Bryant Tutas Broker/REALTOR(R) Tutas Towne Realty, Inc

Hi folks. As I was reading my daily "Early Bird News" put out by our Florida Association of REALTORS® I was enlightened by the real reason for our housing downturn. This may come as a shock to some of you......are you ready?

Speculators may have accelerated housing downturn!

Speculators! Who would of thunk it. Well I sure did. My market, Poinciana Fl, was raped by speculators. It seems like every "investor" from NY and South Florida swooped down on Poinciana to purchase every new construction home they could with the intent to flip for a profit.

The appeal was new houses that could be bought in the mid to high 100s that would have cost them $300,000 to $400,000, or more, in the areas they were from. It seemed like an easy game plan. Purchase for $175,000 in Poinciana and then by the time construction was complete turn around and sell it for $275,000 and make a nice tidy profit. Some speculators got lucky and did.

The problem was they got lucky by selling it to another Investor who then thought they could sell it for $350,000 but couldn't. So now these properties sit empty. They can't sell them and they can't rent them.

Now they are attempting to get a "short sale". But here's the problem. When they purchased the property they bought them under the pretense of being their primary residence. Even though that was never the intent, they figured by saying it was a primary residence, they would qualify for a 100% loan. And they did. But they lied and actually committed "Occupancy fraud".

Now when they apply for the "short sale" their lie will be exposed and the "short sale" will be denied AND the Lender could very well go after them for fraud.

What these "Investors" didn't realize is that "end users" in Poinciana aren't willing to purchase a home for more than about $225,000. Poinciana is a blue collar and service industry community. Most folks that can afford $250,000 for a home will not buy in Poinciana.

Poinciana is now in dire straights and it will take quite a while to come out of it. In January there were 19 closings. There are currently 1,157 active listings. That's a dismal absorption rate of 1.6% or 5 years worth of inventory!!

In all fairness, speculators weren't the only reason there's now a housing downturn. But they were certainly a major part of it in Poinciana Fl. But this too shall pass. It will just take time. In the meantime, there are starting to be some very good buys in Poinciana. Check out the house below. Do you want to buy it?

Copyright © 2008 http://www.brokerbryant.com/ | All Rights Reserved

Hi folks. Earlier today I was preparing my listing presentation for an appointment tomorrow morning. It reminded me of why I LOVE working expired listing.

First, if you solicit expired listings everyday you will get appointments. In fact, you'll get a bunch of them. And that's a good thing as I get to spend a lot of time researching the MLS and practicing my presentation.

And secondly, expired listings are challenging. The reason the listing has expired is almost always pricing. I don't care how good the REALTOR® was if they didn't price the property properly...it will expire. Then I get to step in.

Getting Sellers to price properly can be a big challenge. Fortunately, it's the part of my job I enjoy the must. It's a real good feeling when you can get the Seller to "see the light".

Surprisingly it's not as difficult as you would think. More times than not the Sellers are ready to listen to reason by the time I get there. After all, I'm always the second REALTOR® and sometimes the third or fourth. So they have already experienced a period of no showings.

By the time I get there they are usually a little more anxious to get their property sold and move on with their life.

The Seller, I am meeting with tomorrow morning, has already had their property on the market for 8 months. There have been no showings.

My challenge is that the property is currently listed at $182,500 and my analysis tells me it needs to be at $125,000!!! And that assumes it's in excellent condition.

So, my goal tomorrow, is to get a 30% price reduction. That's a pretty substantial reduction but is certainly achievable. They have enough equity to price right I just have to present the cold hard facts and get them to agree. It should be fun.

The sad part is that if they would have priced at around $150,000 or so, when they first placed it on the market, it would probably have already sold. By overpricing they have already cost themselves about $30,000, or 20%.

That's the reality, that as a professional, I have to get them to understand. It's a tuff job but it's why people pay me.

So folks, if you need experience with listing presentations and pricing, my advice is to start working the expired listings market. You may not be able to list them all but you will certainly get a great education. So go for it! I know I will.

I'll come back tomorrow and let you know how I did. Think I can do it? I do.

Copyright © 2008 www.brokerbryant.com | All Rights Reserved

Hi folks. Have you ever worked with builders that offered to pay your commission, or a portion of it, at time of contract? I have. In fact quite a few builders were offering that during the boom and still are. My policy was always NOT to accept it until the deal closed.

My main reason for doing this was, that if I was working with the buyer, I didn't feel it was fair to get paid until I had completed my job, which was to get them to closing on their new home.

My second reason was because in the fine print, the commission agreement, most likely states that the commission is not due until closing and if the transaction didn't close you would actually have to give the commission back. Well I don't know about you but my commissions don't normally just sit around in my bank account. I spend those suckas!!!

If a deal didn't close I would have hated to have to cut the builder a check for money that I had already spent. As a Broker, I would also make it a policy, not to pay my agent even if the commission was paid in advance by the builder. Could you imagine how difficult it would be to take a commission back from one of your agents?

