Real Estate, Really

I was closing up an open house in downtown Huntington Beach on a sunny late summer afternoon, pulling the Open House sign up out of the ground and folding the flag, when a couple approached me. They lived in the multi-family unit next door to the open house and were waiting for a chance to speak with me. After introducing themselves, they said they were looking for a realtor to help them purchase a home. "We've spoken to several realtors and no one calls us back," Tony said. "We have decided to purchase but we need some guidance about where to start." "I will call you back," I said with a smile, wondering why on earth the other realtors had passed on helping this darling couple with a new home. "But first let me ask you this: do you have a loan in place--are you working with a lender who can let you know how much you can afford?" "Not really," Sylvia replied. "Do you know of one? We really want to get started right away!...

I overheard a conversation in my office yesterday between one of our luxury realtors and a client who was hedging about listing his home with her. The reason: the realtor who had failed to sell the man's home said, "She won't do anything that I haven't already done." In other words...or in those words...the realtor who hadn't sold his home assured the seller he couldn't find anyone any better. I had to laugh. My co-worker very diplomatically pointed out the fact that over half of this realtor's listings canceled before the listing expired (something like 48 out of 90). She was nice about it, but, of course, the question hangs in the air: What happens with his listings? The other realtor also had very minimal pictures online, probably taken with his iphone. Then, how did he advertise? Did he stage the home (the answer was a negative)? How accessible was the home to the public? Was the home overpriced...did the realtor tend to overprice homes? As I l...

In 2010 we bought a Real Estate Owned (REO) property in Huntington Beach. We'd sold a home downtown that we'd bought at the height of the market in 2006 and knew we had to let it go before we lost all the money we'd invested in it. It was heartbreaking, because we loved our downtown home, but investments are just that...investments. We'd leased for a year after we sold the home, waiting for two things: the market to settle to its perceived low and for the model we wanted to come up in the community we'd chosen as our next move. When the townhome came up on the MLS, it was an REO, which meant the previous owners had defaulted on their loan and the bank now owned it. Generally speaking, especially in those depressing days when so many lost so much, REO properties were stripped of many of their appliances, light fixtures, mirrors, sometimes AC units...you name it. It seemed that if it would fit into a moving truck, owners, angry at the world and their banks, loaded it...

I got very dressed up and strode up the front walk of the home looking and acting way more confident than I felt. My clients were offering a price far below the recent asking price of a home just recently taken off the market. I'd seen the home when it was on broker preview and thought at the time that this was the place for my clients. They hadn't been quite ready to make the move at the time, but now they were. The day before, I'd called the realtor whose listing it was, asking if we could have a private showing. The sellers agreed, and I was correct: It was their home! They couldn't have loved it more. The rub: they weren't willing to pay the price the sellers wanted. I did a very thorough comparable search and we came up with a price my clients felt was right. I wrote up the offer, called the listing realtor, and our conversation was awkward, at best. "Kay, I'm not going to present that offer. My clients will be furious with me for wasting their time...

Looking through the Multiple Listing Service for homes for my client recently, I came across some disheartening listing postings--terrible descriptions and worse pictures. Most are good. But many realtors still feel they can phone it in...literally with the photographs. This isn't verbatim, but here's the description for one I saw:               This home has it all...2 bed, 2 bath, upgraded and beach close. Move in ready. I know almost nothing about this home! Maybe the realtor is illiterate and can't write. She could hire someone to create the description for her! We can write long, flowing descriptions for our listings! It's the buyer's first contact with the home. Attached to this literary masterpiece are several pictures of dubious quality. It is clear the realtor, who is selling the place for less than 2% commission, whipped out her iphone6 and snapped a few pictures. How do I know this? The same way the buyers will know when this listing la...

