The San Diego Home Blog

Thanks to alert reader “Rido,” we identified the bottom of the market a couple of months ago. Actually, it was Jim Cramer who nailed it.

A good benchmark to use: Wait until things revert back to 2000 prices, which I think will be sometime in March 2008.

But today, Mad-Jim has apparently moved up the schedule, which means we may have to rethink our own scheduled American Home Buying Day. March is coming early.

Wrote Tom Brennan, due in large part to the recent Fed rate cut, Cramer is “so confident in the economy he’s considering buying what might be ‘the most loathed and toxic investment around’: a house.”

But don’t believe me; watch the video.

(Note: No surprise - I just noticed that my blog buddy, Jim the Realtor at bubbleinfo, got to this first. Does that guy ever sleep?)

To better serve you? Maybe they’ve just put on a little weight. And sometimes once you get in, it’s a little hard to gracefully get out.

Redfin offers a two-fer deal on press releases this morning. One announces “a new version of Redfin.com designed to give buyers the most thoroughly informed real estate search experience on the Internet.”

Redfin’s goal is to delight our audience of hard-core real estate fanatics by offering Freakish Depth on major real estate markets… The site also now supports the Apple Safari browser.

Nice site, but we have seen it all before. In fact, I can get Freakish Depth on any of a number of sites. At least you dudes, like, speak my language, you know, ’cause some sites are just so, like random. Safari rocks!

If you believe the rhetoric, they endeavor to turn the real estate industry on its head. Forget the rhetoric. They, of course, endeavor to make money acting as agents while pretending to be something else - Freakishly hip innovators.

The problem is this. Delivery of online information is no longer an innovation; it is a basic business practice. Their end game to profitability, of course, lies in moving more product. Redfin’s premise from the outset was to “sell” for less but “sell” to more. Volume discounts, unfortunately, only work when you have volume. Curly is stuck in his sweater, but how will they get him out?

Which brings us to the second announcement.

SEATTLE - Jan. 31, 2008: Online real estate broker Redfin Corporation today rolled out a 75-day trial of a new home-tours policy that allows visitors to its site to arrange four Redfin-hosted home tours without paying any money up-front or making any commitment to Redfin.

Hmm… The whole idea of showing homes to buyers sounds a little traditional. I guess now it’s hip to be square.

The first two tours would be free, and the third and fourth tours would cost $250 (each) at closing, with any subsequest tours costing $250 in advance.

What’s next? If, having connected the homes on a grid plane, the point of the intersection of the four lines lies beyond a ten mile radial projection of the Redfin Field Agent’s home office, and gas prices exceed $3.50 per gallon, a home tour surcharge shall be applied, but only when a transaction is not ultimately consummated by Arbor Day or Tuesday, whichever occurs first.

I predict this will be no more successful than the old program in which a single free home tour was offered. Keep in mind, the one tour of yesteryear was limited to three hours; now they limit the showings to two. Afterall, something’s got to give. They can’t make money if they are expected to spend all day with people.

For the first time, users can download data to a spreadsheet for in-depth analysis.

In the future, Redfin might just find that those same folks who clamored to see more homes might be lobbying for a professional to do a little of his own in-depth analysis on their behalf. I wonder what that will cost? Somebody get the tire iron.

I wrote about my missing signs on Monday. You can call off the dogs. One more “gentle” phone call to the sign company, and my new all-weather, coroplast friends miraculously arrived on my doorstep yesterday morning.

We have now officially launched our first “Green” listing. Before you conjure images of solar panels, windmills gracing the front yard, and a large compost pile with the remnants of last night’s pot roast, I’ll first share the genesis of this idea. It is a baby-step.

Back in December, those traditional days of feel-good giving and in the wake of my company’s push to have agents get “Green Certified” (whatever that means), I was struck by the hypocrisy of our industry. Now, I haven’t pursued the “EcoBroker” designation, but one our Buyers’ Specialists, John Lowe, is in the process of getting certified. According to Prudential California Realty:

Prudential professionals that have earned the EcoBroker Certified designation have successfully completed a unique and informative training program on the energy and environmental issues that affect real estate transactions.

