Jim Minkey

What a year! What a job!

So, we get a nice offer on my listing at 9 Lilly Lane in San Carlos, and one night last week I get a call from the buyer's agent who's up at the property meeting his clients and a contractor. He has a couple of simple questions, which I easily answered...and then comes the big question. Seems that when he and the contractor opened the door on this vacant and staged home they were greated by a large surprise on the tile floor in the foyer. The agent explained to me that it was, in fact, poo poo. Excrement. Feces. On the floor in my vacant listing.

I was a little surprised. It's not everyday in this business that someone calls to tell me that there's a large pile of poop on the floor of one of my vacant listings. In fact, it's happened....NEVER! Needless to say I wasn't quite sure exactly what to say...but I did manage to blurt out, "Did you clean it up?" Always practical...that's me! The answer was "Yes", he did clean it up...before his buyers arrived (Thank God!)

It's now official...2009 is the weirdest year in my 20 year career in Real Estate. The buyers agent posed a question...is anybody angry with the sellers that maybe we should know about? "Not to my knowledge", I said. In fact, they changed the locks just prior to putting the home on the market. Fortunately, the lock box allows me to have a record of everyone who's been in and out of the property using that device. Turns out that another agent was in...and brought his dog along! Unbeknownst to him, Fido went slightly astray whilst he was there and left the little (big) present on the tile floor. Ooops! The agent apologized.

Honestly....I was REALLY happy to find out it was a dog! If it wasn't a dog...what then?!? I realize it's been a tough year, but JEEZ!

And you thought your job had strange issues!

There's a new dialog taking place in this area between sellers and their agents upon listing homes for sale. It used to be that it was almost impossible to make a mistake with pricing on a listing. With very few exceptions, no matter what price you put on a place somebody agreed to pay it...or multiple folks lined up to pay more than your price. Pricing required some thought, of course, because you wanted to maximize the opportunity for multiple offers and ususally you did that by making it seem like a bit of a value. Now the dialog is typically going like this:

Seller: Where do you think we should price the house?

Agent: I think we should list it at $850,000.

Seller: Well...we would be OK with $850,000, but we were thinking that we should go a little higher just to build in some cushion for the inevitable offer that comes in under the asking price.

Agent: What price were you thinking?

Seller: We were thinking $900,000.

Here's the problem...sometimes this notion of cushion will actually push the listing into the "overpriced" category. Sometimes the cushion is really insulation from reality. This new thought process is certainly fascinating and to a very great degree, logical. The fear, of course, is that building in too much cushion will cause the listing to be on the market longer, experience at least one price reduction and end up selling for less than it could have if priced agressively from the beginning. Buyers do indeed want to negotiate downward, it's not necessarily wrong to anticipate that.

Pricing has always been a bit of an artform. Now it sure feels like it's gone to the next level.

For years, friends, clients, friends of clients, family of clients and sometimes even clients of friends have called to ask some rudimentary questions about becoming a real estate agent. Usually we get together and have a nice chat and during that discussion I'll usually hear the phrase "I think I'd like to try out real estate". Here's the thing, you don't try out real estate...real estate try's you out!

Once upon a time, before I became a realtor actually, I thought this would be an easy job...a lucrative easy job too! Ha! What was I smoking! In 2008, 60% of the agents in San Mateo county sold 1 house or less...86% sold 5 or less. I'm thinking that there weren't a whole bunch of agents lining up to by the new Mercedes E-Class lately. So much for the lucrative part for most folks. How about the easy part?

In 2009 alone I've had several clients whose marriages were either falling apart or had recently fallen apart, folks in severe financial distress and folks who just lost a loved one and I'm in the middle of all of it. I have client's that routinely show up a half hour to 45 minutes late and clients who have under reported their income or down payment, not only to me but to their lender as well, to the extent that I've just wasted all of the last couple of months showing them property. Not exactly an easy environment.

If you're thinking about leaping into the fray and getting your license, here a few great 2009 stories to wet your appetite: An agent I know was on vacation in New York when a client called all excited about a house they had seen held open one Sunday. They insisted that he alone write the offer for them...no substitutes or pinch hittters. He left the family and flew back early, wrote, presented and ratified the offer for the clients...and at 8:00AM the following morning they called him to tell him that they had changed their mind. They didn't really want that house after all.

Or how about this one: Another agent I know called her clients at a listing she had in Burlingame (the house had been on the market for 2 months) to tell them she would be going on vacation and explain how she would have a partner handle the business while she was gone. The seller said no, she couldn't go on vacation and that if she did she would lose the listing. My friend explained that this was her 35th wedding anniversary and the trip was a once in a lifetime opportunity that her husband was surprising her with. The seller didn't care, if you go you lose the listing she said.

