The Catalina Foothills

uh-oh, here we go again

On numerous occasions recently I’ve pointed out that the supposed recovery of the real estate market, and, more specifically, home sales in the Catalina Foothills, remain lackluster.

And lackluster performance is not unique to us. Many areas across the country have experienced and continue to experience similar or worse conditions.

And just in time, in steps Realtor® Mag, the OFFICIAL MAGAZINE OF THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS® to the rescue. And they have a long history of coming to the rescue with just the right advice at just the right time. Remember their ad campaign in the early days of the real estate bust  “it’s a great time to buy or sell a home”
_______________________________________________________________________

From Inman News; July 2014

Realtor.com’s new economist won’t tell you ‘It’s a great time to buy or sell a home’

In the fall of 2006, as the world hurtled toward a financial crisis precipitated by loose mortgage lending practices that fueled one of the greatest housing bubbles in U.S. history, the National Association of Realtors launched a $40 million advertising campaign advising consumers that “It’s a great time to buy or sell a home.”

As it turned out, it was a great time to sell a home, if you could — prices in many markets had already peaked, and inventories were climbing. But many who bought at the tail end of the boom soon found themselves underwater.

(further down in the article Jonathan Smoke, the new economist for Realtor.com is quoted as saying’'; “I’ve personally never made a decision to buy or sell a home based on what the talking heads are saying, so I’m never going to presume that I can tell the entire market that they should be buying or selling.” 

Read all about it
__________________________________________________________________________

Well that’s very reassuring. But, my how things change, and so quickly too.
Looky here, six months later, in an article out just yesterday, (February 4, 2015) on Realtor® Mag, that very same Mr. Smoke, proclaims;

Home buyers need to move fast if they want to spend less, notes Jonathan Smoke, chief economist at realtor.com® in commentary at the site.

“Delayed purchases will only result in higher monthly mortgage payments as prices and rates rise,” Smoke writes. Realtor.com® is forecasting that affordability may decline as much as 10 percent over the year. [and he makes no bones about it, “… move fast…Delayed purchases will result …”and 10%, wow]
_________________________________________________________________________

If you google “it’s a great time to buy or sell a home” you’ll find that the mantra has already been picked up and is being regurgitated by the news media and other reputable sources.

My advice, have a large grain of salt handy when reading these “advice” columns.

see TheFoothillsToday.com
to find your Catalina Foothills Home

want a faster deal for more money, set a deadline

From WSJ.com
By SANETTE TANAKA

When Deadlines Help Sell Houses

Want to get people moving? Set a due date. In real estate, deadlines bring results—and high returns.

So far this year, 58% of home listings with published offer deadlines sold above list price, according to an analysis of 37 major metropolitan markets in the U.S. by real-estate brokerage Redfin. Listings with offer deadlines also averaged 31 days on the market, compared with 61 days for listings without published deadlines.

Published offer deadlines—where real-estate agents cite a specific due date for offers in the listing and marketing materials—are rare. Less than 4% of U.S. listings include a deadline, according to the Redfin data, and most of those are written in private agent-to-agent comments instead of public listing descriptions.

In hot markets like San Jose and Oakland in California, more than 20% of listings in 2014 had deadlines, according to Redfin. In the 37 markets analyzed, offer deadlines are 89% more common in listings priced between $500,000 and $1 million when compared with homes priced under $500,000.

"As a buyer's agent, I have been one of 40 offers. It's scary, and it's exciting," says Abby Wentworth, a Redfin agent in San Francisco.

Offer deadlines are typically short—just a few days—and appeal to sellers because they can evaluate all offers at once. Setting a deadline expresses confidence in a property and price, and in some cases, can spark a bidding war.

Redfin examined for-sale listings in its coverage area of 37 metro markets from Jan. 1, 2009, through April 26, 2014, excluding foreclosures, short sales and other bank-owned homes. The brokerage searched keywords like "bid," "offer" and "best" used in conjunction with words like "due" and "deadline" followed by a date or day of the week to determine listings published with offer deadlines.

People tend to delay making decisions, but deadlines help them focus and act, says Dan Ariely, a professor of behavioral economics at Duke University and a Wall Street Journal contributor. The more public a deadline is, the more pressure people feel to make decisions, he adds.

The problem with real-estate deadlines is that they aren't binding. Agents can accept offers at any point during the listing and many do so.

"It's frustrating for everyone," says Rebecca Schumacher, an agent with Sotheby's International Realty in San Francisco. "It's an embarrassment to the agent representing those buyers, and it's not good for agent-to-agent relationships."

