About Cape Girardeau's Cape Girardeau

Chilled to the bone five times today, I closed out the day by bringing home some House Special Soup from Chan's Restaurant. After she took my take-out order, Kiki brought me hot tea to drink while I waited. My family and I love Chan's, and it is our Saturday lunch destination every weekend, so Kiki and Niki (wife and husband proprietors) were somewhat taken aback when I showed up on Friday evening.

Not to worry, though, I will be back tomorrow with the family. Tonight, I needed the soup and hot tea when I finally wrapped up the day's business after 8:30 pm. I sometimes refer to it as "Chan's Magical Soup," while invoking its magic to ward off illness or to chase away illness. Tonight is going to be the coldest night of the season, and today was windy with falling temperatures.

My daughter and I are trying to get four new pre-list foreclosures through the cash for keys (in lieu of eviction), rekey, property preservation, valuation and pre-marketing processes. Today, I took inside and outside photos of three cold houses, as well as finalizing a cash for keys transaction, doing an occupancy check, and meeting a vendor who was preparing a trashout bid. Two additional trips outside involved meeting an insurance adjuster and, finally, attending a closing!

A very busy December will mean a comfortable number of January listings to see me through the coldest month of the new year.

Thanks to Chan's Magical Soup and a warm pair of pj's, I'm now toasty!

PS: Chan's is located at 1159 N. Kingshighway in Cape Girardeau. The soup I refer to in this blog is their House Special Soup. I know that I should have taken a photo to post with this blog, but I admit to eating the evidence...

I knew that students might scoff at "the speech," but I gave it anyway--just in case it would reach someone. I told them that they were important to me and wished them a Merry Christmas, and then I cautioned them to be safe over New Years--pretty much the same speech I also delivered right before prom and graduation. As a teacher, I always felt that I had less influence over my students during the holidays--either to reassure them when they might be having a holiday depression or to caution them right before New Year's Eve. I had to do my part to prevent one of "my kids" being in a horrible accident or making a careless decision that could not be taken back.

In the 21 years I was in the classroom, I never had to teach class where there was an empty chair due to the death of one of "my" own students, though I shepherded student editors through the writing of numerous tributes and news stories about deaths of their classmates and teachers. Of course, I also knew students who had serious health issues (some that eventually took the lives of those students), and I had former students who died after graduation.

I once feared for several hours that one of my own students had committed suicide. Assistant principal Robert King also believed that to be true; and we worried together, making frantic phone calls off and on all day and hearing conflicting reports before finally learning that the student in question had lived through the attempt. Not long before she graduated, that student came to me and asked what I would have thought if she had actually died in the suicide attempt. I remember very clearly telling her that I would be mad at her for the rest of my life, because she would have thrown away the love and attention I had given her for three years.

Though maybe not politically correct, that response came right from my heart and it shocked her. She objected, saying that she thought I would tell her how sad I would have been. I told her straight out that suicide is not romantic, and then I told her about Susie, whom my parents fostered for two years in her early teens. Susie wrote a suicide note and took an overdose not long after she turned 21. Standing beside her bed for days and then being there when the machines were turned off nearly killed my Mom. In the end, it seemed that Mom's love and anguish had been tragically wasted. "Don't you ever be the Susie of my life," I said.

During my years as a yearbook sales representative, I had numerous phone calls from advisers who needed help with the memorial pages in their books. One of the victims that I remember well was on the yearbook staff at her school. The teacher and the entire yearbook staff were devastated, as you can imagine, over the death of their assistant editor.

I remember so clearly seeing that student earlier in the year when she was sporting a horribly bruised forehead. She had banged her head against her car's windshield during a minor wreck. "Not wearing your seatbelt, I see," I told her, chiding her about how impossible it was to kiss the windshield while wearing a seatbelt. She broke her neck a few short weeks later in another accident, a wreck that her passengers walked away from, uninjured. It was a stupid accident caused by going too fast and goofing off with her friends just minutes after school let out one spring afternoon, and it was one she would have survived with a seatbelt.

One of my former students just sent me a note on Facebook to tell me that she is grateful that I have made it through some recent medical issues. She also said that she remembers "the speech" I gave every year before Christmas break. She thanked me for caring. I guess the speech did work. Wow. I'm so grateful that she went out of her way to tell me that, so many years later as her own children are in high school!

I might go crazy nowadays, if I were still teaching during these days of texting and driving... I'm so grateful that "my kids" made it to adulthood.

When a seller chooses to counter-offer rather than accept an offer, he/she kills the original offer. The offer is DEAD, and it was killed by the side who countered it rather than accepting it. That's a powerful message, because sellers and buyers often assume that they are "keeping the deal alive" when they counter.