Or this one: Yet another agent I know has a listing that a buyer came in paying all cash at the asking price and a week into the escrow the buyer requested to come over to the house to measure and show other family members their soon to be new home. The seller said no and in fact flatly stated that the buyer was not allowed into the house for the rest of the escrow. They have to wait until closing and they get the keys. That would sure make me feel all warm and fuzzy about buying that house...how about you?

Oops...I ranted again! Honestly, I love this business. I see it as a priveledge to be a part of the situations that have been placed before me. It's not an easy job though.

It's always been sort of common to hear kind of "off" questions at open houses I would hold. Actually, stupid questions really. For the house that's completely empty of all furnishings, "Is the house vacant?" For the fixer upper that needs a new roof, furnace, plumbing, electrical and has a foundation problem, "Will the seller fix all that? How about the seller in 2009 who asks " Can't the buyer just let us live here rent free for 30 days after closing?"

You know what? I can get on a roll with this! The buyer that says "Hey! The Title Company cashed my deposit check! Are they supposed to do that?" The agent who asks, "Did the seller accept my client's offer?" when said offer is $150,000 under the asking price when we had 8 other offers. Then there's these, "Can we go looking at houses at 8:00AM on Sunday morning?" or "I'm only interested in a house with at least 2000 minimum square feet inside and on a 10,000 sq ft lot, at least 4 bedrooms...can I find that for under $600,000 in Foster City?..and can I buy it via a contingency offer on my home in Redding?"

I'll bet you think I'm making this stuff up, don't you? I'm not, I promise! Well, here's a common question heard at almost every open house...and I used to think it was kind of "off" too. "Where are the sellers going?" That question get's asked alot! Honestly, there's usually a very finite amount of answers to that question too. Most likely it's because the house became either too big (kids grown and gone)or too small (kids not grown and home), there was a job change or a life change (marriage, divorce) or the family's liquidating an asset. I've frequently had to laugh though at this question because it's seemed that the question comes with an expectation of some weird answer. When someone asks me that they look at me waiting for me to say something like "well, the sellers just got tired of living on top of all the toxic waste under the house" or "Mr. Smith went bananas and shot poor Mrs. Smith right there by the fireplace...after he went to prison the family needs to sell the place".

You know what? I ask this question all the time myself...because every once in a while the truth is exactly one of these crazy sounding answers! It's really a very good question! When I was a kid my Dad had this routine every time we went out to eat. He always asked the hostess "How's the food here?" It used to really embarrass me! Typically they would chuckle and rave about the food. One time when I was about 14 he asked a young girl that question and she looked around and told him "It stinks!" Hmm, I guess my Dad wasn't so dumb after all!

Once upon a time, Realtors were important. At least we thought we were! One of the big reasons we thought we were so important is because we had a virtual corner on the market of real estate related information. Anything that was useful when determining the value of a property or to simply help you make an offer to a seller had to be acquired via a realtor. We held public record data close to our hearts, we alone knew where the homes for sale were located and we could show them to you in those phone book looking things we all carried around with us in the days before the internet. If there were questions you could rely on us to get the answers for you.

Things have changed! The truth is, we're really not Real Estate Agents in the sense we used to be...we're Real Estate Consultants. I'm constantly impressed with how knowledgeable my clients are. I met a young lady in front of a house I was showing her for the second time a few weeks ago and she had a print out of every owner of every house in the cul-de-sac. Most of my clients easily find out who the owners are of the homes they like, they also find out how much money those sellers paid for their homes and exactly how long ago they have lived there. I've seen clients find info about permitted (or not permitted as the case may be) additions. I've even had clients find out on their own details about registered sex offenders in their neighborhoods. Our culture is a whole lot more transparent than it used to be! Obviously, folks find listings abundantly on the internet and request showings on their own every day.

So, what's the value of a realtor anymore? If we're not holding all of the cards like we used to, then what good are we? Good realtors are consultants and I don't think there's any shame in that. A good realtor can help you navigate, with a whole lot less stress, though a foundation problem. A good consultant knows how to read a property and pest inspection to know what's important on them. A good consultant knows a good neighborhood from a crappy one...or even a marginal one. Sometimes they occur very near to one another too. Good realtor consultants know good lender consultants. Good consultants know how the market "feels" at any given moment and that often could mean the difference between getting a house or not. Perhaps most importantly, good consultants know most of the other good consultants and in this business relationships are incredibly important..sometimes critical. You can learn all kinds of things researching online...but you can't develop trust with the people who are actually selling the homes you want.