The buzz in our office today is the continuing saga of the Charles Rutenberg agent from Tampa that has created a flurry of news and coverage in the recent weeks due to the manner in which her clients were buying homes. The reason our office is buzzing is because this group (agent, investors, and the mortgage broker) all tried to put a deal together with one of our agents here at ERA Lambrecht.
The deal went something like this - the group was interested in putting an offer together to buy one of this agents' listings (in our office), but they wanted to add thousands and thousands of dollars to the purchase price, but they wanted the seller to credit it back at closing.
To make a long story short, we talked about this in our office because nobody really understood how this was going to work and how in the world it could be legit. Well, the deal never got done at our office with this listing agent,but based on the news reports, dozens of deals did get done and all of them are now under suspicion.
It goes back to the things that our parents probably told each of us as we were growing up - if something sounds too good to be true - well, you know, it probably is. How does the saying go - if you smell a rat....
Yikes.
Friday, October 27, 2006
Elegant Downtown St Petersburg Living - at a discount!
Can you imagine sitting on your balcony looking at this perfect view every day? We just reduced the price on this Ana Capri unit at the prestigous Parkshore Plaza in downtown St Petersburg. Elegant details and craftsmanship are evident everywhere in the home, building, and grounds.
As on any of my properties, you can view more details and tours through my website at www.realtorshane.com.
Thursday, October 19, 2006
Future of Real Estate, Pt 1
This topic is one that I plan on commenting on quite often as it is something that I think about almost every day. As most of you may know, I became a real estate professional to 'escape' the corporate vice president role that included way too much travel and kept me away from my family and my city. You can read all about that on my old web site and other bio 'spots' out there.
Ok, back to the future. All of my experience after graduate school was in technology, primarily software, so I am constantly looking at ways to utilize technology better in my business. I think I do a decent job, but I know that I am not maximizing technology. My web site needs to get a lot better, my tracking software and CRM software can be better, and my systems of providing information and feedback to customers can improve, just to name a few things.
What I really question is how will technology and the internet especially improve the process and costs of buying and selling real estate? Look, I am currently paid to do just that so I understand the position of the majority of real estate professionals against increasing effeciency and reducing costs because they see their income being pinched.
From my experience in technology you better be in the front of that curve and be a part of that change because technology will make virtually every process more effecient. Some just take more time and are more challenging. I have seen way too many very smart people figure out how technology can solve very challenging systems and create incredibly useful tools and efficent results in a short period of time.
Enough about the set up - what are the elements? You have a buyer, a seller, and a piece of property. those are the essential parties to the deal. Then you add 'others' to help make a certain part of the process easier, possible, or more efficient. For example, a mortgage broker is there to help bring money to the exchange. A real estate agent is there to help put the transaction together and currently handles much of the process (that can be made more efficient). They can help research properties, negotiate the terms, coordinate the closing process, and keep the parties at the table, among many other items. An attorney can be there to help with title (or a title agent), write and/or approve contracts, and other tasks. Of course, there are home inspectors, pest inspectors, surveyors, appraisers, and a myriad of other professionals that are also involved.
As I look at my job, my primary role is to provide professional advise and representation. For my sellers, I would also place marketing strategy up there with the advice and representation. There are about 62 (yes, we have written them down) other responsibilities that I do as a normal course of action for my customers. Perhaps at the top of the list is to provide all of this in person.
Since it is getting late, I want to wrap up this as the intro to this topic. What I have been trying to solve is how can I look at those items identified and numerated above and supplement and/or replace them with technology and subsequently reduce the cost to the consumer. I tried almost 1 year ago to create a fee-for-service model so I could match up a customers expectation with the services so that the process was more efficient for all and increased customer satisfaction. Well, I haven't found that perfect model yet. I tried to do this with some customers but in the end it came out more expensive. I will get there, and I welcome your input!
Yes, I have looked at the online companies. They each seem to offer pieces of the process, so that is a promising start. If I could minimize the process where my clients hired me to advise based on experience and continued education but left the leg work to automation - everyone would be happier. We just need to make sure it is better and less expensive.
Ok, back to the future. All of my experience after graduate school was in technology, primarily software, so I am constantly looking at ways to utilize technology better in my business. I think I do a decent job, but I know that I am not maximizing technology. My web site needs to get a lot better, my tracking software and CRM software can be better, and my systems of providing information and feedback to customers can improve, just to name a few things.
What I really question is how will technology and the internet especially improve the process and costs of buying and selling real estate? Look, I am currently paid to do just that so I understand the position of the majority of real estate professionals against increasing effeciency and reducing costs because they see their income being pinched.