Well, I guess this is now happening in South Florida. According to this article Related Group sues realty firms, developers are suing Brokers to recoup commissions on deals where the Buyers didn't close. Can't say I blame them. Many Buyers in South Florida and other areas are walking away from deals.

According to the article the Brokers are fighting this on the grounds that the builder kept the deposits so they shouldn't have to return the commissions.

Now folks, I'm not an Attorney but I don't see how in the heck they think this argument will hold up in a court of law. The real estate commission has nothing to do with the deposit. The Builder may very well be entitled to the deposit if the Buyer decided not to close. But whether they are entitled or not it certainly doesn't change the fact that the commissions were paid, albeit in advance, based on the transaction closing.

Anyway, it should be interesting to see how this plays out. Think about this the next time a Builder offers to pay you in advance. It might make sense to make sure the commission does not have to be refunded. Make sure the builder agrees you are getting paid for providing a Buyer NOT for getting it closed. If they don't agree, well.......best wait to get that check after the deal closes. I know I will. Will you?

Copyright © 2008 Broker Bryant's Real Estate Ramblings | All Rights Reserved

By the way, click on that link up there and check out the new and improved format for www.brokerbryant.com. Let me know what you think.

Recently, I re-listed one of my listings that had expired about six weeks ago. At the time it expired the hubby decided they need a new REALTOR® so did not re-list with me. I HATE it when that happens!!!

I had the property on the market for 5 months and had quite a bit of activity but being on the high side of the market, for Poinciana, we never received any offers. Got real close but nothing materialized.

Anyway, the Sellers came down before Christmas and decided to try another REALTOR® that was a friend of a friend of a friend. We all know how that goes.

I'm very close with my Sellers and talk with them all the time. Mrs. Seller did not want to switch but Mr. Seller just felt he needed to try something new. No biggie. It happens in a down market. Folks get anxious. I completely understood and wished them well.

Being the good little Broker that I am, I decided to treat these folks as if they were still my Sellers until such time that I saw the listing pop up as a new listing in the MLS. So every week, just as I had done when the listing was mine, I called the Sellers to check in on them.

Three weeks went by and the property still had not shown up in the MLS yet. Needless to say MY Sellers were very surprised to hear this since they had signed a listing agreement with their new REALTOR® when they were down for Christmas.

So, they figured they had best track down their new REALTOR® to see what was going on. It seems their new REALTOR® didn't work over the Holidays and hadn't had time yet to activate his new listing. Too busy opening presents I guess. Either that or his shift at Wal-Mart was keeping him busy. After all, it WAS the Holidays! Well OK then!!! You're FIRED!!!

Copyright © 2007 Broker Bryant's Real Estate Ramblings| All Rights Reserved

Hi folks. Since I'm always writing about Real Estate in Poinciana Fl I thought I best tell you a little a bit about Poinciana today.

Did you know Poinciana Fl is right smack dab in the center of Florida? It's also the second fastest growing PUD(planned unit development) in the Country. Poinciana is 90 minutes to the East coast (Melbourne-Space Coast) and 90 minutes to the West coast (Clearwater-Tamp Bay).

If you haven't heard of Poinciana before maybe it's because it's not a town or a city. In fact it's actually a part of Kissimmee. Kissimmee is just a little south of Orlando and about 15 minutes to Disney World.

Poinciana has a population of approximately 67,000 people and encompasses two counties. The north side is in Osceola county and the south side is in Polk county.

Poinciana was plotted out as a master planned community in the 1960s. At that time the developer was a company called General Development(GDC) Corporation. You may have heard of them from the Florida land scams in the ‘60s and ‘70s. It is my understanding that sometime in the early ‘70s Poinciana was purchase by Gulf American Land Corporation(GAL) another company notorious for land scams.

In 1973 the first homes were built in Poinciana. At this time, Poinciana was a retirement destination and homes were built around the Poinciana Golf and Racquet Club. There was only a one lane road to get into Poinciana which was miles from anything. It was literally in the middle of the boonies.

Poinciana, over the next few years, grew to a small population of 2,000 to 3,000 people. There was the country club, a small farm store and miles and miles of roads. Not much happened in Poinciana until the mid ‘80s when GAL went bankrupt and out of this, Avatar Holdings, the current developer was born. The next 10 years or so Poinciana just sat with an occasional home being sold.

When I started selling in Poinciana back in 1994 there were still only about 8,000 people. So it took 20 years to reach 8,000 and only 14 more to reach 67,000!!! We have room for more than 200,000.

OK, I'm done boring you for now. If you want to read about the history of Florida real estate check out this white paper by J. Bruce Cummings Jr. from the Florida Appraisal Institute. It's an excellent read from Indians to "filling in" Miami to land scams and more.

Also, check out my new listing in Poinciana(below). Where else can you find a 6 bedroom 3 bath home with a pool for less than $250,000!!! Want to buy it?

Copyright © 2007 Broker Bryant Real Estate Ramblings | All Rights Reserved