Earn Money Trashing your Home

I could not believe this latest information on the Foreclosure front. Just when you thought things were as unreal as they could be with the entire mortgage market meltdown, the amount of home owners that have walked away from their homes due to falling values and now add to this Trashing your Home for money ?

You heard me correct, check out this video segment. It appears that many homeowners angry with their banks refusal to work with them have been taking out their frustrations on the bank and the lenders by totally trashing their homes as they-vacate them. It has been so bad that many banks are now paying top dollar to the former owners to leave the property with a guarantee not to tamper with the home.

I believe that this footage is from the West Coast.

Has any one in the Tampa Real Estate Market observed this ?

What about Florida as a whole ?

Please comment if you have heard about this, or know anyone that has ?

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Denial will stop you from selling your home

 

A new report from Zillow.com shows home values dropped nationwide by 3%. Chief Financial Officer Spencer Rascoff discusses which cities saw the largest declines.
Time for little cold water on the face for those that have obviously been asleep for oh..the last year. Hey times are tough, I don?t need to rehash all the media hype of the last several months however, todays news has continued with fact that Mortgage Applications volumes decreased this last week in large part because the interest rates started creeping back up again. The Wall Street Journal reported on Zillows market data from Monday, that outlines the Bubble Areas of California and Florida. Basically, they reported that prices are still falling and may continue to fall more.

So where does this leave the home owner that really wants to sell their home ? Well first off you have to be really motivated to sell. Yes it is difficult the house you are selling was to bank role your retirement plan and so you have a certain number that you feel you have to sell at. Sound familiar ? If this is you then you had better get your head out of the sand. Either take your home of the market and forgo that retirement plan for a year or two or reduce your house to what your realtor says it should sell at. And even then you need to be prepared to lower the price even more again.

That is if you want to really sell your home ? Now maybe you don?t have retirement in mind, but you wanted to profit from your sale. Who doesn?t ? However, if you have had your home for some time, you have a lot of room to work with. It is unfortunate that homes are over valued. And yes that means the very one you are trying to sell now.

You can read more of this article by the WSJ concerning your R.O.I. here:

As I am writing this, I am also reminded of an article I read in January?s issue of Realtor Magazine discussing this issue of Realtors trying to get Sellers to Get Real. They did cover both ends of the spectrum and covered unrealistic buyers expectations too. The larger issue that we face here in Florida is the fact that our homes are over valued. It is not personal, believe me, we bought into a new home at near the top of the market. If we had to sell today we would loose a lot, but that?s just what the market bares right now and being realistic is the only way to keep moving forward.

If you are a Realtor and have ?clients who won?t budge from unreasonable thinking,? then you may have to try an alternative approach to the one you are currently using. One of those items that I find no one has mentioned is the use of BLOGS. Yep, give them the web site address here or email them the link to this article. They can get mad as hell at me, but I have included the links to the statistics within this article.

I can?t say it any better than this ?When you have clients or prospects that are being unreasonable, it?s your job to help them revise their expectations based on the market reality.? I have to give credit where it?s due. This quote is from Kelle Sparta?s article that I mentioned above. (Kelly is the author of The Consultative Real Estate Agent).

In closing, it appears that the signs of denial for Sellers are still all over the map here in Florida and California. . Inman news covers it fairly well in their article entitled Denial: Didn?t we do this stage already ?

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Will you find your home on Roost ?

Another NEW Generation Real Estate Platform, joined the likes of Trulia, Realtor.com and Zillow earlier this week. I believe their actual launch was on Wednesday the 23^rd.

Roost.com says they will partner with MLS?s and Brokers. They claim they are unlike other online models in that, ?Roost?s network of broker sites ensures consumers have access to comprehensive MLS listings in major metropolitan areas across the U.S., via close collaborations with MLSs and leading local brokers that can help them find their next home.?

From what I can tell they are predominantly covering the West Coast now and are in about 13 markets. It is too soon to tell if and when they will develop into the South and the Florida Markets.

