Sacramento Real Estate Blog

Purva Brown has the listing on this great opportunity for a general contractor or accomplished handyman. We have the pest report on file, and there’s a fair amount of work to be done, but if you’re handy and want an opportunity to put some sweat equity into owning a terrific home at a great price, this may be for you.

Handyman’s Special — Huge Price Reduction

Location: Sacramento, CA

Investors and contractors! Fix the pest damange and you have a fabulous investment! This home features a family room addition with permits, a full garage, big backyard, and possible RV parking. Central heat and Air. Eight year old roof.

Information

Contact Information

Purva Brown

1 877 735-5657

Contact Reply Form

Forward to a Friend

View Other Flyers

Pricing

Asking Price: $149,000.00

Property Location

7710 25th Ave
Sacramento, CA 95820
View Map

Links

Schedule a Showing

View Details

Listing Agent’s Blog

Features

Bedrooms: 4

Bathrooms: 2

Parking: Garage

Year Built: 1952

Lot Size: .18 acres

Garage Size: 1 car

School District: Sacramento Unified

Square Footage: 1250

Agent Name: Purva Brown

Broker: Elite Properties

MLS #: 70011450

Powered by vFlyer.com

Equal Housing Opportunity

VFLYER ID: 1160407

At least four members of social real estate web site, ActiveRain, have gone on record with the position that those of us who post your real estate listings to the “Professional” category of that web site should be “publicly flogged”.

This in spite of the fact that ActiveRain advertises itself as “a free online community for real estate professionals designed to help them promote and grow their business.”

The thread where all this took place was in the members only section so you as a real estate seller can’t read it, but here’s my public summary of where we were after about forty-five comments or so. (Actually there’s nothing especially onerous about being a member, since there’s a “Real Estate - Other” category, so if you happen to sign up you can read this).

There’s a common lament that you’ll hear echoed on real estate blogs day in and day out: “Why, oh why, don’t consumers trust us? Why do they have such a low opinion of us?”

I don’t know. Could it be that you have no problem with begging a seller to list their most important investment at five or six percent of its value and then instead of marketing it aggressively like you’re being paid to do you go up on ActiveRain and argue that people marketing listings is an inconvenience for your royal preciousness?

It’s possible.

When Purva Brown joined us recently she brought two listings with her that aren’t yet in our vFlyer account. They’re going into vFlyer and the sites that vFlyer can feed either way, since that much is noncontroversial.

As for the rest, I’m open to debate on the issue, but offhand I’m thinking Thursday will be an excellent day for a flogging.

Readers, what do you say? Do I go under the lash or not?

Today Purva’s journey to the bright side of the force was complete, as we went over to the El Dorado County Association or Realtors® to get her signed up with the local board.  This is symbolic move more than anything, really, since we all in the Metrolist MLS area and therefore cover the whole greater Sacramento (Yolo / Placer / El Dorado) area.  After the usual Realtor® ritual (”the sharing of the paperwork”), we went over to Colina de Oro (which translates, by the way, as “Hills of Gold”).

There I had the pleasure of meeting Huck Ferrill, a mortgage banker with First Security Loan who comes highly recommended by Purva, and who impressed me as a highly competent and knowledgeable lender who’s very thorough with his borrowers.  I expect to hear more from Huck in the future because Purva recommends him so highly.

One of the things I think about when I talk to other Realtors® in the company about the good people they use to get things done for our clients is that at some point we really should have a recommended vendor list.   Even though we can’t guarantee the performance of another, we always think it’s helpful when we can give referrals to folks who do an excellent job, whether it’s lenders, title people, contractors and tradespeople of various types, etc.  So that’s something to add to my big list of things to do.

So if you’re shopping for a loan, I am confident that Huck can do a superior job for you, and it’s at least very much worth your while to get a quote from him.  Huck can be reached at 916-788-9802, or visit him online at http://www.huckferrill.com.

This is a by the way post, but I believe it is an important by the way post. After the recent wildfire in Tahoe which I have written about http://www.sacramentohomeshopper.com/blog/2007/06/26/tahoe-fire-and-this-realtors-realization/ I realized most people are not prepared for the worst if it happens. Most people have home insurance, but what about replacing all the things we have in our houses? Here are some tips:

1. Do check your home insurance regularly to see if you’re fully protected. Do not assume you are.
2. Do not let your home insurance lapse. If your mortgage company is paying the bill through an impound account, make sure they have paid it each year.
3. Real estate is one of the best investments precisely because you can insure it. Can you imagine insuring the value of your stock portfolio? If you do move from your primary residence and turn it into a rental property, do not forget to change your insurance to “tenant-occupied investment property.” Your homeowner’s insurance will not protect you in this case.
4. Take a home inventory. Most home insurance will cover articles in your home, but it helps to have a list of everything in your house. There are quite a few internet sites that will let you do just that - upload pics for every room and list inventory. I use A Safe Spot at www.asafespot.com but there are others. Google “home inventory” and pick the one you like.
5. Lastly, do not use your home insurance unless you really need it. If you do, be sure to save receipts of what you fixed. When it comes time to sell your home, the buyers might run into trouble getting home insurance if there’s been a claim in the last three years on the property unless you can prove that there has been work performed. After a 45 day escrow, you don’t want something like this to hold you back from the sale!

