Rebecca White

Wow-two ratified contracts last week! Six of my nine listings are in escrow in one form or another and I am expecting more offers on 2-3 of these plus on another active listing.

Who said that the market is slow????

Granted these are short sales and take more time but I would rather be busy doing lots of little transactions than be bored waiting for the one big one.

I am aware that many of us do not like short sales. Most agents I know don't like them; many prospective purchasers do not like having to wait for 2-3-4 months (sometimes longer) for lender approval.

I am in one short sale-with B of A and Chase-going on 7 months now. If I didn't care about my clients, I would have thrown in the towel a long time ago. Another lender (Wells Fargo Home Mortgage) deleted our package because they claimed that they didn't have something that had been faxed to them three times. I got a timely offer, over asking, and a back-up and their 3-4 weeks to respond has turned into 2 ½ months and we still hear 30 more days every time we speak to them.

I am soooooooooooooo annoyed with these lenders. Why can't they approve these transactions in a timely manner? Van anything be done to compel them to respond? To communicate? I am very frustrated with every lender but one with whom I have dealt-and that was a year ago. If the lenders are so overwhelmed, why don't they use those billions of dollars of bail-out money to hire more staff in their loss mitigation departments????????

In one of three I am now doing with Countrywide, I faxed the package in March 5, again the 13th and yet again March 23. Finally when we followed up on the third submission, a very nice woman gave us her email and Voila! we were in the system the next day.

When we asked her why no one had done this before, she said that we should have asked for an email and to speak with a supervisor. My client and I told her that we had repeatedly asked for an email as the faxes were lost in space and had asked the last guy with whom we spoke for a supervisor and he refused!

Now I have got to go through this two more times with Countrywide.

And what really angers me is that after all of this hard work, they have the gall to not only reduce my commission from 6% to 5%--which I can live with-but then they want me to cut it even more (my deal from H*** with Chase as the second).

There are times I wonder why I bother with all of this aggravation and then I realize it is for two or three reasons. Most importantly, I do care about the people who have lost their wealth in their homes. Concurrent with that is their gratitude provides me with more referrals and future business. Lastly, the reality is that short sales are here and will be here for a while. (If I can figure out how to attach or copy an excel spread sheet, I will provide the San Francisco short sale stats in another post.)

~Rebecca White

Ouch-the backlash! I am befuddled by some of your comments (to my last blog post). Yes, it is good to get comments but part of being an independent contractor is just that--being able to make choices and some difficult decisions.

I have tracked a number of homes that have gone down, down, down in price. This one on Church was $112,000 when I first saw it. It was marketed by several brokers and went down to $85,000, less, less, $50-something and finally sold for $34,639. OMIGOD-the land or sewer or whatever is worth more than that!! I showed it several times to no avail. In November of 2005, there was a loan amount of $312,000 and it is assessed for over $200,000. Someone got an amazing bargain!!!

Fortunately, when some of these are REOs, the asset manager can offer bonuses and higher commissions to attract a cooperating broker to effect a sale. This is not always the case.

When a property is "controlled" by an attorney and a probate judge and the attorney won't go to the probate judge to do what it takes to sell something-even when the seller is willing to pay more out of her pocket-what can be done?

It is easy to judge unless one walks a mile in someone else's shoes. Sorry, but I work hard enough as it is for small amounts (less than $2000). At times, the short sales, REOs and first-time buyers do not seem worth the aggravation. I like to think that it all averages out but right now, my average list price is less than $300,000 and many of my listings are shared with someone else and/or referrals to boot.

I am not greedy nor a snob, I'd just like to get a paycheck again someday. :(

Wow, it wasn't easy but I canceled my listing of the little house that didn't sell in East Oakland.

Cute house--needed work, but great potential.

It is a sad state of affairs when price becomes irrelevant and some places won't sell no matter how low they are priced. Lowering the price of one acts as a downward spiral on the surrounding home prices.

No showings, no phone calls, nada. All someone would have had to do was buy, fix up with $20-30,000, rent out with cash flow and wait 3-5 years to triple their investment.

