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Tag Archives: wayback wednesday

Wayback Wednesday… From the Meltdown.

Atomic bombing of Nagasaki on August 9, 1945.

Image via Wikipedia

One advantage of having blogged for more than three years is that I have a LOT of posts to look back upon… and there are some really opinionated pieces lurking back there.

This one actually does push back into the early days of my blog… October 7th, 2008… as the financial systems of the country (and arguably the whole world) were on the verge of collapse.

At that time, TARP wasn’t something we talked about in the past tense.  It was a brand new idea.

Honestly, at the time I thought it was what we needed to do.  But now… not so sure.  Of course, it is a LOT easier to make a decision when looking in the rear-view mirror than it is when looking through the windshield.

Through my connections on Active Rain, I know a particular guy that is a serious “financial wonk”.  He tends to be well to the left of me on many issues, but as TARP was being debated in the public eye, he was VERY much opposed to it.  He wasn’t a big fan of the alternative… but his reasoning pointed to TARP as being a long term issue…

And there is NOTHING I could say in response that had as much validity as what he was saying.  But I stuck to my guns.

Now, I think he might have been right.  Even using the 20/20 rear-view mirror, the best we can do is guess.  We can’t know what would have happened had we taken the other path.

Here is the link again…  Have you been left wondering how we’ve gotten here?

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Wayback Wednesday… Termite Bonds, Which Should You Have?

Termite mound in Queensland / Australia, betwe...

Image via Wikipedia

A couple of years ago I had a lot of buyers asking me about termite bonds.  I don’t know why, but sometimes questions come in waves.

So, what type of termite bond should you get when you are buying a house… or even if you aren’t buying it?  Should you get a “normal” retreatment bond?  Should you dig for a company that does a repair bond?  Did your termite company even tell you which one they offer or what they mean?

Take a look at the original post

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Wayback Wednesday… Bankrupt Subdivisions… Good Deal?

Sign of the times - Foreclosure

Image via Wikipedia

Two years ago, I wrote about some of the pros and cons of buying a home in a ‘distressed’ subdivision.  While there aren’t quite as many builder foreclosure properties as there were a couple of years ago, there are resales coming into the market now from people that bought builder foreclosures.

As with many things, all that is old is new again.  I’m hearing from buyers more than any time in the last year and a half that they are thinking about buying a home in an abandoned subdivision.

As I said in the original post, there are both pros and cons.  It would be a great post to go back and read.

Oddly, a couple of months after writing the post, I got a call from a local TV station that wanted to interview me on camera regarding this situation with a specific subdivision.  Unfortunately, I was on vacation with my family and out of town.  I wasn’t important enough to warrant a satellite interview…

Homes had originally been marketed at $600k to $800k in the neighborhood.  As the market started to slide, the prices offered by the builder started to drop.  They weren’t able to sell many units though.  Eventually, the bank took over and was selling the homes in the $400k to $500k range.  Just after the last existing home had been sold, another builder bought the remaining lots and began selling homes under $300k.

Some of the owners in the neighborhood that had purchased at higher prices were VERY upset with the builder and everyone else involved.  One owner had purchased for just over $800k, and needed to relocate.  Her house was not likely to sell for much over half that.

The bottom line is that there is potential for a VERY good deal… and there are some major pitfalls that could make that deal go very sour.  Step in with your eyes wide open…

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Wayback Wednesday… Dirty Little Secrets…

A tablet with the phrase "For sale by own...

Image via Wikipedia

There are a couple of Dirty Little Secrets in Real Estate.  I wrote about one of them a few years ago this week.  Those people that want you to sell your home “FSBO” through them for a flat fee have one of those secrets.  They don’t care if your home sellsThey get paid whether your home sells or not…  In fact, I’ve been to presentations where some of these companies were talking about their business model.  It was mentioned that if the house DOESN’T sell, they have a chance to double down on the revenue.

But that isn’t the only secret.

Another one is that your real estate agent is only guessing at the “market value” of your home.  And the same holds true for appraisers, adjusters and anyone else that is pegging a “value” to a home.  There is only one way to determine an accurate type of value for a home, and that is replacement value.  But that isn’t market value.  See, the problem is that market value is determined by a buyer and a seller agreeing on the price of a house.  And it is valid at the closing table… for THAT buyer and THAT seller.  The second that title changes hands, that value starts becoming vaporous again.  Some of us are pretty good at guessing what the market value MIGHT be, but it is a guess.

I don’t want that to sound self-serving.  If you really want, I’ll sell your house for a flat fee.  We can agree on everything right up front… what is going to be done, when it will be done, what is or isn’t included…  You’ll even get a healthy discount for going that way.

I don’t mind being open about this industry.  Dirty laundry HAS to be aired in order to get clean.  This isn’t GIANT dirty laundry, but I think it is something that needs to be disclosed.

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Wayback Wednesday… Buyers and Sellers, Same Advice…

Deal Castle

Image via Wikipedia

I’m going WAY back this week.  I’m going back 3 years.  There are a LOT of real estate bloggers that can’t go back close to three years because their blogs didn’t exist that long ago.  I actually had been blogging a year by then.  [Horn-tooting over]

I had a series of posts earlier that year called “Into The Mailbag” where I answered on the blog, questions I got from my email.  It was fun, and still one of my favorite things to do… help consumers have a better experience while buying or selling property.  [As a side-note, feel free to shoot me questions for my blog… they are great post ideas]

These two posts were actually inspired by the Into The Mailbag series, but they were not actually asked by my readers or clients.  They were subjects that I always seemed to end up addressing with clients.  I called them “Not into the Mailbag“.

In Not into the Mailbag… Buyers… I posted about offering strategies for buyers.  Many seem to think (still) that offering some percentage of the listing price is the magical solution to getting a good deal and making sure to actually be able to get the property.  It isn’t so…

In Not into the Mailbag… Sellers… I posted about listing price strategies for sellers.  Some sellers try to game buyers by thinking that the listing price should be some magical percentage higher than they actually expect the home to bring.  That isn’t so, either…

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