Sacramento’s Arden Arcade (95825) (or “Arden / Arcade Creek”, if you prefer) includes some of my favorite areas, including the condos along La Riviera drive, which in my opinion are well priced and have excellent access to highway 50, downtown, and Sac State.

95825 is one of five zip codes that Metrolist describes as “Arden / Arcade Creek”, along with 95815, 95864, 95841, and 95821.  Needless to say, that’s one pretty big “neighborhood”, one which varies considerably in price and amenities.

This May, the average home sold in Arden Arcade for $317,413, on the face of it only a one tenth of one per cent drop from last year’s average sale price of $317,887.  Similarly, the median price did not change much, only 2.7%, from $318,500 last May to $310,00 this May.

Under the surface, however, things changed a bit more dramatically, as this year’s buyer purchased an 11.6% larger home (average square feet of 1453 this year compared to 1302 square feet last year).  So on a sold price per square foot basis, prices fell some 10.5%, from $244.15 on average last May, to $218.45 per square foot on average this May.

The expired to sold ratio is up from last year, but is moderate at 47.8%.  We have approximately eight months of inventory in Arden Arcade.  The percentage of short sales and foreclosures that we have in inventory in Arden / Arcade (15.5%) is moderate compared to Sacramento County as a whole (26%).

For more information about Arden Arcade, or any of the zip codes in Sacramento County, check out our index of Sacramento Neighborhoods by Zip Code.  To be honest, this isn’t the friendliest user interface I ever created, but if you follow the links you’ll find lots of useful information including:

• Average pricing
• Maps of the zip codes
• Maps of listings for sale and recently sold for several individual neighborhoods.  (Our neighborhood or “subdivision” database is not complete, so if there’s something you want to be included, let us know and we’ll try to add it).

Enjoy!

Last month we took a look at some Sacramento County Foreclosure and Short Sale Data, and at that time had MLS data to show active short sales at about 24% of inventory.  (Actually you’ll note the chart shows 11% + 12%, so that looks like 23%, but there’s a rounding error going on).

OK, I get it.  Is there a rounding error or not is not an interesting question, to all but the most bow-tie wearing of math geeks.

Here are the interesting questions:  What are this month’s numbers, and how do they compare to last month’s?  Do we have more foreclosures and short sales than last year, or less?

Well, darn, sports fans.  We have more.  Of our unsold inventory in MLS, here’s the breakdown.  Now we’re up to some 26% of overall inventory.  In Sacramento County as of this morning, our MLS inventory contains:

1,345 Real Estate Owned (Bank Repos) or 12.18% of total

1,533 Short Sales, or 13.88% of total

8,163 All others, or 73.93% of total.

(From now on, if anyone asks me the very common question “Do you have bank repos?”, I’m going to be fairly tempted to say, “Yes, as a matter of fact, we have 1,345 of them.  Let’s go pick one out.”)

Here it is graphically:

But the really, really $64,000 questions are these:

• How big will those pie pieces get?
• What time will it be when they’re as big as they’re going to get?

We don’t realistically expect the distressed properties to make up 100% of the total, since even if the market goes somewhere unpleasant in a handbasket, there’ll always be a number of “traditional” sales mixed in.

Have we posted the price curve lately?  I’m really starting to feel like old Ross Perot here.  So many charts.  So little time.

When I was in elementary school, there was this kid, Bob Pouliot, who as it happens is now music director and conductor for the City of Fairfax Band.  I knew if I Googled him he’d be in charge of some orchestra somewhere or otherwise pretty famous, since he probably had more musical talent than any other kid I knew.

So anyway, Bob Pouliot was quite a fan of Peanuts comics, and taught us all how to draw Snoopy, which was pretty slick.  He also got me reading Peanut comics collections.  I remember this one comic that had a concept in it that I didn’t understand as a kid, and that ruined the joke, but at least I got to learn the concept from my mother.

So two peanuts characters are talking (I forget which ones):

“I’ve made my New Year’s Resolutions.”

“Are you kidding?  New Year’s Resolutions?   It’s April !”

“I have my own fiscal year.”

So that’s how I learned what a fiscal year was.

My New Year’s Resolutions

So here I am, at the end of June, having just turned the death defying age of forty-eight, on the verge of perhaps spitting out a new years resolution or two.

Resolved:

• I’m going to lose weight.  That’s pretty vague, isn’t it?  But I really should, and let’s face it, that one is the classic, the gold standard, the cadillac of resolutions.  If new years resolutions were a president, that one would be Baberaham Lincoln.
• I’m going to work on a more comprehensive business strategy than I have now, which goes outside my comfort zone significantly in the following areas:

• Listing presentation.
• Client follow-up.

The Sac Bee today reports that an Irvine-based foreclosure liquidator sold a house a minute to investors hungry for a bargain on Sacramento homes. For all the fear of a real estate bubble that everyone seems to be talking about, you have to admit a house a minute bodes well for all of us invested in our homes and investment properties.

Buyers on the fence, are you listening?

We’ve made some decent progress tonight on our Elite Online Listings Program, both in general and in playing catch up for one of our listings.