From my experience in technology you better be in the front of that curve and be a part of that change because technology will make virtually every process more effecient. Some just take more time and are more challenging. I have seen way too many very smart people figure out how technology can solve very challenging systems and create incredibly useful tools and efficent results in a short period of time.
Enough about the set up - what are the elements? You have a buyer, a seller, and a piece of property. those are the essential parties to the deal. Then you add 'others' to help make a certain part of the process easier, possible, or more efficient. For example, a mortgage broker is there to help bring money to the exchange. A real estate agent is there to help put the transaction together and currently handles much of the process (that can be made more efficient). They can help research properties, negotiate the terms, coordinate the closing process, and keep the parties at the table, among many other items. An attorney can be there to help with title (or a title agent), write and/or approve contracts, and other tasks. Of course, there are home inspectors, pest inspectors, surveyors, appraisers, and a myriad of other professionals that are also involved.
As I look at my job, my primary role is to provide professional advise and representation. For my sellers, I would also place marketing strategy up there with the advice and representation. There are about 62 (yes, we have written them down) other responsibilities that I do as a normal course of action for my customers. Perhaps at the top of the list is to provide all of this in person.
Since it is getting late, I want to wrap up this as the intro to this topic. What I have been trying to solve is how can I look at those items identified and numerated above and supplement and/or replace them with technology and subsequently reduce the cost to the consumer. I tried almost 1 year ago to create a fee-for-service model so I could match up a customers expectation with the services so that the process was more efficient for all and increased customer satisfaction. Well, I haven't found that perfect model yet. I tried to do this with some customers but in the end it came out more expensive. I will get there, and I welcome your input!
Yes, I have looked at the online companies. They each seem to offer pieces of the process, so that is a promising start. If I could minimize the process where my clients hired me to advise based on experience and continued education but left the leg work to automation - everyone would be happier. We just need to make sure it is better and less expensive.
When is the best time to buy? Pt 1 from my newsletter
When is the best time to buy?
The answers really depend on why you are buying first. If you are investing it is fairly simple and we can address that later. One thing to remember is that most investors – stocks, real estate, etc – are always late to the party. The pros make their money on the herd coming in to a market.
If you are buying for the purpose of living in a new home, be it a relocation or upsize or downsize, it becomes more complicated. There are hundreds and thousands of studies out there that speak to the fallacy of ‘timing’ a market. There are a lot of people in the financial news for timing the stock market and it boils down to the best timing you can do is based on insider information. So, as a buyer, how do you get ‘insider information’ on the housing market? Research. If you look at historic trends and look at the last time the market ‘corrected’ you can then look for trends at that time and most importantly perhaps at the trends following that time. What type of data points do I look at? Mortgage rates and applications, rental vacancy rates, inflation and fed funds rate predictions, listing and sales trends to start with. Just like any statistical analysis you can go nuts but I just try and match these up with my situation or my buyers situation and act. We are in an unusual and desirable situation here in St Pete due to our location and climate in that we do have traits that attract buyers to the region. If you lived in Nebraska or Kansas, for example, I would pay very close attention to those statistics in a down market. (Please don’t take offense if you live in those states, but c’mon) One of my favorite golf courses is in Kansas, but I am not going there at least 6 months out of the year! I will try and expand on this topic on my blog if I can continue to make that a part of my daily and weekly routine, but I will tell you what I tell my clients that are currently looking to buy for residence purposes that if you look historically at the worst market corrections as being in the 19% range (and I think that was aggressively looking at the numbers), then look at what the home is priced at today, what it was priced at originally, and make an offer 20% less as the worst case scenario. In our market, you probably won’t get the home in most cases, but it can be a start. I am not crazy about making offers at 80% of list price, but I do use that as a worst case scenario for research purposes. You then have to ask yourself is this a worst case scenario? Are there less appealing places to live? You bet. So, if you can buy a home at 85-95% of the proper list price, you can look at it as a discounted price for paradise.
Please remember you are buying a home. This isn’t something you should buy expecting to sell it in 2 years and pocket a 40% gain even though you could have a year or two ago. Heck, my parents sold their home in WV that they lived in for over 20 years and sold it for something like 20-25% more than they paid for it. We are trained here in florida to now expect stock market type returns that are unrealistic, but I do feel like we have a great product that will appreciate more than other markets.
You know, I look at New Orleans as an example. I don’t have the statistics in front of me but I look at New Orleans as a worst case example for here. What if a major hurricane wipes out St Pete? By some accounts that I have read, the New Orleans residential market has improved in value since the storm. I don’t know enough about the market to comment on why, but it is definitely something to look into for perspective.
