The Atlanta Report

The Early Bird Gets the Best Deal

I wanted to share a success story I had with a recent buyer.

Many people use my home search tool to keep track of homes coming on to the market.  Then they call me when they want to go look at homes in person.  It’s my main method for finding new buyer clients and has been working very well.

On a Monday morning I checked my email at 9:00am to find a request to see a home ASAP.  I immediately give the person a call.  They told me that they had seen this home a few weeks ago when it was “for sale by owner” and they were told at the time that it was under contract.  The owner’s fiancee was an agent and said she would call if things fell through.

These buyers saw it come up  on my website and wanted me to find out about this home and if it was available that they wanted to see it immediately.  I called the agent and she said the previous deal had fallen through and they decided to get it listed on the MLS.  She had just put it in the MLS yesterday and she had it underpriced in order to sell it quickly.  She and the owner were getting married in six weeks and wanted to have it sold by then.

At 9:30 am I called the buyer back and agreed to meet them at the home at 12:30 that same day.  They also wanted to see another home in the same neighborhood. 

At 12:30 pm we see the home, we see the other home, and we come back to the first home to look at it again in detail.  My buyers like it a lot and I tell them I will send them the comps for the neighborhood.

At 1:30 pm I get back to the office and I run the comps for the neighborhood.  It’s an area where many homes are being torn down and million dollar homes are being built.  So I have to go through the tax records to find out how much builders are paying for the tear down homes.  There are several recent sales in the $290,000 range.  The home of interest is listed at $279,000 and is not really in tear down condition.

At 1:45 pm I send all the information to my buyer and suggest that it’s already a good deal but if we act quickly we might be able to get it for less.

At 3:45 pm my buyer calls me back and tells me that they want to buy the home.  We write up an offer for $255,000 and they tell me that they would be willing to go up to $272,000 if they had to.  I tell them that the sellers seem pretty motivated to get this home out of the way before their wedding so they might be pretty motivated.  I get them to have their lender email a preapproval letter to me and we also put a 24 hour deadline on our offer.  The home had only been on the market for a day and any negotiating strength we had would quickly evaporate as soon as someone else showed some interest.

At 5:00 pm we submit our offer.  The listing agent complains that it is pretty low and that the home is underpriced already.  I agree with her but tell her that my buyers can complete the deal in four weeks and are already approved with a lender.  I ask her to just come back with a counter and I’d see what I could do. 

At 7:30 pm she comes back with a counter of $272,000.  That’s the price that my buyer was ready to accept in the beginning.  So they were happy ready to make a deal.  I told them to hang in there and come back at $262,000.  They agreed and I relayed our counter back to the other agent over the telephone.  Things need to be in writing but I didn’t want to waste time and allow another offer to come in and wreck things.

At 8:30 pm the listing agent comes back at $270,000.  She says that that is the best and final offer that they can do.  I talk with my buyers and we decide to make a counter.

At 9:30 pm I call the listing agent with our counter of $267,000.  I find that a gap of $3000 or less is usually small enough to get a motivated seller to accept.  I tell them to think about it over night and get back with us first thing in the morning.

At 8:30 am Tuesday morning the listing agent calls me to tell me they will accept the $267,000.  They make the changes on the contract and initial them and fax it over to me.  I fax the contract to my buyers for their initials and then fax it back to the listing agent.  In less than 24 hours we have a deal.

At 4:00 pm I call the listing agent about the inspection and she tells me that she has received a few more calls about the home.  I feel that we were very lucky to get the offer negotiated before another one came in.  We might have had to pay full price.

Two weeks later we get the appraisal back.  Usually appraisals come in right at the contract price.  This one came in at $283,000.  So my buyers had instant equity of $16,000.

My commission was $8000 for a few hours that day and a few more hours spent during the inspection, where we negotiated another $3000 in closing costs in lieu of a few repairs.  Am I over paid?  Some might suggest that if they look at it on an hourly basis.  But I don’t think that anyone else would have made that deal come together as quickly as I did.  I give my clients the information they need to move quickly then I help them execute the details in an efficient manner.

Posted in Miscellaneous, Success stories | No Comments »

You Have No Enemies? Try a Little Harder

Most people just want to get along.  Just go with the flow and be friends with everyone.  God forbid if you stir up some controversy.  I guess that’s OK some of the time but  if you compromise on everything you end up being a nothing. 

I came across this poem this morning while reading a column.  I thought I would share.

