By John Capomaccio

Do listing agents need to be at showings? Guest blogger John Capomaccio, a broker with New Age Real Estate in Haverhill, Mass.. says emphatically no.

This has happened to me a number of times: A listing agent insists on being present at showings but can’t make it when my buyers want to see the property. So, I show the buyers similar properties, and they make an offer on one of those properties that’s accepted and eventually closes. The property with the accompanied showing was never viewed by my buyers. I wonder if the sellers of that property realize that if their property was on a lockbox it would have been shown.

Do the listing broker or the home seller believes they have a better chance of selling the property if the listing agent is there? Not only do I think it doesn’t help, I believe it hurts. Many buyers have told me they are uncomfortable with the listing agent there. I have had a few buyers tell me not to make appointments with properties where the listing agent is present. Let buyers’ agents do their job! They know the buyers’ wants and needs. Buyers tend to stay longer in a property when they are with their agent alone. They pay more attention to the details. If they have any questions, they can always have their agent contact the listing agent.

Accompanied showings limit the number of times a property can be shown, and in this market they’re a big disservice to sellers.

Now that sub agency is almost totally eliminated, liability should not be an issue. And, personally, when I list a property, I don’t want to do buyer’s agents’ job for them.

Posted on August 19 at 04:37 PM | Permanent Link | Add a Comment (0)

By Wendy Cole
Senior Editor

No one really disputes the importance of the Internet in the home search process anymore. The latest NAR research shows that 8 out of 10 buyers go online to hunt for property. A new Yahoo! survey similarly finds that 77 percent of respondents used an online source during their research for a home, while only 34 percent used newspapers or other print sources.

However, when it comes to advertising dollars, there's a gaping disconnect between consumer and industry behavior. The Yahoo! study reports that real estate advertising dollars are not even close to catching up to where the buyers are: on the Internet.

Though online ad spending has doubled since 2005, making up 32 percent of total spending, newspapers are still getting a higher share with 40 percent, according to the media research firm Borrell Associates.

These lopsided stats make me wonder what's holding you all back. Is it a lack of familiarity or comfort with online advertising oportunities? Or something else? And if you have adapted a smart and consistent online media strategy, please tell us about it and how well it's working.

Posted on July 11 at 11:33 AM | Permanent Link | Add a Comment (4)

BY STACEY MONCRIEFF

Many REALTOR® Magazine Readers are telling us they’ve never experienced a more challenging time to be in residential real estate. One reader wrote to say she opened the newly redesigned magazine and asked herself, “Is this all you’ve got?” She urged us to dig deeper to find strategies to help her and her fellow practitioners weather the slow market.

So I did just that, finding an article I wrote back in 1990 when my last name was still Waldron. The country was in a recession, and NAR membership had dropped below 700,000. California was seeing significant home price declines, the “Massachusetts Miracle” was derailing, and the Gulf States were still recovering from the 1980s oil bust.

Much of the advice that brokers and salespeople offered at that time is still germane today, so I’ve posted the text of the article, “Turn Up the Heat on a Cold Market” here.

One point you may find refreshing: In 5,000+ words, there's nary a mention of the Internet!

Of course, we're also working on more modern-day guidance for you — but still with a focus on the fundamentals.

Just after the NAR Conference in Las Vegas in November, long-time practitioner John Mayfield, CRB, posted this entry at the Council of Real Estate Brokerage Managers blog: "If there was

Continue reading "Surviving the Slowdown" »

Posted on January 25 at 08:20 AM | Permanent Link | Add a Comment (3)

BY JOHN N. FRANK

Mark Lefanowicz, president of mortgage Web site E-Loan, discussed at Real Estate Connect last week how much more difficult it’s becoming to find financing for people with low credit scores. Last summer, E-Loan could counsel people who had scores around 540 (620 is generally considered the subprime cut-off level) on how to raise their scores to 600 and qualify for mortgages, Lefanowicz recounted.

These days, those scores need to be raised to 620 to 640 to get lender interest.

At the same time that lending standards have tightened, more people in the subprime score range are looking online for mortgages, he noted.

Roughly 70 percent of applications to E-Loan in the past were from people with scores above 620. Today, 50 percent of applications are from those with scores below 620.

Lefanowicz theorized the shift was coming because people with low scores feel less intimated looking for mortgages online as opposed to seeing a mortgage broker or other lender face-to-face.

Speaking on the same panel with Lefanowicz, Patrick F. Stone, chairman of The Stone Group, a commercial brokerage and development company headquartered in Austin, Texas, said one of the most important services a real estate professional can provide clients is to make sure they understand the provisions of any mortgage they’re taking on.

Borrowers don’t like asking questions at a closing when one document after another is being shoved in their faces, but that’s exactly when they should slow things down and understand the financial obligation they’re taking on, Stone argued.

Good advice to remember at your next closing!

Posted on January 18 at 06:47 AM | Permanent Link | Add a Comment (0)