The San Diego Home Blog

This is unfortunately just a new twist on an old theme.

My word processing software comes with a spell-checker. I will go out on a limb and say that most word processing programs include this feature. I also believe that dictionaries are still in print.

EXCELLANT BANK OWNED OPPORTUNITY!! lOOK NO FURTHER THIS SPACIOUS 4 BEDROOM 2.5 BATH IN SCRIPPS RRANCH IS A FAMILY PLEASER… KITCHEN AND DINNING HAVE RECESSED LIGHTING…

I know, I know. I am fighting a battle I will never win. Why is it that agents find writing 200 characters of text to be so challenging? More importantly, why is it that their clients are okay with the results? Sure, this is an MLS excerpt for a bank-owned listing, but the bank is still a client. Okay, fine. The bank is a busy-busy, frowny faced entity right now. They are trying to move their very large inventory, and it is not practical to suggest that they are in a position to monitor the comings and goings of the agents who they have hired to represent them.

I can’t resist a footnote. This same listing shows “N/A” for almost every input field including “pool” and “spa,” even though the description tells us there is a pool and spa. And thank goodness they are “in the back.” I just hate it when my neighbors build pools in their front yards, but that is beside the point. Remember, a lot of people search by these fields, so when you say there is no laundry room yet there is, you may have just lost a buyer.

My photo editing software is not fancy. I didn’t pop for the expensive version. But it does include an intuitive little rotate icon, one which allows me to… rotate stuff.

I know, I know. We see this kind of stuff all of the time. Athol Kay in Connecticut has built an entire cottage industry around exposing laughably bad MLS photos. Why is it that any agent would think this is passable? More importantly, why would their clients accept this as a reasonable marketing effort on their behalf? Sure, this is a short-sale, but the seller is still a client. Okay, fine. They are disinvested in the process at this point. The bank is going to ultimately accept whatever they accept and forgive the balance of the debt, and the seller is not going to see a proceeds check. So, who cares?

I care. I have spoken in the past about the class system that seems to exist in marketing homes for sale. I see too many agents treat a lower priced home differently than a million dollar baby. One gets a single-page, third-generation photocopy of the MLS printout and the other a four-page glossy brochure. One gets a sign slapped in the front yard and the other gets forty professional photos and staging worthy of the Lincoln Bedroom. This is a practice Steve and I shun, of course. Just because I may make less on a lower priced home does not mean that the sale is any less important to the seller than is the sale of the higher priced home to that client. And, if our marketing plan is indeed thoughtfully designed to provide the best and broadest exposure and appeal, what is good for the one is good for the other. To suggest anything else is illogical (and quite possibly cheap and lazy).

Now I am seeing a different king of class system evolving: Traditional versus distress sales. Maybe the theory is that the bank won’t notice, that the short-selling owner won’t care, or (sadly) that in light of the lower commission an agent might be realizing on this particular sale, they just “can’t afford” to provide the same level of service. That’s just crap.

We are closing escrow today on a short-sale. The lender (in this case “lenders”) approving the sale will invariably ask the agents to take a “short” position as well, on commissions, and this was no exception. Regardless, our marketing effort and expense for this home was no less than for any other home we have represented, and our reasoning is this - The sale price still matters. It matters to the lenders, it matters to the surrounding neighborhood which will now have this new “comp” with which to contend, and it matters to us. Not only is my credibility as an agent at stake, as every ad I print or place is a reflection of our standards and our service, but I like to sleep nights knowing that I did the best I could do for every client. This even includes the clients who may be paying a little less attention or caring a little less about the outcome.

I guess that’s just me.

I encountered an op-ed piece this week which reminded me that it might be time to boldly venture into Boring Land. Boring Land is that place where we keep all of our contracts and disclosures, a place we visit occasionally when we receive the periodic Ask the Brokers question regarding the riveting world of transactional procedures and statutory obligations.

So, without further ado and lest your heads explode with giddy anticipation, I bring you our first installment of Better Know a Disclosure.