Donna and Mike Scott make that point clearly in their article, Are You Presenting Offers as Well as You Should Be? The Scotts provide several strong arguments for why agents should have a serious discussion with sellers before they counter any offer. In fact, though, both sides need to hear that message very clearly.

I am on the listing side of most of my real estate deals, and I often find myself presenting a counter-offer to other agents, rather than an acceptance. In fact, I find that many sellers are uncomfortable accepting the first offer they get. Buyers whose first offer is accepted may suddenly become dissatisfied, fearing they made an offer that was too high, rather than feeling the sense of jubilation that a ratified contract should generate.

Of course, accepting the first offer would be much easier and more common if truth were more common in our everyday way of doing real estate. Implicit in the contract offer is the implication that the offered price is what the buyer is willing to pay. Too often, that is not the case. The leading volley may be a "throw it on the wall" with little resemblance to an honest negotiation.

While lowball offers are usually countered nowadays, that has not always been the case. When I first started representing REO sellers, asset managers often ignored lowball offers or rejected them outright. Letting a lowball offer just sit had the effect of keeping it alive until it expired or was withdrawn by the offeror. To counter the offer could have put the sellers at a disadvantage, "showing their hand" to a player who had made an insincere offer and was not, therefore, playing an honest game. Better to let such an offer die its natural death (expire) than to outright kill it by countering it. I see the wisdom of just letting an offer sit, if the converse is killing it via a counter-offer.

It may be time to rethink the whole negotiation scenario. Countering an offer does not really keep it alive, though that is often how sellers view the process. The buyer is not obligated to continue the negotiation.

Sellers: If it's in the ballpark, catch that offer before it gets away.

Aside to buyers: If the property is priced fairly for the market, and especially if it is priced aggressively, make your first offer an honest offer. Unlike in a ballgame, you may not be the only hitter out there. You may find yourself out of the game, instead of on base and working your way to home.

The BPO has a distinct place in the valuation process. The perspective of a real estate agent is different than that of an appraiser. Appraisers, after all, never actually walk into a house with a prospective client, something agents do all the time (or at least, presumably, do).The agent, like the appraiser, uses facts to arrive at an opinion of value. Neither evaluator has a crystal ball or employs wizardry.

An appraisal's emphasis relies heavily on recently sold properties and physical value. When an agent prepares either a CMA or a BPO, comparables are pulled from both currently listed and recently sold properties. An agent is more likely to be influenced by the aesthetics of the property and its marketability, while the appraiser's value is more likely to be influenced by measurable aspects. In other words, an agent will more readily see the property through the eyes of a buyer.

In spite of the similarity of the two processes, one does not take the place of the other. They do, however, compliment each other very well; and the BPO is most valuable when it it used in tandem with an appraisal. The negativity that most appraisers feel toward BPOs seems to be at least partially based on a fear that agents are taking work away from appraisers. A bad BPO can wreak havoc on a listing price, but so can a bad appraisal. In fact, a bad appraisal is MORE LIKELY to result in a misguided listing price. That is a very strong argument in favor of using both methods in the valuation process.

It just does not make sense to me to say, on the one hand, that a real estate agent knows enough write contracts, to advise buyers and sellers, and to market and sell real estate--but then to turn around and say that the same agent cannot be compensated for their unique perspective.

More on this topic in To BPO or not to BPO part 2.

AVOID FORECLOSURE! I see the billboards. I see it on the internet. I see the ads for agents who claim to be foreclosure prevention experts. And while those claims are technically correct, I believe many of the advertisements are misleading and purposefully so.

The billboards appeal to homeowners who are in danger of losing their homes to foreclosure. Hoping against hope, these borrowers pick up the phone and call the number. They then learn that the person smiling back from them on the billboard is a short sale agent who wants to list their home for sale, not a person who will somehow work magic that will keep them in the home.

Where the homeowner probably expects to connect with an expert who can help them explore several options, they instead find an "expert" who has one card in their deck, "Let me help you sell your home."

Now I know that I may start a firestorm of criticism, but I would like to hear some rational discussion about where agents should draw the line when advertising their services. I believe that the more vulnerable the target audience, the more careful a professional should be. At the least, I would like those STOP FORECLOSURE ads to be upfront about what services the advertiser actually offers. If the practitioner is a "one card in the deck" short sale expert, they should disclose that what they are actually advertising is short sale services.

Let's put a stop to the misleading advertisements. Be part of the solution, not part of the confusion.