David Black

For being a grim reaper, Tom Horn is a pretty nice guy. 

It's just that some folks trying to sell their homes in the Birmingham, Alabama area these days may think of him as the grim reaper.  After all, for anyone with an unrealistic idea of what a Buyer would pay for their home, Tom is the one to bring them back to reality.

Horn, who has been a central Alabama appraiser for nearly twenty years, has seen his share of up and down cycles in real estate values.  He owns appraisal-source.com, a website that caters to owners selling on their own.

We recently caught up with Tom and got his views about the decline in central Alabama home values, as well as where he thinks the market might be headed. 

But it's not just Sellers who will find Horn's comments interesting. 

Agents stand to benefit by knowing what's happening as a result of the Government's recently mandated changes in how appraisers are chosen by Lenders.

As it turns out, Sellers--who, among others, were supposed to be benefiting from the new rules--appear to be getting the short end of the deal, instead.  And it even may be up to a knowledgeable Agent to keep a sale from falling apart, because of the new regulations.

Tom also operates a blog, full of information that's useful to both Sellers and Agents.

We've divided our interview with Tom into two parts for listening convenience.

Listen to Tom's interview now by going here and clicking the players...

Or, direct links for downloading each segment (MP3 files) are just below.

Click to download Tom Horn interview Part 1 (9 Mb)

Click to download Tom Horn interview Part 2 (7 Mb)

Enjoy!

The first phone call makes me a little uneasy.

But when my cell phone rings the second time a few minutes later, I start thinking: This does not sound good.

It’s a sunny but cold day in the low 30s.

The calls come while my wife, Colleen, and I are having lunch. The first caller is a woman who lives near a vacant town home we have listed for sale.

It looks like water may be leaking down the side of the house, she says. Not knowing how to reach the owner, but seeing our yard sign, she calls us.

Odd, we think, because the owner had long since turned off the utilities, including water, and moved out.

Imagining a trickle sort of leak, I thank her for calling and say we’ll check it out. We continue eating when the second call comes moments later. Another resident, same message. “It looks pretty bad,” she says. That’s when I start getting a bad feeling in my stomach (and it’s not from the lunch).

We drive straight over.

When we pull up, water is flowing from the house across the driveway and into the street, and it’s moving fast. As I approach the front, I can’t help but hear what sounds like a good sized waterfall inside. Water is pouring (not trickling, pouring) out of both the front and back doors. It’s also coming down the side of the house.

The scene is almost what you'd expect to see in a movie. The bad feelings in our stomachs have really kicked in now!

I look through the glass in the front door, to see easily an inch and a half of water on the floor. Water is streaming down from the ceiling, splashing below. Streams are running everywhere. The trickle of a leak I had imagined? Not!

We’re talking out of control.

I open the door, and the mini tsunami roars out. Not wanting to get deluged in 30 degree weather, we step quickly out of the way as water rushes out. But my feet still manage to get wet and cold.

We are stumped. How could water be pouring, uncontrolled, at such a fast rate from inside a home where the water was shut off months ago?

The Seller’s daughter (our contact for the sale) is out of state, so, for the moment, it’s all up to us to deal with. I call the Alabaster Fire Department and Water Board. Moments later, an engine crew arrives, followed shortly by Water Board personnel.

The water crew shuts off the water and unravels the mystery. It turns out that the home has a fire/sprinkler system which is served by a separate water line. When water service is disconnected, the regular water is turned off, but for obvious safety reasons, the workers tell us, the sprinkler system feed is always left on.

I wonder how many people with sprinkler systems inside their homes know this?

Take a home that has no heat, add cold water and temperatures well below freezing, and … well, what results isn’t pretty. The sprinkler system pipes just couldn’t take it, and blew.

Sadly, none of this had to happen.

We had this home Under Contract as a Short Sale since the fall of 2009. We had procured a ready, willing and able Buyer, who had been told that getting approval from the Seller’s two Lenders could take anywhere from 60 to 90 days.

The Buyer agrees to ride it out, because she really wants the property. Our Seller really needs to sell. So, here you have parties and their Agents on both sides, all working together to reach a mutual goal. We just need one other component to make this work: Cooperation by the two banks holding loans on the property.