Hannah Driscoll, a Redfin agent who represents buyers in Boston, says one of her buyers recently decided to submit an early offer for a two-bedroom condo listed for $950,000. "We hit it with everything we had—$15,000 over asking, waived mortgage and inspection contingencies, and we showed a preapproval [letter] that showed they were strong buyers," she says. After a bit of back and forth, and an additional $10,000 from the buyer, the seller accepted before the offer deadline. "It's a seller's market, and sellers can choose whichever buyer they want," Ms. Driscoll says.
__________________________________________________________________________

Lower priced homes in the foothills are selling well and for the right home, particularly for a new listing, this could work. Or, if it’s a higher priced listing and the seller is ready to make a drastic price cut that puts it below market, it could help spur offers and maybe a bidding war.

see TheFoothillsToday.com
to find your Catalina Foothills Home

gee, I wonder if this also applies to real estate

From NYTimes.com

Rose-Colored Words, but Gray Outcomes

When all the words you hear about the economy are bullish, you may want to run in the other direction. This counterintuitive finding — that positive visions of the future precede downturns — appears to be the case both for people and the economy as a whole.

This bad news for unbridled optimism was laid out in a paper published in Psychological Science online in February. The study looked at the relationship between economic malaise and language in newspaper articles and presidential addresses. The finding was stark: Optimistic language was a predictor of poor performance.

“A cultural climate of positive thinking about the future, may have contributed to low economic achievement,” the article concludes.

The paper, by scholars from New York University and the University of Hamburg, speculates that widespread optimism could cause people to discount the risk of trouble ahead, make unwise investments, be less entrepreneurial and thus exacerbate or even create economic weakness.

Read all about it; Rose-Colored Words, but Gray Outcomes

see thefoothillsToday.com
to find your Tucson Foothills home

gearing up for the new year

Already, just 7 days into the new year and there are 30 new listings.

10 priced from $1,090,000 to $1,895,000, two of which caught my eye.

5372 E Gleneagles Drive, aside from its other virtues, sits on 5.2 acres in Skyline CC – lots of that size are rare anywhere in the foothills and more so in places like Skyline. And it’s not one of those bowling alley lots either, where your 5 acres is 80 ft wide and 2 miles long, leaving you with 4 1/2  absolutely useless acres - except to the tax man. (listed by Long Realty)

And a yet to be completed new spec home in Finisterra priced at $1,895,000 ($349/sf) has joined the fray. (listed by Tierra Antigua Realty)
Encouraged, perhaps, by the spec that did eventually sell last July in Finisterra. It went for $2,500,000 ($280/sf) off a $3,500,000 ($392/sf) list price that had been reduced from its debut price $4,200,000 ($470/sf) in Feb 2010.

10 new listings from $1,090,000

And 11 new listings from $159,900 to $590,000 – so about the same as for the $mil+ homes – even though this price range is out selling the upper-end by leaps and bounds.

And 9 new listings for the middle of the market – homes priced $600,000 to $999,999 –
so a very fair and even distribution of new listings.

And then there are approximately 20 so-called New Listings that are actually relisted old listings. That is, listings that have been on the market for a month or a year or however long, and either expired or were cancelled and relisted shortly thereafter, sometimes just minutes thereafter. And, while technically they may be new listings, because they have a new mls #, does anyone really consider them New Listings? No one that I know does, why would you?

And I wonder, doesn’t labeling them New Listings fly in the face of serving the public with honest and full disclosure as is so often touted by the real estate industry, to say nothing of causing consumers to flee to Zillow, Trulia and other sources for their real estate information?

I could see it, labeling a relisted old listing as a New Listing, if it were relisted by a different listing agent and broker. That makes sense to me, the new listing agent should be able to start off fresh while trying to apply their marketing know-how. But when it’s the same agent/broker just relisting an old listing, nah. But that’s how the system works, or, depending on your point of view, doesn’t work.

see thefoothillsToday.com
to find your Tucson Foothills home

a new homepage design for Long Realty

The homepage of the Long Realty web site was recently redesigned and Long Realty is looking for feedback on the new design.

If you would, please go to www.longrealty.com and have a look. There’s a feedback tab on the right side. Thank you, Long Realty welcomes and appreciates your opinion.

please, let’s all read this and pass it on to help make sure that Pulte homes gets the PR they really deserve

By GRETCHEN MORGENSON In today’s New York Times

Preapproved: Well, It Sounded Good

MELISSA CALDERONE was ready for a fresh start when she made plans last year to move to Florida from New Jersey. Recently remarried, she signed a contract in mid-March on a house to be built in Windermere, Fla., by Pulte Homes, the nation’s largest homebuilder. The neighborhood had good schools for her three children and two stepchildren. It was also close to where Ms. Calderone’s parents lived.