So here it is, what’s going on:

• We’ve published a slide show featuring Bridget’s gorgeous 5 bedroom - 3 bath listing on East Marlette in Ione.
• This being the second of Bridget’s listings that we’ve set to Beethoven, we of course had to ask this musical follow-on question.
• Deciding it was well worth it to our sellers and to us, we took out the credit card and upgaded from our FREE vFlyer account to a much better looking and better featured paid account.  One thing that happened right away is that we got a much prettier vFlyer Featured Listing Page.
• Of course while we were at that Beethoven Stuff for Bridget’s East Marlette Listing, we also got it entered into VFlyer (here), and got it posted on Craigslist as well.

If the spelling of “plaque” is incorrect, please excuse it. It’s the first time I’ve received one. Anyway, nothing against Re/Max but when I went in to pick up my license today I received a little box with a plaque for my addition into the “Executive Club” - my outstanding sales in 2006.

Hmmm… all this along with the release for my listings.

It gives me great pleasure to announce that Purva Brown has joined Elite Properties as a Realtor®, after several years of experience in that capacity at REMAX Gold and Prudential real estate.

I first contacted Purva several months ago when I was looking through the statistics for local agents, trying to find those that were doing a great job for their clients (which is a good thing), but doing it at other companies (which I actively discourage, since agents who do a great job for their clients are elite agents by definition, and therefore need to work at Elite Properties  — Q.E.D.).

A short time after that, I bumped into Purva again and found out she was the author of a local real estate blog, Sacramento Real Estate Gal, which had just recently launched.  But beyond that, it turned out that Purva’s a genuine writer-type writer — you know, the kind that people pay to put in print, even if there’s not a picture of a house attached.  So we had something in common, because I knew something about getting paid to write things that did have houses attached, and Purva was enough of a writer to get paid to do it even if there wasn’t a house attached.  Yet she still worked with houses and did a great job, not only for her clients, but also for herself and her husband, who are active real estate investors.

I am quite confident that those of you who will call or email us will enjoy working with Purva, because it’s clear in getting to know her she has the friendliness, low key approach, and breadth of experience that my clients tell me they enjoy in our other agents.  I hope my readers will join me in welcoming as I do a new voice and a new perspective on this and on other company blogs.  (I know, some of you may miss the sheer relentlessness of the Lockwood drivel, but please try to bear up as best you can.)

Welcome, Purva!

Apparently according to Postlets Beta that’s where it is.

I should talk to my agent, Jamie, on this — if this really is in San Francisco, we have it priced way too low.

Oh well, it’s Beta.  And that would make this a bug report, I guess.

Meantime, buy this listing from Jamie and we promise to get you better directions.

I’m still exploring all the many places where we can put our sellers’ listings, as part of our Elite Ultimate Online Listing program.

I don’t think our listings are advertised in enough places.  I want more.  More.  MORE ! ! !

Alright, admittedly I should calm down.  I kind of have this Internet mad scientist thing going on.  Picture me looking like Christopher Lloyd with his “Back to the Future” Hair.  Here’s a little audio something from that movie about your average listing agent.

And here’s a little something from the same movie that could easily have been from my average listing presentation, where I explain the energy and commitment we we put into our marketing program to a seller, and the seller tells me he understands completely.

So this evening in my quest for yet another destination for my sellers’ listings, I worked on my Point2MLS web site, and tried posting our first listing there.

Here’s the Elite Point2MLS Web Site, and here’s Bridget’s beautiful listing in Somerset.

So far my experience with my free Point2 web site and the Point2NLS network is that it’s really strong on the syndication part of things.  Check out, for example, this list (pdf) of where your listing can be syndicated from a single Point2 listing via what they call their “Exposure Engine”.  That’s pretty cool stuff, one of the more comprehensive syndication lists I’ve seen.  On the negative side, I’m not sure I really see the point (pardon the pun) of Point2’s “NLS”, which in effect is a listing sharing scheme similar to IDX.  Yes, it’s cool that I can put listings on more web sites, but doesn’t the IDX already let me do that?  Also, so far I haven’t been able to verify that my listings are appearing where I have “handshake agreements” with other agents — nor am I able to see their listings on my site.  Perhaps the handshake takes place in the wee hours, and in the morning I’ll end up with a bunch of listings.  (It seems to me if it’s all in the same database, it’s just a matter of a SELECT statement, but enough programmer talk).

Jay Thompson, aka the Phoenix Real Estate Guy, is a pretty well known Point2 web site heavy hitter.  Maybe we can entice him to come over and fix my ignorance, either in a comment or a guest article.

Here’s an ad you may see if you’re in the market for an agent to list your home in the greater Sacramento area.  I don’t mean to pick on anyone in particular with this.  It turns out there are about eleven local web sites with the same ad:

How I [We] Market Your Home

Technology is a powerful tool in today’s real estate market. Our presence on the World Wide Web gives your home maximum exposure to potential buyers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Worldwide access to information about your home is available on:

National Association of Realtors® website www.Realtor.com
MetroList MLS website
www.MetrolistMLS.com
The Sacramento Bee website
www.SacBee.com
And my own site
[something-something.com]”

Marketing:  Getting a Silk Purse from a Sow’s Ear

The ad above sounds pretty good (except for the Middle English reference to something called the “World Wide Web”.  Beowulf used to call that the “Information Superhighway”.).  But here’s how the ad above boils down in terms of the work the agent actually does:

How I [We] Market Your Home

I put it in the MLS.

