The Advantages of Working Together

Hello readers,

If you're reading this you are reading my first blog ever.  Wish me luck.  Anyway, I had the opportunity to speak to the agents at Remax Millenium on Wednesday, October 24th.  Despite the fact that I went on after they sat there for an hour they were extremely attentive and welcoming.  I thank them. 

As I stated at the meeting, going forward I would like to partner with each and every agent as their appraiser.  When you need counsel or advice, phone me.  I will always give you my time, maybe not always the answer you want, but always my time and consideration.  But my main message, and the one I feel gives you the best opportunity to enhance your sales and income, is the need for you to consider getting an appraisal done for those tough listings that you know are over priced.  Or the potential listing with the pie-in-the-sky seller who is pushing for an over price.  For whatever reason, most sellers put more stock in an appraiser's opinion of value than they do your's.  Makes no sense to me, I know you folks know your markets as well as me, but that doesn't change your seller's perception.  And their perception is their reality.  Rather than you get in a debate with them over price, let me, an unbiased third party, give them a dose of reality.  As I communicated, I will present myself in a well dressed professional manner and will take my time to to hear them.  I have found that sellers need to be heard.  My estimate of value will reflect their marketing needs: do they need a quick sale or is it preferrable to get a higher price despite an extended marketing period?  Click on the following link, it is from realestatejournal.com, a Wall Street Journal on-line publication, I think you'll find it informative.  Also, if you have a seller who you would like to approach with the appraisal concept, print it out, it's excellent ammunition. 

http://www.realestatejournal.com:80/buysell/tactics/20060728-hoak.html

The other point we discussed is getting an FHA appraisal done for one of your listings.  Obviously, you should only consider this if you have a listing in an FHA prevalent area.  Getting the FHA appraisal ahead of time serves numerous purposes.  Most importantly, you establish a value that sticks with that property for six months in the eyes of HUD.  In other words, if the listing ends up selling FHA that buyer's mortgage company must use that appraisal.  That is an FHA guideline and there is no way around it.  That's huge.  What if values come down in the months after that appraisal or there have been some low sales on the block since the appraisal?  So what, those conditions will not affect you or your seller.  Also, getting the FHA appraisal ahead of time alerts your seller to any required repairs.  As we talked about on Wednesday, HUD revised their appraisal guidelines approximately two years ago.  Since the revised guidelines repair items for FHA deals are way down.  So there may not be any required repairs anyway, but at least you will know for sure.  Keep in mind with the obliteration of sub-prime, alt-A, and no-doc, and the revision of conforming lending guidelines, FHA buyers are going to be more and more prevalent. 

In conclusion, I have been practicing what I'm preaching with different agents over the last six months and they have had sucess.  Their feedback is that my listing appraisals have saved them time and money as they were able to get the house priced right and subsequently sold fast.  We all know that as bad as this market is, when a house is priced right it typically sells in 30 days or less.  I hope you give me an opportunity to work with you, as I strongly believe in these methodologies.  You should note that we are credit card capable, which we have found people prefer.  Also, don't feel you need to give me appraisal work in order to lean on me for counsel or advice, I'm always happy to help other real estate professionals.  I would love to add any readers of this blog to my address book for future blog notices.  Please go the "contact us" link and give us your contact info including e-mail address and phone #'s.  I promise you we won't be bombarding you with junk.  My goal is to do a once month blog targeted towards agents.  I'm fairly certain next month's will be shorter. 

Jim Dougherty