sell

Zillow, PLEASE stop doing this

by John Rice

Okay Zillow.  I can deal with you saying every house has a carport.  I can deal with your inaccurate Zestimates.  I can deal with you often messing up school districts.

What I can’t deal with though are the Pre-Foreclosure listings.

Why?  Because they ARE NOT FOR SALE!

Zillow, people see a house on your site and think it is for sale.  Why do you confuse the public and leave it to us agents to explain to our clients that the house you just posted is not for sale?

Here is what is going on with those Pre-Foreclosure listings.  The person who owns the house is far enough behind on their mortgage payments that the lender has filed a lawsuit.  As soon as that happens, Zillow posts it as a Pre-Foreclosure.  Since the person who owns the house is not the bank, you cannot go see it since it has not been foreclosed yet.

If the lawsuit goes the way the lender wants, the house will eventually be sold at the Master Commissioner’s sale.  The Master Commissioner is who is appointed by the court to sell the house.  Anybody with 10% down and proof of the remaining funds can go bid on the house.  You have to have the funds available.  You can’t go down there with 10% down and a preapproval letter for a mortgage.  You have to show proof that you have the balance of the money available.  You also can’t see the house.  You have to buy it without any type of inspection contingency.

There are two types of buyers at the Master Commissioner sale:  Investors and the Lender for the house.  Sometimes investors get the house.  Most of the time the lender buys the house.  Well, we call it a sale but in all reality what is happening is the money the lender pays for the house goes to settle the debt the seller owed them so they are getting it right back.  Picture a dollar getting pulled out of your left pocket and going into your right pocket.

If an investor buys it, most of them either flip it or rent it.  If the lender buys it, it eventually goes on the market for sale.  This time when you see it on Zillow, it will really be for sale….and it will probably say it has a carport.  And the Zestimate will be inaccurate.

Masterson Station: A legit part of Lexington

by John Rice

I’ve got a long history with Masterson Station.

Long before I was The LEXpert, I was a one man lawn care operation.  I had a few customers out there in the mid 90s.  Masterson Station ended one house past Gateway Park.  My wife and I would go see the new model homes by builders such as PSC and Barlow Homes.  We would marvel at the trendy finishes like green counter tops and pickled cabinets that were sort of a pinkish white.

Back then, Masterson Station seemed so far out that you felt like you were half way to Frankfort.  I remember thinking “Who would want to live this far out of town?”  I said the same thing about Hartland back in the mid 80s.  I had always lived inside New Circle back then, so I was one of those people who thought the “Real” Lexington was just inside New Circle Road and anything outside the circle didn’t count.

Since then, Masterson Station has grown and grown and keeps growing.  It is Lexington’s largest neighborhood and has had non stop construction for about 25 years.

At lot has changed.  To begin with,  nobody calls it Masterson Station any more.  It’s just Masterson now.   I’ve changed a lot too.  Instead of pulling a trailer full of lawn equipment, I am working inside the houses now and own a house in the neighborhood.  I just got an accepted offer on the 41st house I have sold in this area.

It used to be that you picked Masterson because you could get the same house for cheaper than anywhere else in town.  It was a good value.  As it grew and people didn’t view it as some random neighborhood hung out of the west end of Fayette County, the price difference became less and less.  Today the same 1300 square foot home in Masterson sells for maybe $10k less than an identical house in one of the top neighborhoods on the south end of town.

As it grew, a new elementary school was built in the neighborhood.  Then Citation Road was built, which was really great.  The new road helped with traffic flow and all the sudden, made sense of the way the neighborhood developed over the past couple of decades.

I have always said that all the whole Masterson area  needs is some commercial development and it would become a part of town people pick because they like it, not just because its a good value.  I drove through the area last night and the gas station/convenience store on Leestown Road is now open.  Meijer owns a big corner on Citation.  I am starting to see more development along Citation too.

Congrats Masterson.  You’re all grown up and we’re glad you’re a legit part of Lexington.

The worst part of being a Realtor

by John Rice

I bet you are thinking I am going to talk about being on call 24/7 and other things realtors complain about.

Not quite.

To me, the worst part of being a realtor is seeing your client make a mistake you know they will regret later.  It is easy to do.  I mean, no buyer or seller really know the market like a realtor.  They only know what they read in the paper or hear their friends discuss.  Often buyers and sellers don’t totally trust their agent.  I recently told a client a truth about our market.  This client said none of her friends believed me.  I asked if any of them had recently sold a house in our area.  None of them had.

