Doug Hoover

There is nothing better than the excitement of buying a home. Better yet, the excitement of buying your first home when you are a first time home-buyer. Isn't it after all the "American Dream"? Everyone knows how the economy has been in the past couple of years and we are finally at a point where I believe that home buyer confidence is on the rise. Home prices are very good, interest rates are low and there is a plethora of inventory that is ready for people to step up and say "I'll take it".

Helping first time home-buyers is nothing short of exciting, full of ups and downs and everything in between. I do enjoy helping someone find the perfect home, walking them through the buying process and explaining the complex array of addendum's, contingencies and other terms that until now, were most likely not used very often in their vocabulary. Why would anyone need to know what and how earnest money is used.

When working with buyers today, it is inevitable that you will be showing some sort of REO, foreclosed property or short sale property. Here in-lies part of the problem when working with a first time home buyer who wants to write an offer on one of these properties. There are many emotions when the offer is written, decitions to be made as to how much to make the offer for, how much earnest money will it take to make it a good offer and so on. When the offer is presented, all is good when there is an actual homeowner on the other end to have the offer presented to, it may take possibly a couple of hours of talking and then, possibly a yes, counter offer or something else that we can work with. When there is not a homeowner on the other end all of this goes out the window. When the time comes to get an answer on a bank owned or short sale property, it can truly be a crap shoot as to when they will respond, at times, it seems like they only respond when we have make several phone calls and are blue in the face. I have heard almost every excuse as to why it takes so much time: we have so many files to look, we are understaffed, it is not assigned to anyone and we can't get to it until next Monday. Here is one small tip to these companies, I believe I have heard of quite a few people out of work and they could possibly hire a few of them to expedite these transactions and actually sell the properties to get them off the books.

There is nothing worse than an offer taking days, weeks and sometimes months to get an answer on an offer what was written by an actual living breathing person who wants to buy the house that the bank does not want to own. I am sure not every transaction is this bad but I keep running into these that are very drawn out. I see a fundamental problem with a bank that does not want to own property and a buyer who wants to buy it and why it should take so long to respond to an initial offer on a property. I do hope that sometime in the near future as we do more and more of these types of transactions, that a cleaner and faster way can be developed. It is very difficult for a first time home-buyer to go through this long drawn-out process and still feel good about wanting to buy a house. The lack of sleep, endless phone calls and the lack of communication from someone in a different state should really not be part of the "American Dream".

If you are a first time homebuyer, don't let me scare you off from buying a home. Just keep in mind, if you want to "find a deal", it may take you longer than you would expect to go from writting an offer to actually living in your new home. If your planning to use the new and much improved tax credit, don't wait too long. You must close prior to December 1st 2009.

Doug Hoover e-pro

I recently attended a class put on by the Bemidji Chamber of commerce on keeping above others in this slow and challenging market. The class was called "Survive or Thrive". It was a "Dale Carnegie Trainer" class put on by Rick Cole. The class was "How to position your business for success". This was marketed to Realtors and other business owners in the Bemidji area.

The class was pretty interesting. It basically boiled down to how you look and the current situation, react to how things are going and actually get out and tackle your own daily activities. We certainly have sellers in the area that want to sell their home and we also have buyers who want to buy. Our job is to find these people, help them find the right home and bring it to closing. I know it is tougher to do it but it is still happening every day. Now is the time to find our strong suites and get back to the basics. Talk to people, walk them through their fears and bring it to closing.

I see and hear a lot of people getting out of the real estate business because of the way the market is. I believe most get out because they do not know how to react to the market conditions. I believe that most think that this should be a very easy job and when it is not, it is time to get out. Some that are still chugging along are cutting way back on advertising and other means of getting the information out to people. My opinion on that is if you cut back with certain forms of advertising, publications or how ever you try to market buyers and sellers when the market is down. You most likely didn't need that form of advertising in the first place. If you are not finding buyers and sellers with your forms of media when things are slow, you may not have been getting your buyers and sellers from these forms when the market was good. You may have only thought you were getting clients from these.

Now is the time to sit down and revisit your budgets, marketing and especially how you spend your time in 2009.

Doug Hoover e-pro
www.BemidjiHomeSearch.com