You have no enemies, you say?
Alas, my friend, the boast is poor;
He who has mingled in the fray
Of duty, that the brave endure,
Must have made foes! If you have none,
Small is the work that you have done.
You’ve hit no traitor on the hip,
You’ve dashed no cup from perjured lip,
You’ve never turned the wrong to right,
You’ve been a coward in the fight.
– Charles MacKay (1814-1889)

Here’s to fighting the good fight and making some foes in 2007.

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New Law Makes Mortgage Insurance Premiums deductible for 2007

The legislation allows taxpayers who itemize their deductions to deduct premiums paid for mortgage insurance - which typically is required when home buyers purchase their homes with less than 20 percent down.

Mortgage insurance is necessary on loans where you are putting down less than 20%.  It protects the bank from losing money if you default on the mortgage.  Over the past five years it has been used less and less.  Usually the way to go is with an 80% first mortgage and then take out a HELOC(home equity line of credit) or a second mortgage for the rest.

President Bush just signed a new law making mortgage insurance premiums deductible.  This should change the equation a bit and possibly make it a better choice.  A good mortgage loan officer or a CPA should be able to help you evaluate what’s best in your particular situation.

The new insurance premiums deduction will only apply to mortgage insurance contracts issued in 2007 and is only available to taxpayers whose adjusted gross incomes do not exceed $110,000 ($55,000 for married taxpayers filing separately).

Posted in Miscellaneous, Mortgage info | 1 Comment »

Mobile High Speed Wireless Internet Improves Productivity

I’ve been using a Verizon high speed wireless card in my tablet computer for about a year now.  It’s really nice being able to access the Internet pretty much any where that I go.  If I have an appointment and I don’t know how bad the traffic will be, I just leave a lot earlier and if I arrive early I can get things accomplished online.

If I’m out with a client, I can pull up other homes or I can pull up the tax records.   

It’s still not as fast as my office or home computers are but it can handle most sites without too much problem.  Verizon gives you a package deal if you have your cell phone with them.  It saves you $20/month.

I love testing gadgets out and try to stay ahead of the curve.  I haven’t been happy with the GPS sytem that I purchased.  It is a bit too slow and it sometimes sends you to roads that do not exist.  I am so lucky that I double checked a few addresses on a real map before I relied on the GPS unit.  I would have looked pretty silly driving into a field. 

There’s nothing like a real map that you can unfold and mark up.  It give you a good perspective on distances and it can be given to the client at the end of the day.

Posted in Miscellaneous, Atlanta home search tools | No Comments »

Caney Creek Home in Close in Forsyth Georgia

I showed a home to a customer who has been using my site to search for homes in Atlanta.

I thought that it was a really nice home and priced pretty well.  I’d love to show it to anyone else wiho is looking for a large home with a large flat backyard.  It’s in Forsyth county whick means the taxes are very low but it’s just a mile from the Fulton county line. 

Here’s a link to the details of this home in Caney Creek.  I talked with the listing agent and he said that the sellers would probably be open to a contract contingent on the sale of another home.  You don’t hear that much any more.  So it could be a great opportunity.

 This is a special floor plan.  It is on a slab but it has 3 levels of living space.  there is a guest bedroom and full bath on the main. Along with the family room which is open to the kitchen, it has a huge two story living room, not one of those little living rooms that are pretty much useless.

On the second floor you have 4 bedrooms and 2 baths.  And then up on the third floor you have two bedrooms, a bath  and a bonus area.  It would be great for two older kids to have kind of a private retreat.

Posted in Miscellaneous, House of the week, Caney Creek | No Comments »

Motivated Listing Agents Are Always Useful

Everyone has heard about motivated sellers.  Find one who is desparate to sell and there’s a good chance that they’ll be willing to come down in price.  Have you ever thought about how important it is to have a motivated listing agent?

In negotiations, I always try to understand the goals and the fears of all participants.  What would be a fear of the listing agent if their listing was going to expire soon and there was a good chance that the sellers were going to find another agent?  They would fear ending up with absolutely nothing after having invested a lot of time and energy into marketing the home.  They would be very motivated to do whatever it took to put the home under contract.

In the FMLS, they don’t post the list date or the expiration date.  What you have to do is keep a running tally of listing numbers so you can estimate about when a listing was first entered.  Usually listings are for periods of 90 days.  So agents begin getting a little antsy about 60 days into the listing.  They dread the thought of having to talk with the seller about relisting for another 90 days.  If you submit a reasonable offer, you should have a better chance of getting the listing agent to present it to the seller as a good deal for them.

Getting a good deal in real estate many times depends on timing.  Motivations are very dynamic.  A “low ball offer” on day one might look like an answer to a prayer on day 81.  Just another little thing to keep in mind.

