Craig Chapman - the value guy

The Number One Most Important Key in Home Buying or Home Selling in Mesa Az is:

Get the Price Right from the beginning of the listing for sellers!

Know the correct value of the home (not neccessarily the list price) before you put in an offer - for buyers!

The why to this most important key should be obvious, if you don't know or get the value right from the start, you may loose a ton of money! Ouch!

Listings tend to sell best in their intitial period, or in the 1st week or so they are listed. If they blow it by being over priced & then have to lower the price, they still can't regain that 1st impression to the market they lost by being initially over priced. And if the market is declining as ours has been for several years, extra time on the market can cost thousands in a lower delayed sales price.

A buyer who doesn't know the real value may over bid & pay too much for the home. And if the appraiser, who is supposed to be a protection against this happening, just rubber stamps the contract price, as many agents & lenders want them to do, as often appears to happen, the buyer does not get to renegotiate a better price on the strength of the appraisal value.

So, who can correctly inform sellers & buyers of accurate vlaues & sales prices? Well, the real estate agent is supposed to be able to do that, but no real valuation education is required or offered to agents to get their lic. or afterwards & many have never taken any kind of a valuation class. Most use the MLS CMA that prints out a page of area listijgs & sales & comes up with an average value for the neighborhood. But in many neighborhoods their is thousands of dollars or even tens of thousands of value difference between avg & the better homes or the ones needing work. How does your house fit? A shotgun is probably not the best valuation tool to use, & yet this appears to be the best many agents can come up with. It's not their fault, at least not completely, they just are not taught how.

If you want the best valuation information available in the listing or buying of your home, call a double agent.

I've made my living as both a certified appraiser & real estate agent for over 20 years & will give you the best value knowledge to make the best deal you can in this market. Don't wonder if, Get the answer you need!

Craig Chapman, SFR / CraigsHouseDeals@yahoo.com / www.MesaHouseListings.com / 480 244-6210

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Recently I've read several articles & blogs on the topic of BPOs & the problems they are having on our markets, due to inaccuracy, conflict of interest, lack of training, lack of experience, lack of accountability, etc.

Why is this the case? And what can be done to solve the problem. When short sale deals are forced to foreclosure because a BPO comes in way too high more than just that home owner suffers. The listing agent who was working hard to save the owners from foreclosure, the home owner, even the neighborhood from another bank owned vacant home, etc. This is happening way too often all over the country.

Some have proposed to have appraisers take over, as they are trained and experienced in valuation & their estimates are typically more reliable. They have, or should have no conflict of interest as independent appraisers, they have plenty of training & experience (1 1/2 yrs full time just to get lic), they have accontability & many standards they have to adhere to. This is one idea that has merit.

But another idea has come out that promotes the idea of real estate agents having a separate certification or even license that would allow them in some circumstances to do BPOs for a fee. There would be training required, a certain amount of experience required, specific requirements to adhere to & continuing education required in valuation topics. I suppose that some BPO agents would not want to go through all this & maybe green agents trying to make some fast money would not like it either, but that is one of the problems. One state has issued a ruling that says, only brokers can do BPOs. A number of other sates have limitations placed on BPOs for similar reasons, all based in the idea that something is badly needed in this segment of the industry.

If we could reduce the amount of un needed foreclosures, we could be helping people recover from this economic disaster faster, & that would significantly help our country. So if we could have BPO regulation in place to make BPOs more accurate, it would be a good thing even if we had to do some training etc. If there were more requirements to be BPO lic. I suppose there would be fewer agents available to do BPOs, & maybe the fees would increase. Hey, that would be good, what if you could get $75 or $100 for a BPO instead of $50 or less? That would help make the training worth it.

What do you think? I've heard & read the hundreds of complaints about what is wrong with BPOs, so lets see if we can let our leaders know we want change. Oh, that sounds bad, lets say we want improvement.

In real estate there is a term called "steering" which typically refers to leading potential buyers to particular homes or areas for various reasons. In some cases it's illegal.

I have noticed lately an intersting situation in relation to different homes for sale in the Mesa & Queen Creek area. We have a lot of Short sale listings, some of which are pre-approved, bank owned & normal listings. Many of the short sale listings offer less commission to the buyers agent than do the bank owned & typical sale listings. Some of the bank owned even offer a commission bonus on top of the commission.

This situation appears to involve heavy traffic with multiple offers comming in very quickly at bank owned listings offering the bonus, while many times better priced short sale listings & other listings not offering the bonus go with little traffic. Somtimes the low traffic listings are bigger Sq Ft for similar prices or even lower & appear to be better deals than the other ones. So why do the buyers put in so many offers on these bonus listings? I'm not accusing anyone of steering their clients to only show the bonus listings, I'm just asking the question, why is this happening.

Some buyers can't wait the extra time for a short sale to get approved, but is eveyone in that much of a hurry? Are buyers getting to see what the real values are before they make their decision, or just the ones they can close on quickly where their agent gets a mush bigger check? I don't know, but it is an intersting question.

I hope buyers are not being mistreated or "steered" to only the high commission listings.

Feel free to see all the active listings at www.MesaHouseListings.com and call me if you would like to check out any of them.

My main goal is to find the right house for my clients that they will be happy in. Also check out my seller & Buyer incentive plans.

HUD homes for sale in Mesa AZ offer some great buying opportunities. Any repairs can often be worked into your loan to keep out of pocket expenses down. The bidding process offers opportunity for some great deals.

Search HUD Homes for sale at www.MesaHouseListings.com Go to the advanced search & enter in what you are looking for, including HUD homes for sale.

When you find one that interests you, call me & we can check it out. And don't miss my Buyer incentive page.

CraigsHouseDeals@yahoo.com or message at 480 244-6210 Happy searching.

Some builders offer big commission bonuses to real estate agents to bring them buyers. Call me about helping you find your new home & if the builder you choose offers a big commission bonus, you get the bonus amount, above 3%. This can be applied to closing costs & or make for a bigger down payment.

Call & Save!!! If the builder is offering any other great deals to buyers, you will get that too!

Call me, you will be glad you did. 480 244-6210 or CraigsHouseDeals@yahoo.com

Search MLS resales at www.MesaHouseListings.com

This is a good time to buy, make it even better!