you can learn more about real estate, so that you see how we strategize, and that St. Augustine Team Realty is both expereinced and on the level.  This is part of how we promote ourselves, and I feel it’s valuable enough to take the time away from other things that I handle as an agent and a Broker.  Getting back to the two agents, the agent that manages his time effectively will succeed.  The agent who takes his time to set up a drip system and research properties and do follow up is wasting his most valuable asset on a prospect that will not pay off at the minimum for two years, while there are buyers in the market today.

 

  • Experienced agents are smooth operators.  Any agent who has been in the business long enough to recognize an earnest but delusional buyer will handle the situation deftly.  They will not slam the phone down on anyone.  But if the buyer candidate gets too insistent, the agent will tell the person what he needs to hear, but maybe not what he wants to hear.

 

  • These buyers that are one year, two years, some vague time period out from buying are super earnest.  They really do believe that they really will “just buy right now if they find the right place.”  Or that “we’re thinking about renting it out until we retire.”  But the truth is, there is no urgency to buy right now, and these people are not going to be landlords.  Part of cutting your teeth in real estate is that the first one of these candidates that you encounter you hang on tight and never let go.  After two years mine bought a FSBO but I still managed a $1000 referral out of it…and I was one of the lucky ones.  Every Realtor has a sale in their inventory that starts with, “Well, I met these people three years ago…”, but it’s their ONLY sale like that.  Because the time spent on the project took away from so many other projects that were more profitable and more satisfying.          

 

  • There’s an old real estate maxim, “Buyers are Liars.”  Expereinced agents have to have an almost supernatural sense of who’s for real and who’s not, but even agents with decades in the business still get fooled.  My experience has been that someone two years out is usually not talking to just me, but other Realtors as well (no loyalty…which is okay, just don’t expect me to go to the wall for you), that they are looking at other locations (they don’t even know the area well enough to actually want to live here), and only have the vaguest notion of financing what they want to buy (though they usually have good income and assets). 

Yet I still get fooled.  It’s the income and assets that do it everytime…they have the means but they’re just not motivated.  I got hung out to dry last summer for two days on a “two year out” buyer because I bit on the income and assets.  And I’ll never get those two days back.  And it still bothers me.

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in St. Augustine Homes for sale, St. Augustine Real Estate, buying in st. augustine, moving to st. augustine, realtor blows off customer | 3 Comments »

Selling St. Augustine Homes: Real Estate & Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmare

Friday, April 30th, 2010

by Sean Hess (www.SeanHess.com), Broker and Manager for St. Augustine Team Realty (www.StAugustineTeamRealty.com). Become a fan of ours on Facebook.

Ramsey, a kindred spirit.

Ramsay, a kindred spirit.

Last night I stumbled across “Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmare” while channel surfing.  Basically Ramsay is chef who takes over a failing restaurant and tries to get it running right.

Ramsay is incredibly profane.  He drops F-bombs with the passion of a hockey coach.  He has no problem telling a restaurant owner and chef that their food is “f*-ing crap” and that the restaurant’s atmosphere is worse than a sleazy “f*-ing strip club.”  He yells, he screams, he belittles, he berates.

Early in the episode Ramsay discovers that the restaurant isn’t preparing anything from scratch.  In the kitchen the chef was preparing food ahead of time from a mix, then reheating it in a microwave.  Meanwhile, the owner was doing a sound check with an acoustic guitarist in the seating area.  It was lunch.  The restaurant was empty.  They were losing $1000 a day in overhead, and the food was awful.  

Ramsay gets the owner and chef in the kitchen and starts blasting them like a battleship.  One thing he said struck me like a lightning bolt.  I’m paraphrasing here:

“You f*-ing morons are falling apart at the f*-ing seams.  No one wants your food. You aren’t selling f*-ing anything and you wrap yourself in this bubble and keep telling yourself everything is alright!”

And I think to myself, “Omigosh that is so real estate.”

We deal with sellers all the time…thank goodness most of them don’t list with us…that are wrapped in that bubble of self delusion about the market.  Some property is very black-and-white on price, some isn’t, but everything falls into a range.  And then you get a seller who wants to list for $50,000 or more above any rational threshold, and you think to yourself, “What planet are these people on?”

Home sales are simply a function of supply and demand, with a caveat for available credit.  There are 2200 homes on the market, only 1000 of them may sell.  If the price goes down on the other 1200 the demand might increase enough to generate 1200 more sales.  But, “my house is worth more than that.” 

I had a Ramsay moment (or two) when I lost it with an irrational seller.  Once, in response to the question of “Why isn’t my house selling?” I replied:

“Because you don’t clean up the dogsh*t on the floor John!  I’ve been telling you for weeks to clean the house. John, the last person who saw it threatened to call the health department, John.  Clean up the freaking house!”