Her local bank approved her for a mortgage. But then a Pulte Homes saleswoman told her that she would get a $4,000 credit toward closing costs if she took out a loan with the homebuilder’s banking unit instead. Ms. Calderone, 38, agreed. She deposited $20,000 in earnest money and set aside $80,000 more for a down payment on the $347,000 house. Her closing date, documents show, was scheduled for late summer, about six months later.

Then her troubles began. Although she had been “preapproved” by Pulte, the company ultimately denied her the loan. Then, contending that Ms. Calderone had defaulted on the purchase agreement by failing to close on time, Pulte kept her $20,000 deposit. The house went back on the market.

Read all about it, Preapproved: Well, It Sounded Good

To my knowledge Pulte doesn’t do business in the Foothills, but they do sell homes in other areas of Tucson. Get the word out,

ta-da

The new public mls search site from flexmls and the Tucson Association of Realtors® is up and running as of today. One day earlier than promised. You can find it here> http://tarmls.com/

And already a reader has weighed in with his opinion of the site. 
I’ll post his email here, in the hopes of getting the ball rolling, and look forward to others letting us know what you think.
(just click> Comments at bottom of this post, and fire away) 

Bruce wrote;

John
I am not a realtor, just a old banker trying to research and buy a home in Tucson.  The new MLS system is a major step backward (from a consumers standpoint); maybe realtors have more bells and whistles.  In my industry, to survive as an independent community bank, you have to be on the cutting edge in terms of technology to both retain customers and reduce costs.  If TAR’s moved to the new system to save money, they got what they paid for, an inferior product!  The old system had more search options, ran faster, and was more intuitive to use.  If there are some ‘great tools’ out there with this system, make them available to sophisticated buyers trying to use them.  If what that is available with the public options is it, too bad for the prospective buyers.
When you live over 1,000 miles away and are trying to research the options available by area (now only 3 choices) and in a house (about 1/3 of the search options as before), it gets real frustrating.  Maybe we should look at other areas where the data are more readily available.  Transparency, access, and speed of delivery of relevant information over the internet is what customers demand in the 21st century, not a striped down inferior product such as ‘flexmls’ offers.  Did the committee selecting this product miss the internet as an important channel to market and sell their products?
bbm
__________________________________________________________

Though it appears in the Comments section, I thought it only fair to prominently post an opposing point of view, so here’s Jim, a reader who seems to be enjoying the new flexmls system,

This new MLS search site seems faster to me, especially when using the map in conjunction with search criteria. I've been using the old system for a year now and was frustrated at how incredibly S-L-O-W the map refreshes were. This new format will take some getting used to (as all things do) but in just an hour or so, this 50 year-old didn't find it all that challenging. I think this new MLS search site has potential to be more useful to this buyer. I definitely wouldn't be writing it off so soon. BTW, John, I've been meaning to compliment your blog for some time. I've enjoyed it for many months now and look forward to your take on listings I've seen and homes I've visited. It is refreshing to read your unabashed commentary. 

Jim
________________________________________________________

please, let’s hear more,

when you wish upon a star

A reader sent me a link to an LA Times article about the luxury home market in Bev Hills, Malibu and such. And if you lop off a zero here and there it bears a striking resemblance to the market here in the Tucson Foothills.

Same overpricing, same denial, same playing catch-up with the falling market – … sellers' thinking has been slow to adjust to the sea change in pricing since the bubble burst, same  ‘my house is better than theirs’ syndrome, same taking of overpriced listings - It's one thing for an agent to take an overpriced listing when prices are rising. "It's possible the market will catch up with the price eventually," Davis said. "But the reverse is happening. To take an overpriced listing now is pointless for the agent and the homeowner."
but in la la land, they do have one reason for overpricing that we do not, the magical belief that a star will happen upon their place and be willing to pay any price.

High-end home sellers lower their sights

 

about open houses

The other day an agent friend of mine was bemoaning the fact that as time goes on his open houses are drawing fewer and fewer lookers. And that the one’s who do show up are less interested in what he has to say and spend less time at the open house than in the past.

Well, obviously, there are fewer buyers out there now than there were a couple of years ago, I said. But also, the internet has disintermediated the open house process. It’s come between the open house agent - who traditionally supplied information about the house - and potential buyers.

