About Polk County, FL

I had a home buyer call me after we had been corresponding for about 4 months about purchasing a project for him to buy. He was looking for something in just the right location that he could work on. It didn’t have to be perfect or even a complete home. The location was the primary focus, and everything else was secondary. If it needed work then so be it.

I almost always pre-qualify buyers before I ever show a home. I have to be very careful with my time. I’m busy all the time with my business and I have a family and friends who need my attention at times too. So being very careful about who I work with and when is an important part of what I do. However, in this case it was all a matter of answering some emails so I didn’t do any pre-qualifying.

During our conversation the buyer informed me that he thought he had found the perfect home and location and wanted my opinion. So I stopped by the home on the way back from an appointment. It was indeed exactly what he was looking for and I felt very confident that he was going to love it so I took a bunch of pictures while I was there and sent them to him by email.

He responded with an email breaking down the terms of the offer he would like to make on the home. For the record, it’s a foreclosure and banks can be tough to work with for obvious reasons. But it’s been on the market for well over a year so I was hoping he could get a good deal since it’s an unfinished home and hasn’t had any attention.

I responded asking him to forward his proof of funds so that I could merge it with the offer when I sent the offer over for his signature. His reaction shocked me. He immediately called me and asked me what I was playing at. Having no idea what he was talking about, I politely asked him to explain what he meant. He was apparently upset that I would be “so rude” as to ask to see his financial statements. I explained to him that the bank or any seller would require proof of cleared funds or a mortgage pre-approval before they accepted his offer.

The conversation was going nowhere unfortunately. He was upset and didn’t think it was the bank’s business how he planned to pay for the house. Of course, this sent up a red flag for me. When all was said and done it became apparent that he didn’t have any money, couldn’t get pre-approved for a mortgage, and really had no way to buy a home. I honestly have no idea how he planned to buy the home. Call me crazy, but I always assumed it was obvious that if you wanted to buy a home you’d have to pay for it....I pay for mine!

I took the news that Picnik was closing up shop pretty hard because I loved having a quick and easy way of editing my photos for my blogs. All the little gadgets that came with the premium service were really cool and user friendly. I guess it’s time to adapt and overcome so I’ve been checking out some of the sites that others in the community have recommended and some of them are pretty good, but many of them are kind of cumbersome or not very user friendly.

This morning I happened to be resizing a pic for a friend and realized I already had a gem of a program on my desktop that I hadn’t even thought of using for my blog photos. Allow me to introduce you to IrfanView. It’s a small program that can do a whole bunch of things. It’s not a full photo editing suite, but it’s definitely worth having considering it’s free. It can resize or resample a photo, quick fix, sharpen, rotate or flip, add effects and a whole lot more. I’ve had the program for about 3 years and never realized it did all this cool stuff. I always knew it was easy and user friendly, I just didn’t realize how pwerful a tool it was.

Click the link to IrfanView’s website to download it. I actually used it to crop the pic in this post. It literally took me 17 seconds to screen shot from their website and then crop it and save it. Pretty cool, quick, and easy. Let me know what you guys think and have fun.

There has been some noise (by noise I mean quite a few posts and stories) about whether the MLS is on a downward spiral and whether 10 years from now will there even be an MLS. I can tell you this, I don’t know how I’d do the things I do without an MLS. It’s the hub for all of the information associated with a listing. Other sites may have syndicated most of the information, or allowed the listing agent to put a few more pictures up, or any number of things. But the fact still remains...when I want to know what the “real deal” is with a listing, the first place I go is the MLS.

On to the point of this post...why should I have to pay Zillow or Trulia or any other syndication site have the right to make me pay for a buyer lead that was generated from “MY” listing? Call me crazy but the last time I checked none of these websites were on the phone with my sellers working on how to get their home sold. They weren’t on hold with the seller’s lender trying to get a short sale approved. They weren’t emotionally there for the sellers when they realize that a problem with an inspection may have just cost them a sale and or a bunch of money. You get the idea...

So I’ll come right out and say it...I don’t like the idea of having to pay some middle man to forward the email or phone number of a home buyer when I’m the one who did all the work to create the lead. If refuse to pay any of them and that’s that. I think instead of getting rid of the MLS maybe we need to come together as a community and fight for our rights! If you care, you can affect a change...

Photo courtesy of Kheel Center, Cornell University at Flickr

I had an offer come in on one of my listings today which was pretty low when compared to the recent comps sold. Along with the offer, the buyer’s agent spelled out the buyer’s thoughts on why his offer was so low.

Firstly, the property needs some work so he had discounted his price based on the cost of the required repairs (about $6,000). Ok, I get that and it’s probably fair to do so. Secondly, he had discounted his offered price by $16,000 because he was going to have to furnish the home. Hmmm...

Not making a lot of sense to me on that one. Furniture (no matter how nice) is not a part of real property. Furniture is personal property which doesn’t normally convey with a property unless the buyer is paying for it.

I’ll give you an example...let’s say a home is listed for $100,000 (unfurnished). The 3 most recent comps have sold for $89k, $97k, and $103,000 (this particular house sold fully furnished). Just to make it easy, let’s average those and make that our market value (again, only for ease of demonstration) of $96,333.

Then let’s say you offer $80,333 due to the fact that you have to furnish your new home. You are still offering $9,000 less than the lowest recent comparable sale (two of which were sold without furnishings just like the subject property). Can anyone see the flaw in that logic? The homes that sold for $89k and $97k without furnishings make up a good portion of how that market value is calculated and the buyer has completely dismissed them with his offer as written.

We haven’t even covered the fact that the furniture in the one comp that sold furnished was old and used while the buyer is trying to discount the price in order to buy brand new furniture. So as you can expect, I advised the seller to counter this offer with a more fair price.

This guy can’t be serious! A cash buyer is interested in the listing (been listed for 503 days), he has proof of funds, and he’s ready to make an offer...and you won’t make one quick phone call to the seller? Really? The buyer had just one question before making a full priced cash offer. No wonder the home hasn’t sold. That’s just sad.

You can’t make this stuff up. It would be against our Realtor ethics to inform this seller what kind of horrible representation they are getting. And that is sad because there is nothing I can do to help them. That seller is stuck with an agent (if you can call him that) who obviously does not have their best interests at heart and my buyer is stuck looking for another home after finding what he felt like was the perfect home for him. All because this Realtor was too lazy to make one phone call and answer a simple question.

I’d go more into detail about the question, but I’m respecting the buyer’s wishes by not discussing that publicly. But the question isn’t really the point. The point is that if you are going to take a listing and sell a home....then sell the home! Nobody ever sold a home sitting on their butt in an office. Make the call! Show the house! Market it! Something!!!