Dan Hughson

While looking through the Coeur d'Alene MLS yesterday for a Client I came across some interesting numbers.

These are my calculations and not the "Official" Coeur d'Alene MLS Statistics

Doing a search in Coeur d'Alene, Hayden and Post Falls for homes selling between $124,00 and $199,000

Yielded 658 Active Listings, of these;

• 44 were listed as REO's or Bank-Owned
• 91 were listed as Short Sales
• 159 were shown as "New Construction"
• leaving 364 Resale homes

Of the 658 Active Listings there are currently 142 "Pending" or Under Contract Listings, with;

• 19 REO's
• 33 Short Sales
• 37 New Construction
• 53 Resale Homes

Or another way of looking at it

• 43% of the Listed REO properties were Pending
• 36% of the Listed Short Sales were Pending
• 23% of the Listed New Construction Homes were Pending
• 14.5% of the Listed Resale Homes were Pending

Dan Hughson

Keller Williams Realty, CdA

(208) 659-8298

hughsteven@gmail.com

Thursday at noon, meet at the Office...We are going out to look at Coeur d'Alene Houses for Sale

A small group of agents in the office go out on Thursday afternoons to preview properties for sale in the area. We have open invitations to Realtors from other offices, too! There were 7 of us today from 2 different Brokerages. We have done this almost every week for the past 2 years with a rotating group of 5-8 Realtors.

We take turns setting up the "Tours" and making appointments, sharing the workload, so most days all you need to do is show up and preview properties. Unless it is your turn to set up that week's tour.

It's always an education!

• We look at properties in a small geographic area
• We look at properties in a narrow price range
• We preview for Buyers, so as not to waste their time looking at houses that don't fit their Criteria
• We look at comparables to properties that we have listed or are going to list
• One Agent's tour might be all of the Condos in a certain area, another Agent's may be 1st time homebuyer's
  
• We see houses that we may not see, as another Agent's Buyers may have different critera than our Clients
  
• We rarely look at our own Company's Listings, as we have seen those on our office tours

All in all it makes us better informed Realtors, better able to price our Listings. It gives us the Market Knowledge and "Quick-Speak" Inventory ability that helps when talking with Buyers.

Today was a very typical tour day. It took about 10 minutes to pick out 10 houses that we had not seen from the MLS. I passed the Tour sheet on to one of the other Agents that called and made appointments. Of the 10, we ended up with 8 houses scheduled.

We toured those 8 houses in about an hour and a half, as they were in a compact geographic area of downtown Coeur d'Alene. Our group today ranged from 2 Realtors with 20+ years of experience to one who has been in the business for 6 months.

It was an interesting group of Coeur d'Alene homes for sale today that ranged in age from 1910 to 2007 and in price from $189,900 to $379,900. None of them were listed in the MLS as either Short Sales or REOs. 5 of the 8 were vacant. As a group, the consensus was that every one of the houses were over-priced, some of them by a considerable amount.

Personally, only one or two were houses that I would show to a Client, due to condition, location or floor plan. But, I feel that going out every week for an hour or two makes us better Realtors, better able to serve our Clients!

Out of frustration this morning I sat down to write a post about my most recent B of A Short Sale frustration.

I had spent the last 24 days attempting to get an updated Approval Letter with a valid date on it so we could close this week, as the Buyers had given up their apartment and were ready to close.

I had been issued an Approval Letter on this Short Sale in 60 days from the date that I had entered it into the Equator system

However, when the Approval letter, dated May 10th arrived it said it was not valid unless we closed prior to

May 5th !

I was frustrated this morning and had given up all hope of getting any kind of response out of Bank of America on this Short Sale. I had emailed and escalated and called with out having any success.

Determined to stay on the phone today and get someone to take action I called Bank of America's Short Sale Customer Service and spoke with Patricia and then her supervisor Jayson. I wasn't hopeful as this issue had already been escalated twice previously with no results.

But Jayson thought that he knew someone that could help out and got someone's attention this morning.

When I got off the phone, I emailed the Escrow Officer, Buyer's Agent and my Sellers to update them on my (lack of) progress and sat down to write out the story of my Bank of America Short Sale Frustration. But, before I could finish the story, about an hour and a half later...I had an email from B of A. and then a 2nd email. I went into Equator and looked and sure enough, there was an updated, amended Approval Letter!

I also had a new task to complete, which I completed, and emailed and thanked the two people at B of A that had gotten this done this morning. I emailed back to the person that had sent the 2nd email and by the time he had responded, he had also approved the Final HUD.

Everything is set for Closing in the morning. 85 Days from entering the listing into Equator to Closing, not without frustration but much better than it's been!

Thanks B of A! Thanks Jayson and Thanks Michael!