Why is Congress Realty different? How does Congress Realty benefit me more than other competing firms?

We are available to help you… Plain and Simple!

Today we received a phone call from a seller in a panic. To summarize, his property was scheduled to close escrow today, however, the FHA certification had not been signed. The lender would not fund the loan without our signature on the doc. I informed the seller to send me the FHA cert and I would be happy to sign & send it back to him. The original phone call came to me at about 12:20. I had the FHA cert signed and emailed back to the seller by 12:34. We beat the 1pm funding deadline and the seller received his money today.

Last week we were contacted by a local Realtor(R) in Las Vegas because they needed my signature on a document to complete a file they had just closed. (on a property we had listed) The agent could not receive their commission from their broker until they had a complete file. I immediately asked for the doc that needed to be signed, signed it, and sent it back within minutes. The Realtor(R) received their check from their broker and called me to express his gratitude. He informed me that I was the first flat fee broker that he had ever worked with that actually returned his phone calls and was responsive to his requests.

The bottom line is that we sell more properties than any other Flat Fee Brokerage. Not just List… But we SELL listings. Our listings sell b/c we go out of our way to make ourselves available to our sellers, escrow officers, lenders, and other Realtors(R).

How do Realtor Associations protect their data? Well first off, what they call protecting their data…. I call hiding it from the public. Redfin recently decided they were going to publish agent performance data from 14 local Association of Realtors(R). What this means is Redfin was going to post to the public exactly what agents are selling properties and what agents are not. In short, Redfin was going to tell the public exactly what agents in their area are productive and what agents are not. They were going to use the factual MLS data from each area to produce this information. What happened next? Realtors and local associations cried bloody murder. Why would they care? Simple, Redfin was going to expose to the public just how few properties that “local Realtor”(R) down the street from you actually sells. (The Realtor(R) who calls himself the neighborhood expert) They were going to arm the public with knowledge that the public had never before had.

Everyone has heard the rumor that 80% of the Real Estate is sold by 20% of the Realtors(R). Redfin was going to tell the public the names of the 20% of the Realtors who are selling the Real Estate. The local board of Realtors(R) has a vested interest in keeping as many members as possible b/c each member pays dues to the association. If the public figures out that “Ricky” Realtor(R) from down the street has accounted for a total 3 real estate sales over the past 2 years, they are going to reject his listing presentation when he tries to sell himself as the neighborhood specialist. However, if the public doesn’t have the info, they have no idea that “Ricky” Realtor has next to zero real estate experience in negotiating contracts, marketing, etc… Hiding the data helps “Ricky” Realtor.

Why would companies like Congress Realty want this data to be published? Simple, we sell a ridiculous number of properties and want the public to know about it. I always laugh when a local Realtor(R) tries to sell his/her service to the homeowner by trying to explain that the owner needs a local specialist or their home won’t sell. If only the homeowner could be given the factual data to compare the agent performance data…. it would make life on the homeowner so much easier….

Malcolm Gladwell, a writer for The New Yorker and author of Outliers, famously wrote that to be an expert at anything, you need to practice that task for around 10,000 hours.  This would apply to Michael Phelps being a great swimmer just as much as it would apply to someone being a great real estate developer, dentist, table tennis player, spelling bee champion, magician, on anything else.  To put 10,000 hours into context, assuming you work 8 hours a day, 5 days a week doing something, 50 weeks a year doing something; it would take 5 straight years of doing just that to become an expert.  I thought about this in context of real estate.  What if someone wanted to say they are an expert at negotiating real estate deals?  How do you define someone as an expert?

Unlike swimming or practicing for a spelling bee, it is extremely difficult to do things relevant to negotiating for 8 hours a day.  Think about all the other things a Realtor would do besides negotiating during an 8 hour day:

• Prospecting for listings
• Showing properties
• Continuing education in areas besides negotiating
• Blogging, online marketing, Twitter
• Email inbox management
• Meeting people, letting people in properties (like inspectors)
• Dealing with bureaucracy
• etc.

At the same time, has the person on the other side of the real estate negotiation table (such as the other Realtor or a buyer), spent 10,000 hours negotiating or doing tasks directly related to negotiating?  It seems doubtful in most cases.  Unless they’ve previously spent years in a field where you spend the majority of your time negotiating (such as a commodity manager for a semiconductor manufacturing company or a sports agent), are they really an expert?  So if someone has 5,000 hours and the other guy has 500 hours, is the guy with 5,000 hours an expert, or is neither one?  Should the 10,000 hours include all time in real estate related activities?  There are quite a few activities that you do where negotiating is no the main focus, but it might still be relevant.  Going through a homebuilder’s models seems like it has nothing to do with negotiating, after all, they mostly have fixed prices for everything unlike your typical resale where all kinds of different things are negotiated (price, earnest money, closing date, possession, what stays, etc.); however, it might be relevant down the road for someone selling their own home.  There might be a comment made during a negotiation, about how the buyer could buy something comparable brand new for a similar price.  Someone who is always thinking about negotiating might say, I understand what you are saying, but this house has a superior location and there are five things in the kitchen (granite countertops, beveled edges, trim above cabinets, sink in island, and pot filler) that would be considered upgrades and would add on to the new home cost (thus my house is a better deal).  Even if you can’t amass 10,000 hours negotiating, you can pay close attention to the real estate market and gain practical knowledge that is helpful down the road; even if you don’t know exactly when it will come into play.