From a quick overview of their platform, I noticed right off the bat that they have optimized the site for Fire Fox Browser which is great. But they may have missed a beat here. As most Realtors know, almost all of the MLS?s at present require usage of IE and in fact do not work well with Fire Fox. But then again Fire Fox is a much better browsers in my book and many Realtors could do well to add it to their tools.

Gregg Swann over at Blood Hound Blog did a really great job of describing what Roost is all about and how they intend to market their product so I would invite you to take a look at his excellent post on Roost.

If I had one initial comment to make, it would be that the folks over at Roost should spend a little more time on their blog. Using a template advertising someone else’s free WP template does not give the professional polished look you would associate with a New Technology Company that is looking to compete with some of the bigger league players. Other than that I can?t wait to kick the tires and see what this will do for us here in the South and more specifically, the Greater Tampa Bay Area Real Estate markets.

Is Roost a tool for you or your clients to use ?

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A Real Estate Story of another cyclical time

Most every thing related to Real Estate sales is cyclical. Even if we had not had all the issues with the sub-prime market conditions…the bubble had to burst. The gains made by many here in Florida over the last year…at the height of the industry were rather ridiculous and I think this resetting will normalize things out.

During the Holiday’s I visited my ailing Father in California who at 90 still recalls his heyday in the market and also a large down turn. He was very big into Real Estate in the early to mid 60′s for about 6 years. He was active in the Oakland Bay Area Real Estate scene and even had his Brokers license. He recalls that about 3 years into his business that the market started a correction and prices and commissions went down along with many of the Realtor s.

The later 2 years, as a full time Realtor he took on odd jobs in the shipyards in San Francisco because he had a family of 6 to provide for. My mother was a stay at home mom with two toddlers and two other young boys just starting elementary school. My father was also a trained mechanic and a member of the merchant marines,so he would do his real estate during the day and at night would drive to SF and work as a first mate on several ships. When the market continued into it’s 2nd year of correction, he had to make a choice that I think was almost ordained for him. He did not make enough to pay the mortgage and keep 4 boys and their mother fed and clothed. At that time many women were not working, it was not the norm. He was offered a position to go back to sea. At that time my father was in his mid 40′s and he stayed on in the merchant marines until he retired in his mid 60′s as a chief engineer. He still dabbled in Real Estate through out his working time. When he retired he sold several duplex he owned and bought an apartment complex in Hayward, California that he managed for many years. He finally sold it about 6 years ago. Not something he wanted to do but age had caught up with him and my step-mother was afraid he would fall off a ladder trying to fix something. My dad did not like to hire sub contractors to do repairs. He did almost everything himself. I recall the week he sold the apartment…he was very sad and told me that he felt like he had lost a family member.

My wife is the Real Estate professional in the family. I am the Technical guru and having worked on the National Scene as a VP of IT for New Homes Realty, I know my way around the industry and have many contacts. If the market had not taken a down turn, who knows I might have even taken a license. For now I am happy to help my wife and her partner Marie get a leg up on their competition in the market and keep them at the cutting edge on the technology side.

This is a rather tough blog for me to write as my father is in the last stages of his life having been diagnosed with a terminal form of cancer a few moths ago. So the lengthy discussions I had with my father over the holiday?s will be the last. He wanted to impart on me how tough he knows conditions can get, but said that the market will correct itself. He has had long discussion with Theresa as they connected a lot on the Real Estate front. So I know things will get better.

My Dad?s parting comments on this conversation were ?be sure to take care of your customers?. Which is something that we see a lot of comments about. I read a great article over at Inman news today written by Marc Davidson of 1000 Watt Consulting, (which by the way is another great Blog to read up on) Where he discusses among other things that 2008 should be the year of CEM or Customer Experience Management. You can read his article from the links I left but a few bullet points I think are worth repeating here.