Posted in Miscellaneous, Atlanta real estate info | No Comments »

Zillow Will Become the National MLS, Realtors Need to Adjust

If you haven’t heard of Zillow yet let me be the first to introduce you to it.  Zillow started out in February as a site that had hooked into all of the public property tax records and started a system of trying to give the public a computer generated estimate of the value of their home. They combined that with a neat mapping feature and the term Zestimate started to be used.  I never though much of it because the amount of data I have access to through the MLS system makes the tax records that Zillow look like a cheap toy. But things are changing as of yesterday. Zillow has the potential to be the standard national MLS system open and free to anyone and everyone. They just introduced a free listing system as a new feature.   If they can entice a critical mass of people to put their listings into their system, then it will be a must for everyone who wants to sell a home. 

I have a feeling they might have a hard time convincing all the Realtors to put their listings on there but their system is so easy to use that the sellers could very easily do it themselves.  So the challenge to Zillow will be to try to become a household name.  They seem to be getting a lot of free press lately so it might not be that difficult.  In a few years if your home isn’t listed on Zillow it will be the same as someone without email or a cell phone.

It should be interesting to see how long it takes for things to change.  I look forward to the new opportunities of doing business in hopefully a more efficient and economical way.

The one thing that Realtors have that I can’t see being eliminated is the lock box key system.  Without the lock box system, showing real estate will be slowed down to a crawl.  It’s a beautiful thing right now showing homes without appointments during the day.  You make a few courtesy calls to sellers to tell them when you’ll be by and you can zip from one home to another never having to worry about keeping to an exact schedule and meeting sellers at specific times.  If homes aren’t listed with agent lock boxes, agents will only be able to show homes when the owners are home.  I guess there could be lock box keys given to the public but that sounds like a pretty risky proposition.  Realtors have been screened to some extent and have their livelihood on the line if they abuse their lock box privileges in any way.

For now though, if you want to search for homes in Atlanta, you really need to be using my home search tool.

Posted in Miscellaneous, Atlanta home search tools | 3 Comments »

Bombarded by Mortgage Offers? Mortgage Trigger Leads Should be Illegal!

Have you ever applied for a mortgage and then all of a sudden you begin getting other mortgage companies calling you up, emailing you or sending you a ton of junk mail? How do they just all of a sudden know that I’m ready to buy a home or refinance?  What I discovered is really shocking.

When you apply for a mortgage and allow the loan officer to pull your credit report from the 3 credit bureaus, (which the credit bureaus charge for) the credit bureaus sell this information to other mortgage companies who are looking for people just like you.  They sell them all the information they have on you so they can call you up and make you an offer.  They rationalize it away by saying that it will be good for you to get approached by other mortgage companies who might have better deals.  That’s wonderful if I would know about that up front and maybe I would give them my permission to do that.  But I don’t want to fight off all of these salespeople. And I’m annoyed that the credit bureaus are making additional money on top of what they are charging to supply me for my credit report.  Do a Google search for “Mortgage Trigger Leads” and you’ll find many companies who sell these leads, some for over $100/lead.  I just have a gut feeling that someone paying $100/lead is going to have to make that up some where along the line.

There is a solution but you have to be proactive and register to opt out of the system.  If you don’t opt out they assume that it’s OK to do this to you.

Here’s the site www.optoutprescreen.com that you need to go to in order to opt out of this madness.  It says it takes about 5 days so make sure you do it before you start looking for a mortgage.

Posted in Miscellaneous, Mortgage info | 2 Comments »

Inverted Mortgage Rates

It’s very interesting to see 3 year adjustable rate mortgages lower than a 30 year fixed rate.  Usually one would expect long term rates to be more expensive because there is more risk over 30 years than over 3 years.  If rates go up anytime over the life of the loan the bank will be still be stuck with you at the original low rate.  Every once in a while things get turned upside down and we get what is called an inverted yield curve.

I don’t know why some lenders even bother showing these short term rates when they are more than the 30 year fixed.  The only way you’ll win is by interest rates going down below the current lower 30 year fixed rate in the next few years.  That doesn’t seem to me to be a very good thing to bet on.  

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10% Off Anything at Home Depot and Lowes

Pretty good coupon at Home Depot and Lowes for 10% off anything in the store.  You have to give out some information but it might be worth it to save $50 on a $500 purchase.  They’re are good for purchases up to $10,000.

Here are the links:

www.homedepot.com/tenpercent 

 www.lowesmoving.com

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