Christopher and Stephanie Somers - Realtors - Philadelphia Real Estate

Have you heard the great news?

  Remax Affiliates, soon to be Remax Access, is moving to Northern Liberties !

Any day now we'll be in our new space on the 5th floor with its great views of all of Philadelphia at The Rialto Building, a 7 story all glass professional building.  It is part of the Piazza project, an area surrounded by an incredible array of gastro pubs, fine restaurants and casual fooderies as well as shopping, galleries, boutiques, and entertainment.

The excitement is building amongst our staff and clients who all love our more centralized location which will allow us to serve a great portion of the Riverfront Community as well as serving the Philadelphia, Bucks and Montgomery real estate markets.

Here's Chris from his new office space saying hello and welcoming you to see the amazing views from the Remax office space of the Rialto Building in Northern Liberties:

Contact us today for more info regarding the new location in Northern Liberties at thesomersteam@yahoo.com or @remaxaffiliates or @phillyrealty on Twitter !  Stay tuned for more information and updates to come !

Related Posts:

Remax Affiliates is Moving

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If interested in buying or selling properties in Philadelphia, contact Chris and Stephanie Somers at thesomersteam@yahoo.com or 215-400-2612.  For investment properties, check out our new investor site at Philly Investor Hub!  If interested in checking out our new office in Northern Liberties, let us know !

The Somers  Team - Philadelphia Real Estate  

Search the MLS Properties Here in Philadelphia

Areas of specialty include: Northern Liberties, Old City, Center City, Fishtown, Graduate Hospital, Art Museum, Queen Village, Pennsport, Old Kensington, Port Richmond, Bridesburg, Society Hill, Loft District, Spring Garden and more !

Here are a couple of things that Stephanie and I were thinking about this week:

1. Smartphone revolution- I switched from a Blackberry to a Palm Pre this past weekend to have a touch screen. I have not been super happy with my blackberry, plus my wife Stephanie has been very happy with her Palm. These gadgets are just amazing. I think soon everyone (outside of business professionals) will have smartphones. So if you agree, own some Apple (APPL), Research in Motion (RIMM) or Palm (PALM) in your portfolio (disclosure - we own PALM) and I am sure we own the others in various mutual funds.

2. Toll Brothers - Did the recent news that Toll Brothers announced suggest that the end of the housing market has come and gone ? Their press release is worth reading - you can read it here .

3. Lawrence Yun at NAR - 2010 forecast - Wow !!!! See it here: 2010 Sales to Rise 15 percent . I think most Realtors will really like what he is saying about Realtors incomes for 2010. I am bullish on the economy and the housing market in 2010 but think his forecast is too optimistic.

4. Lesson Learned - "Fear is fueled by lack of knowledge, and only by facing that fear can you overcome that fear." Stephanie Somers

For the longest time we have been putting off buying a music system for ourselves. Music happens to be something that we both enjoy very much and is extremely therapeutic, whether we listen to punk rock or a classical composer that we do not understand. Thus, we finally went and bought something that we will enjoy for our home. But the fear of all the technology involved was really a deterrent for us. We sucked it up, we bought it, we got tangled up in instructions, freaked out several times, but we made it through. The fear is behind us and have a future of musical bliss ! HARD WORK ALWAYS PAYS OFF !

5. Expertise- In order to be an expert at something, you need to have many many hours of experience. It takes a long long time to be an expert. We agree with Malcolm Gladwell, author of "Outliers" where he talks about the most successful folks that become experts at something put in about 10,000 hours into that. That seems to be the common denominator ! Is a lot of hours but so be it !

Please comment on what your thoughts are in regards to these items or please share your own random thoughts from your week !

RE/MAX Chief Executive Officer, Margaret Kelly, talks about the government's extension/expansion of the first-time homebuyer tax credit. Certain existing homeowners can now qualify for the credit and homebuyers have until April 30, 2010 to put a contract on a house.

If you need further assistance in understanding how this homebuyer tax credit applies to you or need assistance in locating a new home please contact the Somers Team today - we look forward to hearing from you.

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If interested in buying or selling properties in Philadelphia, contact Chris and Stephanie Somers at thesomersteam@yahoo.com or 215-400-2612.  For investment properties, check out our new investor site at Philly Investor Hub!  If interested in checking out our new office in Northern Liberties, let us know !

The Somers  Team - Philadelphia Real Estate  

Search the MLS Properties Here in Philadelphia

Areas of specialty include: Northern Liberties, Old City, Center City, Fishtown, Graduate Hospital, Art Museum, Queen Village, Pennsport, Old Kensington, Port Richmond, Bridesburg, Society Hill, Loft District, Spring Garden and more !

Each week I will start to post some random thoughts related to both the national real estate market and our local Philadelphia real estate market in addition to related thoughts about the economy, investing and so forth.

October flurry- I met with Jim Makara today on a home inspection in Old Kensington. Jim mentioned that October was his best month EVER for home inspections. He did 57 of them !! Wow ! This was more for Jim than any given month even in the heyday in 2004 and 2005. On a side note, Jim is one of the best home inspectors in the Philadelphia area. His company is Countywide Home Inspections .

Home Buyer Tax Credit Extension- I do not expect the extension to have a huge lift on the market November through January. In fact, expect these months to be slow, maybe even VERY slow. For the most part, I think that every first time homebuyer that wanted to purchase a property DID. It will take a few months to gear this back up again which could make for a very busy spring. Hear that sellers ?? Have your property on the market in January and February. For more info on the credit, see this wonderful blog by Loreeno Yeo:

First Time Home Buyer Tax Credit Extended and Expanded to Include Repeat Buyers

Investors left out ? - I still wonder why there are no incentives for investors for non-owner occupant properties. These are the ones that we need real stimulus as the financing is the hardest to procure !