Sounds of traffic, the loud conversations of the guests outside and the turmoil in my stomach awakened me early the next morning. It was supposed to be moving day for our family, but there were still many unanswered questions. Bill and I needed a plan. I went outside to talk with some of the misplaced people, many of whom hadn't slept all night. Shaking with trauma, anxious to see what was left of their homes, and drunk on caffeine, they'd anxiously awaited daylight so they could make it across town to salvage what they could. Bill and the girls were up when I returned to our room. We thought to have a Wendy's breakfast, but the lines for food were a quarter mile long. Almost all the grocery stores and restaurants in town were damaged by the storm--refrigeration was out and shelves of goods were in very short supply already that morning. What we thought was, we'd get something on the way to the house. We found out too late that there was nothing available. Our plan w...

We pulled into Wichita Falls, Texas, in early April of 1979, ready to settle into our brand new home located off Southwest Parkway. We closed escrow early on Monday, April 9th, and took our daughters on a ride to see the house. Our older daughter was about to enter kindergarten, so we drove by the school and, of course, the local parks. At the entrance to our subdivision was a driving range and the advertisement for it was an enormous golf ball set upon a ten foot high tee. The girls were fascinated by it as we stopped to watch golfers practicing their swings. Also close by were the bank in which we'd just put all our money, a fabric store, a grocery store and an ice cream shop. Farish family staples. There was a moving company driver making his way to our home that day, too. I'd convinced him (begged and pleaded...) to get there on Tuesday. He'd wanted to make our furniture delivery day Thursday, but he was nice enough to accommodate my request. Everything was in order ...

I know it was early on in her search for a home that my buyer told me of her issue. "I need to know if anyone has ever died in the home." According to our California disclosures, the seller only needs to let the buyer know if anyone has passed away in the home in the last three years. My client, however, said she would know if there had ever been a death. She would feel it. We weren't looking at new construction...quite the opposite. Homes she could afford were built in the 1970-1980's. Since we were well into the 2000's by then, there would be many years unaccounted for with any home she might purchase unless we happened upon an original owner. I recommended we wait until we found the right place for her, then I would endeavor to find out how people who'd lived there previously had died, if indeed they had. The home she chose was really perfect for her. The young woman who was selling had been in the home for several years, but wasn't the original owner....

What we didn't know about moving to Atlanta was...we weren't. It took four months to sell the Red Oak house, but if we'd sold sooner we'd have bought a home in Georgia in a buyer's market. There were many homes for sale, some desperately in need of a buyer, and those homes stayed on market for months and months. Instead of purchasing, as some of the other new employees for the manufactured housing group had done, we rented a place in Doraville, Georgia, for six weeks. It was crazy. We hauled all our belongings to a storage unit and wandered around Atlanta discovering Krispy Kreme donuts and Stone Mountain. Many of those who'd already purchased homes there in anticipation of working in Atlanta still hadn't sold their homes in the down market a year later. We were spared that trauma. When the time came, the moving truck alleviated us of anything extraneous, and we loaded up our daughters in two cars, a Chevy Vega (yes, we had a Vega and actually drove it ...

Bill, my husband, got the good news that we were moving to Atlanta, Georgia, to work with a manufactured housing firm in 1977. It meant a raise in salary for us. $19,000 a year. It also meant we'd be selling our Red Oak home and moving...er, I'd be selling our home. My husband had to go on before me to start work. We had no idea what selling a home was like--the ups and downs. People selling a home for the first time need as much help as someone purchasing for the first time. We were property virgins, for sure. We found a realtor familiar with our area, put the sign out front and Bill left on a jet plane while I managed with a three-year-old and eighteen-month-old to keep everything going. Here's the thing: our little family waited with bated breath every evening for Bill to walk through the door for dinner. Single moms and dads will know what I'm talking about. I was the whole shebang now. For what turned into months. Red Oak wasn't Shangri La, so there wasn't...

Bill and I were very young when we married. I was only twenty and Bill, twenty-four. He'd just graduated from the University of Texas at Austin and I had one more year to go to finish my teaching degree. My finishing school was interrupted by a short stay in North Hollywood, Ca., where Bill worked on a special airplane for the military. Back home in Grand Prairie, Texas, I completed my degree and went to work for a small district in Dallas County--Red Oak. I made a whopping $6,000 a year (yes, that's right for all of you with your mouths hanging open)! Bill had his engineering degree and made $9,000 a year. It was the early 1970's when gas was thirty-five cents a gallon, which our little Mustang Mach 1 guzzled. I budgeted $29.00 a week for groceries and pretty much bought the exact same thing every week: ground beef, pork chops, a whole chicken (do you know how to cut one up?), packaged Chef Boyardee pizza (we each ate one whole pizza), bread and veggies (usually canned). ...