The bank holding the smaller loan signs off and says fine. That leaves us needing only Bank of America’s cooperation.

Ahh, so close, and yet, so far.

We used this Contract as a test of sorts, making it our first transaction in working with a new Short Sale/Foreclosure mitigation group we discovered (we wanted to see how well they do their job in helping get Short Sales approved).

The Contract required closing on or before December 30th. Early in the process, we thought that—surely to goodness with so much time involved—we can make this work.

But at the rate we would be getting information out of BofA, (can you say ‘molasses pouring’?), we started realizing that success was not a sure thing.

As it turns out, the Foreclosure team we hired does a very good job trying to get information out of Bank of America, responding to our inquiries, and keeping us up to date on their efforts. On one day in December, they call BofA no less than three times, never getting a response.

At one point, BofA says only that the sale is proceeding according to their timeline. So, just what is their timeline? That was never answered. It obviously has nothing to do with the Contract timeline.

We start feeling uneasy about the time between Christmas and New Year’s.

The Buyer even agrees that—if BofA will at least give an answer by the deadline—she will extend the Contract. Come on, here. Throw us a bone. Throw us something. Anything!

Bank of America’s response: Nothing.

Here’s the big question: It's after Christmas, and with the deadline now staring straight at us, will BofA be continuing to try to get this Sale through?

We get our answer: Our Foreclosure team is told that BofA’s negotiator assigned to our case is off that week and, no, there’s no one else who can help. No supervisors. Nobody. Call us back next year.

After just over three months of waiting, the Contract expires. A sale that would have helped a Buyer and Seller get where they need to be—as well as helping recover at least some of the Lenders’ money—crashes and burns.

So, the property remains vacant. And then it gets colder. Temperatures drop into the teens.

About a week later, the sprinkler pipe blows. Water floods our Seller’s home and leaks into the adjoining town home.

What a shame.

If Bank of America had approved the Short Sale in anything close to a reasonable time frame, they would have gotten at least some of their money back, there would likely have been an owner living there keeping the place maintained, there probably would have been heat, and the pipes might not have blown.

We have no idea what the damage is going to cost, but to think the Seller will be in a position to pay for it would be … well, I’d call that a sprinkler pipe dream.

If Bank of America forecloses, they will probably wind up taking an even harder hit when it comes time to sell, now that the property is damaged.

Would you pardon me for saying something ridiculously obvious?

There’s something very wrong with a system that can’t give a Buyer an answer in three months. At least as far as Bank of America is concerned, the system (if you want to call it that) in place now provides good reason for Agents to suggest that their Buyers not walk, but run, from a Short Sale.

What good is a good deal if you can’t get an answer?

What’s with calling it a Short Sale, anyway? I’m thinking … Long Sale would be more fitting. And when some Lenders are involved, maybe it should be ELS (Eternally Long Sale).

This sale was never about the money to us. We had charged a reduced fee for service, because we knew the Seller, knew he really needed to get the home sold, and we just wanted to help. That’s what drove us and the Seller, jumping through all the hoops of submitting all the required initial and ongoing documentation, calling, being called, waiting, waiting and waiting some more.

Even though this sale crashed (or should I say sank underwater?), we knew it was through no fault of the Foreclosure team we hired. They did a good job trying to make the deal fly, and we’ve decided we’re definitely using them on future Short Sales.

We feel badly for our Seller. And we felt badly for the Buyer, too--at least, up until the day the home she had wanted suddenly acquired an indoor pool.

Everyone involved wanted this to work … except, it seemed, for one needed party in the Sale.

If I hear other Agents describe dealing with Bank of America as a horrible experience, I’ll nod my head in agreement.

Yep, I’ll tell them, we’ve been there and have the T-shirt.

And it’s wet.

When I was very little, I don't believe a single birthday or Christmas went by that my grandmother, Wilma Black, whom I called Willie, didn't give me at least two presents. There was always the really neat toy or other gadget that caught my young eyes and I got immediate enjoyment from.

Then, there was the other gift. Frankly, it wasn't as much fun. I was far too young to understand or appreciate what it meant. It looked like money, but you couldn't spend it right away. All I remember understanding about savings bonds was that they were something you could maybe turn into real money at some point down the road, but when you're that little, the years you'd have to wait before being able to do anything with them might as well have been forever.