Because of all the information that is available on the internet about every house for sale – photos, aerial maps, street view maps, tax records, floor plans, previous sales histories, comparable sales, etc, etc – buyers are able to easily investigate many of the details of any house before deciding whether or not it’s worth going to have a look.

And consequently many houses, that at first may have looked like a possibility, end up in the reject file after just a few minutes of online investigation. Buyers discover that; it’s too close to the road, or to a neighboring house, there are electric/phone wires strung across the backyard, the backyard’s too small, the house is all electric, no gas, the orientation is wrong – east/west rather than north/south, no view, don’t like the floor plan - not a split bedroom plan, the kitchen is too this or too that, the house next door is painted bright red, the house is overpriced. You name it.

Whatever it is, it’s a deal breaker for those buyers, and there’s No Need to go see it in person. So they visit fewer open houses.
And if it does make their keeper list, when the buyers do arrive at the open house, they often have as much or more information about it as does the agent holding it open.

And because they already know the score, these informed buyers are less likely to hang on the agent’s every word. Resulting in the open house agent feeling more like a doorman at a poorly attended premiere, than a sought after provider of information.

see thefoothillsToday.com
to find your Tucson Foothills home

Just Sold

We all get them, even me, those cheerful postcards that announce,

Hi neighbor,

I Just Sold a home at 123 Happy Trails

Tucson, Az 8518

I got one just like that today. And hey, that’s what Realtors® do,
and I used to do it too. If you’re a listing agent, it’s how you get your name around the neighborhood.

But not content to leave well enough alone, this one went on to say,

For fast results, work with an agent who

knows how to get the job done.

OK, sure. Except that I know, and so does everyone else in the neighborhood - because the damn For Sale signs have been out there long enough to become a fixture - that the house at 123 Happy Trails was on the market for at least a year before it sold.

And they wonder why they don’t get no respect.

if it works for Needless Markup

The New York Times reports that Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus and other luxury retailers are deliberately stocking fewer luxury goods.

The strategy is aimed at weaning consumers from deep discounts.
By carrying fewer goods and selling them at full price, Saks is essentially telling customers: buy it now or live without it.

“What’s luxury retailing about?” Mr. Sadove (chairman, CEO of Saks) said. “It is about a scarcity of supply.”

This could work. Take Pima Canyon, instead of 18 homes for sale, the home owners get together, draw straws, and stingily dole the listings out, so there’s never more than 2 or 3 for sale. Hey, if you want Pima Canyon …

“Upscale stores want to train the customer that luxury equals exclusivity and that they cannot assume they can wait and they’re able to buy it on sale,” said William S. Taubman, chief operating officer of Taubman Centers.

You got that.

Luxury Stores Trim Inventory and Discounts

a picture is worth a thousand words

but thanks to new MLS rules restricting the use of MLS photos, you’ll be seeing a lot fewer of them on this page and other places too.

I can’t imagine what the purpose of this new rule is, or what onerous activity it’s intended to curb – that was not explained.
Just,

Effective November 1st, you will no longer be able to copy photos from the MLS. If you wish to use a photo found on the system, you will need to contact the listing agent.

I also wonder, since the new ruling says nothing about copying photos from sources other than the MLS - and since the photos from the MLS show up on dozens of public web sites - is it OK to copy them from there, the public web sites.

Like this one. It’s a dead ringer for a photo that’s also on the MLS, but I didn’t get it from the MLS, I got it from a public web site.

Who’s to know. And again, what onerous activity is this new rule intended to curb.

A QUICK ABOUT FACE; 
It's just a few hours after posting this piece and the MLS has decided that it will NOT prohibit the copying and use of photos from the MLS. And this time with an explanation:

After further review, it appears that we may not have to disable the Copy Picture function. This action was proposed due to potential liability issues for MLS, but after talking further to legal counsel the liability may not be great enough to warrant the change. As of now, there will be no change on November 1st.

Now I'd like to know what 'potential liability issues' they speak of. Any attorneys out there who might shed some light on that issue.
 

over easy or straight-up

My friend Christopher Fountain is again taking flack for telling it like it is at his Greenwich, Ct real estate blog For What It’s Worth

His latest villainy has to do with some straight-up info and commentary he provided for a slide show in The New York Times that documents the real estate bust across the U.S. Apparently the entrenched citizenry of Greenwich find his disclosures terribly unseemly.

It’s juicy stuff, Shhh! Don’t say a word.

And the slide show, Ruins of the Second Gilded Age

Enjoy, and Happy 4th!

things must be looking up

Homesmart Realty, a Phoenix based company, is buying Homeway Realty, a Tucson based company, with plans to expand in the Tucson market by spreading its model of reducing costs through technology.

