Joshua Jarvis - Georgia Realtor's Blog

I'm pleased to be hosting a call with the number 1 real estate agent in the world for 2007 about how to grow your million dollar network!

Chad will go in depth on how to be a more effective networker, how to improve our attitude aptitude and talk about running an efficient business.

The call is a free conference dial in call.  There will be a unique opportunity to network after the interview.

Chad Goldwasser is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Goldwasser International, leading the number one residential real estate team in Austin, TX.


To register visit: http://www.budurl.com/chad

Short Sales is the buzz word of 2009, but what is a short sale really?

Short Sale is simply when the bank agrees to accept less payment then what they are owed by the borrower.

Example:  John owes $250,000 on his 4 bedroom home.  The comparables suggest that he cannot sell it for more than $225,000.  The bank agrees to accept $225,000.

There are some things that come into play, particular the hardship of the owner.  So that begs the next question:  What is a Hardship?

A hardship would be anything that has caused the borrower not to be able to make the payments.

This could be anything from divorce or job loss to the rate adjusting.  It could also be that the borrower moved up into a larger home (or downsized) but never sold their old home.  Each case is dfferent. Here is a list of the top 10 Hardships.

The next question that comes up is Why would you short sale?  Why not try to do a Loan Modification or just let the bank have it back?

The "SHORT" answer is that Shorting a home affects the overall credit of a borrower less than foreclosure both in length of term (2 yrs vs 5yrs) and overall magnitude (although industry experts have differring opinions on how much).

Lastly, there are all sorts of information that is being given out about Short Sales.  Check the people out.  How many have they really closed?  Fannie Mae has some tips about the scams.

The key is, NEVER PAY ANYONE UPFRONT UNLESS YOU KNOW THE PERSON.

As I show homes for sale in georgia I often come across various commissions on the homes. To be honest I notice them and always hope that the homes that have high commissions are the ones my clients want. Inevitably, they are not.

What does strike me is the number of homes on the markwt with low commissions. This practice tells me a few things:

1. The home has no equity and this should be tough to negotiate
2. The owner does not value a real estate agent's job and thus is ok underpaying.
3. The owner is uneducated on the world of real estate
4. No matter the cause, it all screams "unmotivated."

This is a buyer's market and the buyer's usually have an agent.

Conversly, homes with above average commission are a joy to work with and there are many agents who will admit behind the scenes that they will push these homes.

The sellers appear motivated because:

1. They have equity
2. They seem to value the agent's time or at least the ability to find a buyer. 

Don't believe me.  Think about the Atlanta Falcons.  Every player wants to play in Atlanta?  Why? Because it's a better life than any other city?  There's some truth to that, but they can always retire here.  Is it because Atlanta is known as a winning football team?  Certainly not until recently?  Nope, it's because the owner Aurthur Blank has been known to pay the players very well and wine and dine them.  There are tough negotiations that go on, but at the end of the day the player always feels like a winner.  Compare that to other towns like Cleveland where they don't pay their players at all.  No one wants to play there and the teams is ALWAYS a loser.

Back to the homes.  Would you rather work with a seller that pays your agent well and is motivated to work things out or one that is greedy from the "get-go?"

I interviewed several agents while at the Shift Book Tour and here's the video about what have they Shifted.

I recently wrote a blog post about Walmart Pricing and why it's an outdated and poor strategy.   You can read about it there, but I wanted to go into more depth here.  As Trulia and other websites expand their capabilities, this will be less of an issue.  In particular, when a user uses SNAPSHOT, they don't have the same limitations that the traditional search engines do. 

Ok, I made you look.  This isn't a tirade about Trulia Snapshot, no.  I in fact, LOVE, snapshot... so much I hate it.  It makes looking at homes fun.   That's all we need is another method to look at real estate that is fun and entertaining.  I know now where to send ALL of my LONG TERM clients. 
(HINT TO TRULIA STAFF:  (offer a product like Market Snapshot from Top Producer to agents and I'll be in line first).

Snapshot does have that unnerving effect of making you spend time looking at real estate without offerring any real conclusions.  Time will tell if it's going to be an effective tool or not, since there aren't a ton of options.  However, I could very easily see showing this to a buyer and displaying graphically their 10 home choices next to each other.  Add a little bit of functionality (Trulia will have to pay me for this hint) and it could very well replace what I am doing with our MLS altogether.

*** After time passes playing with Snapshot *****

Having finally spent a few hours with it, I would say that although the black map (AWESOME!) is cool, the most functional item is the bars at the bottom.

As many of you MVP'ers know, Trulia is about to open up this new blog thing to the general public. In fact, we got an e-mail from Katie about this very thing.

What happens next?

For starters look at the blogs? Just an FYI - they are time and date stamped. There are several of "you" that posted three or more blogs in under an hour. We can all probably raise our hand and say "YES, I OCCASIONALLY RE-BLOG." Um, but in my book, that's called a word.... "SPAM." Want another word? How about dumb.

What do I mean?

We all like to blog and we all have articles that should probably be on several locations. Blasting Trulia blogs with your content might get it up here, heck it might even get it read more in the beginning, but you may very well have shot yourself in the foot if you are going in this for the long haul.

If trulia blogs are going to be about content and it takes off with consumers, you're going to want to be consistent. Unless you devote time specifically to blog for Trulia, it's unlikely you are going to be able keep up (if you plan to blog for your site and other social sites like ActiveRain)... unless you already have content. Let's be real, we all have done this before... the ones on beta anyway, so we have content... and we will likely repost it ... all I'm saying is that it's better for YOU and ME if you do it methodically instead of one large dump.

Frankly, I'm turned off by it and I bet consumers would be too.