But when you're a loving grandmother and give bonds to the grandson you're crazy about on a regular basis--as often as Willie did--those bonds add up over the years. As I grew up and kept getting more and more bonds as gifts (many from her), they developed into a pretty decent sized stack.

Of course, they do eventually mature, and at a certain point, they stop maturing, so you might as well do something with them then, like reinvesting, or turning them into cash.

One day, during a conversation I was having with Willie easily forty plus years ago, I jokingly called her a cheap, crummy grandmother. With a description like that coming from such a young child, Willie thought that was hilarious, so the name stuck.

For many years, whenever a gift was exchanged, the "To" or "From" tag bore the name Cheap Crummy. Some of the envelopes my savings bond gifts came in were signed, "Love, Cheap Crummy."

Not long ago, my wife, Colleen, and I went through all the bonds I've ever received and sorted them, pulling the bonds that had matured. I took the matured bonds to the bank and cashed them in. I'd have been smart to invest the money back into something else, but not having anything really in mind for the money, and not wanting to dump it into an existing account for fear it would, in effect, lose its identity as gift money, I held the cash in an envelope in a safe at home. I figured I'd do something with it one day.

One day has finally come.

Over the past few years, I've admired the ever advancing technology of digital photography. I've never owned a digital SLR camera, mainly because of cost. I haven't been buying many things for myself lately, choosing instead to go easy on expenditures amid the current state of our business. I've watched as the technology came from behind and surpassed by miles in some cases what film cameras did in their day.

Colleen has been watching me do research on cameras recently and, knowing my hesitancy to spend the money, she suggested using the cash I got from the bonds Willie gave me all those years ago. It would probably make your grandmother very happy to know you were using that money to get something you really want, she said. Those words really hit home and stayed with me. The more I thought about it, the more I realized: she's absolutely right.

So, several decades later--longer than I would have ever guessed--I am getting one final gift from Wilma. A new Nikon digital SLR camera and telephoto lens, with plenty of bells and whistles, arrive tomorrow. From the research I've done, I have no doubt I'll get some great use out of it and will probably enjoy it tremendously. It's a purchase for both pleasure and need for me, but I really think of it as something else. It's a tribute to Willie. I have to think she would be smiling to know what she made possible, twenty years after leaving us.

From a childhood of wonderful memories she made possible for me, including staying with her in her small Plainview, Texas home one summer and travelling with her, I have come, yet again, to realize how special and good Cheap Crummy was to me, and how lucky I was to have her as my grandmother.

I will think of her when I use my new camera.

David

Talk about frustrating...

We've been working with a Seller who has been behind on his payments. Unfortunately, he Listed with us late in the game, so to speak, already having tried to sell on his own (unsuccessfully), and long since having received a notice of Foreclosure. But we told him we'd give it our best shot in an effort to help him avoid being Foreclosed.

We managed to get an Offer on his property and began immediately to try and obtain Short Sale approval. But if you haven't been through the process before, rest assured that it's not as easy as picking up the phone one time and getting cleared. One Agent told me recently, "Why do they call it short? It's anything but short."

Complicating this was the delay we encountered in getting verification of the Seller's income, a critical Document Lenders must have.

Around mid-day today, one day before our Seller's Foreclosure date, we received the final needed Document. We quickly submitted all the paperwork to the Lender, along with a copy of the Sales Contract (we had to wait until all the documentation was in before we could submit it). Our Seller called the Lender twice to tell them that a Contract is in hand and to ask that his Foreclosure be delayed until they at least take the time to look at the Offer.

But guess what?

The Lender (one of those really big names everyone knows) is so big and bureaucratic that just getting the paperwork actually entered into their system takes--ready for this?--seven to ten days after they receive it. The Lender, we were told, outsources their incoming paperwork flow to another company to process.

So, you could FAX everything in as needed on, say, the first of the month (e-mail? no way...has to be FAXed), and if you call about it eight or nine days later, there's a good chance the Lender will tell you that they have no record of it. That's what the Seller we're working with was told when he called today to make his final plea. Without a Contract, there is absolutely nothing we can do for you, the Lender told our Seller.