So says The Arizona Republic, HomeSmart plans expansion to Tucson

Because I think there’s a big opportunity for real estate brokerages to be run much more efficiently than is generally being done, it’ll be interesting to see what Homesmart’s model is. On the other hand, brokerages that have taken a more technology driven approach, like Redfin and ziprealty, have not done much in the way of taking market share from traditional brokerages.

here’s a good one

from Chris Fountain, my Greenwich connection

Realtor speak

flirting with fame

In the last two days I've gotten calls from The Wall Street Journal and True West magazine, and both of them were looking to feature a couple of the homes I've mentioned on the blog.

WSJ was interested in the house at 5280 E Mission Hill Dr, in Skyline CC, and the managing editor of True West contacted me about doing a feature on the wonderful Lee Marvin Residence built by Josias Joesler

Both are listed by other agents, so I passed on their names, etc. and slumped back into obscurity. But surely, if Tucson's not already on everyone's lips, it soon will be.

see thefoothillsToday.com
to search for Tucson Foothills Homes

mmm-mm good

I've never really gotten the connection between Realtors® and recipe cards. You know, like why would receiving recipes from a Realtor® cause you to want to hire them to sell your house. Or is it just an icing on the cake thing, so to speak. In any case I must be missing something, because sending out recipe cards is a very popular thing for many successful Realtors®. So when I saw this good looking new recipe card courtesy of Long Realty, and featuring a recipe from EL Charro, I thought I'd better get with it and give it a try. Hey, you never know.

But instead of licking all those stamps and schlepping to the post office with hundreds of cards, which I'd never do, I'm going to take the easy way out and just post them here, where you can get at it whether you're in Tucson or Tennessee.

And it does look good, and coincidentally, I had dinner at
El Charro just the other night, though I didn't have the Albondigas.
Next time. And here's a printable pdf. file Download Albondigas
So, recipe cards, what do you think?? Yes, No. Or is it just too girly.

Enjoy!

here, this is where it's at

Public Information

Ditto!

even more choices

In case you haven't noticed, there have been a lot of new listings coming to market recently in the Tucson Foothills. At the beginning of the year we had about 518 homes for sale. By yesterday morning it had jumped to 534, and this morning we're at 552 556. And because this is (usually) our busy season, I expect that trend to continue for a while.

So you'll have even more homes to choose from during the next few months than at any other time of year. But more to the point, a lot of it is fresh inventory, rather than just re-treads of old listings that haven't sold.

And now you can search for all those homes while you're on the go, from your iphone, Blackberry or other web enabled mobile device at Long Realty's brand new mobile web site.

So if you're cruising around the Foothills and happen to run across the home you've been dreaming of, there's no need to wait. Just fire up your mobile browser, go to www.m.LongRealty.com, enter the address, and in two secs the listing pops up with all the key info,
like this,
   

3718 E Rose Peak Pl
Tucson AZ 85718

Price:$1,495,000  MLS#: 20804177
Beds: 4  Baths: 2 Full/1 Three-Qtr/1 Half 
Status: Active
Listing Provided Courtesy Of: Long Realty Company
Contact John Schneider, [email protected], (520) 271-4164
________________________________________

Then Click on the address link, and it opens to more info, like this,

3718 E Rose Peak Pl
Tucson AZ 85718

Subdivision: Foothills II (The)

From its eagles nest perch atop one of the highest sites overlooking the entire Tucson Valley-the Intoxicating 360 City & Mountain Views surround you morning thru night. This Dramatic SW style home is designed to capture those Jaw-Dropping views from every room & each of the superb outdoor living areas.With walls of windows,high timber beam ceilings,balconies/patios from every room,& a to-die-for pool area-in an unmatched setting ABOVE IT ALL

Directions: Alvernon/ Skyline North, Windy Point Dr. West thru gate, left on Finger Rock, left on Rose Peak Pl. to address.
Price:$1,495,000  MLS#: 20804177
Property Type: Single Family
Beds: 4  Baths: 2 Full/1 Three-Qtr/1 Half  Year Built: 1983
Status: Active
Sq.Ft.: 4599 
Listing Provided Courtesy Of: Long Realty Company
Contact John Schneider, [email protected], (520) 271-4164
_____________________________________________________________
What could be easier.
And you can search for all the same properties listed for sale at  LongRealty.com, which means everything in the MLS.
You can search by property address and MLS#, and advanced searches includes Zip Code, City, Bedrooms, Baths, Price, and Square Feet. You can also search for open houses, and search and contact
a Long Realty agent me.