I was warned very specifically not to let the cat out of the house. "He's very sneaky," the seller said. "If he detects the slightest opportunity, he'll bolt!" With that she smiled and left me to my open house. Here's the thing. I had no idea where the cat even was, at this point. The home was huge...lots of bedrooms, massive sofas, closets galore. My thought was that if I don't know where Binky is right now, how will I know if he's close enough to sneak by me and slither out the door, free at last? So before I put the open house sign up signaling buyers to drop in, I scoured the home for this beloved pet. It took a very long time. The owner hadn't known where he was, either. "Oh, he's somewhere." Well, clearly...somewhere. I never located Binky. So I put my please keep door closed for escaping pets sign up and got down to the business of selling the home. It was a pretty busy open house, but it wasn't until about half wa...

When they walked into my open house in Dana Point one Saturday afternoon, she had a few paint splotches on her tee shirt and he was wearing a baseball cap. They were interested in homes closer to the beach than their current South Orange County residence, too far inland for those cool ocean breezes. They liked the home in which we met, but wanted to see a few more. That's why we set up a tour for the next day. She came with fresh homemade cookies--a rare and thoughtful gift. We spent the middle of the day traipsing all over San Clemente and Dana Point, sitting in front of windows with ocean views, calculating the expense of moving, talking about her art, his photography. Of course...the paint from the day before made sense--she's an accomplished artist. She'd been a teacher. I'd been a teacher. By the time we'd  gone on a few more outings, it was as much about a blossoming friendship as a realtor-client relationship. That was several years ago. They decided to keep...

Most of us won't post a picture to Instagram or Facebook if we haven't approved it first. I have an infinite number of deleted selfies from my cell phone that would curl your hair. Yikes! You know the ones I'm talking about where your nose is four times its normal size or, as with me, there are wrinkles I forget are there in my daily life and am not at all interested in being reminded of. I don't mind posting the professional pictures I've recently sat for. They have me at twilight on the beach and the amazing photographer even gave me a digital facelift. Those images I even want to share. This morning I received an email from a woman to whom I'd sent this marketing brochure. She said she'd been carrying it around admiring the picture for weeks, so she wanted the name and number of the artistic photographer who captured the moment. The purpose of the brochure was to sell a home, but, oh well, I loved giving April Reprucchio a new client! My point is, the...

It's hard to overestimate the importance of a home inspection. Even if the home is new construction. Maybe even especially then because the expectation is that everything is new and, after all, what could go wrong? Plenty. Before I became a real estate professional, my husband and I purchased a brand new home in the downtown area of a beach city. Previously we'd owned a condo close by and every time we took a walk to the ocean, we passed this gorgeous property. It sat for a while. Aside from being overpriced for the market, it had a few design flaws that perhaps kept it waiting for us to buy it. The kitchen was very small for a 3000 square foot home and the washer and dryer hook-ups were in the garage instead of in a designated laundry area. Not what the buyers would expect in a home priced at nearly two million dollars. Also, the ceilings were lower than normal, but this accommodated a full third floor deck and bonus room. The exterior was beautifully designed with several ...

Every realtor has a story about the strange things that happen while showing homes. I am no exception. The average home buyer  has no idea what goes into making arrangements for their concierge tour of available homes in their price range. Aside from providing water and snacks, which I always try to have strategically placed in the cup holders of the consoles of my SUV, there is the pressure to have scintillating conversation and a cheerful demeanor no matter what we find when we arrive at the scheduled homes. Let's say our clients want to see six homes. That is six phone calls to six realtors who may or may not answer, much less return calls. (Yes, there are some out there. They might even be the ones who put cell phone pictures of their listings onto the MLS instead of hiring a photographer and doing it correctly....but I digress.) Real estate professionals are essentially tour guides at this point in the transaction, and we have to make sure each home is given enough "look...