How's that for efficient?

Unless something totally unforseen happens, our Seller will lose his property tomorrow, despite the fact that we procured a Buyer.

Who knows ... maybe, in another week or ten days, the Lender will run a cross a copy of the Sales Contract.

I can see it now: "Hmm. Hey Fred, look at this. Looks like a Contract to buy one of our properties. Say, didn't we already Foreclose that one? I wonder how long it's been sitting here? Oh well..."

Who wins when it ends up like this?

David

I will always be grateful for Walter Cronkite.

You'd know why I say that if you grew up in the 1960's or '70s, when television news was such a totally different industry from what it is today, and when we depended on it so much to learn about our world.

Back then, television news was real.

The most trusted man in America, as he was frequently called, held that title for a reason. Mr. Cronkite brought honesty and integrity to a profession in its infancy. It was inevitable that so many Americans would connect with his down home demeanor and sincerity.

And, unlike so much of the reporting Americans watch today, Walter Cronkite was willing to question authority.

His nearly two decades as anchor of the CBS Evening News coincided with what became a daily viewing routine for millions of families, including mine. Hurry, Mom would say, “it's almost time for Walter.”

We always made it a point to gather around the television set at 5:30 p.m. to hear Mr. Cronkite explain the events taking place at home and abroad. If you missed him, you had to wait until the next day; after all, there were no constant news cable channels, no electronic ticker tape bulletins crawling across the screen, and no Internet. Pretty much, there was just Walter and his fellow journalists, inching their way along in a new electronic medium, void of splashy motion graphics and sound effects, doing what they did best: informing.

Walter Cronkite is part of the reason I vividly remember July 20, 1969, when the black and white television set in our Texas living room brought us fuzzy images of Neil Armstrong setting foot upon the moon. We watched in suspense, while Mr. Cronkite, through his compelling storytelling, helped us realize the magnitude of what we were witnessing. There are so many other memories I have of seeing Mr. Cronkite bringing us news that I can't count them all. When someone is in your living room every day, well, he's family.

Mr. Cronkite didn't know it, but he helped inspire a young Texas kid to pursue a career in the news business. Prior to getting into real estate, I spent more than 30 years in broadcast journalism, including working in television news in Texas and, later, Alabama. My love of journalism started around age seven, and included recording make believe newscasts on our old reel-to-reel tape recorder, as well as creating newspapers while seated at Dad's IBM electric typewriter.

My mother once said to me that she expected me to one day sit in Mr. Cronkite's anchor chair. That wasn't meant to be, but a wonderful thing happened, anyway: I got to grow up in the Cronkite era.

From all the TV news I watched in the days of the Cronkite era, I could tell you the names of many on-air correspondents, as they were known. Eric Sevareid and Howard K. Smith were familiar; I traveled across America, On The Road, with Charles Kuralt, a regular feature on the CBS Evening News. There was John Chancellor. Dan Rather. Chet Huntley. David Brinkley. Daniel Schorr. Hughes Rudd. Roy Neal. And so many more. I followed local news on both television and radio, as closely, too.

The fire really got lit after a trip to New York City when Dad took a budding young journalist of around age ten to 51 W. 52nd St to see the CBS Morning and Evening newscasts produced live. Mr. Cronkite was off that day, but I still got to see where the giants of the industry worked! My eyes were wide open when Mr. Rudd welcomed us into his small office for a visit following the morning newscast. The thrill of getting to watch the news from the main Control Room was the experience of a lifetime (which reminds me … I need to tell my Dad, again, how cool it was of him to arrange that).

The Cronkite thrill didn't stop after childhood. It came back for me as recently as September 9, 2006. While watching the launch of the Shuttle Atlantis from the Kennedy Space Center, I saw the media stands where Mr. Cronkite once sat and, with NASA astronauts adding commentary, brought us the Apollo launches that I and millions of others watched live.

Many will probably say that Mr. Cronkite's passing represents the end of an era for television news. But the era, I think, was ending earlier, while he was alive, as broadcast ownership and managements began to change, not once, but repeatedly, and as cable and other technology started creating new challenges for the industry. The broadcast news profession was starting to undergo a profound change, and its long-held stability was the first casualty.

