Archive for 'Personal Experiences' Category
The REALTOR Self-Regulating Justice System
6 October 2008If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!I am a member of the Minnesota Association of REALTORS Professional Standards Committee. This committee is charged with reviewing and hearing cases regarding disputes between member REALTORS over commission (an arbitration) and complaints of alleged violations of the REALTOR [...]
Short Sales are “Liar Listings” on the Twin Cities MLS
26 August 2008Short Sale
Definition: a home sale where the seller owes more than what the home is worth and is asking the lender(s) to accept an amount that is less than the amount owed to them as payment in full.
The same problem continues to come up day after day and I finally have the time and focus [...]
Builders Clearing Out Inventory
25 August 2008I received an email this weekend from a builder advertising models that were marked down 20% + ($100k+) from their original prices (but marked down incrementally).
I also saw another builder marking their inventory down in the MLS a similar amount too.
This suggests to me that builders understand that we’re nearing the end of the strong sales season [...]
Twin Cities Foreclosures & Short Sales - A Report Analysis
14 August 2008For several weeks now, Jeff Allen (and several others) from MAAR and I have been working diligently to provide an update to our one-of-a-kind research report we released a few months ago. We’ve just released Foreclosures and Short Sales in the Twin Cities Housing Market Q2 2008 Update. The report contains updates to a lot of [...]
Crazy Homeowner - Keep Kids in Private School & Mom at Home, Lose the House
11 August 2008CNBC has a new show called “On the Money with Carmen Wong Ulrich” and I recently saw a segment that drove me nuts. Click here to see the video.
Here’s a summary:
They send one kid to private school ($14,000/yr currently), the 2nd will be in kindergarten next year
Mom stays at home
Mom can start working 2 days [...]
Twin Cities Sales Strong, Listings Soft
21 July 2008While I’m probably the most techie REALTOR in my office, I still like something that is decidedly low-tech, our office’s Listings & Sales Boards. These white boards, which “back in the day” were chalk boards, give a one-line description of each of our new listings and sales for the month, including the name of the agent [...]
Loose Lending Broke Housing, Tight Lending Keeps it Broken
20 June 2008The several years of “loose lending” by mortgage lenders helped bring a surge of bad loan programs with borrowers that were either overextended from Day One or should have been unqualified to begin with. This surge has now become a tsunami of foreclosures and short sales, which Jeff Allen and I have lumped together as [...]
Minneapolis/St. Paul MLS Addresses Foreclosures & Short Sales… Kinda
10 June 2008The RMLS of Minnesota, which is the governing body of the MLS in the Twin Cities and is owned by the 4 local REALTOR associations, has made some policy changes in regards to the reporting of foreclosures on the MLS, effective on Thursday:
The “In Foreclosure/Lender Owned?” field:
Initially will be an agent-only field (not available on [...]
May 31st Storms
31 May 2008I’ve posted some photos to Flickr of the latest hail storm that came through on Saturday, May 31, 2008:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/27215653@N05/sets/72157605363818571/
Q&A - How Long Should it Take to Sell My Home?
9 May 2008According to the RMLS’s analysis of the 13 county Twin Cities metro area, the average home is selling in 165 days. But also according to the RMLS, that home is only selling for 91.7% of original list price.
Now I’m not 100% sure on this, but my feeling is that most sellers would prefer to sell [...]