That doesn’t sound as good, does it?  But the truth is, I can have your home show up on www.Realtor.com, www.MetrolistMLS.com (that IS the MLS’s web site — duh), www.SacBee.com and “my own site” (actually “my own eight sites” in my case), and I’m going to tell you the awesome secret of my hitherto unknown marketing powers:  I’m a member of the Multiple Listing Service. 

You see, just by entering your home in the MLS, it will be listed on all the web sites that other agents advertise as their “marketing campaign” automatically.  It’s kind of like bragging “I will do actual breathing during your listing.”

“Wow, really?  Inhaling AND exhaling?  Clearly you’re a top producer, young man.  Where do I sign?”

If you’ve been reading this blog, you’ll know I have been working on a service offering called the ultimate online listing, and already it includes featuring your ad on over five hundred pages of web content (granted some of that is automatic now, but I did have to set it up once).  It includes featuring your home on Craigslist, Trulia, Googlebase, and the classified ad section of Sacramento News and Review.  It includes putting your fliers on multiple real estate web logs, both with a local readership and with a national readership. 

That’s just what it includes now.  I’m not done yet. 

And yes, in case you’re wondering, it also includes Realtor.com, Metrolistmls.com, SacBee.com, and my own (eight) web site(s). 

So yes, I’ll breathe during your listing, too, I’m just not going to brag about it.

When the sheer scope of it takes your breath away, then maybe I’ll brag.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words.  Well, that may be true, but a price reduction is worth a thousand pictures.  (Or maybe 500 Athol Kay pictures, or 250 Ansel Adams pictures.  What’s the exchange rate, anyway?)

Our listing on Birchgrove, which recently ran afoul of Athol’s kodachromatic sensibilities, has two offers on it as of this evening, because the price is right on it.

Kelley Koehler, Tuscon’s very own eyeball-friendly Housechick, wrote this brilliant article for sellers recently, in which she counseled that if sellers are having a hard time selling (as most sellers are in this market), they have four choices:

1) Change their price.

2) Change the condition of their home.

3) Change their agent.  (Actually I’m just quoting that one.  I can’t endorse it, for a couple of ethical and legal reasons.  If you have an agent, you need to stick with them.   However, if you’re home’s not yet listed or the listing has expired, this is fine.)

4) Change your mind about selling.

I couldn’t have put it better if I’d quoted it myself.

Here’s the reality:  the market is not a seller’s market, so you need to be realistic in your expectations.  Last I checked we had about seven months of inventory in Sacramento County.  That means that out of every seven sellers hoping to sell their homes this month, six will fail, and one will succeed.

Assuming changing your mind is not an option, your agent can only help you to succeed, counsel you, and work on ensuring you have maximum exposure so you can rule out needing to do change the price or condition of your home.  I checked the stats one time on the very top #1 listing agent in our area once, and was surprised (at the time) to find that her success rate was no better than mine on average for closing sales.  She was just better at getting listings.  Her sellers either reduced their price and fixed up their homes to the point where she could sell their homes, or they didn’t, just like mine do.

This market is making me seriously consider the nature of my fiduciary duty to my sellers.  I no longer see it as a kindness to take a listing at any price.  My seller on Birchgrove could have moved on months ago if I’d been more of an “aggressive SOB” on price, and he probably would have taken home more money, as well.  Indeed, what’s sad in this case is that we thought we had the price right, too, at each stage of the game.  So now I no longer shoot for the middle of the averages when counseling a seller on price.  I shoot lower.

Sellers, get out, run away.  Take that sign out of your yard. 

If you can’t do that, your price needs to be slashed.  Slash early, slash hard.  We’ll do the best we can on the marketing, but the home with two offers on it isn’t the one that Athol thought looked good.

Buyers, one in seven sellers has already been market-educated.  Let’s go shopping!

Susan Norris just listed this beautiful home on a gorgeous .95 acre corner “lot” in Foresthill.  (That’s some “lot”!)

It automatically appeared on many of our Ultimate Online Listing sites within 24 hours of being listed in the MLS. 

Some of the steps in our Ultimate Online Listing are manual, however, so I have to go in and get them done.  Of course, right now I’m playing catch up, upgrading our current listings to this level of service as a courtesy to our existing sellers. 

Since I’m playing catch up, I have more to work on with this listing, but so far between the manual steps and the automatic one it appears on:

• Every page of this blog (via the “Elite Listings” widget on the right).
• The front page of our main company site, EliteSacramento.com.
• Every page of the company’s ActiveRain blog, plus a featured post there.
• vFlyer.com
• Craigslist

We’ll have more ads on this really fine home out soon.

Sellers, if you have any questions about our ultimate online listing service, please call me at (530) 672-9160.   Buyers, if you want to get more information about this home directly from the listing agent, give Susan Norris a call at (916) 849-6421.  Or have your agent show it to you — either way, this home is a total keeper!