This is all good, but the punch line is that the real estate industry arguably leads the pack when it comes to waste. We may be the single largest killer of natural resources next to the Ikea Catalogue. Steve and I had one listing recently which alone consumed 800 glossy brochures, not counting the brochures which were mailed, brochures which for the most part spent one nanosecond in the hands of the neighbors before finding a more permanent home in the trash bin.

This assault on our environment coupled with the continuing consumer migration online suggested to me that we need to start thinking about a different way of doing things. It is not practical to quit providing brochures for our selling clients entirely; sellers need exposure, buyers need information, and buyers still live in the real, off-line world. Yet, we know that online is where we want the would-be buyers to be. It is not only more efficient, it is more informative. A brochure can hold just so much information. It can’t provide a video, it can’t link to community information or market stats, and it simply can not present a home in the most comprehensive and compelling light. Combine that with our own selfish desire to expand our online reach, and we are suddenly inspired to give the hold-out favorers of print media a little nudge.

So here is our program:

• Our curbside concierge will continue to host the traditional trappings: Full-color brochures, “listing lights” which illuminate the sign after dark, the slightly personalized but company-mandated hanging yard sign, and the sign rider displaying the unique property web address.
• All of our brochures (and all of our other print marketing materials) will now be produced on recycled paper. It costs more, and that’s okay.
• Our sign posts, which are admittedly getting a little busy, will now display the Going Green placard with the following:

Brochures are made from paper, and paper comes from trees. We are committed to doing our part, however small, to protect the environment.

Please feel free to take a brochure which, we are proud to say, is printed on recycled paper. As an alternative, however, you may wish to take a Web Card. Our Web Card gives you the address on the Internet where you will find all of the property information shown on the brochure plus additional photos, a virtual tour, the floor plan and more!

• Above the brochures, we will be providing Web Cards, offered as an alternative to the big, fancy, expensive and wasteful brochures. The Web Card contains all any casual looker really wants to know about the home: The address, the size, and the price. Most importantly, the Web Card provides the web address where the home will be presented in all of its glory. These, too, are printed on recycled paper stock, of course.

Again, this is just a little step in the right direction, but if it works, it will be a huge win-win. The seller still gets all of the marketing material he did before but more. We have made one more distinction between ourselves and the gobzillion other agents doing business-as-usual. From a cost standpoint, while the brochures are now more expensive, one brochure equals approximately a dozen Web Cards, so the potential savings in both dollars and trees is enormous.  The ultimate goal, of course, it to move people online where I can promote both my client’s home and my own services much more effectively.

Our Beta home will be an interesting experiment. Positioned on the corner of a highly-trafficked street, this home begs for brochure over-consumption. Ordinarily, we would expect to burn through 100 or so a week for a home in this location. We will know very soon whether our project was a success, and we will report back.

I predict that there will come a day when the property flyer is as antiquated as the abacus, but that day is in the very distant future. In the meantime, I hope we can all do our small part to speed things along. “It’s Your Move!”

I think it is time that we all bought ourselves a pair of yellow shoes.

This sign is prominently displayed in my home office, and yet whining is mostly what we seem to be doing lately. I think in some twisted way, we thrive on whining, and we revel in bad news. Always have, in fact. 

This morning I arrived at my computer to find an inbox full of irony, the first two messages in particular. To start things off, Steve, who had apparently felt the 5:00 am need for some Sharing Time, forwarded the morning lead business article from MSNBC. “U.S home prices plunge by a record”, they gaily announced. If the news wasn’t negative enough to satisfy, the “most viewed story” on the side bar declared “Middle age is truly depressing, study finds.” Tell me something I didn’t know.

Okay, I couldn’t help slowing to look at the wreck. The middle age article had this to say:

On average, (scientists) found, well-being bottoms out at about age 48 1/2 around the world.

I will let you take a wild guess where I fall in the old deep depression cycle. You are only three months off, but I digress.

Where the impending collapse of the housing market is concerned, I think we are all getting a little numb to this bit of “news.” It caused me to think back to the good times earlier in this decade when the real estate news was pretty terrific for most. If you owned a home, your equity was climbing more rapidly than the numbers on a telethon tote board. Those who worked in the industry made money and spent money, fueling a giddy economy. Here is the second irony, however. The headlines then dealt not with the wealth being created or the unprecedented numbers of people finally realizing the American Dream of home ownership, but with affordability issues and, much too often, with the perceived super-sized buckets of money that real estate agents were making. Instead of celebrating prosperity, everyone’s prosperity, if even on paper, the media chose to vilify the agents. A popular picture was painted of the agent as the opportunistic vulture serving no purpose but to suck the retirement accounts of unsuspecting home owners dry.