Enjoy!

see my web site thefoothillsToday.com
to search for and learn more about Tucson Foothills Homes

who do you trust

David Lereah the former chief economist and cheerleader for the NAR, who is now self-employed, claims that his relentlessly sunny predictions for the real estate market were the result of pressure from his NAR bosses to issue optimistic forecasts.

The NAR on the other hand, claims "... during his tenure Mr. Lereah was "solely responsible for the content of NAR forecasts and housing reports -- both the data and the interpretation."

From WSJ.com
Realtors' Former Top Economist Says Don't Blame the Messenger

You decide;

□ NAR

□ David Lereah

□ Both

□ None of the above

see my web site thefoothillsToday.com
to search for and learn more about Tucson Foothills Homes

now this, is tempting

Just in case you're interested in one of these homes, and who wouldn't be - go ahead, have a look,

 

-or more likely, you've got your heart set on buying both of them, because they are right across the street from each other, ya know. But there's just one little wrinkle you need to know about. Before you can go inside and have a look around, you and your agent just have to take a sec and write up an offer that looks good to the seller. Want to see 'em both, just write up two offers. And they're owned by the same person, so that makes it easy.

Nothin' to it really, and the nice thing is, you get all that haggling and paperwork out of the way ahead of time. Once you and the seller have hashed things out and agreed on price and terms and everybody's signed on the dotted line - then away you go, and you're free to go inside and look around to your hearts content, and see what a good deal you got. 

Now I know you probably can't wait to get on this, but I'm busy tomorrow, and the next day I'm at the dentist all day, and the day after that I'm getting my horse re-shoe-ed, and then ..

So if you can't wait for me, just drive on by and have a look for yourself, they're at 6521 & 6530 N Camino Padre Isidoro. And if that's not tempting enough, they're both short sales.

Can't wait to hear.

see my web site thefoothillsToday.com
to search for and learn more about Tucson Foothills Homes

remember David Lereah

I sure do. A loathsome character, and coincidentally, former chief economist for the National Association of Realtors®, who with his relentlessly sunny predictions, did an awfully good job of helping to marginalize Realtors® in their own industry.

But Chris Fountain's got him pegged, 
Confessions of a real estate bull (shitter)

see my web site thefoothillsToday.com
to search for and learn more about Tucson Foothills Homes

10% off sale

NEW YORK, Oct 6 (Reuters) - One of the largest U.S. real estate brokerages on Monday said it is asking its sellers to cut listing prices by as much as 10 percent to kick-start U.S. home sales in a market plagued by a two-year price slump and near-record unsold supply.

Coldwell Banker Real Estate said some 25,000 sellers listing homes with its brokers will cut prices during its first national, 10-day sales event starting on Friday ...

Coldwell sets 10-day price cuts to spur home sales

Whether it works or not it's a bold attention getting move.
At the very least it'll get people looking a lot more closely at Coldwell Bankers listings and at Coldwell Banker. Couldn't hurt.

see my web site thefoothillsToday.com
to search for and learn more about Tucson Foothills Homes

... why do you have a real estate blog

Accompanied by an amused expression, I get asked that question from time to time by other real estate agents. Well... so I can talk about what's going on in Tucson Foothills real estate, and people who are interested in that can read about it, if they want to. It's how I market myself too, at least I think so. 

But I'm also hooked on it. Because it's fun and because I learn a lot by researching and writing about what I've observed out on the street. 

At the beginning I used to do postcard mailings, but you can't fit much on a postcard. And by the time you figure out what you want to say and have them printed and stamped and mailed, and they arrive in peoples mailboxes, it's at least ten days. And by then, if it's news you're sending, it's old news, and if it's fluff, which it probably is, who cares. Most people just toss that stuff anyway. I know I do.

Postcards seem to lend themselves to those short fluffy self promotion pieces, "I just sold..." or, "Homes are selling in your neighborhood, for a free ...... just call me"
Or how about those recipe postcards. Just what you need from your agent, chocolate chip cookie recipes. mmm-mmm good

Call me crazy, but I'm pretty sure that even the most basic market information, delivered regularly via a blog, is more useful, and hopefully more appreciated, than a new cookie recipe.

But when I was a beginner I too mailed postcards, because I saw the other agents were all doing it, or so I was told, so I figured that's the thing to do, it must work. But I swear, I never sent a cookie recipe.