Of course, no one can predict the future, but I can be optimistic, right?

Wow, I am so bummed. For the first time, I am unable to sell a normal listing. This is neither a short sale nor an REO—well, it is a probate and according to the attorney, the court won’t allow more than a 6% commission. This means if I were to lower the price again to a mere $75,000—though not convinced that it would sell at this price—my net commission would be less than $700!!!

Since I am now dating my company’s broker, he told the owner and she told me to cancel the listing. The reward isn’t worth the risk to them? Or me?

I find all of this difficult to believe for two reasons. First, when I sold real estate in Oregon 10-12 years ago, I sold many condos and land in the $50-70,000 range. My biggest sale was considerably less than $300,000. Despite the “nickels and dimes”, I was able to garner $3 million in volume to be an MMDP (the successor to the “Million Dollar Club, stands for Multi-Million Dollar Producer). At one time, selling a million dollars in real estate was a big deal. Now it’s not enough (volume and resulting commission) to rent a studio in the City.

The second reason is that this is a cute house. The land was worth more than $100,000 at one time. Yes, it needs work but the potential!!! This is a solid working class East Oakland neighborhood. Some original details are intact. The lot is deep.

Do I regret taking this listing? (You may recall my ambivalence in a previous post or two?

I know that with some REO’s—and desperate sellers—commissions are 3.5 to 5%--and sometimes a bonus--to the Buyer’s Agent. Somehow the probate court won’t allow this—despite the trustee and beneficiary being the same person? (I have a buddy who specializes in probate—maybe he can do battle with the judge and attorney better than I can.)

I guess that all of this begs the question: Are there really homes that will NOT sell in today’s market regardless of price???? It appears that way to me—what do you think?

P.S. In checking the recent MLS comps, two houses are pending under $50,000 and four recent sales were under $50,000. If my soon-to-former listing sold at this price, I would make $210. I am glad that that I didn’t waste $100 on a sign!

The Power of Intention is AMAZING!!! A few weeks ago, I was telling Tim (Charlene's husband-they own the building and Charlene owns the company) that I was going to get 10 listings. I was not so sure that I believed myself but I boldly put it out there. Of course, Tim goes running to Charlene and she asks me about it. So I thought about the six or seven in hand and the birds in the tree-and I said "yes, I am working on 10 listings". And sure enough, I now have-for the FIRST TIME EVER in my life-TEN LISTINGS!!! (And part of the amazing aspect of this is that these are not even the 10 I thought-a few came out of the blue!)

Heck, I got three this past week. Now, I know that REO agents have dozens-if not scores of listings-and many "Mega Agents" as we call them at Keller Williams have 20-30 at a time. And many of these have top agents have teams. I do not have a team per se, but I have started teaming up with different people for different things. My colleague, Carol, helps me with short sales in Marina Bay where we currently have 2 active listings and one pending (see How to LOSE $200,000 in 18 Months?!? (Or WHAT Bailout????) and my broker, Dennis, helps with listings that are tenant-occupied.

What is nice about these arrangements is that they are flexible and we agree on the terms and conditions under we will work together. I have somehow developed a knack for getting listings and being knowledgeable about short sales (7 out of 10 are short sales). I can sell a short sale. I hear more and more negative comments about short sales from friends and other agents. Are short sales my favorite type of listing? Honestly-No. But I like the idea of helping someone out of a bad situation and I know that when their situation improves, they will remember me. Three of my current listings are directly or indirectly due to a satisfied short sale client last year.

I am grateful for people's trust in me and the opportunity to be productive when many agents are high-tailing it out of real estate. I am especially happy to be with a company like Keller Williams.

Bottom line, I am a hard-working agent who is well-supported by a great company or I would not have the success that I am having. Short sales are not easy nor fun but they are an ever-increasing part of the Bay Area real estate market. Even in San Francisco, short sales account for 15-20% of the housing inventory with over 100 short sales currently available. (More short sale info available at my website: www.ShortSaleSF.com .)