I’ve been working hard on the new Elite Properties real estate service offering, the Ultimate Online Listing.  All the details aren’t worked out and we’re still getting it put together and organized.  However, so far we’re pleased to report that — among all the other places — if you listed your home with Elite Properties, we now have (or soon will have) your listing appearing on:

• All the sites you would get with any other real estate brokerage’s listing (Metrolist.com, Realtor.com, Sacbee.com, other brokers’ web sites via IDX, etc.)  (Done)
• The front page of about seven company sites.  (I’ll work on getting a better list together of all these places soon).  These sites are aggressively placed and include major top keyword positions with Google, Yahoo, and MSN. (Done — but I’m behind on one listing right now).
• Twenty-three blog pages on ActiveRain, and counting.  (That’s done now — every new blog post is a new ad for your home).
• 441 blog pages here, and counting.  (Done – again, every post is an ad).
• Flyer.com and the sites that are automatically updated by Flyer.com.  List to follow soon.  (Done, but with a couple of listings to add).
• Somewhat more sporadically at this point, but we’re working on it, we’re publishing our listings to the major “manual submission” sites that vFlyer.com supports, including:

• Craigslist.
• Sacramento News and Review
• (Coming soon if we can work it) eBay.

Full details of this service offering are being worked out.  I’m excited about the level of exposure I can offer you, but at the same time don’t want to overpromise.  Therefore, interested sellers should please feel free to call me (John Lockwood) directly at (530) 672-9160. 

Thanks!

I’ve widened the margins of the blog. We should now have no trouble posting a vFlyer here whenever we list a home.

Beautiful Home, Great Neighborhood, $255,000

Location: Rosemont

Ready to occupy. Seller has put lots of money into upgrades, including beautiful laminated wood floors, new vinyl windows. The heating and air condition system are just a few years old, and the roof is less than ten years old and still has several years on the warranty. Open floor plan, large patio. Beautiful, mature shade trees. Only minutes to college or downtown. Have your agent check the comparable sales on this one, or for a personalized showing call John Lockwood at (530) 672-9160.

Information

Contact Information

John Lockwood

(530) 672-9160

Contact Reply Form

Forward to a Friend

View Other Flyers

Pricing

Asking Price: $255,000.00

Property Location

4032 Birchgrove Way
Sacramento, CA 95826
View Map

Links

Schedule a Showing

Listing Details

Features

Bedrooms: 3

Bathrooms: 2

Year Built: 1977

Subdivision: Rosemont Town

Lot Size: .139 acres

Garage Size: 2 car garage

School District: Sacramento Unified

Square Footage: 1214

Agent Name: John Lockwood

Broker: Elite Properties

MLS #: 70013701

Attributes

Appliances

Range/Oven

Full Refrigerator

Dishwasher

Sink Disposal

Interior Amenities

Hardwood Floors

Exterior Amenities

Patio

Fenced Yard

Grass Lawn

Photo Gallery

View as SlideshowView Photo Gallery (5 Photos)

Powered by vFlyer.com

Equal Housing Opportunity

VFLYER ID: 1086468

Our latest vFlyer, for 127 Pioneer Road, is now showing on Craigslist, ActiveRain, the Sacramento News & Review, and of course on our vFlyer Main Site. 

By virtue of vFlyer, it also should appear soon on another half dozen sites.

Thank you to our sellers at 127 Pioneer Road for listing your home with Elite Properties!

Buyers, if you like what you see, please give us a call at the number below or use our online form schedule a showing.

Thanks!

Well, OK, if you insist.  Here’s a screenshot of our listing on Birchgrove.

I’m thinking this is worth $275,000 or so.  Zillow, as it often does, is running a tad high and says $280,929.

The seller wants it sold, that’s why he’s offering it at $255,000.

Approximately four years is left on the roof warranty — roof only six years old.  Newer dual pane windows and laminate flooring. Turn key condition, not a fixer except needs paint, but the seller’s giving a $4,000 credit for that so pick your colors.

Buy it direct from us and we’ll knock another $2,550 off the list price for you.

Call John Lockwood direct at (530) 672-9160 and I’ll have you moved in in 30 days or less.

Only down side?   A bit smaller kitchen.  So if you’re a gourmet cook who sleeps on a pile of money at night, this home is not for you.  On the other hand, if you’re looking for a real bargain and you don’t mind a smaller kitchen, let’s go see it.  The $150 a month you’ll save over what the price should be buys a lot of Jiffy Pop.

Another place we’re making a standard stop when we do an Elite Properties Ultimate online listing is Craigslist.  Here for example is our Craigslist ad for Bridget’s Awesome Listing on over six beautiful acres in Someset.

To give our sellers yet another edge in getting their home to stand out among all the other homes that show up online, I recently installed a listing slide show feature on my ActiveRain blog, where all of our Elite Properties listings are featured.

ActiveRain is a popular social networking web site that has a huge readership not only among real estate buyers and sellers, but also among real estate professionals who actively work with buyers who may want your home.

Creating an overwhelming marketing advantage for your home is the goal behind this new category we’re writing about, Elite Properties’  Ultimate Online Listing. The idea is that if a single print ad is good, a hundred online listing ads is better.  (We’re still developing this category, so come back again).