“If home prices have appreciated so much, why should you make so much more?” Today, instead, we hear, “If my home has depreciated this much, why shouldn’t you make less as well?” No whining here, but just an acknowledgement that they are all tough markets for the agent. Markets change, but the argument does not.

At the now-infamous Martini Bar I worked leaned on Saturday night, there was a lot of whining going on. “How is the market, really?” they asked, but not in the way one initiates idle conversation. And, at the Broker Open House we hosted this morning, there were many more long faces. “How was your year?” We still like to talk about bad news, but the difference is that it is everyone’s bad news now. I saw worry in the faces of the homeowners; no martini was strong enough. I saw panic in the faces of the agents; no martini bar in sight.

There is seemingly no joy in Mudville. Sunday night, 60 Minutes ran a piece on Stockton, California distress sales. It was painful. And we all watched. I think, however, for those who choose take an honest gander at this predicament we find ourselves in, you can’t help but find some good news. Valuable lessons have been learned. Painful lessons have been learned. Too many of us got sucked into playing at the high-stakes table with house money, and too many of us crapped out. For many more others, however, for whom personal circumstances haven’t mandated a sale, we only gained and lost on paper. Tables are hot and they are cold. Play with markers, and your markers might eventually be called. And markets are cyclical.

As for a little more irony, Andy Rooney’s segment compared our current economy to the Great Depression, and the message was delivered in a “get over it” fashion. When Steve and I stopped pondering exactly when he would retire, I recognized the message - as a good one. Times are tough for many; they are always tough for many. Revel in it, or return to the emotional well-being that resides on either side of 48 1/2.

Spring’s Bright Idea: Yellow Shoes

This was the next message I received this morning, and it was from Nordstrom. What a dichotomy, yet this is news I can get behind. I say we all buy some yellow shoes.

Hitting rewind…

Martinis contain alcohol.

Saturday night was the annual Taste of the Ranch event to benefit Scripps Ranch High School. Did I remember to take a photo to memorialize the festivities? No. That is because Lisa Yates, one of our Buyers’ Specialists, and I were assigned the late shift duties at the Prudential-sponsored Martini Bar. At 9:00 pm it became painfully obvious that the agent charged with securing the ingredients had over-purchased. What are two charming and perky bartenders to do? Answer: Consume the overage. Needless to say, I wasn’t exactly a blur of Mach-speed productivity on Sunday. A younger girl could have rallied.

I would really like to write an offer but…

A client this weekend expressed interest in writing an offer on a property. Like any good agent, the first thing I did was call the listing agent. Are there any other offers? What are the possession considerations? Are there any disclosure issues we should be aware of? What’s up with that assessment? These were my thoughts which, unfortunately, remain unspoken. And the offer remains unwritten.

A phone call to the listing agent (I got voice mail) revealed that any inquiries should be directed to “Agent #2″ as shown in the MLS. Fair enough. This is a busy, busy agent. It is 24 hours later, and I am still waiting on a call from Agent #2, who apparently is also a very busy, busy agent. Now that I think about it, I might have seen them both at my martini bar.

I would like to sell my home but…

I attempted to schedule appointments Friday afternoon in anticipation of showing an out-of-town client homes on Saturday. Simple enough.

Six homes, and three were listed as “shown by appointment only.” Good grief. The average market time for homes offered for sale in San Diego County this morning is 103 days, according to the Sandicor Multiple Listing Service. We know it is actually much longer, as this does not reflect the churning that takes place in a sluggish selling environment. Each time a home is canceled, withdrawn or expired and relisted, the odometer resets to zero.

Home #1: Saturday, it turns out, is not a good day. Market time = 119 days.
Home #2: Two calls to the agent and no return call (still), thus no appointment. We drove by, and my client really thought it looked appealing. She is now on a plane back to Seattle, and this property is still on the market. Market time = 87 days.
Home #3: Success! Owner sat on sofa and watched television while we took the self-guided tour. Market time = 92 days.