• 2008 should be the year of CEM
• 2008 needs to be the year of crystal vision.
• 2008 is the year to reduce expenses.
• 2008 must be the year we begin to conserve.

I am also resolving here to not use the term down market anymore as it appears by all measures that the market is returning to a normal cyclical correction.

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Is now the right time to buy your Florida home ?

There was an interesting post today on the Inman Blog titled, “Who’s spinning whom?” that was digesting a recently written article by Dian Hymer, “Is buying a home today a good investment?” Hymer is a veteran agent in the San Francisco East Bay and has been writing a syndicated column for Inman News for many years. This article was also reproduced in several other News outlets around the country and received quite the buzz.

In the article Hymer deliberates this question she gets from today’s buyers and advises:

“Buying a home is still a good investment if you can afford it, if you are ready to put down roots in a community, and if you want to invest in your personal happiness. Profit potential shouldn’t be your only reason for buying a home, even though in most cases your home will appreciate in value if you maintain it and if you own it long enough.

“The housing market, like any economic market, is cyclical. There are periods of robust activity followed by periods of sluggishness. Prices can go down as well as up. Now that the market has softened in most areas, it’s time to look at owning your home as a way to gain control over your personal domain — not as a source of quick cash.”

This article received a lot of comments more pros than cons. There are some interesting comments, as one reader an associate political professor at the University of California in San Diego muses -

“By any reasonable measure (expected trends in prices, the ratio of rents to mortgage payments, the ratio of incomes to mortgage payments), now is a phenomenally and historically BAD time to buy. Smart buyers will wait until smart sellers lower prices to conform to reasonable income multiples.

He continues: “This is just wrong. All of the reasons to buy are made better by waiting a year or two (or more) for prices to fall. By definition, an “investment” is something that will appreciate in price or pay a dividend. Neither is expected to be true in the next few years for housing.”

You can argue this both ways all day long but the end result is, when you are ready to buy a home, buy it.

It’ s kind of like the proverbial question – “When is the best time to buy a new computer?” The answer is, “when you need it”. Due to advances in technology, what you buy today is outdated tomorrow.

This same rationale should be applied to a major decision like buying a home as well. Yes, you need to be capable of handing the financial obligations without overreaching your self to pay your mortgage and perform regular maintenance and upkeep.

Well what about my investment some inquire ?

While we all want to ensure that an investment like a home purchase is going to net us some equity in the future right ?

True, however you should not go into it with this solely as the purpose to purchase your home.

When we bought our first home I can tell you that the investment thought was secondary to our desire to have our own place to raise our family. We stayed in that first house for just a little over 10 years.

A lot of changes happened in the marketplace and when we sold, we did receive some equity but nowhere near the insane amounts that overvalued property owners were getting here in Florida. But then again a vast majority of the homes that were purchased over the last few years in Florida and elsewhere were bough for investment as the first priority.

We bought our second home this time last year in New Port Richey. A great new development and we paid pretty close to the market rate at the time. The same model is now selling for less than what we paid for.

Are we upset about it ? Yes and No. The difference now is that we have all been engaged by the media hysteria and thinking that we are loosing out because the next person got the better deal. Sellers here in the Tampa Florida Market are still holding on with a death grip on their homes price evaluations because they think they are loosing something and buyers are holding back because they of course want the rock bottom best deal they can get.

Right now the Real Estate Market in Florida is in a Stalemate. Some one has to move to keep the process momentum going forward, despite the mortgage and lending woes.

Heres a humble suggestion:

Buy your home now. Live in it and don’t worry about the Real Estate Market. It is cyclical, it will come around when you are ready to sell. After your kids have gone off to college and your now ready to move into a smaller home or you want to buy that Vacation Home at the Beach.

If your retired now and want that Home on the Beach. You may not live to enjoy it tomorrow if you are still waiting on the market recovery next month or next year.

So back to the question of topic again.

When is the best time to buy a home ?

The answer is: * When you need it. *

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