Eventually though, I didn't care whether it worked or not, it felt useless and I was embarrassed sending people this fluff stuff.
So I stopped doing it. And while we're on that (bygone) era, does anyone really still use the newspaper or a magazine to shop for a house.  

On the other hand, many agents that do a lot more business than me, still like and use postcards and newspaper ads. And for them,
I guess it works. It just doesn't work for me.

But when other agents ask why..., I know better than to go on about it like that, so usually I just say, "cause I ran out of cookie recipes"
And that's the end of that discussion.

see my web site thefoothillsToday.com
to search for and learn more about Tucson Foothills Homes

good things come in small packages, I guess

There are a lot of really crummy pictures of homes on the internet.
But these are my favorite. Teeny-weeny little postage stamp size pictures, where you know there's something there, you just can't tell what it is. If you're trying to sell your home, having pictures like these is not the best way to go about it. 
But you see these little postage stamp size pictures all the time in the MLS and on the internet.

 

And if your agent hasn't figured this out yet, the internet is where home buyers are shopping for homes, and the pictures go a long way to determining which homes buyers go to see. 
It's the ad for your home, and it's the only one that really brings them in the door, or doesn't.
Check out the pictures of your home on the internet,
they should look something like this,  

so that home buyers can actually see what your home looks like

and maybe even decide that they just have to come see it in person,

and because it looks so nice in the pictures,

maybe they've already begun to picture themselves in it,
before they even walk in the front door 

see TheFoothillsToday.com
to search for and learn more about Tucson Foothills Homes

a picture is worth ...

When I bought my first house in 1981 the only way to find houses for sale and see what they looked like, was to hook up with a real estate agent and go see them in person. There was no MLS and no internet.
You had to make an appointment with an agent and go through the listing sheets one by one, pretty much guessing which houses you should see, because at best there was just one fuzzy picture of the outside of the house and none of the inside. So you couldn't tell much about the outside, and you had no idea what the inside looked like.
It was kinda like a blind date, the agent thought you'd be a good match, but you really had no idea what to expect.
Then the agent had to go through the rig-a-ma-roll of making appointments for each of the houses you wanted to see and getting the keys from each of the listing agents. They didn't use lockboxes in those days.
And finally, after all this preparation, you'd drive over to the house with the agent, and the second you pulled in the driveway, you knew, it wasn't for you. But you'd come this far, so you looked at it anyway, just because.
Today we're bombarded with real estate information, and technology has given us access to more choices than we can ever make use of.
We can easily find out just about anything we want to know about all the houses for sale, whether they're across the street or across the country, without leaving our chair.
Both traditional and new internet based real estate companies are doing their best to out-spend, out-think and out-innovate each other in providing cutting edge information technology to the consumer.
But with all this progress, sometimes it seems as if we're back in 1981, because so often we still have no way of knowing what a house that's listed for sale looks like.
Because there are no pictures. Or the pictures on the listing are so dismal that they're worthless. Or they're worse than worthless, because they make the house look so awful that only the most determined buyer would take the time to go see it.
Everybody loses in this situation, but by far the seller loses the most.
They're at a huge disadvantage because they're not getting the showings they should be getting, and the showings that they are getting are pretty much blind dates, because the buyers have no idea what to expect. So there's a lot of wasted time for the seller, the buyer and the agent, dealing with showings that are doomed to go nowhere.
Taking good pictures of a house is skill that not everyone has.
That's OK. There are photographers that'll do a very decent job for a a couple of hundred dollars. Pinching pennies? Forget about the ad in the Sunday paper, or certainly the magazine ad that won't see the light of day for maybe 45 to 60 days, after the house gets listed.
Get the biggest bang for your buck, and have good pictures of the house on the MLS and the internet. That's where the buyers are.
For a lot of reasons that I won't go into now, I'm not a big fan of Virtual Tours, but they are usually competently done, and provide a reasonably decent presentation of the home being sold. And they're cheap, about $69, and easy, just one phone call.
There's no excuse.

