Archive for June, 2010
June 21st, 2010 - Weddings, Buying a House and Reality
My daughter recently opened a concierge service for Brides. We have been amazed at how many women have been dreaming about their weddings since they were very little girls. The problem is; that when they actually get engaged they are shocked to learn how much they didn’t know about the process. The cost of the actual wedding is astounding and they quickly learn that they have to have a bigger budget than they anticipated.
This is also what happens when you buy a house for the first time. You dream about the kind of house you are going to buy, you envision raising your kids there and you think you will stay there for many years. Then reality sets in! You need more money, you have to compromise, and you have to live farther out into the country than you wanted to live to get the house you really want. This is when you have to make some major decisions.
There’s the hard way to buy real estate and there’s the easy way. This isn’t your parents or your grandparents market. This is a totally new ballgame! There are people out there who will say anything to get you to buy a house. The banks are not interested in protecting you, if the house is a foreclosure, then you get what you pay for.
In the early 1990′s we moved away from “Buyer Beware” but then the industry circled right back to it. So “Caveat Emptor” and have a good day! So beware and still use a buyers agent.
June 17th, 2010 - Technorati
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June 4th, 2010 - Beware of the real estate agent recommended by a radio talk host!
Ok here’s my rant today… I recently listened to a radio talk show host who is a wizard in helping you get out of debt…I thought; now here is a person who is a consumer advocate and he cares about his listeners. So I called to see how I might be added to his list of preferred agents and was told that I don’t close enough sales to warrant being one of his preferred agents! So of course I said: I don’t get it.. I would have to sell at least 150 houses a year to become one of your preferred agents? That breaks down to 12.5 houses a month! ~ It isn’t even possible to represent 12.5 people buying houses in one month.. How could I possibly actually represent my clients if I tried to juggle 12.5 clients a month? That is insane! To which his representative said: well unless you are producing that many sales, we won’t recommend you. So the real truth is they are making tons of money recommending discount real estate brokers to his listeners and it is not actually about the quality of the agent, it is about the amount of money the agent makes the radio talk show host! So it is simply a numbers game.
If it walks like a greedy person, sounds like a greedy person then it is indeed a greedy person.. so beware. The money is in the recommending, not the actual wanting to help consumers.