I’m Missing Something Fundamental:  Should We Be Selling Homes or Not?

Believe it or not, much of the discussion in the real estate blogging community revolves around why listings should not be posted on blogs. One recent discussion of the issue on a blog maintained by a popular and successful real estate blogging coach maintained that Realtors® should not post their listings to their blogs.

There are a zillion sites out there with listings on them. Blogs with posts about listings look like real estate web sites. Distinguish your blog from the tens of thousands of real estate web sites by making it unique and different. A real estate blog can be used for marketing and will help generate business without listings on it.

Huh?

Let me ask that question a bit differently: WHAT????

Don’t you as a seller pay your agent a big tasty 6% commission to complete the concrete task of selling your home, rather than the generic task of “generating business”. And speaking of business, what was the listing on your home, chopped liver? Didn’t you just generate some business for your blogoholic agent when you agreed to trust them for ninety days or more to sell your house for them? I think an important question at this juncture is “Who’s giving whom the business”?

Nor is this an isolated opinion.

I recently confirmed that ActiveRain, which awards bloggers “points” for their contributions to their non-trivial real estate network, does not award points for posting listings. Now that’s all well and good in a general sense: a webmaster doesn’t have to even let me type on their site, let alone give me points for typing on their web site.

But look, if I had a web site with the by line “Real Estate Network”, what would I put on there, and what would I not try to exclude from it?  Let’s see, “Real Estate Network”. What should go there?  [Scratches head rhetorically]

I may get in a heap of trouble for missing some key philosophical point here, but I’m going to lug my massive 300 lb frame all the way out to the skinny end of the limb and try this answer:

Maybe, oh, I don’t know . . . real estate?

Hi there. John Lockwood. Broker of Elite Properties. My company would like the job of listing your home. We’re not especially philosophical, but we do get it about what you’re paying us for. If you listed with us, your listing appears here, on almost a dozen web sites that we maintain, on ActiveRain, on a special site on vFlyer.com, and elsewhere.

We’re just getting warmed up.

One of the classic article-title tricks is to ask a rhetorical question, and then answer it, so you may be thinking that’s where we’re going.

It isn’t. This is not a trick, and it’s not a rhetorical question.

I really want to know: What do home sellers want?

If you’re a seller, then you should have one really really good opinion, so please comment scroll down and hit the comment key, and let me know. If you’re an agent and you take more than three listings per month, than I want to hear from you, too, because presumably you’ve answered the question well enough so that sellers choose you over and over again.

Every so often I get a bit obsessed with that question, because our web sites let us meet so many buyers, but few sellers. Yet overall we do every bit as good a job for our sellers as we do for our buyers. Vicki’s listing on Sandhurst is closing in a couple of days. Go Vicki! Some of our other listings have taken a bit longer to get sold in this market, but if you’ve seen our outlays of cash and time on them, you’d probably be pretty impressed.

Yet we don’t connect with that many sellers on line.

Is that because people looking for a home are looking for a home, and we provide that, while people looking for an agent are looking for something different?

Reputation?

A bargain?

Someone in a pin stripe suit?

Someone who seems to care for them more than the other guy?

I’ll Tell You a Secret if You Tell Me One

I’m thinking maybe if I share a secret, you’ll tell me one.

So here it is, truth or dare: I am competitive. I hate to fail. As someone (Woodie Allen?) said, “It’s no crime to fail, but it’s no great honor, either.” In school I was an A Junkie. On the Internet, it’s top of the search engine results or it ain’t worth playing.

You get the picture.

If I were to just work my business on purely capitalist principles, I probably wouldn’t even be here on line asking sellers what they want. This is a buyers’ market. If it was strictly about the money, I can assure you of this: In this market, buyers are cash in the register, while listings are things we spend time and money on with an uncertain reward.

But it goes beyond money for me. Darn my ego — I don’t just want to make money, I want to go home at the end of the day thinking that Elite Properties has succeeded awesomely as a listing firm as well, because I hate to fail.

I have an idea for the Elite Online Listing that I’ll be developing in the next few days, because I think it’ll help our sellers be wildly successful, and will help us be wildly successful helping more and more sellers.

But I don’t know: maybe it’s just another project.

Or maybe, just maybe, what you want in this market where six out of seven listings fail to sell in any given month (or fourteen out of fifteen, depending on your county) — maybe what you want is a guy who hates to fail. I hope that’s what you want, because if you do, have I got a company for you.

But I still don’t know, so I’m asking again. I told you my secret. Now you tell me yours.

What do home sellers want?

I’m hoping to have good news about a Realtor® I’ve been recruiting for some time now.  Last I heard she’s leaning toward Elite from her current position at (Mumbledee-Mumbledee), so I hope it comes together.  The story behind this agent is rather interesting, inasmuch as I began talking to her last year while I was doing some general recruiting, because her production numbers looked quite good.  What I found out later from an email from her is that she’d started blogging in the meantime but felt a little intimidated because I had done everything she’d thought of doing.