Of the three homes which subscribed to the more traditional method of allowing access, “call first/use lockbox,” the average market time is 14 days. A coincidence? Nah.

It never rains in Southern California.

It never rains unless you have a new listing to photograph. Turn-me-sideways wind and torrential downpours ensued late last week and continue. Marketing waits for no one, so the professional photographer did her thing while I dutifully held her umbrella, the result being exterior photos which look as if we were knee-deep in nuclear winter. Can I amend the property description to read, “Light and Bright - I SWEAR!”?

Have you seen this sign?

We are going green-er. This month we began using (more expensive) recycled paper on all of our brochures. This month we also rolled out our “Going Green” program in which all yard signs will carry a supplemental placard explaining the option of foregoing the big tree-killing brochure in favor of a “web card” containing the property vitals and the link to the property web site.

Great plan. Exciting plan. Environmentally responsible plan. The problem is that the signs I ordered in November have still not arrived. Well, they did arrive once, but they lacked the necessary holes whereby they could actually be affixed to the sign post. Not wanting to carry a nail gun, or even a glue gun, in my trunk for the remainder of my career, I insisted that they be reproduced. The second batch, it seems, was loaded onto the delivery truck “some time last month” but “got lost somewhere” during the five-mile trip to my office.

I am mounting a public awareness campaign involving milk cartons and leaflets, and perhaps the Today Show. I want my signs back!

 Fast forward…

So, it’s Monday morning, and a new week full of new opportunities awaits me. It’s still raining. The link to my digital monsoon-day photos has finally arrived. 404 Error. Aargh!

I miss the martini bar already.

Do you ever feel like it is all moving a little too fast? Real estate agents certainly do. And if you are buying or selling a home, your agent had better be in the fast lane or you might find yourself and your transaction a wreck.

It’s never been enough to just go with the flow, but when the market was healthier and technology less complicated, agents could get away with setting the cruise control. The true depth and breadth of an agent’s experience, knowledge, and professionalism got lost in the gridlock. These things have always mattered to the consumer, yet in “simpler” times when listing information was a closely guarded secret and demand for real estate far exceeded supply, an agent’s qualifications were relegated to the back seat. Too many agents stopped believing that they needed to demonstrate value or adopted the false notion that their value lied only in the taxi service, the free list of homes, and the access to the MLS they provided. Consumers began to buy into the roles we defined for ourselves. We have all suffered as a consequence. Stuck in traffic.

I started thinking about these things this week when Marc Davison of 1000 Watt Consulting called me regarding a series of articles he is writing on what I will call “the difference.” When times were good, times of double-digit home price appreciation and record levels of buying and selling, there were two express lanes to riches: Buying property and getting a real estate license. As a result, there are now nearly 540,000 licensed real estate agents and brokers in California alone, representing roughly 1 in 50 adults. As a result, there are $362 billion worth of adjustable rate subprime loans projected to reset in 2008 (according to Bank of America Corp.) nationally. Too many drivers with no place to go.

Among both agents and home buyers and sellers, the pervasive attitude is that there is nowhere to turn. This is because too many are focused on the rear-view mirror - have always been - and not on the road ahead. The reality is that, for both, it is a market of opportunity and not Armageddon.

Never were all real estate agents created equal; it just appeared that way when things were simpler. Now is the time for the agents who were always better, and for the agents who continue to pursue betterment and embrace change, to shine. Suddenly, value must be a part of the equation. If an agent is unwillingly or unable to demonstrate this value, the “difference,” to distinguish himself from every other agent on the street, then tough times they are indeed.

Shifting to the consumer, let’s take the home seller. The number of sales is admittedly down, but homes are still selling. Is your agent making a distinction on your behalf? Your property descriptions need to be better written, your brochures more attractive, your advertising presence further reaching, and your representation throughout the transaction more aggressive and professional. Your staging needs to be superior, your pricing more thoughtful, your exposure more progressive. Your home needs its own web domain, its own virtual tour and video, and its own vast and impressive online presence. Your agent needs to communicate with you frequently and effectively, needs to return your emails and phone calls and text messages, as well as those from your potential buyers, immediately, and needs to be accessible whether they are in their office or away. PDAs and Smart Phones, Instant Messaging and Online Transaction Management, electronic signatures and eFax are not fancy geek gizmos. They are basic tools in our new value-added world, essentials for doing business how and where the consumers do business.

