Really Real Estate....................... Blog

Graduation

My daughter graduated Cornell last weekend. Needless to say it was a milestone, forcing me to take 2 full days off from Real Estate in the middle of my Spring Market. As my daughters name was being called, my wife and I beaming with pride, my cell starts to ring. Do I answer it or do I watch my daughter get her diploma? That I have to grapple with the question is what worries me. The phone call is not a matter of life and death (I hope). The client can always leave a message on my voice mail. Yet I am so conditioned to answer my cell, capture that potential business that I have to check myself on one of the most wonderful days a parent can experience. My wife slaps me back into reality by quipping, ‘I hope you’re not going to answer that because if you do you’ll be spending the rest of the day by yourself.” I did not answer the call. Instead, I watched Sydney get her diploma, cheering like a proud parent. Yeah Sydney.

Interior Design

I am encouraging my fellow agents to take an interior design class. Especially the men. It can be a little daunting for us guys to discuss with a client where the furniture goes and what color the room should be but I have found it to be extremely helpful in closing the deal. It is just as important as talking about the condition of the heating system or the roof. Maybe more so. The first thing I do with a client when they walk into a house is figure out where the Flat Screen TV goes. That usually gets the husband interested. (Even if they don’t have one you know they are thinking about buying one.) Most older homes aren’t designed to accommodate a Flat Screen so it’s not always obvious where it goes. Next, one of them (usually the wife) is ripping out a wall here and there so I go over where I think a wall can be eliminated and say something like, “You know if you took this wall down…”  In a Raised Ranch it’s the wall separating the Kitchen from the Dining Room. That gets a common response, “I was just think that.”  That puts you on the same page as the client. Now they’re beginning to see the house with possibilities not just as it is. “If you painted this room this color…” And then we discuss colors. I have a subscription to Architectural Digest just so I can know what the latest colors are as well as kitchen designs. (Because you know they buyer has been looking at home magazines for months before they went out to look at their first house.) Do the buyers already have a dining room set or a bedroom set that has to be accommodated? Once you have their furniture in place it makes it that much easier to have them imagine themselves living in a new space.

The FSBO

Today I went to see a For Sale By Owner (FSBO). As a Buyer’s Agent I like to know what is on the market even if it’s not part of the MLS. I try to get the homeowner to agree to an imbedded commission so I don’t have to collect a commission directly from the buyer. An imbedded commission is where the commission is included in the offer to purchase. The seller will then direct the commission to my office at closing.

I meet the Seller at the house. She is already annoyed with me just because I’m an agent. The house is not in the best shape. I start to ask her a few basic questions:

Are the taxes without STAR?

“I don’t know” is her response.

Does the finished basement have a Certificate of Occupancy?

“I don’t know” again is her response.

Do you know how many bedrooms are listed on the property card?

Another “I don’t know”

Do you know how old the roof is?

“No”

Now I can tell she was really starting to get annoyed.

It wasn’t my intention to put her in that state. These are just some of the questions that buyers ask and the seller should be prepared for. I started to suggest to her that maybe she should go to the town hall and pull her property card when I found myself standing outside the front door as she was waving goodbye. I can still hear her cautioning me: “This is the way I bought it and this is the way I’m going to sell it.”

Surprise, Surprise

I’m showing a Vacant House. I have a family with me. A wife and husband, a couple of kids. The kids are running through the empty bedrooms. The wife is chasing after them. Suddenly, the wife comes running up to me clutching her kids in her arms.

“We have to leave”

“What’s the matter,” I ask

“We have to leave the house now”

"What’s wrong?”

“There’s a skunk in the closet”

“A skunk, are you sure it’s not a cat or something”

“It’s a skunk and it hissed at me and I’m out of here”

And so was I

I shut the bedroom door, locking the skunk in the room and call the listing agent.

“Hi, this is Barry Malawer from Century 21 Mulvey, I’m showing your house”

“Great, do you have an offer for me?”

“Well, no not exactly, there’s a skunk in the master closet”

“Haha, your kidding me”

“No, really, there’s a skunk in the closet”

“Are you sure it’s not a cat”

“Yes, I suggest you call animal control”

“Well, there is no animal control there”

“You need to have someone get rid of the skunk”

“Can’t you shoo it out of the house?”