I eventually paid to clean the house, but it was too little too late and it eventually went to foreclosure.

I’ve even threatened to quit. When a seller wanted to counter a very good offer on a very tough to sell home two years ago I told her I wouldn’t present it.  I told her I was going to give back the listing and she could find another Realtor to present it, but I wouldn’t do it.  Because it was a b*llshit counter on a good offer in the worst market in history and I would not go down that road.  So after hanging up on me she called back, apologized and took the offer.  And a good thing she did, because the market turned even worse after.   

I saved that one but for every one I do save it seems like I have another one that fails, like I had with John, above.

The last one involved, you guessed it, a very good (actually above market) offer on a very hard to sell property.  I thought the sellers were rational until they countered at a very irrational price and terms.  They seemed normal up until that point.  I had educated them every week on selling prices and market conditions…they knew as much as I did.  But they stuck on that hard counter thinking the buyer was going to budge, but the buyer just walked away.  So after a few days the sellers came back with a better, but not great counter offer.  But at this point the buyers wouldn’t even respond.  I assume they had a choice #2 and bought that instead.

So, Ramsay, you got kindred spirits in real estate.  Maybe not as profane, but a kindred spirit nonetheless.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in St. Augustine Homes for sale, St. Augustine Real Estate | No Comments »

Homes for Sale in St. Augustine: Top 10 Reasons Bank of America/SunTrust Loan Packages are Late

Wednesday, April 28th, 2010

by Sean Hess (www.SeanHess.com), Broker and Manager for St. Augustine Team Realty (www.StAugustineTeamRealty.com). Become a fan of ours on Facebook.

In two of my recent closings Bank of America and SunTrust (or as we colloquially refer to them at the office, BOA and S*ckTrust) were somewhat cavalier about the closing dates.  Closing dates were extended multiple times and left both sellers and buyers disappointed: moving dates were disrupted, utility services changed and changed again, days were taken off work to close…and then no closing.

In S*ckTrust’s case we extended the original close date three weeks taking us to the 67 day mark from when the original offer was signed.  And they still blew it, triggering the new RESPA 3-day wait becuase their closing costs exceeded the threshold they promised at application.  Since it was supposed to close on a Friday,the three business day wait took us to the following Wednesday.

For Bank of America we gave them a short window to close, so length was not the issue…my sellers were prepared to go longer.  But, BOA’s communication was poor, never giving any indication when their loan package would show up.  Two days before our third closing date (and right after the second came and went) we e-mailed to check on its status. “I’ll be out of the office today,” was the reply.  Frankly, this automated vacation response was the only timely feedback we ever got from BOA during the process.  

But the BOA package did show up before the fourth closing date, at 4:15 on a Friday afternoon.  Guess what, everyone had to come back Monday because the money wouldn’t transfer after close of business on Friday. 

So here are the Top 10 Reasons BOA and S*uckTrust miss closing dates:

10. Bank management out at airport ogling CitiBank’s new lear jet.

9. Underwriting department took off early for Jessica Simpson concert.

8. “Casual Friday” extends to work ethic on loan packages.

7. Workers too busy shoveling short sale offers into incinerator to work on loan packages.

6. Todd, the janitor, unplugged the fax machine.

5. Staff too busy following Tiger Woods saga on TMZ online.

4. Management worried that timely loan packages will hurt “ailing bank image.”

3. Executives too busy in Washington lobbying against Wall Street reform.

2. Loan money spent on TV commercials for NBA playoffs.

And finally, the number one reason…

1. Bank servers tied up while executives try to calculate 8-figure bonuses.

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in St. Augustine Homes for sale, bank of america, boa, missed closing date, suntrus | 1 Comment »

St. Augustine Homes for Sale: If it Sounds Too Good to be True…

Friday, April 2nd, 2010

by Sean Hess (www.SeanHess.com), Broker and Manager for St. Augustine Team Realty (www.StAugustineTeamRealty.com)

The news in St. Augustine the last two days is the implosion of Lydia Cladek, Inc., a local firm that allegedly lost, spent or absconded with about $200 million in investor monies.  It hasn’t been revealed yet if it was a Ponzi scheme or just an edge-of-your-seat investment attempt that went bad due to the economy.

There were a lot of local investors tied up in this who lost money.  Back in 2007 or 2008 I remember hearing a lot of positive things about Lydia Cladek in the business circles I network in.  “A guaranteed 15% return on investment,” some people told me while others said, “the money comes in like clockwork.”  The way these investors understood it, Lydia Cladek invested the money in “Buy Here-Pay Here” used car lot loans to people with bad credit.  Apparently the loans were written at nealry 30% and that’s how the 15% return came back in.