Disclosures are made during the residential real estate transaction to inform and to protect. These disclosures protect the buyer, in that they are presented with all material facts and considerations which might affect the decision to purchase or not, and they protect the seller, from potential future claims which might arise out of a failure to disclose. And they protect the agents for both from liability. Much like there is no guarantee that I won’t walk out the door this morning and be struck dead by an errant golf ball, the knowledge that this is possible allows me to make an informed decision and even take reasonable precautions. Fortunately for me, my home is located at least ten miles from the nearest driving range, but you can be sure I am always alert. This is because I read my…

Statewide Buyer and Seller Advisory (SBSA)

This is a ten page document that reads like a stream of consciousness. Number 18 on the hit list reads:

Buyer and Seller are advised that if the Property is located adjacent to or near a golf course there is a possibility that golf balls may damage the Property or injure persons or pets on it. Additionally, persons playing golf may enter the Property to retrieve errant golf ball or for other purposes.

So, that is what the dude with the nine iron is doing in my gazanias!

To the untrained eye, this may seem a little goofy. The reality is that each and every disclosure exists because, at some point, someone sued someone else over the issue. The fact that we have told your buyer that Fido might find a Titleist up his nose one morning does not guarantee he won’t sue both of us when this happens, but it does afford a level of protection that he won’t prevail in court.

Number 25 of the SBSA packs a bit more of a punch. Under Neighborhood, Area: Personal Factors, the buyer is advised that many things may affect their intended use and enjoyment. The list is long, but it includes things such as schools, crime, law enforcement, and “conditions and influences of significance to certain cultures and/or religions, and personal needs, requirements and preferences.”

This disclosure affords the seller and their agent protection for two main reasons. First, consider that “personal factors” are by their very nature subjective. If you ask me, “Are the schools good?” how do I know that my “good” and yours are aligned? What is “a lot” of crime? What constitutes “nice neighbors?” Second, and more importantly, I as an agent am forbidden from speaking in specifics about these things, with the obvious and biggest no-nos being related to race and religion. I could be charged with steering, with blockbusting and with Fair Housing Law violations. And I could lose my license.

In the article I alluded to, the contention was that agents get paid the big bucks yet want to relegate their duties of discovery to their clients, agents just want to sell the home at any cost (presumably so they can pocket the big commission check and themselves hit the links), and agents are lazy-lazy-lazy. The writer’s Exhibit 1 was Megan’s Law.

Megan’s Law Database Disclosure

This is the language which appears in the California Association of Realtors Residential Purchase Agreement:

Notice: Pursuant to Section 290.46 of the Penal Code, information about specified registered sex offenders is made available to the public via an Internet Web site maintained by the Department of Justice at www.meganslaw.ca.gov. Depending on an offender’s criminal history, this information will include either the addresses at which the offender resides or the community of residence and ZIP code in which he or she resides. (Neither the Seller nor Brokers are required to check this web site. If Buyer wants further information, Broker recommends that Buyer obtain information from this web site during Buyer’s inspection contingency period. Brokers do not have expertise in this area.)

This Megan’s Law site is an important one, and we disclose it as being a valuable resource to the concerned buyer. However, I can not say this emphatically enough - Sellers and their Brokers SHOULD NOT attempt to provide affirmative information regarding the presence or absence of neighborhood sex offenders. This is not lazy; it is prudent. It is prudent if I want to keep my client out of court, and it is prudent if I want to keep my license.

Now, to be clear, if I have specific knowledge of any issue which might affect the buyer’s decision to purchase, I must disclose. If my selling client has knowledge, he must disclose. And, if my client simply represents something of potential import to me in passing, I have the responsibility to share this information with a buyer. This applies to both golf balls and sex offenders, and to dozens of other issues both large and small. So why shouldn’t I save my client, buyer or seller, a little time and check out the Megan’s Law web site myself? Because of the danger that I might misrepresent.

• The Megan’s Law web site is not mine; it is designed, populated and presented by the Department of Justice. I have absolutely no way of ensuring that the information is absolutely current and 100% accurate (which it is not).

That is it. Period. A “dot” may be present on the map when in fact no sex offender resides at that location.  A “dot” may not be present when a registered sex offender does live at a location. And, I can give a real life example. We had an home in escrow several years ago. The buyer visited the web site and found that a registered sex offender was shown living one block from this home. The seller had no knowledge, and we had no knowledge, but the buyer flipped out and canceled contract, which was within their rights. Within days, the home was back in escrow with a new buyer. This time, I did have knowledge and we did disclose. The new buyer chose to be more thorough, however. They knocked on doors up one side and down the other of the street in question. The neighbors told them that the gentleman no longer lived in the home, was in fact in the hospital and would likely die. Escrow closed. Within a month, the “dot” mysteriously disappeared from the map. Should I have knocked on doors? No. It turned out the neighbors were right, the map was wrong, and the buyer was happy with their purchase. But, it might not have turned out this way at all, and my clients and I would have been telling it to the judge.