“You’re kidding me, you want me to do it. I’m just calling you out of professional courtsey to let you know you have a skunk in the house. Right now he’s trapped in the bedroom, do you want me to leave the door open?”

“So do you think you’re clients might be interested in buying the house?”

“Not with the skunk in it?”

“Well, I guess I'll have to take care of it”

“Yes, I would imagine so, Good Luck”

I bet you the skunk is still sitting in the house.

Surprise

My usual routine when showing a house: I ring the doorbell; wait a few seconds, then I knock loudly on the door in case the doorbell was not working; take the key, open the door, poke my head in calling out loudly, “Hello…Hello, Barry Malawer from Century 21 Mulvey, Hello…” Then I walk in and proceed to show the house. So two weekends ago I do just that. I’m now showing the house to my clients and get to the Master Bedroom, open the door and this guy is lying buck naked on the bed snoring so loudly it hurts my ears. It sounds like a chain saw. And this is what is going through my mind: If I wake him now, he will be so startled by the fact that strange people are standing in his bedroom that he could take out a gun and shoot us, maybe he'll just charge at us, rampaging about being in his house, or just yell at us and I would now have to explain to him that I am a Real Estate agent and made an appointment to show his house, blah, blah, blah. Or, I could shut the door and continue to show the rest of the house, quietly, hoping he doesn’t wake up. Or, we could just leave the house and see it again another time. Or, we could quietly leave the house and never come back. Just then, the phone rings. We stop dead in our tracks, hold our breath and wai. He stops snoring then, rolls over and --------- continues to snore. We decided to tip toe out of the room, close the door and save the house for another day.   

Tag Sale

I was showing a home where the Homeowner insisted that he be present for all showings. There was no lock box, so I had to wait in the driveway for him to come home and show the house. Great. We walk in through the garage (not the ideal way to show a house) and before we get into the house itself, he starts selling us everything in the garage. He is having his own mini tag sale with my clients. “This snow blower cost me $500 hundred dollars, you can have it for $300.” This went on and on with every single item in the garage and the garage was packed. I mean PACKED. It took us a half an hour just to get to the kitchen door. Once inside the house, he repeated the tag sale for every room. I had four more houses to show these clients. Finally, my clients bought a $3 tray and got out of there. It was a nice house and something I have clients for but since I can’t show the house without him being there...I will not be able to sell his house. I cannot go through that again. If it was nicer stuff, maybe---

Feedback

Seller’s are very concerned with Feedback. With some sellers I get the call while the Showing Agents are still showing the house. “They’re in the house and just about to leave, can you call them for feedback before they get in the car?” While I fully appreciate the need for an immediate response, the feedback that’s going to be most beneficial is the feedback I can get from the Agent at the end of the day or the next business day, after the Buyer has seen all the houses he needs to see with the Agent and the Agent can assess what the Buyer is really looking for. 

Most of the time the feedback response is, “That house was not really for my buyer.” While I can appreciate that response, my Seller usually has a hard time with it. (And I am so guilty of using that one.) It doesn’t give them enough information as to whether their house will ever sell. Of course it doesn’t give the Seller anything to go on because that response and “It was a nice house but the Buyer is still looking” are standard responses from agents who usually can’t remember what house your are referring to or did not bother to interview the buyer as to their actual impressions of the house or they’re just being polite about the whole thing. Either way it is of no help.

The majority of feedback is usually about stuff the Seller can’t change anyway: “They didn’t like the busy road” or “The Master Bedroom was too small” or “The Sun didn’t set in the right window” (I’ve gotten that one more than once). This feedback is useless information to the Seller because it is something they are usually aware of and can’t change and have priced the house accordingly. What you are really waiting for is for someone to say “The house had a bad odor or smelled of smoke” or “The house was too cluttered to give a good impression” or “They should have made their bed.” These are things I’ve been trying to find a polite way to tell my Seller with out insulting them or have told them about the house but they just didn’t hear me. This is the feedback that helps us sell a house.

The Closing Gift

I have a problem with the concept of the closing gift. Especially on the Buyer's side. I need to know where this originated. Here, I have spent fifty hours of my life showing the clients untold amount of houses. I went to Town Hall, researched the property, checked the taxes; spent four hours with them at the inspection; spent hours on the phone with the Listing Agent negotiating price, terms, inspections items. I coordinated the appraisal, the attorneys, attended the first walk thru (so they can measure), the second walk thru. I did my job and now I have to buy them a gift? Did the attorney buy them a gift? Did the mortgage company buy them a gift? I know they're expecting a gift. If I don't buy them a gift and the Listing Agent comes to the closing with a three hundred dollar basket for her clients, I look like, well, you know what I look like.