When broadcasters started losing more and more audience in the 1980s, consultants advised them to go younger and sexier to get viewers back. By then, the Cronkite look was dinosaur era. “Make it sizzle and splash,” broadcasters were told. Entertainment started nudging its nose alongside news content.

Infotainment was in.

I wish the broadcasters had instead gone to Mr. Cronkite and asked, “What would you do to keep our audience?” My bet is that he would have told them the answer in a few simple words: “Keep doing what you do best.”

Mr. Cronkite wasn't slick or flashy. He never tried to be. It wasn't his character, and it wasn't why he was on the air. “That my delivery is straight, even dull at times, is probably a valid criticism. But I built my reputation on honest, straightforward reporting. To do anything else would be phony," he said.

I missed out on the Edward R. Murrow era. But I call the Cronkite generation home. And I feel for people who missed it, and who instead rely on today's broadcast news diet, one I think of as the rough equivalent of lots of empty calories with virtually no nutrition. It caused me to go through a big change, turning from someone who lived and breathed the news business 24 hours a day to someone who pretty much stopped watching years ago.

What an amazing transition the industry has gone through in the years since Mr. Cronkite retired. The Cronkite era was all about “get it right.” Today's era is “get it first,” regardless of other considerations. So, I'm old fashioned? Guilty.

Technology changed everything, including the definition of news.

In the Cronkite era, covering news meant sending a crew to some remote part of the world where they shot film. The film would typically then have to be flown somewhere else to be developed (often, back to New York). Today, anyone with an iPhone can shoot video and upload it to the Internet for the world to see in a matter of seconds.

In the days of Mr. Cronkite, breaking news meant that you stopped whatever it was you were doing, sat down, and watched what he had to say. You didn't even have to ask if something big had happened. Today, breaking news means newly discovered footage of Michael Jackson's hair on fire.

After the Cronkite era, I started feeling less and less payoff for the time spent watching. I'd be hard pressed to tell you who's on any of the channels today. You can't go back, but I secretly wished for the days when faces with wrinkles and few showmanship skills delivered factual, informative accounts of events that really affect us. I longed for the people who wanted to be on the air, not to be stars or famous, but to communicate information that mattered to us. That's what attracted me to the business.

Distracting graphics, messages that pollute the screen, swish sound effects, slick coiffures and people talking at the same time instead of listening? No thanks. What happened to the good story telling and investigative reporting where tough questions were asked? Nowadays, you have to really hunt to find those.

I had many wonderful experiences during my years in broadcasting and still respect the difficult and often dangerous job journalists have. But the changes I saw coming in the administrative offices and on the air told me it was time to move on.

The end of the Cronkite era is as close as your television set. Not many years back, during the 9 p.m. news on one of the network affiliates in my market, the long time anchor said, “We have some breaking news to tell you about tonight.” The picture switched to video, live from the scene, showing a parked fire department rescue truck that had been involved in a fender bender while responding to an emergency call. Nobody hurt; just a torn up front bumper. If I had been the anchor reading that, I would have been embarrassed.

When I was a television news reporter in the 1990's, a supervisor at our daily editorial meeting (where we decided what stories to cover) turned down my suggestion of doing a report about the local area's economy. “That's a newspaper story,” she said.

I don't think editorial decisions like these would have been likely in the Cronkite era.

A friend and former television news anchor commented recently on the changes the industry has undergone. “Journalism isn't an honest profession, anymore,” he said.

The question more and more people ask today about the news media's coverage of many subjects is usually the same: What are they not telling us? Is the coverage balanced? Are we hearing all the sides? So much reporting has become so superficial and often one-sided (a concern Mr. Cronkite himself spoke about) that our skepticism of the media grows more all the time, while our confidence in it drops.

Most kids had baseball players or cowboys as their heroes. Mine was Mr. Cronkite (though Sky King, with his ultra cool twin engine Cessna, and Commander Scott McCloud with his spaceship Starduster from the science fiction cartoon Space Angel, were pretty close behind).

I wish I had written Mr. Cronkite a letter. I could have told him how much I appreciated the job he did. I could have told him how much I wish the electronic media could be trusted and relied upon again, more like it was when he and the associates of his day were on the air.

Most of all, I would just tell him, “Thank you.”