Glendale, CA

I read this post from fellow blogger Irina Netchaev and nearly fell over from laughter. She had this video of a cliche of a Realtor and, sadly, I know many of you have met this type of agent. t Really, what makes a great Realtor? What makes a great Glendale Realtor? Irina has some really great points and I agree with each and every one of them. Here, though, are my additional ideas.

A Great Glendale Realtor Knows:

• How to negotiate

  • Negotiations begin with the very first question. A great Realtor never gives their client's money away

• How to manage expectations

  • We can't control other people, but experience can help us prepare you for what might happen

• How to manage the process

  • Great systems and great resources make the process much smoother

• That long term success is way more important than any sale made today

  • Manipulation might lead to a sale, but it won't lead to referrals and it is murder on the reputation.

• Never waits for a sale

  • Most Realtors put an ad in the paper, a sign in the yard, post to the web (MLS and the like) and sits back and waits. A great Realtor spends each and every day vending the opportunity of your home to everyone they meet! For our buyers, a great Realtor asks everyone if they know of a home for their client. A great Realtor is actively finding opportunity, all the others are sitting on their bumpers.

What do you think a great Glendale Realtor is/does?

Sorry for the late morning-ness of this post, gentle readers! It has already been a very eventful day. Today is "New and Notable" Thursday and below is the list of the new homes I find interesting. We had another bumper crop week in Glendale and Above the 134 - with 21 mostly new listings. I say "mostly" because a few are just re-listed with another agent.

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Address	City	Bd	Bth	SqFt	LotSz	List Price
307 San Juan Way	La Canada	3	1	1,236	7800sf	599,995
1245 Oak Circle Dr	Sparr Hts	2	2	1,274	6630sf	669,000
1447 Norton	Northwest	3	2	1,611	12296sf	719,000
1522 Val Verde Pl.	Sparr Hts	3	2	1,618	5283sf	769,000
1220 Moncado Dr	Rossmoyne	3	2	1,741	6636sf	789,500
1529 Ard Eevin Ave	Northwest	3	2	2,471	10877sf	945,000
5169 Redwillow Ln	La Canada	4	3	2,063	15799sf	1,050,000
850 Cumberland Rd	Northwest	5	5	4,271	14200sf	1,995,000
Pending
416 Audraine Dr	Northwest	3	3	2,152	8921sf	889,000

It is interesting that the cheapest home on my list, 307 San Juan, is in La Canada!!! This home is billed as a "major fixer" but I think "bulldozer special" might be more accurate. However, the location is awesome, the lot is decent and the price is very fair. Opportunity calls!

1245 Oak Circle is the most coveted street in Sparr Hts. The spirits of Doris Day, Ozzie and Harriet and the Beaver flit about through the trees, the children playing and the neat and charming houses. It is a wonderous street to grow up on. This simple house has diamond paned front windows and looks well maintained.

1447 Norton is my new listing this week. This is a perfect LOL fixer on a tremendous lot just below Kenneth Rd. The architectural details are wonderful and there are many bonus spaces in addition to the tax assessed space. I am holding this home open this Sunday 2-5 PM

152 Val Verde is nearly as well located as Oak Circle. This is a sophisticated home and very well appointed.

1220 Moncado is a small street in the Rossmoyne flats. This is a wonderful character home with dramatic Living Room and nice yard. The owner is very close to needing a short sale, but it isn't short yet.

1529 Ard Eevin - this 2 story Spanish is on a great lot in a great location, but it deserves a new family to come and give it some love. Will you be that family?

5169 Redwillow is located off of Crown in La Canada. This part of the neighborhood features tidy and somwhat uniform long/low ranch style homes and sewer lines that have been connected for quite some time. One of my favorite things is the caption under the first picture, "Front of the home. Duh". Hilarious!

Last, but absolutely not the least, is 850 Cumberland. Oiy Vey! This home is so lovely it hurts. Known as the Lombardi House, it is a registered Landmark home and protected under the Mills Act. This means a whole host of things, but on the money front it means that the property taxes are very low.

I usually do not include a home in escrow on my New and Notable list, but one of my loyal gentle readers lives on this street, so here you go. 416 Audraine is a trust sale and sold in 2 days - I would argue it might have even sold before processing. The pictures show a lovely remodeled home with a pool and a view. I expect that the seller got close to their asking with such a short marketing time.

Here is a new feature at Kendyl's Open House! Click here and you will see an MLS report of all the listings disscussed today. This way you can see addtional pictures and the agents marketing remarks. Remember, if you want to see/buy and of these listings, you found it here first. Call me! My goal is to earn your business.