The flip side of this scenario is the one that frightens us most and keeps our attorneys up nights. What if I check the database and, finding no “dot,” give the high-five, all-clear? What if, based on my representation, the buyer answers his door to receive his first Welcome to the Neighborhood bundt cake from Charles Manson who lives two homes over in the cute single-level Craftsman?

Let’s Get Sued (Again)

Real estate agents are a lot of things. We are advisers, we are negotiators, we are marketers and market experts. And this list just scratches the surface. The list of what we are not is longer yet. We are not plumbers, roofers, hazardous materials specialists, or criminologists. We do not set school boundaries, we do not draft and approve land use plans, and we can not guarantee that what we know today will be true tomorrow or even that what we know today based on the representation of others is in fact the truth today. And we are not mind readers. I like the people in my neighborhood; you may find them infinitely unlikeable. I like my daughters’ school fine; when your child fails European History, you may have another opinion entirely.

We disclose our britches off, but there is a limitation to our knowledge and expertise in all areas that may be of import to all buyers. We have many responsibilities and obligations, all of which carry significant liability baggage for both ourselves and our clients. Risk avoidance is not lazy, its not lacking in compassion and it is not a shirking of responsibility or duty. Risk avoidance is in fact a large part of our duty to our clients. It is a harsh reality of the world we now live in.

In our next installment, we will talk about the San Diego Local Area Disclosures, beginning with all-important Number 1:

Buyer and Seller are advised that various public attractions and amusement parks may impact the traffic in the area near the Property or create noise which may be of concern to some Buyers.

I am ashamed to admit that as a part of my services, I do not perform peak hour traffic counts at nearby intersections, I do not time your commute to work, and I do not maintain sound influence charts. There are agencies, however, who do these things, and I am happy to give you their contact information. I suspect somebody has been sued over this one as well.

 3.1459265… I could go on and on.

This is the one of the posts which has been sitting in my draft folder for months. It actually isn’t a post at all, but rather a title that amused me. The article doesn’t exist and probably never will. Neither do the others that greet me every morning in the back panel of our blog:

Gefilte Fish - A Much Maligned Edible
Things to do with string.
Two Reasons Why Birth Control Should be Retroactive
It’s a Great Time to Buy!

It is sort of a little game I play with myself, a game I devised to serve as a grounding mechanism. My Posts that Never Got Written are my constant reminders to not take too much too seriously, and they are constant reminders of how seriously silly the whole blogging thing can get if you elevate it to some mythical level of import. If you don’t blog, then you can substitute any activity which is valuable and fulfilling but, if you are honest, is non-essential, at least from the standpoint of “things I must do today lest the human race face extinction.”

I took a few days off from posting this past week. Some call it burn out. For me, it is more like having four stockpots on the stove at once, all boiling over, and finding myself momentarily paralyzed by the notion that I have to start turning down the heat somewhere. 

So, I left the kitchen. I abandoned my feed reader. I set my instant chat status to Unavailable, and while other agents have most certainly been Twittering and getting LinkedIn and pounding out epic save-the-industry tomes, I have been a human busy signal. 

Spring has sprung, and the signs are everywhere. Wildflowers are in full bloom at the lake, Steve had his first roadrunner sighting of the season, and I am sporting a new and overdue “do.” The only thing now separating me and Posh Spice is some serious plastic surgery. On a more personal front, if that is indeed possible, we are knee-deep in heated negotiations at our house with the female offspring regarding seasonal wardrobe needs. Our next meeting is scheduled for Geneva. We are also dealing with the Prom Dress Debacle (one high school senior who shall remain nameless and is named Becky has determined that the only suitable gown for this milestone event can only be found in a boutique in Milan), and graduation and then college are just around the corner.

