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Bye-Bye STI June 19, 2008

NWMLS treesThe NWMLS has announced that as of June 24th 2008, they will no longer use the term. Active STI. It will become Pending Inspection and two new statuses will be created, Pending Feasibility and Pending BU Requested.

For those who are members and have access to the database, all three statuses will appear in the pending section of the Hotsheet. Pending Inspection will be used when the property has a signed Purchase and Sale Agreement and has an inspection scheduled. Pending Feasibility will be used for listings where a purchase and sale agreement is signed pending a feasibility study. Pending BU Requested will be used when the seller would like to receive back up offers.

Once the inspection or feasibility study is completed the listing must be changed. The listing would be set to Active, if the inspection or feasibility study were not waived and the sale fails, or Pending, if waived.

The most significant change is that properties with a Pending Inspection status (formally STI) will not be visible on the public websites. All pending statuses shall be considered off-market and will be treated as follows:

I’m sort of surprised that Pending BU Requested will not be in the IDX feed and can not be shown on public websites. This goes counter to what Sellers want. That is, continued exposure to the market. Perhaps this will change with time too if the NWMLS receives feedback about it.

Fishing season is officially open! June 4, 2008

To this title you might ask, “which salmon is available?”  Well, I’m not really talking about fish with scales and fins here.  What we’ve noticed over the past month is that the fishing with low offers is getting pretty common in a lot of price ranges.  These occurred in neighborhoods ranging all over the area too including Greenwood, Phinney Ridge (x2), Bellevue (Bridle Trails), and Mercer Island.

Some of these properties I can understand the desire of investors to lowball and get a bargain.  One of these homes I had listed was already priced to be a good value for the neighborhood so my clients completely ignored some extremely low all cash offers from an investor because they weren’t THAT motivated to sell - meaning, we’d only been on market for about 30 days.  Now, 2 years ago being on market that period of time would have made some people nervous but, realistically, most homes take longer than just a few hours to sell or even just a couple of weeks. So, we ignored the first 2 ridiculous offers and another one came along (still low). We put forward a counter with a very small price change and the buyers took it. WAKE UP CALL!  We’re not in a buyer’s market in the Puget Sound region.  We’re in a balanced market.

What I’ve noticed in talking with all of the agents submitting offers for these various listings I have is that they’ve all bought into their client’s mindset of thinking that “it’s a buyer’s market” and they should be able to really drop prices via their offers. But the agents aren’t helping their clients by doing the work associated with helping “sell” those offers.

Yes, there are some sellers out there that are still hanging on and desperately wishing for the days of the high flying markets we had for 5+ years, but reality is kicking in for most and the scales are becoming more balanced.  This isn’t the rust belt where the economy has sunk and houses have sunk lower.  If you’re a listing agent you had better be able to justify your pricing.  And, if you’re a buyer’s agent you should do the same for your offer.  One lowball offer we received my partner went back and asked the guy to submit his comps that supported the offer.  The agent’s reply was, “well, I don’t have any, it’s just what they wanted to offer.”  Our client almost completely ignored their offer except for some details we pointed out that led us to believe they’d accept a counteroffer with a minor price change - and it worked.

Another listing had an agent providing comps but they just solidified my client’s view that our pricing was right on. We did go ahead and submit a counter with a faster closing date and some small concessions that we expect will be accepted.

I will admit though that with a couple of my buyer clients, who are not in a hurry to buy, we’re doing some of this offer roulette.  We submitted an offer on a MI house for about $100k less than asking price but we also put forward our pricing analysis and comps that supported the price point.  The house had had several large price drops based on other agent feedback as well and it was definitely a cosmetic fixer.  It might have worked out for my clients except that the house got another offer the same day - it was still a very low offer but not as low as ours so the seller started negotiating with them.  But, that’s okay because my clients are willing to wait for the right deal for them.  This house was going to need roughly $200-400k in updates over time so from a cost perspective the price we offered was what they were willing to spend knowing the costs they’d incur later.

Having watched the low offers come in for one of our listings my client provided the impetus for this post by saying in an email, “well, it looks like fishing season is officially open!”  I’m glad that she’s got a good head on her shoulders and a good sense of humor too.  These are the clients you really enjoy working with especially when you can have sensible discourse with regard to your work together, market conditions, strategy, and more.