            And I never know what to buy them. First there was the traditional basket of something. Then, the leather binder that holds your documents. Then, the gift card to somewhere.  Now, I usually buy a nice bottle of champagne. I have been told that this is not appropriate in case the client may be a recovering alcoholic. However, I think a bottle of champagne is appropriate for the beginning of all new journeys. We start the New Year with it, our marriages with it, cruises too. I celebrated the birth of my children with a bottle of champagne. And it's easier to carry than a platter of cheese.

Maybe Some People Should Not Buy Houses

I had a Buyer Client, a single woman, who recently purchased her first house. She was a sweet woman, but was very nervous about the purchase. Every time I tried to guide her through the process, she made the assumption that somehow I was working in the Seller’s interests and not hers. Her friends and relatives had drummed it into her that the Real Estate Agent is always working for the Seller or their own pocket and she had to protect herself.  I understood where she was coming from and tried to allay her fears.

     On one house, I even stopped the inspection and got most of her money back because she could never have corrected all the problems on her budget (even though I knew I would have to show her twenty more houses before we found another one that she liked). However, on the next house, if I recommended an inspector, she made sure not to use that inspector. Same with the attorney, the mortgage person, etc. She was so sure that the septic system was in failure, that even after three septic inspections from three different septic companies certified that the system was functioning properly, she tried to get out of the contract. On the walk thru, she took a shovel out of her trunk to dig up the fields herself. I will never forget the look on the listing agent’s face as my client proceeded to dig up the yard. I still don’t know what she was expecting to find. She would call me late in the evening about a dream she just had of “doo doo” floating around her back yard.

     At the closing, their was mix up between the attorneys on a financial escrow and she yelled at me across the table that “this was all my fault” even though the attorneys on both sides assured that it was not. Through it all, I kept my cool, kept the attorneys from leaving the table, and made sure she closed on her dream house. The day after the closing it snowed. I made sure that she had someone to plow her driveway and deliver pizza to her new home. The other agents in my office thought I was nuts for continuing to communicate with my client. So was my wife. But you know, not everyone deals with the difficult process of buying or selling a house in the same way and our obligation is to the client whether or not they recognize (or appreciate) your intentions.

Sitting At An Open House

Sitting at an open house recently, I was struck by an observation of a recurring behavior of my “visitors.”  They walk into the house and seem annoyed by my very presence. They walk in as if they were expecting no one to be there so they can walk through the house unfettered, not to be bothered by a host of questions by an annoying and impertinent agent. They seem genuinely surprised when I ask them if they are already working with an agent. They seem more shocked when I ask them what price range they are looking in, as if that was a shameful secret and absolutely none of my business. (I haven’t even gotten to the Pre-Approval question yet.) When I try to ascertain what they are actually looking for in a house they look at me with great suspicion and with an eye on the escape door. I wonder what they think is my reason for being at the house. Certainly it’s not to ask questions, certainly it’s not to show them around, and most certainly it’s not to offer them any help in their search for a new home. They do take my card, however reluctantly, on the way out after forcing them to sign my login book.

            In trying to analyze this behavior, I need to figure out what the purpose of an Open House is for the visitor. I call them Visitors and not Buyers because they are not exhibiting Buyer behavior. Even though many of them are working with an agent (or say they are to avoid any solicitation by the sitting agent), why isn’t the agent accompanying them to the Open House? I find this a really curious phenomenon. I try to accompany my Buyer Clients to all the public open houses that I am aware of.  This is my naturally protective behavior of my business. So why do most visitors show up at open houses with out their agent of record. Is it because they just want to look and do not want to be sold? Is it because it gives them a chance to see the market for themselves without any professional input? Are they really just curious? Is it the desire to go to a neighbor’s house just to see how it’s decorated?

            I try to respect their position. But I still have a job to do, which is to ascertain whether they are truly a buyer for the house or potential future business. I am always astonished when the visitor is surprised when I try to do my job.

            That’s not to say that every now and then a Buyer walks in to my Open House and lets me do my job. And for those buyers I am grateful.