There’s more, of course. We got “the letter,” and I am now faced with finding a good week to take an 18-year-old to New Orleans (if there is such a thing), compliments of Drew Carey. Hopefully the hideous and, therefore, theft-proof orange luggage arrives in time. Our youngest has decided that this will be the year she must go to summer camp, but the camp she chose involves death defying (we hope) adventure on sheer cliffs and in high Sierra rapids, thus requiring completion of 87 pounds of medical release forms. And my tax returns are sticking their proverbial tongues out at me. So what is an overtaxed mother to do?

Channel Martha Stewart.

Her job is safe.

And did I mention we still “do a little real estate?” The phones are starting to ring again. I always marvel at how this happens during the busiest times of the year. You can set your time bomb by it.  I can’t possibly be the only one dealing with these domestic distractions, yet somehow at a time when the world by all accounts should be otherwise occupied with more pressing and personal issues, people are thinking about (gasp) moving! Which brings us back to that real estate truism. Whatever the market, whatever the season, people will want to buy and sell. For many this is the “more pressing and personal” issue.

This Spring will be very telling. There are four basic indicators of market health and demand: Price, inventory, pace of sales and market time. Prices are - how do you say? - softer in San Diego. The pace of sales year over year is indisputably slower. Inventory and market times, however, are holding rather steady. We expect both seller and buyer activity to increase during the season, but for now, we seem to be slip-sliding sideways. Consumer confidence and economic indicators suggest that we might we finally nearing the valley. Of course, we won’t know until we have pulled ourselves up the other side, but from my vantage point, the buyer campground is getting a little crowded, and I am starting to see a lot of them pulling up stakes.

Prom dresses and bunny cakes (in case you didn’t recognize it as such, it was a rabbit), four listing appointments and three buyer interviews, warmer weather and caps and gowns, taxation and, well, taxation - This has been my week. Then, one of the first posts I read once I rejoined the blogging ranks was a list of questions a seller should be asking their would-be agent at the Listing Interview. Aside from the fact that addressing each of these questions at my afternoon appointment would have me staying for breakfast, there were some good points raised. And then this:

What is your Alexa traffic ranking?

Excuse me? That’s just seriously silly. I don’t know what my Alexa traffic ranking is, and I rather doubt that 1 out of 1,000 home sellers even knows what this means or if it matters (it doesn’t). What they want to know is how much their home is worth, how much I charge, what I am going to do to get it sold, and why I am going to deliver the best possible bottom line.

What does this have to do with scary looking cakes and 1040 forms? More than you think. My personal anecdotes are not at all unrelated to my business of real estate. The same things that occupy my time, consume my thoughts and compete for my attention are the same things that challenge my clients. When we blog for any period of time, there is an ever-present danger that we will become detached - detached from our client’s worlds and detached from the true value we should be, could be, bringing. We constantly run the risk of getting so wrapped up in the technical that we lose sight of the human factor.

For me, periodically detaching from the online conversation is essential. It allows me to come full circle, and to remember why I am doing this and for whom. It’s a rebirth, kind of like Spring.

And I still don’t know what my Alexa ranking is, so don’t ask.

… which may grow up to be full-blown posts some day. 

This is the problem…

…with having my listings submitted on my behalf.

From the company web site and on ours, this is the same home. If we agree that buyers want information, how is the buyer better served by redirecting them to a site with less information than more? And how is the seller better served in the process?

I know, I know. It is impractical to feed tens of thousands of listings while allowing a redirect to tens of thousands of different agent sites. Still, it is something that continues to trouble me, not in the “global warming” sense nor in the “Look at the price of gas!” sense, but it bugs me nonetheless.

This is the problem…

…with third-party search sites which rely on indiviual feeds (for instance Trulia, Zillow, and now Front Door) rather than IDX arrangements with the MLS providers (for instance, Redfin, Realtor.com, and even SanDiegoCastles.com).

The home I linked to above is in escrow, has been, actually, for 17 days. It is still displayed on Trulia, but at least the savvy shopper with a keen eye for the fine print will eventually find the little “pending” descriptor somewhere along the way. On Zillow, this home is shown as For Sale with 42 days on Zillow, as is another listing of ours which shows 6 days on Zillow yet was sold prior to entry in our MLS and was therefore active for approximately the one nanosecond it took me to enter the data and push the “change status” button. I find it amusing that the property description for the latter active offering says “Sold prior to MLS input.”