The answers really depend on why you are buying first. If you are investing it is fairly simple and we can address that later. One thing to remember is that most investors – stocks, real estate, etc – are always late to the party. The pros make their money on the herd coming in to a market.
If you are buying for the purpose of living in a new home, be it a relocation or upsize or downsize, it becomes more complicated. There are hundreds and thousands of studies out there that speak to the fallacy of ‘timing’ a market. There are a lot of people in the financial news for timing the stock market and it boils down to the best timing you can do is based on insider information. So, as a buyer, how do you get ‘insider information’ on the housing market? Research. If you look at historic trends and look at the last time the market ‘corrected’ you can then look for trends at that time and most importantly perhaps at the trends following that time. What type of data points do I look at? Mortgage rates and applications, rental vacancy rates, inflation and fed funds rate predictions, listing and sales trends to start with. Just like any statistical analysis you can go nuts but I just try and match these up with my situation or my buyers situation and act. We are in an unusual and desirable situation here in St Pete due to our location and climate in that we do have traits that attract buyers to the region. If you lived in Nebraska or Kansas, for example, I would pay very close attention to those statistics in a down market. (Please don’t take offense if you live in those states, but c’mon) One of my favorite golf courses is in Kansas, but I am not going there at least 6 months out of the year! I will try and expand on this topic on my blog if I can continue to make that a part of my daily and weekly routine, but I will tell you what I tell my clients that are currently looking to buy for residence purposes that if you look historically at the worst market corrections as being in the 19% range (and I think that was aggressively looking at the numbers), then look at what the home is priced at today, what it was priced at originally, and make an offer 20% less as the worst case scenario. In our market, you probably won’t get the home in most cases, but it can be a start. I am not crazy about making offers at 80% of list price, but I do use that as a worst case scenario for research purposes. You then have to ask yourself is this a worst case scenario? Are there less appealing places to live? You bet. So, if you can buy a home at 85-95% of the proper list price, you can look at it as a discounted price for paradise.
Please remember you are buying a home. This isn’t something you should buy expecting to sell it in 2 years and pocket a 40% gain even though you could have a year or two ago. Heck, my parents sold their home in WV that they lived in for over 20 years and sold it for something like 20-25% more than they paid for it. We are trained here in florida to now expect stock market type returns that are unrealistic, but I do feel like we have a great product that will appreciate more than other markets.
You know, I look at New Orleans as an example. I don’t have the statistics in front of me but I look at New Orleans as a worst case example for here. What if a major hurricane wipes out St Pete? By some accounts that I have read, the New Orleans residential market has improved in value since the storm. I don’t know enough about the market to comment on why, but it is definitely something to look into for perspective.
Monday, October 16, 2006
It is nice to be back in St Petersburg
After spending the last 5 days driving to visit my 92 year old grandparents in West Virginia and back, I can really say it is nice to be home. My wife and I took this quick trip to take advantage of a couple of days off school for my daughter to allow both of my kids to see the changing leaves as well as spending some precious time with my aging grandparents and their great-grandparents. We made the trip up in 2 quick days, but spent 3 coming back to savor time in almost every state. From a real estate perspective, I tried to pick up home books in every state and we even took a side trip to Lake Overlee in South Carolina because we love lake property. From our quick view, it was picture perfect and it seemed you could get a lot with a small home or mobile for $200k on the lake. We will be researching that a bit more. It was not a bad drive from home and could be used in the summer or for a long weekend.
I was very interested in seeing how difficult it would be to find rental properties that could cash flow themselves and found some options. The problem that I ran into was that in the places that were most desirable to me in terms of price inflation over time were of course priced up thus making the cash flow goal more difficult to obtain. If you then add in the cost of property management it became more difficult. That is a short term view, however. Historically, properties don't descrease in value on the whole. So, if you can cash flow it it should pay for itself over time - thus the entire value regardless of gain - is a gain. Of course, there are operating costs, cost of capital, etc, to consider but the point is that if you take a long term view - which is a reasonable one there are opportunities out there.
I saw tons of potential in almost every state, especially as I headed north of Georgia. Virginia and especially West Virginia seemed to have the more reasonable rental price vs list price opportunities when I looked at long term leases. Short term rentals were more opportune in the southern resort states, but those prices were much higher.
So, in summary - because it is late and I did spend 5 driving days with 2 kids so I need my sleep - I learned that I am going to explore being a long distance property owner a bit more. The risks of being long distance are a big concern for me but I have some things to look into that I may talk about later.
The good news is that prices everywhere have come down which makes the options grow!