selling your home online

Yesterday the Arizona Daily Star online had an article titled
Selling home online can net a hefty gain. The author, Marshall Loeb, tells us ' Despite the recent housing market slump, many Americans are still paying a walloping 6 percent commission to real estate brokers'. He gets it wrong right out of the gate. It's not despite the recent housing market slump that many Americans are paying a walloping 6 percent - if anything, the slump has caused people to continue to use proven methods to try and sell their home & not experiment with methods that have been much less reliable, even in the best of times.
When many thousands of homes are listed for sale on MLS's all across the country, and sitting on the market for months, most home sellers would not choose to drastically reduce the amount of exposure that their home is getting to potential buyers on the chance that they may save a couple of percent in commission.
He then states that Many homeowners are now opting to market their property directly to the consumer using online services like Yahoo Real Estate and Craigslist. And he ties that in with- 80% of those searching for a home use the internet. Leaving you with the impression that it's simple to sell your home on the internet by using Yahoo and Craigslist, because, 80% of the home searches are being conducted on the internet, on sites like Yahoo and Craigslist.
In fact the great majority of the searches of those 80% searching online are doing so on real estate brokerage web sites and MLS's, not on Yahoo or Craigslist. Because those real estate brokerages and MLS's have made all their listings available for people to search on the internet. Yahoo and Craigslist are great sites, but they contain just a teeny tiny fraction of the homes for sale. 
Then, ' Six percent may not sound like much, but consider: According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the average price of a home is $313,000, which means the average seller has to pony up nearly $19,000 in broker fees. This is a hefty penalty for not selling your own home, one that more and more Americans are unwilling to pay'.
Mr. Loeb consistently uses 6 percent as the amount of commission charged by real estate brokers, leading you to believe - intentionally it seems since I'm sure he knows otherwise- that it's 6 percent, like it or not, with no choice for the consumer. 
In fact there is a whole range of choices in the services offered by various real estate brokerages and the cost of those services, just like in every other industry and business in this country.
But it's a very convenient omission on Loeb's part, since it allows him to tell the story the way he wants, without being hindered by the facts. And again simplifying beyond belief, the $19,000 savings is offered as a given, with no mention of the possible trade-offs involved, or the fact that this $19,000 savings assumes that the buyers are also not represented by an agent, hence no commission.
A very unlikely scenario.
And whether the commission is 6, 5 or 4 percent, or whatever it is, it's not a penalty, it's a fee that's paid for services rendered.
And the fee is only paid if the home sells. No sale, no fee.
In that same vein of characterizing a fee for services as a penalty, would it be correct to consider the cost of an ad in the Arizona Daily Star (which you pay for whether or not it works), or, the cost of a subscription to the Star, to be a penalty.
We can choose, and increasingly many of us do, to sell our cars, used furniture and other stuff on the internet for free, and not put an ad in the Star. And we can read the news all day long on the internet for free. Why pay a penalty to the Star to subsidize these fairy tales.
Then Mr Loeb talks with Colby Sambrotto, chief operating officer of ForSaleByOwner.com, a leading online home marketplace, who says
(surprise-surprise) "Selling your home online is simpler than you might think", and then goes on to list the three simple steps to sell your home online and on your own, and how to accomplish each of them. (For the details read the article HERE)
1. Find out what your home is worth
2. Market your property
and, 3. Transfer the title
That's it, it's childs play, easy as 1,2,3.
This article would be laughable really and it's hard to believe that anyone would take it seriously, nevertheless, the glaring omissions and blatant oversimplification misinform and mislead on a subject that's important to me and to lots of other people.

Free Harley

Apparently a lot of real estate agents have discovered email flyers. Everyday for the last couple of months my inbox is crammed with email flyers from Realtors advertising their listings. Like it or not I get 30, 40 or more of these things every day. And while they may be cheaper and easier to send than snail mail flyers, they're not very effective. 95% of them are for homes that are in areas of Tucson that I don't do business in - the Southwest, southeast, Vail, central Tucson, and on and on. So they mean nothing to me, they're just more meaningless advertising. And because there are so many of these untargeted flyers coming at me everyday, I have to just batch delete them, and in the process not get to see those few that may be of interest to me. Besides, the formatting and headlines are all just slight variations on the same theme, so they're really monotonous and very forgettable. Somebody sold these agents a bill of goods.

and my favorite, as opposed to Priced To Not Sell Like I said, I get 30 or 40 a day, so I just buzz through and delete delete delete But this next one caught my eye

FURNISHINGS FOR THEM / HARLEY FOR YOU!

I've never had a Harley, but every now and then I think about having one.
Furnishings For Them/Harley for you! A Must See!
Hmmm!
But what's the Must See? The Furnishings, The Harley, or what. The flyer goes on to explain that the buyers will get the furnishings that have been left behind in the house, supposedly a 20K value, and the agent will get the Harley Davidson motorcycle that's in the garage, a 5K value. And aside from the very glaring and cheap bribe, your first impression has to be that this must be a terrible house since the whole proposition is based on some leftover used furniture and a Harley. So now you're target is someone who's really smitten by this used furniture, digs Harleys, and is willing to take the house in the bargain.
How embarassing. It's hard to believe this ad got published.