Happy fishing! 

Closing the Translation Loop October 23, 2007

A long, long, it-feels-like-forever, time ago, Anna covered the story that there were a lack of good translations tools available on the internet, and especially in languages like Russian. In that article, she linked to an article that showed Google had developed a much better translations service, but hadn’t released it to the general public. Well, I’m always interested in closing loops, and so I’m happy to report that Google just announced that their, much improved, translation service is now live at Google Translates.

What makes Google’s service interesting is that it doesn’t use the standard “rule-based” translation methods, but rather, it is much more statistical in nature:

We feed the computer with billions of words of text, both monolingual text in the target language, and aligned text consisting of examples of human translations between the languages. We then apply statistical learning techniques to build a translation model.

Anna and I couldn’t help but to try the service out, so we choose a Russian news site: pravda.ru and the results were pretty impressive (pravda.ru in English) as I could definitely pick up almost every story.

pravdaru

My take is that the translation of websites is only the beginning for Google… Not only will they improve the translations (especially if enough users adopt their feature to “recommend” a better translation directly through the tool), but I can easily see a day in the not-too-distant future when this tool is built right into gmail or google chat. This could make it extremely easy to have an online conversation with someone who doesn’t even speak your language.

In my family this could be very useful as my wife’s parents do not speak much English (and I don’t speak much of their native Russian). At this point that means that my wife has to translate everything that is said between us. What if instead, I could simple email them (in English), but it would arrive with an accurate translation in Russian? The result is that it would actually be easier for us to share stories over email or chat then in person!

From a business perspective, the possibilities are fascinating… Why not translate an entire website (Welcome to “Дождь город Недвижимость руководства”) into another language (Will Google start to penalize “duplicate content” if it is in another language??? :)). This would work especially well if you could feel comfortable also having a “conversation” using these tools with clients who don’t speak your language. Considering all of this technology will be ported to mobile devices, I’m sure I’m just hitting the tip of the iceberg…

Transit on my mind… August 14, 2007

So, we’ve all been inundated by WSDOT telling us to stay off the highways during the shut down on I-5 and today’s Seattle Times shows that they’ve done such a good job of convincing us about it that traffic has been better than the past 15 year’s time (my personal opinion on that timeline) because people are taking alternate routes, alternate transportation or just plain not getting on the roadway. While I am all in favor of alternate modes of transportation this August exercise in changing habits makes me wonder if the citizens of Puget Sound are willing to consider longer term changes in transportation.  

Coming up this fall (November 2007) the tri-county area will have the opportunity to vote on a new roads & transit package for Sound Transit.  The high-level overview of it is that it will provide improvements to current highways, 50 new miles of light rail (including to the Eastside), new HOV lanes, bike lanes/sidewalks/connections, and improvement on major freight routes. Each county has specific items that they’ll gain as benefits as well but what is truly important about the package to pass is that 2 contiguous counties must approve it for it to pass.  That means we can’t have just Snohomish and Pierce pass the measure, it must include King County in there somewhere - and most preferably have all 3 counties agree to pass it so we can get all of the benefits that are part of the proposal.

As a member of the Government & Public Affairs Committee within Seattle King County Association of Realtors(R), I have been present at many discussions of the Regional Transportation Investment District (RTID) along with many of my counterparts and we all support the plan. As real estate agents we understand how transportation affects our clients as well as the business community, which in turn affects home prices and quality of life. It is all enmeshed together. 

One significant point that was brought up at the last meeting I was able to attend was that some of the issues with the Pierce County section of the plan are being held up or threatened by an environmental group.  According to one of the folks at the meeting this group is trying to protect a wooded portion of land that is made up of trees that are not indigenous to the area - they were transplanted here about 100 years ago. This may be a mis-guided attempt to conserve and the area in question is an important link to the military bases in Pierce County. Not being able to provide better transit access to these areas could cause those bases to be put on close down lists within the Federal Government which would then put Pierce County at risk for massive job losses.  Surely some other kind of environmental mitigation could occur to preserve land areas that could allow for a work-around here.

Read the report and feel free to weigh in here about the plan!

This vote happens in November, but in the meantime don’t forget to vote in the August 21 Primary and Special Election!  Part of this election has measures regarding parks and open space funding, including funds for the much beloved Woodland Park Zoo.

