Archive for June, 2007
A Picture’s Worth
June 26, 2007
I had a lovely day out showing property to a mother and daughter from Manhattan. They were referred to me by a friend of mine, she thought we’d hit it off - and we did! The morning started in Capitola, not far from my office, at the hotel they were staying in. A typical June morning - fog just starting to burn off by around 11 AM. We were going to look for view properties up in the hills, where I expected it would be warmer and sunnier. It was warmer and sunnier up in the hills, but the day was unusually cool nevertheless.
We had lots of interesting conversation over a five hour period. One question was if I thought that Realtors here in town are dishonest. I said no, I didn’t think they were; generally speaking, I have a high regard for the Realtors I have worked with here. I then said, “The most dishonest thing they do, actually, is the pictures they put up on the MLS, and the descriptions they give to the properties.”
That one is a fine line, of course. It’s a Realtor’s job to make the house look its best. It is critical to have great photos of the house on the MLS - how else do you expect to lure buyers to see the property? The “dishonesty” comes, of course, with what the pictures don’t show - the high voltage power lines cutting across half of the view, or the neighbor’s house with all the junked cars out in front.
However, a picture can even be misleading when it is showing something - for example, how open and bright the home is. In a picture, a room can look much more open and bright (or closed and dark, for that matter!) than it really is. The only way that a buyer is really going to know what a home is like is to go and visit the home in person. There’s really just no other way to do it.
Which is why I don’t think that Realtors are headed the same place as the travel agent - into near-oblivion, that is. Perhaps in an area where there are seas of cookie-cutter homes in massive subdivisions when really, one home is very much like all the others. But here, in Santa Cruz, where you can have five radically different houses and lots all adjacent to each other, I just don’t see it happening.
A picture may be worth a thousand words, but it surely is no substitute for hopping in your Realtor’s car and going cruising. When it comes to buying Santa Cruz real estate, that’s priceless.
Posted by Administrator at 7:15pm
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Real Estate Podcasts
June 20, 2007
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past several years (and not that there’s anything wrong with that!), you know what a Podcast is. If for some reason you’ve missed out on this phenomena, let me clue you in. A Podcast is like a radio (talk) show, but instead of being transmitted live over the radio, it is transmitted as a recording over the internet. Usually, people listen to podcasts on their iPods - hence the name, Podcast.
I’ve been listening to podcasts for a year or two now. I first got into them to help me improve my Spanish. I’ve been learning and speaking Spanish for well over 20 years now, but the hardest part for me has always been understanding what people were saying to me in Spanish. I have now been listening to a great number of podcasts in Spanish from around the world, becoming accustomed to the various accents and colloquialisms of spanish around the world. It’s been a great help, and I’ve learned a bunch of things, too.
Last week I took my last two GRI classes. The second-to-last one, which I wrote about a few days ago, was about technology applications in Real Estate. The instructor suggested that maybe we should start our own podcast - something I have thought about in the past, and even downloaded some software and made a few experimental recordings.
I’ve officially added making a podcast to my To-Do list, but that’s a ways away yet. To prepare myself, though, I thought I’d see what other real estate podcasts are available presently. There are quite a few - some of them are for Realtors, some of them are for investors - I haven’t seen anything that’s just for the average joe who is thinking about buying a house. However, when the average Joe is buying a house, he is definitely making an investment, so I feel that the investment-type podcasts (and books, etc.) have something to offer “typical” buyers.
It’s only been a few days that I’ve been listening to these podcasts (and then, just in the car and in the gym), but there are a couple I’d like to share with you. The first one is called Real Estate Masters. It’s taught by a proclaimed (maybe self-proclaimed, I don’t know!) Shaolin Master, and he’s got a very interesting approach to real estate investing - the way of the Warrior and all that. He’s not from China - he talks with a New York or New Jersey accent. Anyway, he’s got a big fat web site - Success.org. He’s actually got two podcasts - Real Estate Masters, and another one about his Action Principles for Self Improvement. I haven’t listened to the second one yet, but I find the first to be quite interesting.
The other Real Estate Investor podcast I’ve been listening to is called Real Life Real Estate Investing. This is a really great, professionally produced podcast which is basically a copy of a radio program done by Vena Jones-Cox. She’s from Chicago (or Ohio, Kentucky? Somewhere the other side of the Rockies). She’s got a great voice and is fun to listen to.
There are many more real estate podcasts out there, and I’ll be searching for more - when I find them, I’ll be sure to let you know. I’ll also let you all know, of course, when I get my own podcast put together. Stay tuned!
Posted by Administrator at 8:22am
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Market Statistics - May 2007
June 15, 2007
Subscribers of my Real Estate Newsletter have received another copy, with the latest market trends. For those of you who don’t subscribe, here’s what is going on in a nutshell. This is county-wide, for single-family residences:
Median Price: $790,000 (year ago: $755,000)
Average Price: $832,842 (year ago: $846,921)
Units Sold: 153 (year ago: 193)
Sale/List Price Ratio: 97.9% (year ago: 98.0%)
Days of Inventory: 238 (year ago: 174)
Days on Market: 89 (year ago: 68)
Clearly the best bit of news here is that the median price is up quite a bit. Everything else, though, definitely shows a softer market. And the median price number is deceptive - what’s going on here is that more middle-and-upper range homes are selling than on the lower end. The condo market might be classified as “in the tank,” for example.
But, fear not - this too shall pass.
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Posted by Administrator at 6:58am
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(Mis) Application of Technology
June 14, 2007
Last night I went to bed around 2:30 AM - a bit of a late night, especially for a Wednesday! And then, this morning, promptly at 4:01 AM, my alarm went off and a new day began. Today I had to go up to Sacramento, to attend my next-to-last GRI class. It was Course 107 - Technology Applications in Real Estate. I have a deep and abiding interest in this topic, so I thought it would be well worth the 3.5 hour drive.
The class started out pretty slow, with discussions about what is a CD-ROM, what is RAM, etc. - pretty basic stuff, and certainly nothing new to me. I could see, though, that a lot of people in the class were learning a lot, and the instructor clearly loved the topic and he was pretty entertaining. Lunch was served, and afterwards, I started getting pretty drowsy as the class continued learning about what a web browser is. Fortunately, I had my Palm Treo 700p with me, which helps me keep me entertained at times when the GRI instructor is traveling over what is for me well-trodden material.
A lot of it has been pretty well-trodden, too. I took my Real Estate Broker’s exam in the spring of 2006, and there was quite a bit of reading and testing involved in that. A good chunk of what gets covered in the GRI classes is also covered in the course of studying for the Broker’s exam. So why all the effort to get up at 4 AM to learn what a video card does?
The reason is simple: it’s not what you know, it’s what you don’t know. In this particular GRI class, I was very familiar with about 98% of the material that was taught. However, there were just a couple of few interesting web sites and other digital products that may just prove to be useful, in some way, to the clients I serve. I can’t say that I learned much today, but I did spot a couple of things that will help me provide a better service to my clients. And for me, that’s a lot of what the GRI training is all about.
Of course, it’s also about being able to have three more characters to dangle after my name. It may not read MBA, but in the world of real estate, it’s just as valuable. 
Posted by Administrator at 9:21pm
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