Realtor.com - It appears that Realtor.com is fading fast. If you did not see the action in MOVE this week, I would check it out. (MOVE is the publicly traded company that owns and operates Realtor.com) MOVE got clobbered on a weak quarter as well as a sluggish forecast. The value of enhanced listings on Realtor.com is not nearly as valuable as it used to be. I am glad we decided to focus on other areas of the Internet for our Internet Marketing.

Investment Idea- There are many regional banks that are not carrying the bad loans... they have strong balance sheets and super management. These banks will benefit dramatically from all the other banks that are going out of business courtesy of the FDIC. Spot them out in you area and consider making an investment in them. These stocks could easily double or triple in the next couple of years. Jim Cramer wrote about this as well in "Getting Back to Even".

Customer Service- If you are a bank doing a REFI for a local Realtor, by all means give that Realtor customer service in terms of returning calls or emails. Otherwise, you just lost a great referral source. This happened to me recently. It was frustrating, but I just took my business to a different bank. Not just my REFI business, but all of the accounts of our main office / business as well. And guess where those future referrals will be going ?

Short Sales- I get at least one call a week from companies wanting to negotiate the whole short sale deal (saying I do not have to do anything) and of course they would be the buyer. Every time I say I am not interested. How can I tell my seller "Oh by the way, I know you hired me, but now I am going to have some third-party company negotiate your short sale for you. Basically what they are trying to do is defraud your lender into giving them a great deal and bribe me to do both sides of the commission as well as the resale of the property". Just watch, we will be hearing more about this subject in the future.

Please comment or elaborate on any or all of these thoughts !

Philadelphia Short Sales:  A Winning Formula for Short Sale Success !!

Stephanie Somers here from The Somers Team.   Call me a pessimist.  Call me a realist. Call me what you will, but I never really been called "lucky". Though in hindsight, perhaps I am particularly with Philadelphia Short Sales.

I think I may have stumbled onto what seems like a formula for a successful short sale:

P + R + L = SSS

Pessimism + Realism + Luck = Short Sale Success

This formula is based on 3 different factors to be taken with a dose of humor and awe at the utter randomness I have unveiled ! Too much Freakonomics !

1) Back-out Buyers (Be careful what you wish for)

2) Customer Service Representatives

3) Good ole Lady Luck

Pessimism Spurred by Back-out Buyers

As a Realtor partner of Chris Somers the Team Leader,  I pretty much do a majority of the back end work on our Short Sales. I will call on Chris,  nick name "big guns", when I have exhausted all of my charm with the negotiators of Short Sale deals. Very recently I have taken notice that "Back-out Buyers" are a growing phenomenon with almost every Short Sale that parks itself on my desk lately. It has become so prevalent that I have vowed from now on, I will assume that at least 1 buyer will back away from every short sale we do between the time we begin the process until we reach the end.  Call me a pessimist ! I have started to tell our clients to expect to go through more than 1 buyer during the Short Sale process. I have also begun to develop a list of Back-up Buyers in the event that a Back-out occurs.  If or when it happens, I want my client to be prepared. The short sale process is difficult enough for the seller and if they are blindsided by a back-out buyer, they may loose hope in the process and loose faith in me thier Realtor and advocate.

Realism:  It is what it is.  Deal with it.

I think we'd all agree that educating the consumer is certainly part of the Real Estate profession. And I will be the first to admit that there are Realtors out there that could use a few tutorials.  I wonder why the Bank's Customer Service Employees, the ones that heard all of the incoming Short Sale calls, do not have more education regarding Short Sales and Customer Service ? In my experience, it is not uncommon for the customer service person in the Short Sale department of any given bank, not to know what they are talking about. The right hand typically does not know what the left hand is doing. They may not know how to use the computer software to access the note on your file.  They may not fully read the digital files and miss telling you about important tings that will impact your Short Sale. They may not be familiar enough with the terms used in the notes to feel comfortable reading them to you, and thus omit very important information. This is not true in all cases but it is sadly true in many many many cases. I mean no insult. It is what it is. I expect it and deal with it though persistence.

Just the other day I found that one of our short sale files was "closed-out". A close-out often occurs when the Short Sale Package is incomplete and the negotiator gives up trying to work on the file due to lack of data or communication from the customer or Realtor. They just shut the file down and focus on another file. I do not blame them. They are beyond busy.  BUT, they closed-out one of MY Short Sales!!!  They claimed that they have been emailing me for a week or two and I had not returned their email ! Absurd I say ! I had called at least 2x per week for the last 3 months and each time I called I had to give all of my contact info to the representative including my email and phone number every time ! Somehow they wrote down the wrong email once.  Then they used the wrong email address.  Talk about luck... and when I had called in as usual the customer service reps I spoke to  NEVER communicated that they were trying to contact me. I was tipped off that something was wrong when I was transferred to an automated message: DO NOT CALL AGAIN FOR ANOTHER 30 DAYS. IF YOU DO, IT WILL JEOPARDIZE THE SHORT SALE PROCESS. (Bank of America) Luckily I had caught this mistake within minutes of the Close-out and was able to salvage the process. I guess luck was on my side.

No logical explanation can make sense of what can sometimes transpire with Short Sales.  Just go into it with Pessimism + Realism + Luck and you may get a taste of Short Sale Success !

Good luck out there !