There is clearly still an ongoing feed problem, a problem I have been fighting since January. As I recently admitted, I have all but given up on trying to control where our listings are being displayed, how, and by whom, but I do care that they get it right. Note to Zillow: If you are going to accept feeds, please do some periodic auditing to confirm that they are indeed being regularly updated. Incorrect or inconsistent feeds compromise the integrity of the data and may eventually compromise the integrity of your site. When our latest listing goes live next week, I would like to think (as would my clients) that you will get the memo.

This is the problem…

… with trying to take advantage of people. The fourth and latest in my string of extortion letters arrived this morning.

krisberg.com was previously priced at $457, but as part of a very limited marketing test, I’ve decided to discount our inventory of domain names for just 24 hours. How big a discount? Up to $250. That’s a huge savings. But, you do have to act right away though… because this offer is only good for the next 24 hours.

I feel a Blue Light Special coming on.

This is the problem…

… with beer. As reported in the San Diego Union Tribune this week:

The more beer a scientist drinks, the less likely the scientist is to publish a paper or to have a paper cited by another researcher - a measure of a paper’s quality and importance.

And I haven’t even been drinking.

Have a great weekend!

Back in “the day,” early in my career when I decided I needed my own web site and domain, the rule du jour was that your web address should be yourname.com. Not one to question authority, the authority of the nice salesman pitching a group of Realtors at a local Board training session, I dutifully purchased krisberg.net. The dot com version was sadly taken, as I apparently had a much more progressive and evil twin who by all accounts wrote sheet music and had already laid claim to the coveted destination.

After a few years, I realized that while my name is quite familiar to me, not every man, woman and child interested in real estate would be intuitively moved by my “name” brand. San Diego Castles was born. The old myname.net still exists, of course, and forwards to our web site, but over time, it has become a place no one goes (kind of like my kitchen). The reality is that if someone is looking for me by name, it is pretty unlikely that they will randomly type krisberg.com or .net or .tv into their browser. What they instead do, and they do it a lot as evidenced by my site statistics, is type my name into the search bar. Consequently, I haven’t lost one moment’s sleep over the fact that krisberg.com potentially links to the Beer Barrel Polka in E Minor. Until now.

Recently, krisberg.com expired and we acquired it in a domain name auction. Since you own the .net or .org version of this domain name we wanted to provide you with the opportunity to own the preferred .com version.

Our company specializes in recovering preferred expiring domains and either selling them to individuals such as yourself or building out our own web presence on those valuable domains.

krisberg.com is a pretty darn good domain name and, the truth is, the .COM is a far stronger version of the name than .NET is.

*.Com is the strongest brand on the internet When people think of a website, they intuitively think ‘.com’. Odds are people trying to get your website are inadvertently going to krisberg.com because they assume that’s where they can find you.

*.Com conveys Professionalism that .net & .org cannot match.

If you would like to own krisberg.com, you can buy it now by covering our acquisition costs and a modest profit.

Ken Palm
ken@securethatdomain.com

It turns out that I need to act quickly, because “this domain name will only be offered for sale for a limited time” and for $457!

I had already decided to pass on this generous offer when I received the next hostage letter:

Earlier today I emailed you about the domain name krisberg.com, but I forgot to mention something at the time…

If you decide to buy the .com version of your domain name, you don’t actually have to rebuild a brand new website to get great value from the krisberg.com domain name.

What many people do is simply forward the .com domain to your existing site. If you do this, whenever anyone goes to krisberg.com they end up on your current website.

Really? Just like magic? How cool is that! So, say I don’t buy it. Does that mean you could, like, forward it to a local RE/MAX agent’s site or even a porn site?

Now, I’m thinking that the market for myname.com is pretty limited. I will be interested to see if the exchange escalates. If I was feeling ornery and had an extra $8.95 to spare this morning, I would be buying kenpalmer.net or even securethatdomain.net (or .info or .org). I know that these aren’t as “strong” as the .com brand, and they don’t convey the same level of “professionalism,” but they are still “pretty darn good” names, and I’m just thinking I could have some fun.

Hey, Ken Palmer - Try this guy.