I wasn’t in fishing for compliments mode at that point, but had I been, that would have been a nice catch.   I took her comments instead as an opportunity to make some progress on an idea I’d had stewing for some time, about beginning to grow the company not only as a team of outstanding agents, but also as a community of outstanding players in the Internet market space.

I’m a firm believer in doing what you know, over and over again, better and better.  That may be because I’m in my late forties and I’m starting to act like the proverbial old dog who can’t learn a new trick.  Then again, maybe it’s because it works.

I’m really hopeful that this will come together.  I have a lot of projects that I need tons of writing help on, and would like to really start putting together some great new information that will benefit all Sacramento area buyers and sellers but also help more of my agents have more opportunities to work with the same great Internet-savvy people we’ve had the joy of working with in the past.  Quite frankly, I need someone with a little bit of technical focus to help me think strategically about the whole business, too, because lately I’ve been stretched a bit thin and I’m becoming a bit of a Zombie typing machine.

I just ran across a really good mortgage blog that I hadn’t seen before,  Mike’s Mortgage Minute.  Mike really shows his strong sense of human decency (in marketspeak, we say “consumer oriented focus”) in  his post, No Sersiously.  Thinking one great post might be a fluke, I scrolled down to The System and found the same compelling prose and a man with a very well developed BS dectector indeed. 

Apropos nothing, he’s also worked with the same software I use all the time to blog with, Windows Live Writer.

He’s worth a read.  Go check him out.

Sacramento’s real estate prices continued their slow steady fall in May.   (I say slow compared to the pre 2004 climb — a bubble blogger might argue it differently, and that’s fine).  The average home in Sacramento County that sold through the MLS in May fetched $375,529, down 7% from last May’s average of $403,945.  The median sale price was $340,000, down 6.8% from last May’s median of $365,000.  Meantime this priced fetched a slightly larger home than last year, pushing the sold price per square foot figure to $233.00, down 8.9% from last year’s average of $244.67.

As we’ve reported over and over again, and much to the constant surprise of our buyers, just because prices are down, doesn’t mean that buyers are naming their own price.  Naturally when prices rise, sellers hope to sell at tomorrow’s price, and when prices fall, it’s the buyers who are hoping to fetch a future price.  Unfortunately, today’s market always takes place today.  The approximately 10% of the total listing inventory that sells each month is the 10% that’s on the high end of the desirability curve, or the low end of the price curve, and most often both.  As a result, May’s average selling price of $375,529 only represents an average discount to the buyer of 2.4% off of the average list of $384,708.  Sure, that’s a little better than last year’s 1% off of list discount, but it hardly means that buyers are successfully naming their own prices on homes that’s attractive and priced well to begin with.

In other indicators, we continue to operate in a buyer’s market.  There are currently 9.5 months of unsold inventory.  Average days on market are actually not too bad at 53 days, but the expired ratio for those listings that have been on the market is up to 76.2%.

Those of you who were waiting for Part III of the Article Series on My Love Hate Relationshiop with Web 2.0 (See Part II or Part I), please note we’ve moved the series to a more Web 2.0-ish sort of Place, ActiveRain, and so Part III is here, where I was gratified to see it as a featured article.  I guess ambvialence is something people can really get behind (well, maybe not).

Meantime, spreadsheet mavens, worry not, we haven’t forgotten about you, and we now have the latest roundup of the May Numbers, albeit a little bit late.

Coming Next…

In Part I of this phenomenally popular article series, I was able to get through the amble and the preamble and finally arrive at the vague threat that this series might indeed contain an article. Tonight I am goaded, inspired — nay, nurtured — by the lovely Austin Realtor’s Wife, Lani Anglin, aka the prettier half of this science-fictiony Blue Brainy Guy, who’s initials I think are BR but after all this is Web 2.0 and who the heck are we?  Lani (who’s not Jen Kay, in case you were wondering) asked me the question the other day that was the basis for this whole article: “So tell me about your love hate relationship with Web 2.0.” At about the same time, Mr. Lani, the blue brainy guy, who’s also not Athol Kay, the latter being a sock puppet, posted a similar essay that’s worth reading on his site.

Actually I’ve gone through a transformation in the last day or two. I’ve decided to really see if there’s something in the Web 2.0 world for me. That is to say, I am a web 2.0 penitent. A lot of my softened attitude toward Web 2.0 probably traces ultimately to the fact that I’ve landed squarely in the AJAX / Javascript / OPC (Other People’s Code) aspect of Web 2.0 in my map site. So that’s as good a place to begin as any.

Other Peoples’ Code

Yes, I know, we have widgets and gizmaux and plugins and sidebars we can put them in.

Rah.

Admittedly: my code isn’t the best in the world. I was a good full time programmer at one time, made a living at it, but I wasn’t the Tiger Woods of the keyboard or anything. But here are a couple of things about my code: We don’t need multiple DNS resolutions for it, typically, because we’ve done that. Also, I control it, so if it stinks, I know who to holler at to get it fixed. Also, I can try to make it somewhat fast.

I like Jim Cronin. I really do. I hope he didn’t get run over by a team of articles about teams. I’m a bit worried about him. But (at the risk of picking on him), Jim’s site takes some ten seconds to finish loading. I know — not a big deal, you can see the Tomato and start reading the article, but I still want to see the page finish loading. As a developer, who used to pay attention to such things knowing a customer would holler at me, it’s a distraction.