This is one of a series of articles designed to help you, my little chitlins, engage wisely in the game of Real Estate. Today we tackle the all time buyer question, how low should I write the offer? After all, the mass media outlets (our "Chicken Little" friends at the LA Times, cable news and others) would lead you to believe that buying any more than 27% or more off the "market" price is stupid. I know you guys read the paper, because I get calls all day long from buyers offering to buy my listings for really low prices and asking questions like, "how flexible is the price?" and "is this a foreclosure sale?". If you are purely an investor, these are meaningful questions. What kind of a deal can be done on this house? However, nearly all of the people asking the questions are looking for a home. A place to live, love, raise a family. The first question should be - do I want to live in this home? And, when it comes time to make an offer, ask yourself, "do I want to buy this home or do I want to make an offer?" These are two very different things. If you just want to make an offer, be aggressive. Offer 10% or 15% below asking. It doesn't matter - you don't care if you get the house or not. Actually, you should ask yourself - if they accept my crazy offer, will I still want the house? But if you want to BUY the home, well, that is completely different. You should know the recent comparable sales in the area and have a realistic idea of how the subject home compares. You should know what your budget truly is - and stick to it. You should assess, does the home stack up to your priorities, or is it just wickedly pretty? And then... only then... you should write an offer to buy it. How much off the list price should you offer? First of all, the facts. Homes sell for about 3%-5% off the list price. Not 15%. Certainly not 27%. Bank REO's routinely sell for more than the list. I just had 4 offers on my listing on Norton and it sold for above list. Sometimes I will tell my buyers to offer less than the 3%-5% - because the listing agent told me to (there's a whole blog post right there), or the property is ripe for a price reduction or I heard a tidbit of gossip. But this strategy rarely works. No, if you want to buy you should write a solid offer no more than 5% off, and that is only if there are no other offers. If this is the house for you and the numbers make sense for you - buy it.

Do you love to watch HGTV? There are so many shows that deal with the process of buying and selling homes. This means, as a nation, we find this drama compelling - and it is high drama, make no mistake. I have a front row seat, each and every day. Last night I saw "Buy Me". It was like watching a slow motion train wreck. Awful and horrifying, but I couldn't look away. This episode dealt with a young man who needed to sell his bachelor pad in a very dodgy neighborhood before his adjustable loan zoomed higher than his monthly paycheck. Here are some of the "train wreck moments"

• Admits on camera that he is trying to "fool" the next buyer

  • The young man talks about how he bought this home in winter when the streets were quiet. When spring came along, the bums and gangs and undesirables came out in droves and he realized he had made a mistake. He plans to sell in winter so that the next buyer will also be fooled. This is 16 different kinds of stupid. If he actually sold the home, do you think the new buyer is going to be happy to see this show?

• Hires his friend who just got his license

  • A small home, in a challenging area, with a financial disaster deadline is not a good first project for a new Realtor! On top of this, you can clearly see how the situation affected the friendship as time wore on. Bad News Bears!!!

• Sets the price too high - foolishly tries to go for a profit.

  • Considering all the negatives disclosed on camera, there was no reason to try to goose the market! He should have priced aggressively and gotten out.

• Waits 6 months to reduce the price - 6 MONTHS ('Nuff said)

Ultimately he takes the home off the market, breaks relations with his Realtor friend, refis his adjustable loan and has his girlfriend move in with him. Buying and selling residential real estate in Glendale is high drama for almost everyone. Your house is a huge part of your life and your finances. Don't make these mistakes.

Glendale, like most markets in Southern California, has seen a shift from a seller's market to a strong buyer's market. Fueled by the mortgage meltdown in August and September of 2007, the number of buyers qualified to purchase homes has been severely decreased due to more restrictive lending guidelines. Homeowners who purchased property with Adjustable Rate Mortgages (ARMs) found themselves facing adjusting interest rates that in some cases forced them to either sell their home or even face foreclosure. Many homes are on the market not because the owners wanted to sell, but because they had to sell. The shrinking pool of buyers, coupled with the increase in inventory, has caused a drop in home prices. For many home buyers this is the first opportunity they will had to purchase an affordable home.

The April 2008 Regional Market Index is a summary index combining new listings and escrows, along with sold properties and days on market. The cumulative result is a market index. It is important to note that after six months of a static market, the market index has shifted upward, perhaps indicating a change in the downward trend.

The next graph shows the list price versus sold prices for homes. Since April, 2008, the average sale price has dropped 4.7%, quite big difference from the regional figures of 20% or more. This is primarily due to the lack of new construction in Glendale. With very little new home inventory, there is simply not as great a shift in overall inventory. The shift in lending guidelines has drastically reduced activity in the first time home buyer market, primarily town homes and condominiums, so with fewer purchases and sales in those price points the average price is skewed upward.

To provide another range of value the third graph shows the change in the price per square foot of homes sold. The price per square foot has declined 11% since last April; also the average square footage has increased 7.6%, again reflecting a smaller amount of homes with smaller square footage (condos and town homes) that are in the sales mix.

In summary the reports indicate that although overall property prices have declined about 10-14%, due to Glendale's many positive attributes such as excellent schools, and outstanding city services such as our police and fire departments, and quality medical facilities Glendale is still a preferred place to live. With the opening of the Americana at Brand, along with numerous other developments, including the expansion of DreamWorks and Walt Disney, for the foreseeable future Glendale will continue to be somewhat isolated from the drastic swings in home values that other outlying communities are seeing.

Note: Data is from iTech MLS, has not been verified, is not guaranteed, and is subject to change.