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Quick Fixes to Sell Your House Faster

Image of Vacuum Cleaner Sometimes good real estate stories don't come from real estate. This was a lesson in paying attention to detail which I experienced (carelessly, mea culpa) some years back.

I wanted to trade in my sports coupe for something a little more practical. I knew I took care of the car, doing regular maintenance, going easy on the clutch, and putting well under the 12,000 mile per year average on it even though it had 5 or 6 years on it. So I took the car into the dealer to see what I could get.

The manager at this Silicon Valley car dealership came out with his checklist and furrowed his brow as he walked around the car. He ran his fingers through the dust on the tires, opened the door and moved the large Coke from McDonald's I had been drinking on the way there, into the rear cup holder which held the loose change from that purchase, so that he could get to the gearshift and put the car into reverse.

Little did I know that this would cause $8.95 to lead to $8,000, but probably not in the way you're thinking.

Mar.04.2007 [ Filed under: Bay Area Real Estate, Home Owners ] Comment Here »

Smells That Keep Your House From Selling Faster

Image of 23 Cologne Like a lot of real estate agents, I go out to see a lot of properties in any given week. But as part of my research, I pay special attention to ones that have been vacant or on the market for a long time.

Sometimes there will be a subtlety in the title or a major defect that keeps the house from selling. Other times, the house is just economically obsolete and will have trouble selling at an unrealistic asking price. Still other times, the marketing might not have been aggressive enough.

Regardless, I look very closely at the reaction of my clients or even people just walking into an open house when they first walk inside. From that experience, it seems clear that nothing damages that first impression like a bad smell.

That damage costs much more than the few hundred dollars it takes to fix the issues. Here's a list of several common ones and what you can do about them.

Feb.22.2007 [ Filed under: Bay Area Real Estate, Home Owners, Silicon Valley News ] 2 Comments »

Oak Trees and Surprising Closing Costs

Image of Peace Sign Just when you thought Berkeley was becoming a gentrified shell of its former self, with the surprisingly large population of young Republicans there, KGO updates a fantastic story about local activists who are opposing the construction of a Cal gymnasium, which threatens a local oak grove.

It started off in December like any other stereotypical tree protest with demonstrators climbing the trees and making temporary residences out of their arboreal friends — stereotypical until today…

Feb.22.2007 [ Filed under: Bay Area Info, Bay Area Real Estate, Home Buyers, Home Owners, Silicon Valley News ] Comment Here »

Carnival of Real Estate for Consumers and Carnival of Improvement

Image of Circus Tent Many thanks to Teresa Boardman at the St. Paul Real Estate Blog who hosts the Carnival of Real Estate for Consumers this week! Hosting blog carnivals isn't always easy and she chose the Silicon Valley Real Estate Blog article, How Home Buyers and Sellers Get Caught in Straw Scams for "a win" this week.

A lot of other bloggers put in great content for this carnival and instead of highlighting the "winning" articles, I'm going to shout three pieces from their sites which may also be helpful to you.

Feb.20.2007 [ Filed under: Home Buyers, Home Owners, Silicon Valley News ] Comment Here »

Is Your Real Estate Agent a Double Agent?

Let’s say you walk into an open house and you’re approached by the friendly and knowledgeable real estate agent sitting at the dining room table. You’re very interested in the house and she says that she can represent you in the transaction.

Image of Caution Sign If you agree, you could be giving up your right to an advocate who solely represents your interests by signing up with a double agent — in real estate parlance, a dual agent.

This exact situation also occurs when you see a property on the internet and call the listing agent directly. She then offers to represent you in the purchase or refers you to someone else in the office. You may have given up your right to someone who only represents you.

Feb.19.2007 [ Filed under: Bay Area Real Estate, Home Buyers, Home Owners, Silicon Valley News ] Comment Here »

Why You Need Real Estate Agents and Why You Don’t Trust Them

Have a look at A and B in this picture. They're obviously different colors: B is lighter than A, right? How people react to that statement is the essence of why people need real estate agents, but it's also why they don't trust them.

Feb.16.2007 [ Filed under: Bay Area Real Estate, Home Buyers, Home Owners ] 1 Comment »

How Home Buyers and Sellers Get Trapped in Straw Scams

Let's say that you've just gotten engaged and that you and your fiancee find your dream house. But since you're just getting started on the rest life, you can't get a reasonably-priced mortgage.

Your parents have a pretty good credit score and a strong income, so you ask them to buy the house for you and then transfer ownership to you using a trust deed. You promise to pay them on the mortgage that you couldn't qualify for yourselves.

Image of Drinking Straws

Your parents are acting as a "straw" through which you are getting ownership of a house. This scenario seems relatively innocent, but it's illegal and leaves your parents on the hook for mortgage payment responsibilities on the house you now own. You are now a straw scammer.

There's another class of straw scammers that causes real estate bubbles all over the country and you can stop them dead in their tracks.

Feb.10.2007 [ Filed under: Bay Area Real Estate, Mortgages, Home Buyers, Home Owners, Silicon Valley News ] 2 Comments »

Beware The “Wisdom of Crowds”

Image of Brains My-currency.com is getting a lot of ink after Silicon Valley's VentureBeat coverage of this new real estate site.

The differentiator of this site is that people can tell the site what they think a piece of real estate is worth. The opinions of all the people who express an opinion is aggregated into a CrowdValue, which is my-currency's official value of the real estate in question.

The name CrowdValue is loosely based on the book The Wisdom of Crowds by James Suroweicki in which Suroweicki asserts that collective thought is often smarter than the individuals who participate in it. Really?

Jan.31.2007 [ Filed under: Bay Area Real Estate, Home Buyers, Home Owners, Silicon Valley News ] Comment Here »

Do-It-Yourself Projects That Will Help You Sell Your House

CNNMoney.com published an article that gives you tips on 5 small home improvement projects that you can do yourself before your house goes on sale. They rate the projects by skill level required, how much it costs, and how much you'd have to pay a professional to do it.

Image of Wooden Room

They note that because it can be difficult to recoup the full cost of the improvements, you should concentrate on what you can do yourself (i.e. without a contractor) and really home in on the rooms that people focus on.

The Wall Street Journal also lists improvements you should avoid when selling your house. This article isn't as detailed or thorough as the CNNMoney.com home improvement article but does provide some insight into common pitfalls.

Many times it will be easier and less expensive to offer your prospects a credit towards improvements rather than doing them yourself. Prospects like having their choice of styles (your buyer's taste is something that's difficult to predict) and you won't have to take on the risk of performing or contracting the work.

Do We Need More Sites That Post House Listings?

I'm not an MLS apologist. I believe that information wants to be free and that agents should be good interpreters of information and not gatekeepers, but we're coming to a point where listing real estate is going to get much worse before it gets better.

While Zillow.com made the big splash in allowing people to list their homes for sale, the Merc announces that HomeGain and HouseValues are joining the fray. HouseValues (which, in full disclosure, I hold an ever shrinking stock position in) will make it easier to post on Google classifieds and Oodle, while HomeGain will be facilitating listings to its own web site.

Maze

What concerns me isn't the availability of this information, but that people looking at real estate will not be able to make decisions based on the highest quality information. Here's why.

Dec.15.2006 [ Filed under: Bay Area Real Estate, Home Buyers, Home Owners ] Comment Here »

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