The MLS is the single best method to find a tenant for your residential rental property. I would challenge anyone to dispute this claim and provide evidence to the contrary.

Why?
With the changing resale market, the rental market has strengthened across the country. Not only are rental prices up but the time it takes to rent a property is down. Look at it this way, people need a place to live. If you default on your home and lose the property to the bank, you still need a place to live.

How does it work?
The MLS has sep sections for residential sales, rentals, commercial, etc… The rental listings appear just as a for sale listing would appear.  (price and commission are of course listed differently)

Rather than waste your money with the local newspaper, consider placing a rental ad in the MLS. I can almost guarantee you will see more activity from the MLS for your rental than any other advertising outlet.

Should the seller be present during the final walk through and inspection? The truth is that 99% of inspectors, agents, and buyers do not want the owner present during either the walk through or inspection. If the owners presence is needed, one of the three will notify the owner ahead of time. As a general rule, I typically recommend sellers  not be present, however, dropping by unexpectedly during the inspection or walk through is perfectly acceptable. (Following the inspector around the property for 2 hours is not acceptable.)

Why would a seller not want to be present during the inspection? An inspector is going to note anything he/she finds during the inspection. Any information the seller provides the inspector during the inspection is not going to change the report. If anything, it will annoy the inspector. As a seller, the last person you want to bother is the individual responsible for finding every small detail that could possibly be perceived as an imperfection. Instead, step back, let the inspector do his/her job, and let the property speak for itself.

Electronic lockboxes – What are they and how do they work?

Electronic lockboxes are lockboxes that track showing activity. There are two types of Electronic boxes used, Supra and Sentrilock. Both boxes perform the same basic function, which is allow Realtors(R) access to the property while logging the day/time/individual who showed the property.

What purpose do these lockboxes serve? Many sellers want the data that Electronic Lockboxes produce for a number of reasons. The top reason is feedback. By tracking who goes in and out of the property through the box, a seller can contact the showing agent for feedback after the showing. This is especially useful on vacant properties. Secondly, many sellers like the boxes because they convey a sense of professionalism. Almost all 6% listing brokers use  Electronic boxes on their listings. Many of our sellers like to give agents the same showing access as they would receive with competing listings. Electronic boxes accomplish an important goal that we try to stress to our sellers… Make your property as easy to show as possible.

Offers are handled differently in different states, however, as a general rule, we will allow any other Realtor(R) to present an offer to our client directly with the permission of our client. In certain states, the Realtor(R) must also fax us a copy of the offer at the time of presenting the offer to our client.  That being said, this does vary from state to state. If any agent faxes or emails an offer to our office, we fwd the offer to the seller via email. We fwd offers 7 days a week, thus, if an offer comes in on Sunday, you will receive the offer that same day.

Generally, as a seller, you want to offer competitive buyer broker compensation to help entice the highest and best offer your property can generate. So… do bonuses actually work? The truth is that I can’t ever recall seeing a situation where a bonus helped entice an agent to bring a buyer to a certain property or entice an agent to convince a buyer to move fwd on a property the client was unsure of. The reality is that most buyer agents are ethical individuals who have their clients interests at heart. As a seller, you are much better off offering competitive buyer broker compensation coupled with the best list price. This will almost always bring the highest net to the seller in the long run.

As a seller, you want to highlight the positives of your property throughout your MLS listing. The remarks area of the MLS gives you the opportunity to focus on the characteristics of your property in an open paragraph ad. There are literally hundreds of different ways to do this. From perfectly edited narratives to short but sweet lists of amenities, you have many possibilities.

The most recent common mistake I see being made concerns the phrase “not a short sale” and “not a foreclosure”. What’s the problem with this? Simple, each MLS has a search feature that allows the user to perform what I call a negative search. Basically, the user can highlight certain words and ask the MLS database to eliminate any listings that contain these specified words.  Two common words typically removed from searches… Short Sale and Foreclosure.  A client may request their Realtor(R) only show them properties that are considered typical resales. If this Realtor(R) runs a negative search on “short sale” and “foreclosure”, a seller advertising the phrase “Not a Short Sale”  or “Not a Foreclosure” will get left out of the results.

Earlier this week NAR announced they will be giving more creative control to Move, Inc. regarding the Realtor.com website. Common sense would lead me to believe Move is wanting to unveil various new features and platforms that will help Realtor.com compete with Zillow and Trulia. The previous agreement between Move, Inc. and NAR limited what Move could actually do with the Realtor.com website. While NAR still retains ownership of the Realtor.com domain and Realtor Trademark, this new creative freedom will hopefully yield a much more useful website for the public to navigate through.