A deeper look into town home joint maintenance agreements… August 9, 2007

In a previous post I wrote about concerns for townhomes that were sold over the past several years that didn’t have clear joint maintenance agreements. A recent deal I closed brought into focus exactly why my concerns are realistic and valid. Buyers need to be aware that it is their responsibility to read all the documents involved with their purchase and to understand the content of those documents - it is essential for making good purchasing decisions.

In the instance I refer to here a couple was buying a townhome built in 1997, the joint maintenance agreement was almost non-existent and if you didn’t look closely at the title report you might not notice the 2 small elements that had been recorded a year or so after the completion of the project. The only items noted in the joint maintenance agreement were that:

1.  All owners of the development would be financially responsible for the driveway used by all the owners, and

2.  Painting decisions had to be agreed to by the unit owners that were adjacent to each other.

That was it.  No discussion of common walls, nor damage caused by negligence, or roofing or siding replacement timelines or guidelines, etc.  One of the issues that was discovered in this property purchase was a siding defect that is under recall by Weyerhaeuser.  The seller had a pending claim that we researched to discover if it was transferrable or not. In the end, we found our clients could file their own claim after closing and release the seller from the claim - which would make everyone’s life easier. For us it was important to find out if my clients could replace the damaged siding with a new material or not. 

Since the impacted siding was on a balcony my clients preferred to rip the old siding off and instead place a metal or glass railing system - this meant we had to review if the joint maintenance agreement would allow for a different balcony railing than what the original design had put in place. Thankfully for my clients it looks like they can replace the poorly designed railing material with something that they find much more aesthetically pleasing. Another item they’ll be fixing right away is the 2-3 feet of organic material growing in the townhome’s gutters on the top floor roofline. This is a source of possible water infiltration to the roofing area and walls so they’ll be getting that done ASAP to try and limit any additional water based damage issues.

I’m looking forward to the remodel they’ll be completing on this home, both inside and out, I’m sure it will be an enormous difference from its current condition!

SEO Idea: Seattle Real Estate July 11, 2007

I know from the comments and emails that a lot of people enjoy the occasional SEO tweak and update. My latest change (as of 10 minutes ago) was to replace the words “Home” in the main tab with “Seattle Real Estate” (Thank you Tim for the inspiration!).

As usual, I’ll wait a few weeks and let you know if it makes any difference in how we show up in Google… (For at least six months, we’ve been pretty consistently ranked between place #10 and #15 in Google for [Seattle Real Estate] and non-existent for that term on the other search engines.)

Consumer Benefits of a Statewide MLS? June 3, 2007

I’ve been asked to speak before the California Association of Realtors (CAR) committee on MLS/Computer and Business Technology this Thursday in Sacramento, CA and I’m just now coming to the conclusion I may be in over my head! :) Despite the slightly off-topic nature (California MLS issues as oppose to Seattle MLS issues), I thought I’d share the story of what I’m working on as it might interest more than a few RCG readers…

Here’s some background:

Just to be clear, I haven’t been asked to give an opinion on the merits of doing away with California’s local MLS organizations in favor of one statewide MLS (although that appears to be the proposal), but rather, my role is to give a short overview presentation (20 to 25 minutes) on how online technologies are being used in the real estate space. (This is tougher than it sounds!).

It’s dangerous to walk into any presentation without a goal in mind, so here is what I’m looking to accomplish. I want the people in attendance (anywhere from 100 to 250 local MLS technology representatives) to walk away with the understanding that the only way to be successful in the online space going forward will be to provide tangible and obvious benefits to consumers. (I’m not going to make this part of my presentation, but I personally think that with the size and scope of the competition in the listing aggregation space, it is a gamble to assume that any one organization will control listing data into the future, especially if the local MLS’ aggregate into larger and larger targets.)