(Footnote: A third email this morning. “If you’re interested, please let me know or use the secure link
below to buy the domain as soon as possible otherwise I’ll make other plans with the domain.” And he really means it this time.) samsung ringtones downloadcell free lg phone ringtones verizon,cell free lg phone ringtones,free ringtones lg cell phonefree country music ringtonesyahoo ringtones free downloadmusic real ringtones ringtonesfree sprint pcs ringtones and screensaver,free sprint pcs ringtonespolyphonic ringtones for sony ericsson7100i blackberry ringtonesfree maker ringtones softwarechocolate lg ringtonescell free phone ringtones sprintalltel free ringtones24 ringtones theme,24 theme ringtonesdownload free music ringtonesbox music ringtones sony,100 free music real ringtones,music ringtonesreal tone ringtones,real ringtones tone,free real ringtones tonedigi caller ringtonesfree yahoo ringtonesnextel ringtones programdownload wwe ringtones for freemotorola tracfone ringtonesdownload free ringtones virgin mobilefree ringtones,motorola ringtones,ringtonesdownload nokia 2270 free ringtones,download free nokia 6600 ringtones,download free ringtones nokiadownload ringtones to a cingular phone,cingular wireless download ringtones,download cingular ringtonescelcom malaysia caller ringtonesfree mp3 nokia ringtonesfree nokia ringtones tracfonemetro pcs ringtones,metro pcs pho ringtones,metro pcs compatible ringtonesfree samsung ringtones,free samsung x426 ringtones,free samsung a670 ringtonescell music onto phone ringtonesdownload info motorola remember ringtones,download ringtones motorola,download motorola v180 ringtonesdownload free ringtones verizonbollywood free latest ringtonesonto phone ringtonesdownload free midi ringtonescell phone ringtones wallpaper,cell phone ringtones game wallpaperbritney spears ringtones for samsung,ismarket.com ringtones samsung site,samsung ringtonesfree motorola nextel ringtonesfree make own ringtonesmotorola q ringtones smartphone,motorola q ringtones,cell motorola phone q ringtonescellular download free ringtones usabove browse listed ringtones samsungmake mp3 ringtoneschristian music ringtonesdownload info remember ringtones verizon,download verizon ringtonesfree ringtones from cingular,free cingular ringtones and graphicvirgin mobile usa ringtonessony ericsson ringtones,ericsson ringtones sony w300i,ericsson mp3 ringtones sony w810inokia composer ringtones

Inman News reports that Prudential Real Estate Affiliates will now be sending listing information to HGTV’s Front Door site, about a 140,000 of them. Dustin Luther sees this as yet another wake-up call for NAR and Realtor.com to start some retooling or risk losing market share.

There’s just no rest for the weary.

Today I am glad I hadn’t gotten around to setting up my agent listing feed at Front Door. It has been on my “look into” agenda, but never quite made it to the Now Appearing, upper quartile of my to-do list. And it’s a good thing. When Prudential started feeding all company listings to Zillow in January, nearly a year after I had been including my own listings there, it took me a full month to untangle the mess.

Agents are typically in two camps - no, make that three. The first is the camp that either doesn’t have a clue where their listing data is being displayed or doesn’t care. They should both know and care, but that is a subject for another time. The second is the group that sees the online, third party aggregators as interlopers simply trying to make a buck off of the agent’s work and, in many cases, sell the “leads” generated from the agent’s listings back to the agent. This is not entirely untrue, of course, but it troubles me little. I fall into the third category: Agents who want their listings everywhere. And, there are several reasons I am more than happy be a good little sharer.

If agents only think of their online efforts in terms of the “leads” that they can generate for themselves, then it makes perfect sense to continue to scream “mine” while clutching that MLS input sheet to your chests. If, on the other hand, agents are going to continue to beat the “I want what is best for my clients” drum, then there can be no justification for not exposing your clients’ homes for sale to the widest possible audience.

Make no mistake - I have agonized more than a little over the past couple of years about the “lost lead” scenario. I am, after all, human, and we are trying to run a business. It does grate on me that potential buyers interested in one of our seller’s homes online may be shuttled off to a another agent’s, or even my own company’s, web site never to be heard from by me again. But the cause of my consternation has been twofold. There is this obvious lost opportunity; they may not buy this home, but they may buy some home, and I would quite certainly rather it was with me. More importantly, however, we go to great lengths to portray our selling clients’ properties in the best and most comprehensive light. Every time a potential buyer is redirected away from my site and to another, the information they are exposed to on this particular home is incomplete at best, thereby putting my client and our marketing efforts at a disadvantage. 

