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Edina Realty Mortgage is offering a $25 gift card for applying for a loan and up to $500 off closing costs when you purchase a home using Edina Realty Mortgage. See below for more information:
Offer Information
Closing Costs Discount Coupon
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I wrote in June about agents who still had snow pictures on the MLS. Today I mention another thorn in my side: agents who represent bank-owned foreclosed homes that do not take photos of the inside.
In the Twin Cities, as in many other large metro areas nationwide, we have seen a sharp increase in foreclosures over the last year. This has been a boon to the business of agents that work with the banks carrying this inventory. Unfortunately, some of these agents are either too busy or feel they are getting paid too little to take the effort to snap interior photos of the house and also often do not measure room dimensions. Sometimes the house’s interior is in bad condition, sometimes it is in remarkably good condition. Either way, consumers want to see layout and general condition before they make the trek out to see the home.
When we have record levels of inventory on the market and many investors waiting on the sidelines, the consumer looking for a home for owner-occupied use is still the best buyer for most homes. Since these consumers have so many choices, they narrow down their options using the photos and other MLS information provided online. Fewer buyers seeing the home means less potential to sell the home quickly and at a good price.
Until banks wake up and demand the agents selling their inventory to do more to market the home, they will find that they are not receiving the full benefits of the MLS and are missing many potential buyers.
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Based upon numbers provided by the Builders Association of the Twin Cities (BATC), new construction unit permits have fallen 31% through August 2007 vs. last year. Units through August totaled 6,408 permitted thus far, down from 9,402 units permitted through the same time last year. In fact, in 2004 there were a total of 12,191 units permitted through August, which means we’re near half of the number of new units from just three years ago!
This is a favorable trend for our market and shows that builders continue to scale back their building from the record levels of a few years ago. While the new construction market is still weak, this dramatic reduction in new construction will help reduce inventory over the long run and sets the stage for a recovery in the future.
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Agents will talk with other agents about it, but rarely speak publicly about it. I’m talking about getting fired by a client.
As it turns out, sometimes things just don’t work out right. For me it is terribly frustrating when it happens. I’ve had quite a few clients that decide not to buy or sell, but I’ve also had a few clients over the years that have fired me. They either choose to cancel their contract early (which I always offer to all my clients if they are dissatisfied) or they choose not to renew upon contract expiration. This has happened for both buyers and sellers.
Truth of the matter is that while this is just the cost of doing business and I typically have not given much thought to it after it happens, there are a few situations that have really bothered me:
- In one case the clients went and bought a FSBO without me and without giving me a chance to negotiate a commission with the seller. It was after I had spent many hours showing them other homes and discussing the neighborhoods and market.
- In one case we wrote an offer, the deal went sour, and then the buyer decided that they didn’t like Dual Agency, even though it had been disclosed and discussed months before and the deal fell apart due to the seller and buyer not being able to negotiate out the inspection, not because of dual agency. In that case I asked them to let me show them more houses and offered to walk away if they decided they wanted to buy another house listed by my broker (1 in 5 chance), but they refused. Bye-bye 6 months of a client relationship.
- Most recently, I was working with a buyer for about a month. We had made one offer that didn’t go through and were having conversations via email and SMS almost daily. On Thursday we decided we needed to do another search for homes and I promised to email him some that night, but forgot. I had a busy Friday and some personal and business activities over the weekend. Monday morning comes and I get an SMS message saying: “Since you don’t seem to be interested in my business, I am going to find a different agent.” Apparently the fact that he didn’t contact me to inquire about the email doesn’t seem to matter.
While there is a significant cost to that lost business… probably $15,000 in total… it is more a personal frustration than a financial one. In all of these situations I felt that I had established a good client relationship with these people and that they would be loyal because they knew I was working hard for their best interests. So that’s a total of three times in five years that I felt personally hurt… given the number of customers I’ve worked with, that is extremely low! The problem is that even one is hard to handle, because I always want 100% customer satisfaction!
This is definitely a business, but it is a people business. When you spend so much time with a client that you get to know them, breaking up is hard to do!
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Edina Realty posted a market share of 19.8% for closed transactions in the 12-month period ending September 31, 2007. That means that there’s an almost 1 in 5 chance that a home sold in the Twin Cities will be sold by an Edina Realty agent.
In this slowing market, where inventory is at record levels, Buyers have almost too many choices to make and Sellers have so much competition for each of those buyers, make the same choice that nearly 1 in 5 customers in the Twin Cities make, work with an Edina Realty agent. Since 1955, Edina Realty has helped Buyers and Sellers through both good and bad markets.
Edina Realty – Now, more than ever.
Aaron Dickinson + Edina Realty = Even Better!
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