Where does that slow load time come from? Other Peoples’ Code, of course. Jim has many of the latest bells and whistles, as well he should — I should have a house, by the same token. My site, which only has a couple of Javascript links, one so I can see if NikNik or the Sock Puppet or Jen Kay are reading me as they should be. I just installed that the other day. The other bit is so Hittail can make inane suggestions, like telling me I should be blogging about “electronic signatures 2007″. Hittail’s so fun. Yet even with just those two, I’m up to three seconds. A “static” (minimal PHP) page on the same site takes just over a second to finish doing its thing.

It Was the Best of Code, It Was The Worst of Code

But look: Google, and Yahoo — who between them probably spend more on keyboards than I make in a year — have competing, free APIs to put maps on your site. How cool is that? I have a whole blog growing up around Other Peoples’ Code, so I don’t want to make it seem all bad. We’ve now serving developer man hours, free, through a series of tubes. And not just code, either. We’re structuring data over here using XML and consuming it over there using plain old stateless HTTP. How fun is that?

I’ll bet Al Gore never dreamed of such applications when he invented the telephone.

What’s also neat about that is that we’re publishing what we’re doing as we’re doing it, so all us men may be working on the chain gang, but we sure make a lovely sound.

I’m not so sure how many more installments there will be of this, but I’ll let you know when I’m done so you can get on with other classics like Charles Dickens or what have you.

Preamble

The other day I broke down and set up a MyBlogLog account again. 

Some of you familiar with The Simpsons will recognize in the Avatar the familiar hooded shadow of Mr. X, who also owned a web site.

If you get over to the MyBlogLog account really quickly you can catch a glimpse of Niknik.  No wait, I’ve put her down as a contact.  Now you don’t have to run over, you can just walk.   This should be good for ratings.

By the way, Niknik’s content is also quite nice, not just her contents.  (Hands — stop — do — not — link — to — red — dress — photo).

I’m going to start reading her religiously if I break down and start reading anyone religiously.

Reading sometimes gets in the way of what we’re trying to do.

Amble

I’ve been breaking down and checking out lots of Web 2.0 places lately, trying to stay current and broaden my horizons beyond the major bleeding edge search engines like AltaVista.

I really like my del.icio.us account.  It’s a neat research tool.  Hat tip again to Dave Smith.  Heck, I even signed up again for ActiveRain recently, after spending three weeks wondering where the darned exit button was.

I’m not sure what got me going back to MyBlogLog.  I think it was probably watching the stream of people on other bloggers MyBlogLog widget and wondering if I have a stream of people, too.  Sure enough, I do, but I don’t have the widget installed so you can’t watch yourself be an eddy in the stream of people here unless you’re over there somewhere.  And if you’re name’s not Eddy, I don’t know how this is going to work.

OK, that’s partly it.  But a bigger reason is that I wanted my head to show up on your blog so you might follow the Mr. X head back here and read me — which is partly an SEO goal and partly a social approbation goal.  (I say “approbation” instead of “approval” inasmuch as the pervasive confusion of pedantry with prose may earn me another blogological brownie point). 

Those of you who read about my recent excitement at having a fan know that I’m pretty easily amused.  Now it would appear that I not only have a real life attorney fan and perhaps one or two more that one of my agents reminded me of recently, I also have (in MyBlogLog, now) three admirers and sixteen members.  An admirer in my blog log is the object form of “fan”.  I think the point was to have another word for it.  Sic semper pedantis.

In fact, one of my admirers sent me a “private message” (isn’t that fun), asking me to elaborate on my love hate relationship with Web 2.0, and that’s how this article was born. 

But with all this preamble, we’ve hardly scratched the psychotherapeutic surface of the emotional thingie-under-the-scratched-surface of my love-hate relationship with Web 2.0, have we?

No problem.  Add “Part I” to the title, and hey, presto:  series of articles.

Where the buyers are, someone waits for me.

OK, speaking of comely brunettes, let’s not forget Connie Francis. Connie’s “Where the Boys Are” popped into my head when I started thinking about where the buyers are — and that chain of rumination began when I reviewed the market in Amador County earlier today. The reason this title popped into my head was that it seemed to me that the 15.3 months of inventory that sellers are having to contend with in Amador County is a fairly high figure.

I think we may have a winner for where the buyers aren’t, but that got me to wondering where they are — at least in our general neck of the woods. Needless to say, this wondering how Amador’s inventory compared to other areas around here led me to the inevitable bout of spreadsheet-itis, and the results are below.

We have a winner! The buyers are all to the west of here, in Yolo County, and, to a lesser extent, in Sacramento and Placer County. (Placer County to me is actually a bit of a surprise, since a few months ago they were contending with very high inventory relative to other areas).

Don’t get me wrong — more than six months of inventory still puts Yolo into the “buyers’ market” neck of the woods. It’s all a matter of degree.

I think we should get a new Kennedy era diva’s photo with each smackerel of real estate news we publish from now on. Spoonful of sugar and all that. Now with that I know you’re primed for Julie Andrews week.