Here’s the outline of my presentation so far:

Understanding Online Real Estate Technology through the Prism of Web2.0

Overview: How do “Web2.0″ technologies apply to online real estate? (7 minutes)

    In a simplistic sense, successful web2.0 sites are designed, developed and managed for the consumer as oppose to a product, advertiser or organization. Some Web2.0 characteristics:

  • Everyone is a publisher
    • Quick examples of writing posts, leaving comments, writing reviews, rating items, social bookmarking, etc.
  • Designed for more than just a browsers
    • Websites are being built for mobile devises and feed readers that rely heavily on web-services and APIs
  • Consumers expect websites that meet their individual needs (personalization)
  • Example: Understanding Kayak’s roll in disrupting sites like Expedia and Travelocity

Understanding how communication tools are being used to benefit consumers (5 minutes)

  • Blogs
    • What is a blog? and Why are agents using them to market themselves?
  • Feed Readers
    • Example: How Google Reader can be seen as an extension of a personalized online newspaper

Understanding how communities are being used to benefit consumers (5 minutes)

  • Consumer-oriented Social Networks in the real estate space are still relatively undeveloped
    • While some agents have gone to existing consumer-oriented platforms (like Facebook and MySpace), the majority of agents using social networking tools are blogging.
    • ActiveRain is the most popular service in the real estate space by providing a forum for agents to share knowledge about effective online marketing options and reach out to consumers.
    • MyBlogLog provides a way to connect blogs and create a sense of community out of bloggers who write on their personal sites.
    • Trulia Voices provides a way for consumers to interact with real estate professionals around local topics
  • Blogging is particularly appealing to real estate agents because it is mostly a one-way conversations where agents can have control over the conversation. While there have been more than a few attempts, no social networking platform in the real estate space has managed to capture significant consumer participation.

Web2.0 websites work because they deliver on evolving consumer expectations… (5 minutes)

Summary (3 minutes)

Web2.0 aggregation sites are highly focused on serving the real estate consumer:

  • RE consumers expect websites (and Realtors!) to use multi-media tools to build community and trust into the systems.
  • RE consumers don’t care about our rules, practices and policies with regard to listings. They expect and will continue to seek out the most complete and accurate database of listings.
  • RE consumers trust the information from websites that (1) rank well in search engines and (2) allow for interaction and acknowledge feedback.
  • RE consumers expect that the tools being developed and the websites they visit to focus on providing a tangible and obvious benefit to them.

Now that I’ve put the outline together, I’m going to rearrange existing slides (from my earlier seminars), add some new content and cut away at my outline until I can get it down to 20 minutes. If you have any thoughts on how I can hack this presentation down to better serve my goal, I would love to hear your ideas. :)

Pickiness imperative in roommate search May 23, 2007

(Chicago-to-Seattle)

Great place in Seattle quells stress of long distance move

With Seattle’s burgeoning condo market and increasing rental rates, pangs of discouragement hit me after I finalized my decision to move to Seattle. Affordability was going to play a prime role in whether I could transfer, and reports of surging prices squeezing out single women from becoming condo owners only left me further disillusioned. You can easily argue that Chicago is still more expensive, but being from the burbs, I have not resided directly downtown.

After scouring apartments and worming my way through Seattle searching for a comfy place to call home, I quickly realized I would have to pay in excess of $1,000/month for a 1 bedroom apartment (that met my standards) downtown, unless I was wiling to settle for a somewhat dilapidated one. Another logical option was to live in my university’s apartments – which are nice, but still pricey – so I decided to scrap that route in favor of one downtown, but with a roommate. My free evenings were spent poring over the Craigslist.org roommate ads.

A few weeks later, I found a suitable roommate, who I’ll call Betty, and things seemed like they would mesh together swimmingly – Betty was subleasing a sumptuous Capitol Hill condo with her soon-to-depart roommate and was looking for her roomie’s replacement. But soon after we agreed on lease terms as roommates, her place became unavailable. Unfortunately, Betty’s roommate managed to extend the lease a couple months, totally disregarding their agreement and her roommate’s efforts to find her replacement.

My heart sank after our plans unraveled and I vowed to be more scrupulous in my search, less trusting and make sure the room’s availablity was not dependent on another person moving out or a landlord. I turned to the slick site, roommates.com, which is much more accessible and informative, in that it provides thumbnail pictures, maps and bios on all its listings. Moreover, the ads seemed geared toward working professionals, a big perk for those not interested in standard college apartments often typecast as grimy.

Thankfully, via the site, I found a great match whose interests and personality jibes with mine. Since my roommate is the owner of the townhouse and to curtail any unforeseen problems, we churned out our own agreement, which eases my mind since I have a cross-country move awaiting me. And even though my new home is not smack in the epicenter of downtown, I appreciate that my rent will chip away at my roommate’s mortgage, instead of going to a random landlord.

