Randy L. Prothero - Hawaii REALTOR®

Scenarios:

• You the REALTOR®, you walk into a potential listing and the home has a few (hundred) too many items in the house. What do you say to the seller?
• The seller wants $75,000 more than the home is worth. Do you tell them the advice they got from their hairdresser neighbor or uncle from another town is a mile off?
• The house is dirty, messy and has a bad smell (Big Dog). Do you say lovely home, I am sure it will sell fast or do you tell it to them straight?
• The orange bathroom walls and hot pink bedroom carpet is not going to be popular among buyers. Do you say lovely choice of colors or do you talk about neutralizing?

These are among some of the basics we as REALTORS® deal with on a daily basis. If you are a professional, you need to be honest and tell them the truth up front. You also need to be diplomatic and not hurt feelings or insult anyone. You are speaking about their home. You are however an expert and they brought you in to help them, not stroke their ego.

Being professional includes preparing clients for the process ahead and keeping them informed. I tell clients I would rather tell them the truth up front and not stand in front of them three months from now making lame excuses. A true test of a professional is you ability to say no without insulting someone. Most people understand no. What really makes them angry is being mislead and later having to deal with the damages.

We are dealing with the most expensive item in their lives in most cases and we need to treat it as such.

To address clutter, I discuss making the space look as big as we can. I also talk about what they loved about the home when they bought it and discuss how we can make the home better show that to potential buyers. We also need to allow buyers to envision the home with their stuff in it. If the walls are filled with family pictures and shelves have a ton of collectables they will not be able to place themselves in there. In some cases bringing in a professional stager may be the solution. If the seller does not except my advice, they may accept it from a staging professional.

The pet question is a big one. Many pet owners are immune to the smell. I delicately discuss that many buyers do not have pets and detect the smell easily. I also mention that many buyers and/or their children have allergies to pet dander and fur. Hopefully when I begin the discussion, they pick up on it and make it easier for me.

The loud colors I handle with my famous speech about staging. I tell sellers there is two ways to stage a home. We can stage it to live in it and we can stage it to sell. Staging to sell requires that we neutralized and depersonalize. I have had a few clients resist by telling my how much they love something. In the most tactful way I can I remind them they are not going to be living here and we need to prepare it for the new owners. In most cases the sellers have gone with my suggestions and we have had a successful sale. In two cases they held their guns and the sell price was less than I felt we might have gotten, and it took longer to sell. In both cases, I gave my professional advice and then accepted the seller's decision. It is their home and their choice in the end.

If sellers are completely unreasonable are not willing to price the home within reason or make any effort to make it sellable, I then do the most professional thing I can. I do not take the listing. This is hard for most agents to do, but there are times when you will not be able to help them.

In one case where I rejected a listing, the seller respected me for doing it and agreed to my recommendations. To this day we are good friends and has not only been a repeat client, but has sent me referrals.

Good luck and good selling!

This Friday and Saturday Mililani High School Trojans will be scrimmaging against Moanalua High School at the Mililani Stadium. The JV Team will be on the field at 2:30pm and the Varsity Team comes on at 4:00pm.

On Saturday both teams scrimmage against Kahuku at 10:00am. The JV team plays in the Mililani Stadium and the Varsity Team will be taking on the Red Raiders at Kahaku the same time.

For a the Mililani High School Trojan schedule and additional information check out their website: www.MililaniFootball.com

During the season the site will contain the most up to date information available. The team has taken on a Mililani's top REALTOR® as their webmaster. (Me)

If you are in or near Mililani, please come out and support the team.

Well known Hawaii REALTOR®, Randy L. Prothero will interviewed on local TV show, The Kukui Connection as a guest of State Representative Marilyn Lee.

He will be wearing one of his other hats, that of Hawaii Chess Federation President and head of the "Chess in the Schools Program".

The show is scheduled to play three times this month. It can be viewed on local TV channel 54 or through the station's website at the same times.

This half hour show will be aired at the following times:

Sundays at 4:00pm Hawaii Time (9:00pm CST) - August 3, 17, 31

• Hawaii Chess Federation President, Randy Prothero
• Is the guest on the The Kukui Connection
• With State Rep. Marilyn Lee
• Discussing Scholastic Chess in Mililani and in Hawaii
• Olelo Public Television - Channel 54
• (The show will be broadcast the three times listed above)

It can also be viewed from their website at the same times: www.Olelo.org and click on Views 54 Livestream

Condominiums were invented in Hawaii. I bet you didn't know that. The term condominium not only refers to apartments and townhouses, it can also refer to single family homes that the land was divided under the Condominium Property Regime (CPR), formerly known as Horizontal Property Regime (HPR).

There are many properties in Hawaii that had multiple homes on them and they wanted to sell them individually. The problem is the property may not have qualified to subdivide for one of several reasons. Here are a few of them:

1. One shared driveway.
2. Lot is too small according to zoning to create individual lots.
3. A shared water meter or septic system for multiple homes.
4. Common area like a playground or pool.

When buying homes in Hawaii it is important to always get a full disclosure. If the property you are purchasing falls under a CPR, the condo association will provide a series of disclosure documents. You will be provided the declaration documents when they created the CPR, the budget, the bylaws, a reserve study, insurance summary, financial statement, minutes from the board and annual meetings and the house rules. It is important to carefully review these documents in the specified period of time. In most purchase contracts there is a contingency for the buyer's acceptance of these disclosures.

If you are shopping on the internet and you are looking at single family homes an easy way to spot CPRs is that the address ends with an apartment number. That is a requirement in Hawaii.

The safest bet is to use a top professional REALTOR® who knows the neighborhood well. They can help you navigate through the buying process and ensure you know what you are buying and what you need to look out for.

Good luck and good house hunting.

Roger Wilf is the home instructor I have used and trusted on majority of the transactions that I represented buyers. Roger is extremely good at what he does. A few of us call him inspector gadget. His brief case has meters and probes that can check things most inspectors would miss or not know how to check.

Roger is a retired Army Warrant Officer. After getting out of the Military he had a construction company servicing our area and built a nice business. He built relationships with several area real estate companies. The last few years he re-focused his business to just doing home inspections. His knowledge of local construction gave him a great advantage in that arena.

Recently Roger and his wife Lynn decided they would be retiring and moving to Florida to be closer to family. Roger's home that he rebuilt is now in escrow and there are getting ready to make the big move.

Roger will be a big loss to us and our community. Even though there are several good home inspectors in the area; it will be hard to fill his shoes.

Aloha Roger, good luck in retired life!