I remember thinking about it and wondered if I missed the boat on something.  These were smart people telling me these things, after all.  But as it ended up, it turns out I have more business sense than I give myself credit it for…here’s my rationale for staying clear of Lydia Cladek:

  • One of the oldest maxims in business is “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”  There is no investment that I’ve ever seen that can give a sustained return of 15% every year, in and out, unless it’s something written that way like a bond from the Federal government, or possibly a CD.  But when have you ever seen a bond or CD with those returns?  During the height of the St. Augustine real estate market boom from 2003-2005 there were properties that appreciated 18-25% a year, but it was unsustainable, and the price depreciation was just as severe.  Returns like that signal the end of a boom market…if you’re going to get in, get in fast and get out even faster.  Does this sound like the 2010 gold market, anyone?
  • Investement returns based on the payback of loans by folks with bad credit will always lose money (notice how payday loan companies and pawn shops always take their cut up front).  People with bad credit aren’t bad people, they’re just people who (based on their payment history) don’t pay back loans.  Eventually a lot of them repair their credit and become good credit risks, but while that FICO score is low, so is the chance you’ll ever see your money again.  As I mentioned earlier, I remember hearing about Lydia Cladek 2-3 years ago, and it sticks in my mind because it was not long after the subprime mortgage companies started imploding.  I remember thinking, “Are you nuts putting your money in with high risk loans?”  But these were smart people. 

So in real estate or anything, if it sounds too good to be true it probably is.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Lydia Cladek, St. Augustine Homes for sale, St. Augustine Real Estate, real estate investing | 2 Comments »

St. Augustine Homes for Sale: When to Make and Stick By a Lowball Offer

Monday, March 22nd, 2010

by Sean Hess (www.SeanHess.com), Broker and Manager for St. Augustine Team Realty (www.StAugustineTeamRealty.com)

I just did a post on my personal site about when to make and stick by a lowball offer in St. Augustine real estate market.  I hope you enjoy it!

Tags: , ,
Posted in St. Augustine Homes for sale, St. Augustine Real Estate, lowball offer | No Comments »

St. Augustine Homes for Sale: Buyer Tips to Keep You from Looking Like an Amateur

Wednesday, March 17th, 2010

by Sean Hess (www.SeanHess.com), Broker and Manager for St. Augustine Team Realty (www.StAugustineTeamRealty.com)

So your a buyer just getting into the market, maybe for the first time or just the first time in awhile.  Here’s some helpful tips to keep you from looking like you’re just in from Amateursville.

  1. The mortgage landscape has changed a lot.  Really.  Even if you have good income and credit there are still landmines out there that will keep you from getting a loan.  Let your Realtor get you in touch with a lender now, so you can outline to them exactly what you want to buy, and how you plan to structure the purchase because you might not be able to do it the way you thought you could.  Condos, for example.  If you don’t have a big down payment then you might not be buying a condo, but not in all cases because some qualify for FHA.  It would be helpful to know this before you start really looking. 
  2. You can make a lowball offer.  We even encourage you to make a lowball offer.  But, no seller in the world cares if “some buyer just in from the world” is giving his “first and final offer.”  Here’s the deal: this is a negotiation.  If you extend an offer and it’s countered, either politely decline and walk away (if it really is your finest and best offer, or you truly feel the property isn’t worth more), or come back with a number that might work better for you than the seller’s counter.  That’s how investors do it: either the number will work or it won’t.  It’s always polite.
  3. Short sales.  We encourage you to make offers on short sales.  But even more than most transactions, have your finances and pre-qualifications ready so they may be presented to the lender with your offer.  Short sale offers are not submitted to the lender for approval without the buyer pre-qualifications.  And short sales are “as-is” deals (with the right to inspect)…if the seller can’t pay his mortgage he can’t pay your closing costs and repairs.  And be prepared to wait…if you can’t wait 90 days for an answer don’t submit a short sale offer.
  4. Look above your price range, but not $50,000 above your price range.  If your price range is $200,000, you have zero business looking at $250,000 homes. So quit insisting to see them.  Just stop it.  You’re getting no closer to finding your own dream home by doing this and taking valuable time away from people who are.

So in a nutshell, get your financing in order, be polite, and look closer to your price range.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in St. Augustine Homes for sale, St. Augustine Real Estate, buyers, first time buyer | 2 Comments »

St. Augustine Homes for Sale: Tales from the Subprime Mess

Monday, March 15th, 2010

by Sean Hess (www.SeanHess.com), broker and manager for St. Augustine Team Realty (www.StAugustineTeamRealty.com)

I watched a story on 60 Minutes last night chronicling the subprime mess.  I wrote a post about it on my personal site, about how subprime mortgages looked to us here on the ground during the housing boom.  It turns out the easiest explanation for the mess is the correct one: loaning money to persons with bad credit was a bad idea.

Tags: , ,
Posted in St. Augustine Homes for sale, St. Augustine Real Estate, subprime mess | No Comments »

« Older Entries