Being capricious and putting too much stake in a place that appeared plush was my biggest downfall in my initial search to find a roommate, and I don’t think my situation is an aberration. If you are fastidious about your research in your roommate search, it will pay off. Plan on chatting extensively with your potential roommate to gauge your compatibility, Googling the person or asking for references and make sure you don’t cling to one specific person (like I did) until all the facts check out. And if even a remote possibility exists that your room/roommate might fall through, simply move on.

New Seattle Area Condo Brokerage

I just love all the Geeky Boys turned Real Estate Broker. I know I’m not supposed to love them. I’m supposed to be threatened by them, or point out their weaker points. But I can’t help myself. They bring SO MUCH to the party!

Truth be told, I like these new businesses better than I like some new agents who refuse to go measure the unfinished area of the basement, because they saw a spider web and they have their “good clothes on”.

I happened upon Condo Compare when someone posted a comment on my blog with their link in it. At first I was miffed that someone was putting a commercial for another company on my blog in the comments. I am human after all. But I visited the site and started an “online chat” with the “expert agents”. The person responding turned out to be “THE Broker” at the other end of the chat line. What I find most endearing about Redfin and other Geeky Boys turned Real Estate Companies like CondoCompare, is they are so full of energy and a sincere interest to bring something new to the scene. They may not, and I stress “MAY” there, know as much about real estate as many of the other brokerages, because their background is in the technology field and not the real estate field. But I say let’s help them out. Let’s put out an outstretched hand, wish them well, and help them get a foothold. They have so much talent to bring to the field in the way of exciting new, never been done before, websites. I say, put your arm around their shoulders and celebrate what they DO bring, rather than play “whack a mole” every time they take a mis-step. AS-IF every agent in the Country has never done anything wrong (rolls her eyes) and is perfect.

Anyway, back to CondoCompare. I rarely find a Public Website that presents info in a format that interests me, given I have access to “the real MLS” and Public Websites just fall too short of what I can accomplish in my Agent Access site. But this one is KEWL!!! I find the info, and the format of that info, to be quite PRICELESS! You can click on any condo building by name of building, and check the properties on market and the comps for EACH BUILDING separately.

Maybe there are other sites like this, and they just didn’t put their commercial on my blog :) But I haven’t seen anything like it before, and would be interested in your thoughts. I think it’s great! And best I can tell, they are not breaking any “rules”, unless someone made a NEW RULE last night or tomorrow, so they can break one.

Sure, I have a problem or two with their model, but I had a great chat with the broker. He’s figuring some of it out as he goes, like most people. We are trying to figure out technology (or not) and they are trying to figure out how to “get into the act” as Jimmy Durante might say. But if we embrace them, the marriage of “The Geeky Boys” and “Expert Agents” could push us up a notch or two into “The Future of Real Estate”. And that’s not a bad thing IMNSHO.

From stirring to digging in one day… May 17, 2007

Another day, another Redfin story:

The Northwest Multiple Listing Service has fined Redfin $50,000 and asked the company to stop publishing a popular blog in which the online real estate brokerage posted reviews of Seattle-area homes.

(”Asked” is probably a bit kind since the consequence of non-compliance was for Redfin to loose their ability to display NWMLS listings on their website…)

This time I’ll highlight Greg’s view that the Sweet Digs blog was clearly not advertising as traditionally defined:

This is absurd. Where any thoughtful person would understand advertising to mean that stuff that newspapers and broadcast outlets used to be able to sell before the internet came along, NWMLS seems to be arguing that any public mention of a listed property by a member is advertising.

…

Amazingly enough, ordinary citizens have the right to free speech in America, provided they are not so foolish as to have joined the Northwest Multiple Listing Service.

(If I’m refraining from too many opinions on this article, it is because my biases are so numerous I should probably not hit publish… (1) In the past I was “asked” by the NWMLS to take down RCG’s home search because we were not an “agent” site, but rather a marketing vehicle for multiple real estate professionals (It now sites at “http://www.annaluther.com” in order to comply). (2) My employer is having their own set of issues with the NWMLS. (3) Yesterday’s article and comments were probably not well received by the staff at Redfin…)

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