Polly Briley

Hi Sally,

Like many areas we are currently down. How long we will be down, I wish I had the answer. June was slow, but anecdotally from my perspective and my office buzz, things have really picked up in July.

Sales as well as listings are below last year and last month for June. We will have the July numbers in a couple of weeks so we will see how the trend lines are looking.

The one trend that is going in a good direction is the days on the market in the price range of $100,000 to $150,000. I have heard so much discussion on why this is happening? New listings are lasting less than a week.

I wish I could offer you more concrete information, but this market in anything but predictable.

Polly Briley
Broker Associate
RE/MAX VALLEY, REALTORS
Oshkosh WI
920-203-1155 - Sun Jul 27 2008, 16:52

Kay,

When you first listed your home we had a different market in NE WI. In this market days on the market are going up, but not by a year.

What is your agent telling you? The instinctive answer is price, however I don't know your home so I can't answer that with any credibility. Your home may be the kind that requires a special buyer. If it is truly unique, historic, quirky, any number of things can require a longer listing.

If none of this is the case, then go back in time to when you first walked into your home, before you bought it, before you made the offer. The very first time you walked in the door. What drew you to it?

Start making a list of all the things you remember that drove you to write that offer. Does your home today meet those expectations? Are there a million little things that could drive a home owner away? Examples would be:
pealing outside paint
old roof
missing or broken tile
obvious water damage
odors
energy inefficiency
a long driveway to shovel (WI humor)

The point being, a home with "little" repairs say to the home buyer, this home is not taken care of, what can't I see that needs repair.

If you are selling your house yourself and need some additional advise, call some one you trust to walk through the house and write down all the things they see. Then please fix them.

As to price: do your own homework. Check the Two Rivers accessors page and find out what other houses in your neighborhood have sold in the past year and what their pre sale assessment vs. sale price were. Also check other realty websites to get an idea of your competition.

When selling your largest investment, don't be passive, do your research and ask lots of questions.

Polly Briley
Broker Associate
RE/MAX VALLEY, REALTORS
Oshkosh WI
920-203-1155 - Sun Jul 27 2008, 16:42

Dan,

Cigarette smoke is difficult to get rid of but not impossible. Carpeting is the hardest to remedy. If you want to keep it there are products out there available to professional cleaners that do a reasonably good job. Any and all fabrics in the home must be cleaned.

Repainting the walls will do a great job removing the smell. Cigarette smoke permeates many services so priming and painting will be needed. Any surface that is acceptable for bleach, use it.

For those areas where bleach won't work or shouldn't, try the leader in cleaning all things, vinegar. (please don't use on granite counter tops, just in case). Clean the windows, tile floors, bathrooms, pretty much anything you can.

Good Luck. I live with smokers and have learned a few tricks.

Polly Briley
920-203-1155
Broker Associate
RE/MAX VALLEY, REALTORS
Oshkosh, WI - Sun Jul 27 2008, 16:13

Eli,

Sorry you are having so much trouble with an FHA. I work with several incredible lenders in Wisconsin that specialize in 203K and one of my buyers just moved into her "new" home and is ready to refinance. The appraisal already came in higher than the anticipated amount.

Keep calling around, ask a few real estate agents for a referral. There is definitely some one in your area who does 203K. It is a great program and is helping many established neighborhoods get the royal treatment. - Sun Jul 27 2008, 16:04

Hi Tom,

Short sales are hard to work with for many reasons, the first being the situation itself. The person facing the short sale is very unhappy. Couple that with the bank looking over their shoulder at every turn and the constant barrage of phone calls from folks off the street asking to purchase their home at half price. That is just from the homeowners perspective.

From the agent's perspective, 9 times out of 10 you have no idea the home is a short sale (depending on your local MLS) so you believe you are working a regular offer only to discover too late, whoops a short sale. Or better, you have a buyer who is only looking for short sales and they know from several sites that there are "hundreds" of foreclosures in your town and gives you the list. As you troll around to discover if the home is listed, what point of the process is the home at and whether a lender is involved, you talk to irate home owners, exhausted and frustrated listing agents and overworked lender property minders.

Then you make a low ball offer and are rejected for the very simple reason of the definition of a short sale - the owner owes more. The current owner can not accept a low ball offer because they don't have money, not a surprise considering they are in foreclosure. The bank doesn't want to lose half of it's investment and often times can't. (Some lending institutions are beginning to move inventory now.)

To answer your initial question, the answer is a few. We are all being invited to take classes on short-sales, usually from the listing agent perspective. There are many horror stories from buyer agents, of lending institutions cutting an agents wages by 2/3 after the offer has been accepted. Could you imagine being asked by your employer to do three times the work for 1/3 the salary?

So, if you don't find agents jumping all over themselves to guide you through the short sale buying process, please don't be surprised or angry. It is just an ugly and sad process for everyone involved. - Sun Jul 27 2008, 15:32