Here are the biggest ways clients can make a mistake:

Buyers:  There is nothing worse for a buyer than the first house they see being the most totally amazing house that has come on the market all year.  When this happens, buyers often assume every house is just as good.  They often decide to wait for a better one.  When they do this, they quickly realize the house they passed on was so much better than the other houses in their price range.  I dread it when this happens because I know that the buyer is thinking I am just trying to get them to buy the first house they see to make it easy on myself.

Another big buyer mistake is wanting to negotiate in multiple offers.  I often have buyers tell me they want to come in low and let the seller counter.  I tell them that if they had two offers, and one of them was lower than the other, which one would you counter if you were even going to counter at all?  When you are in multiple offers and you make the weakest offer the seller got, they simply do not counter your offer, even if your agent tells their realtor you are open to a counter.  I mean, they already have other offers that are better than your offer, they have no need to counter.  Always come in with your best offer in multiple offers because  you only get one chance at getting the house.

Sellers:  I feel for sellers.  I think they have it the worst.  I mean, they see in the news that prices are going up.  They know their neighbor got 5 offers the first day on the market.  They see what their Zestimate is on Zillow.  They often think their house is worth more than it is.  Like in any market, the most you can get out of a house is what a buyer will pay.   You can never get more than market value for your house.  It is just in a hot seller’s market, you might have 5 people all willing to pay market value for your house instead of hoping and praying that just 1 buyer will in a buyer’s market.

When a seller overprices their house, they lose the frenzy of having more than one buyer wanting their house.  When a house hits the market, all the buyers in that price range rush out to see it.  Buyers are afraid of losing it.  Once the house has been on the market for a bit, buyers are no longer afraid of losing the house, so they make less than full price offers.

Sometimes a seller will think the realtor isn’t doing enough to market the house.  Exposure is never a problem these days.  Houses get thousands of views on just zillow.  Once a house is listed you can google the address and see several pages of places the listing can be found.  There is no way there is a buyer out there for a specific house who does not know it is available unless they don’t have internet or don’t have a realtor.

So, those are some of the worst parts of being a realtor.  The 24/7 thing is something you get used to after a while.

Will Realtors be replaced with an app?

by John Rice

Yes, they could.

The app would need to be able to tell a seller that their house has a pet odor and that is what is keeping it from selling.

The app would need to tell a seller to rearrange their furniture because it currently make the living room look very small compared to other houses for sale in it’s price range.

The app would need to tell a buyer the house they want is worth less than other houses in the neighborhood that are the same size due to an unusual floor plan.

The app would need to be able to tell a buyer when the home inspection repair list is big enough to walk away from the house.

All this app would need is a way to download all the experience that only comes from being out there, seeing houses, writing offers, knowing the current market, and dealing with people.

So no, Realtors are here to stay.

I sold a listing of mine that did not inspect so well.  Before we put it back on the market, we have to make some repairs.  I have spent a lot of time advising my client on which repairs we need to do so that the next buyer won’t want to walk away.  We don’t want to fix everything little thing because we don’t have to do so.  The goal is just to do the big things so the next buyer still wants the house after their inspection.

I recently had a standoff with a listing agent when their seller did not do a few repairs they agreed to do.  The listing agent drew a line in the sand and told me my people had to take it or leave it.  Knowing that the seller had moved out of the house and was closing on his new house the next morning, I called his bluff by saying we would postpone the closing and go to mediation since that is how the contract says disputes are to be settled.  A couple of hours later he was asking me what my buyer wanted to have done in order to close on time.

An app can’t do these things.  An app can open doors.  An app can provide paperwork to be filled out.  An app can’t solve these types of problems.  People are always going to want help from somebody who knows what to do, how to do it, and when to do it.

Coming soon: Hype or not?

by John Rice

I say hype.

I think it is more about winning listings than getting top dollar for the house.  It’s something you tell a seller in a listing presentation to make them pick you over another realtor, who isn’t going to sort of put your house on the market but not let anybody see it for up to a week.

The thought is that during the time between posting that the listing is coming soon and when it is available to show, you will be building a frenzy of buyers who will all see it the first day on the market and it will sell in multiple offers for top dollar.

Sounds good, right?

Well, that is already happening with just about every house that is appropriately priced.

In a hot market where there are more buyers than sellers, the “Coming Soon” approach is sort of like telling a bunch of piranhas that you are going to throw raw meet at them next week……whether you throw it now or later, the results are the same.

I think the “Coming soon” thing would work best in a slow market when you need to create a buzz around a listing to make it stand out.