I’m over it, and if you are an agent continuing to belly-ache about losing control, you should consider getting over it as well. It’s too late.

Success for the client is ultimately about maximum exposure, and success for the agent is about making a distinction, distinguishing themselves from the millions of other licensed agents purporting to offer the same levels of service and expertise. The MLS horse is out of the barn. Where yesterday, a tech savvy agent could separate himself by simply saying, “I put your home on Trulia,” today nearly everyone’s listings are there. With the dozens of third-party sites available to the consumer wanting to search for homes, sites populated with hundreds of thousands of national listings, how does the little agent web site compete?

Very well, thank you. The big Brokerages are finally doing what the progressive agent has been doing for years - beating a path to the third-party door. It’s about time. And the consumers will be beating a path to the door which offers them more of the information they are looking for. The Front Doors and Zillows, the Trulias and Realtor.coms, even the Zip Realty and Redfin sites will be the first stops for the majority of consumers, but the agent web sites and blogs will be the last. It is macro versus micro, and an agent website that consists entirely of a Search for Homes button and an About Me page can not compete. But the smart agents already know this, and they are responding by creating something deeper and more content-rich on a smaller scale, a place the big sites can’t go. Ultimately, the consumer will find this place, because real estate is local.

On our site, for example, we have floor plans - dozens and dozens of them. We have our neighborhood overview mash-up in progress, and we are soon to have a complete mash-up showing Homeowner’s Associations and fees for our little community. We are working on an inventory of community services, and we already provide local (in many cases, down to the neighborhood level) information on sales and trends. The casual home shopper having decided he might like to live in California may initially find his best information on Realtor.com, yet the buyer further down that path to his next home, having decided he would like to live in San Diego or even Scripps Ranch, will ultimately find his best information on a local agent site. My goal is that it be mine.

As the consumers continue their migration online and in droves, the jockeying among Brokers and agents and third-party players for their attention will continue. It’s like a college fraternity rush, and everyone wants the customer to come to their party. Absent that, they want to see and be seen hanging out at the same places on the off chance someone will notice them in the corner and ask them to dance. So now I see too many agents, recognizing that they can’t possibly throw the biggest party with the most impressive keg or most popular band, clamoring to at least make the guest list. The Trulia Voices are deafening, and there is an agent downpour at Active Rain. We lend our names and our likenesses, our credibility and our checkbooks to tens of sites, listing aggregators and social networks and group blogs, at any one time in our harried attempt to be everywhere and be noticed. Yet, just as the online evolution brought us to this place, it will eventually take us to another.

There are too many parties going on right now, too many doors from which to chose. For the individual agent, I think online success will ultimately be found in the smaller after-party. This party will be held at the agent website. The gathering will be more intimate, the menu more personalized, and the experience will be more satisfying. It is so easy to get lost in a crowd, and I think it is time we redirected our efforts to being the perfect hosts at our own soirees. How will they find us? We will still send out our invitations, of course, but the invitations which will generate the greatest number of meaningful attendees will be the ones sent locally. Most home buyers and sellers will attend the big parties first, for the free booze and food, but they will join us for dessert. It is not where they start the evening but where they end it that matters most. That will always be closer to home.

My daughter asked me last night, “What’s wrong with you?”

Well, that’s a loaded question for sure. Does she mean in the larger, more clinical sense, in the lifetime-full-of-baggage sense? Or is her question related to the once flash-frozen Orange Chicken served under the pretext of being an adequate dinner entree? It turns out she meant, “What’s wrong with you today?”

I hadn’t really noticed but, on reflection, I must admit Emily was right. I was little off. And it wasn’t any one big thing that had put me in this downer state, but a combination of little things which once piled up began to act as emotional shackles making it all but impossible to perform the ritual Happy Dance.

Trying to rid my head of pies charts depicting foreclosures and the Bear Stearns predicament, of gas at $4.00 a gallon and our own breaking news that the cat has fleas, it was time for a break. So Steve makes me watch Into the Wild, a charming movie about a 24-year-old who puts his parents through hell and back and ultimately starves himself to death in the wilderness. That was just a warm-up for TIVO time and a little LOST. Jin dies. At least the baby looks healthy. But otherwise, everything is such a bummer.