When selling, the commute has gotten longer. When buying, the curves have gotten more frequent. And, when representing buyers and sellers, the driving instructions have gotten more complex. There is a lot of traffic out there. Choose who you carpool with carefully, put yourself in the driver’s seat, and you will get where you need to go.

Today I have to dispense with a couple of laundry list items, so this will be a real estate-free post. Steve’s latest “Better Know a Neighborhood” installment will have to sit in the queue for one more day as a result. For those who have been anxiously awaiting his feature on the Scripps Ranch neighborhood of Scripps Highlands, I will ask you to chill a little longer.

I had a date with my now-18-year-old daughter and Drew Carey yesterday which took me out of cell phone and computer commission. I returned to one of those silly “meme” games that sweep the Internet every second Tuesday and, much to my chagrin, was tagged twice. The rules: Share seven things about yourself, and tag seven people. As my latest random act of kindness, I will skip the tagging part. As a bonus prize, I will rewrite rule number one, as I am not really all that interesting, and instead answer the burning, non-real estate question on everyone’s mind - How did our day (day = an eternity in h-e-double hockey sticks) in Hollywood to see a taping of The Price is Right go?

In seven-point meme fashion, here is the rundown:

1. Tickets do not guarantee admission. Making the determination as to when one should start lining up on Fairfax Boulevard outside the CBS studio is a turkey-shoot at best. We stayed overnight in Beverly Hills (our room had a dead-on view of the Fendi store, which is as close as we will ever get to their product line), and opted for the 3:30 AM wake-up call.

2. We arrived coffee-less to take our place on the sidewalk outside the CBS compound at 5:00 AM. It was pouring down rain. We secured arrival numbers 36 and 37. Arrival number one had arrived at midnight and spent the night covered in a giant Hefty bag. He clearly needed to win something to pay for his much-needed therapy. Oh, and it was cold - not Lambeau Field cold, but see-your-breath cold.

3. At 6:30, they allowed us into the parking lot where we spent the next six hours sitting on cold benches outside of the building. At least it was under cover. They sold coffee. We were happy.

4. We met a lot of nice people during our tour of duty. We were especially fond of Number 34 and Number 35. They were dairy farmers from Buffalo who had flown to California with the express intent of coming to the taping. They, too, needed therapy. It was their second such junket, the first (sadly) failing to result in a contestant spot on the show. On second thought, it is really too late for them.

5. As we entered the studio at 12:30 for a 1:00 taping, a very trendy looking producer man had each of us pause briefly for a ten second “interview.” The interview came after an against-the-wall photo op for each would be contestant (numbering 325), presumably to confirm that we didn’t have arms growing out of our ears. The interview, we think, was to further confirm that we didn’t drool when we spoke or suffer from Tourette’s Syndrome.

6. My daughter, Becky, who turned 18 last Thursday (the minimum age for the show), was the first to get called to “Come On Down!”, which was a good thing as she has no concept of the value of money or of the manufacturers’ suggested retail prices of random inanimate objects. In fact, we were at a distinct disadvantage, as she had raided the hotel mini-bar the previous evening. We feared the following scenario:

Drew Carey: Our next item up for bid is Gummy Bears!
Becky: $27!

On her fourth try, she made it up on stage. With much help from her mother in the audience, who was flailing her arms in lunatic fashion, she nailed it. The cold medicine and the bleach were indeed both $6.29. She won a 7 day trip to New Orleans and $1,000 worth of luggage.

7. Becky made it to the Showcase Showdown. The first Showcase sucked (it always does), so she passed and, as luck would have it, she had to guess the price of a package including a juke box (cool), a trip to the Bahamas (very cool), and a … pop-up Trailer? Not even I am clued in to the fine art of trailer pricing ($25,000). She did not win the Showcase, but we figure the other girl kind of lost too. She now has to pay taxes on an ugly sectional sofa, a home security system and carpeting. Becky got to hug Drew Carey multiple times, and she got her 15-minutes of fame. Priceless.

There you have it. Her show airs on March 4th. Now, back to work.