Now, for a bit of commentary. One of my pet peeves is that nobody seems to be bothered by the fact that we, as parents, cannot let our kids out of our sight and it wasn't that long ago that kids stayed out til the streetlights came on. I noticed that as I headed north I did see kids out and about a bit more than we see that in St Pete. Why is that? Our trip seemed to coincide with several national news stories about murders et al which pointed out that no state seems to be untouched by this crap, however.
What can be done about this? We went camping not that long ago with another family and our kids were able to walk around without us and when we asked them what was their favorite activity during this camping trip what do you think it was? those walks with their friends.
that should be normal activity for kids, but unfortunately in this day of age it is not. I hope I am not the only one mad as hell about it. I don't have a solution but do have some ideas that we will talk about at a later date.
I was very interested in seeing how difficult it would be to find rental properties that could cash flow themselves and found some options. The problem that I ran into was that in the places that were most desirable to me in terms of price inflation over time were of course priced up thus making the cash flow goal more difficult to obtain. If you then add in the cost of property management it became more difficult. That is a short term view, however. Historically, properties don't descrease in value on the whole. So, if you can cash flow it it should pay for itself over time - thus the entire value regardless of gain - is a gain. Of course, there are operating costs, cost of capital, etc, to consider but the point is that if you take a long term view - which is a reasonable one there are opportunities out there.
I saw tons of potential in almost every state, especially as I headed north of Georgia. Virginia and especially West Virginia seemed to have the more reasonable rental price vs list price opportunities when I looked at long term leases. Short term rentals were more opportune in the southern resort states, but those prices were much higher.
So, in summary - because it is late and I did spend 5 driving days with 2 kids so I need my sleep - I learned that I am going to explore being a long distance property owner a bit more. The risks of being long distance are a big concern for me but I have some things to look into that I may talk about later.
The good news is that prices everywhere have come down which makes the options grow!
Now, for a bit of commentary. One of my pet peeves is that nobody seems to be bothered by the fact that we, as parents, cannot let our kids out of our sight and it wasn't that long ago that kids stayed out til the streetlights came on. I noticed that as I headed north I did see kids out and about a bit more than we see that in St Pete. Why is that? Our trip seemed to coincide with several national news stories about murders et al which pointed out that no state seems to be untouched by this crap, however.
What can be done about this? We went camping not that long ago with another family and our kids were able to walk around without us and when we asked them what was their favorite activity during this camping trip what do you think it was? those walks with their friends.
that should be normal activity for kids, but unfortunately in this day of age it is not. I hope I am not the only one mad as hell about it. I don't have a solution but do have some ideas that we will talk about at a later date.
Wednesday, October 04, 2006
How to settle on a price?
This has become a challenge in the last month or so, both on the listing side as well as on the buy side of the transaction. Since this is such a heated topic today, I am going to focus first on the listing side and will comment on the sales side in future blogs.
On the listing side it involves the standard practices of evaluating the features and benefits of the home as well as it's shortcomings. The next step is to look at the comparables both in terms of square footage as well as bed/bath/features. By looking at each one of these homes, I normally can gauge where the subject home shapes up in terms of comparison.
The next step is to evaluate the goal of the seller - when do they want to sell? What type of contract do they want to offer on teh home? What are they going to offer with the home? What options are they going to select in terms of how we market the home? Staging? Warranty? Improvements?
In our market here in St Petersburg, we are definitely seeing a market that is not growing in terms of price as it was a year or two ago, but we still have a very limited amount of inventory and land options as well as having one of the most desirable locations anywhere in the US. What does this mean? It means that you can't be greedy and must be realistic in pricing your homes. What I am advising most of my clients now is to price is just below the comps if they want to sell it. Price it to sell at the asking price and don't count on reductions. reductions in this market are not the best option.
More later...
On the listing side it involves the standard practices of evaluating the features and benefits of the home as well as it's shortcomings. The next step is to look at the comparables both in terms of square footage as well as bed/bath/features. By looking at each one of these homes, I normally can gauge where the subject home shapes up in terms of comparison.
The next step is to evaluate the goal of the seller - when do they want to sell? What type of contract do they want to offer on teh home? What are they going to offer with the home? What options are they going to select in terms of how we market the home? Staging? Warranty? Improvements?
In our market here in St Petersburg, we are definitely seeing a market that is not growing in terms of price as it was a year or two ago, but we still have a very limited amount of inventory and land options as well as having one of the most desirable locations anywhere in the US. What does this mean? It means that you can't be greedy and must be realistic in pricing your homes. What I am advising most of my clients now is to price is just below the comps if they want to sell it. Price it to sell at the asking price and don't count on reductions. reductions in this market are not the best option.
More later...
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