No one thing, not gas prices, not Sean Penn’s movie, not even Jin’s apparent demise is enough to justify my emotional recession. At moments like this, it is important to take a step back and avoid a run on the bank.

As we have talked about the real estate market here lately (we are, after all, known to do this from time to time), each post taken independently has been a rather benign installment along the lines of Fluffy Needs a Flea Collar. But, stepping back, and considering the consolidated message, one might get the impression that its time to assume the crash position and pop the Prozac.

Just because we are flying at a lower altitude doesn’t mean the plane is going down.

Bad news begets bad news, and fear begets fear. Perspective gets lost along the way. So, it is time for a little perspective check.

There was one comment in particular that set me off this week. It was a comment on another blog regarding one of our listings. This blog happens to be a sort of safe house for the people who continue to pile up all of the little negatives until they have created their own virtual Mt. Everest of gloom. They do this by choice, seemingly reveling in the mirth mountain they have created at the expense of others’ misfortunes. Maybe it is envy, maybe silent regret that they are still renting, or maybe it is just a case of having spent far too long mired in the negatives that they can no longer see the positives.

A property the Berg’s are currently listing is 17% over 2007 prices and since this house is in RP and it has seen a fortunate rise in prices it is now only 11% higher than the selling market. In case you thought this was a plum it’s a 1970 sqft house on a spacious 5k lot and it is 23 years old.

 I found this comment particularly funny since the previous day, this home had gone into escrow with multiple (as in three) offers after just two weeks. When I pointed out this little fact, I was offered two possible explanations: The offers were all $100k lower than the asking price (”Just more smoke and mirrors that Realtors use to justify a stupid price”); or the buyers were all just stupid.

Wrong. Why the loathing of agents? Why the mocking of buyers? Emotional tailspin. I suspect this very contingent would have been taking the same public delight and apocalyptic outlook in the mid-1990s had blogs been available as their therapeutic soapbox. Remember the ’90s? Steve and I purchased a home in Scripps Ranch in 1989 (using a loan carrying a 10% interest rate, with which we were exceedingly happy) and watched from first the downhill and then the uphill sides of the price slope, with the net result being that our “investment” had been dead money for the better part of a decade.

Geez, buyers are so stupid.

Yet, call me crazy. I do not see my home as day trade. I am not an anomaly, and I am certainly not stupid. Our homes are long-term investments, to be sure, but for the vast majority of people, homes are first and foremost security, shelter, and a sense of pride. If I could rent a home comparable to mine for a tenth of the cost of ownership, I would still own if I could afford to do so. I would do this because of the satisfaction of knowing that every nail hole I put in the wall is mine, and for the fulfillment that comes with giving my family comfort, constancy and stability. If you trade in penny stocks, emotions have no place. When you purchase a home, emotions have every place, because it is personal.

The dozens and dozens of home buyers and sellers we have represented over the past year, a year during which all of the indicators suggested the market would continue to correct, a year during which we continued to advise our clients that the market would continue to correct, were not stupid. And when Steve and I sold our “dead money” home in 1999 for a new home, we were not lucky, because we weren’t day trading. We needed a larger home, we were in a position to buy one, and we did.

And a year later, I was in tears. I wasn’t grieving the fact that I could have and should have kept our previous home as a rental, now that prices were skyrocketing. I wasn’t counting the payday I hadn’t enjoyed but could have realized, a windfall that might have gotten me a little closer to retirement. I was distraught over the realization that I had forgotten to transfer all of those little hash marks on the wall in the hall before leaving. You know the ones. They had memorialized the growth of our daughters over their first years of life, our daughters who were born and raised in that home, the girls who took their first steps in that family room and their first tumbles down those stairs and their first bike rides on that street.

I’ve got new hash marks in my new home. They start a little higher, on the wall of the home I should have sold in 2005, because I would have been a little richer had I done so - Richer, that is, if all that matters is the balance sheet. 

So, if you leave a comment today, I may be a little slow responding. I am going to be showing property to a family who wants a new home. They can afford to buy one, they like the low interest rates available, and they plan on staying in this new home awhile. They could rent something; their financial bottom line would after all be a little better and they might find a better deal next month or in a year, but they want to own. And they want a big backyard where their children can play. And she likes kitchens open to the family room. And he likes a three-car garage, but mostly he likes whatever makes her happy.

Geez, buyers are so stupid.