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- Not Having the Property Staged—Buyers have come to expect an impeccable environment. And given the slower market, it’s critical that your house look as perfect as possible. Stagers can artfully disguise the defects and showcase the assets of a home.
- Holding the Open House Yourself Satan’s Little Helper movie full
—It’s inevitable that you’ll chat with potential buyers, and in being friendly you may unwittingly reveal something that diminishes your negotiating power. Just saying your spouse got a new job and you can’t wait to relocate gives buyers negotiating leverage. Also, you may say something that seems innocent but violates the law—such as the Fair Housing Act—and gets you into hot water.
- Not Clearing Clutter—You want buyers focusing on your house, not on your stuff. Collectibles and piles of paper and laundry, for instance, are a distraction. And for prospects who love order, an untidy house may make them wonder whether the rest of the house has been maintained in an iffy way over the years.
- Showing Carpet Stains
—When it’s your own dirt, it’s one thing. No one wants to move in and share space with someone else’s. Enough said.
- Lacking a Fresh Coat of Paint—Fresh paint gives an extra sparkle to a house, and it’s an inexpensive way to brighten a property and show that it’s in move-in condition. Prospects can immediately check painting off their to-do list.
- Leaving Fliers in the Flier Box Outside
Flight of Fury divx —You want people to come in to see the house and fall in love. If there’s a flier available, they may just grab it and run. Then you’ve missed a chance at a love connection.
- Forgetting to Advertise the Open House on the MLS and Craigslist—These sites are primary hunting ground for buyers and their agents. To reach the most prospects possible, promoting an open house on the MLS is a must. Craigslist is free!
- Forgetting to Turn on Lights and Keeping the Window Shades Closed—Even the most beautiful property can seem gloomy and oppressive in the dark. Opening all the shades brings in natural light—a huge selling point—and lets buyers see any landscaping or special outdoor spaces your house offers. Also, like a fresh coat of paint, keeping all the lights on provides a house with a little extra sparkle.
- Not Having a Brokers Open House Tour
—Getting advice and feedback from local agents during a brokers open house is priceless. Some typical questions to ask agents that come by are, “What do you think about the pricing?” and “How do you think it shows?”
- Not Leaving the Toilet Seats Down
—Need I say more?
- Not hiring Alex and Rainmaker Properties to host your next open house.
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Today, the simple task of cleaning my closet made my day and probably somebody else’s, too.
I’ve had a bag for old clothes in my closet for months. But like so many of us, I’ve always found something more important to do than to rummage through my clothes and bag up the ones I haven’t worn in ages. And once you see
something like a bag for old clothes in your closet for a while, it becomes part of the scenery.
But recently I was in my car driving to a listing appointment in Mountain View and heard a radio ad about Men’s Wearhouse’s National Suit Drive
In exchange for your donation, you get a 10 percent coupon toward your next purchase at Men’s Wearhouse, along with a tax deduction.
I gathered up and took in about five suits, a dozen shirts, some pants, and some shoes. But I didn’t do it because I wanted a coupon or a tax deduction. I did it because I’ve always believed in giving back to my community. Donating clothes I don’t wear anymore was a way to help out-of-work people. Any help the unemployed can get, the better we’ll all be.
While I was in the store dropping the clothes off, it was such a positive experience knowing that everyone there was working toward a common cause. After I left, I felt really good. I felt like I’d accomplished something and donated to a charitable cause.
Do yourself—and somebody else—a favor. Take an hour to rifle through your closet, and pull out the clothes you know you won’t wear again. Then join a good cause by taking a drive over to a Men’s Wearhouse near you American Psycho Peaceful Warrior movie download Final Destination buy .
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To paraphrase the famous line about voting in Chicago: Check real estate listings early and often. Perseverance can be the key to helping clients be at the right place at the right time to get a great value—even in high-priced zip codes.
Here’s how that rule of thumb recently played out for my client. We had been viewing homes in Redwood City for quite some time and came across five brand new luxury homes in a gated community. We were in the beginning stages of the client’s search, and the homes were priced at the high $2 million to the low $3 million mark. Though we liked the house, we had just begun the home search and were not familiar yet with the current market inventory and pricing. I suggested the client wait until the first of the five homes sold so that we could get a better handle on their value.
As we viewed other homes, I kept checking the MLS for the status of those five trophy homes. One eventually showed that a sale was pending and was scheduled to close within a few weeks. As the deadline for the close of escrow approached and then passed, I checked again and again. When the listing seemed permanently stalled, I started digging—and learned the developer had gone under. The homes foreclosed and were now bank owned.
I immediately called my client, explained the opportunity this new information presented, and suggested he move quickly to view the property before the bank put it on the market. The client made an offer, which the bank accepted after we’d negotiated it down to $2.1 million.
Thus the lesson of checking listings early and often. If I hadn’t stayed on top of that listing, I’d have never learned the property was in foreclosure—and I’m sure it would have sold immediately at the bank’s planned listing price of $2.2 million. Perseverance helped my client get the home of his dreams for a price much lower than what we had originally anticipated. Shortly after we had purchased the property, the other listing that was available also sold prior to the property being marketed on the MLS. tachycardia singulair
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Whenever one of our agents completes a real estate transaction, Rainmaker Properties donates a portion of the commissions to a charity of our client’s choice 007 Goldfinger movie full
. For me, it’s always an enriching experience and I learn about new groups in our community that are working to help others.
A couple weeks ago, my team helped a client sell her townhouse located in the Mountain View Park development in the Whisman Mountain View neighborhood and my client asked me to make a donation to the Second Harvest Food Bank of Santa Clara and San Mateo Counties Buddy move
. I wasn’t familiar with it, and the 35-year-old group invited me to take a tour of their San Carlos warehouse (the smaller of two warehouses, the other one located in San Jose). It turned out to be an eye-opening and touching visit for me.
Thanks to the experience, I found that hunger is really a hidden tragedy in our community. You can usually tell if someone is poor. Or if someone is homeless. But you can’t see hunger. This really got me to think about how I can often take for granted the ability to have a almost any type of meal at anytime of the day.
Second Harvest is the largest nonprofit provider of food to low income households in Santa Clara and San Mateo Counties, and it provides food to an average of 163,000 individuals each month. Families make up 67 percent of the recipients and 12 percent are seniors.
Those are pretty shocking numbers. Even though we live in solidly middle class environment, there are so many people who have to make the choice between paying for housing and utilities or buying food. And with the economy in flux, even more people are feeling pinched.
Though Second Harvest gets donations from large food distributors, it relies heavily on regular people like us too to stay afloat. Its programs go beyond the traditional food pantry.
One is a toll-free hotline, with a multilingual staff, that helps people find food in their neighborhood; another provides food to more than 400 non-profit agencies that run soup kitchens, rehabilitation centers, schools and shelters for victims of domestic violence.
And yet another program helps approximately 12,600 low-income seniors and disabled people through weekly grocery deliveries. Volunteers also deliver food to the homebound.
The group works to get nutritious snacks to low-income kids during after-school, summer, and youth programs. And during the summer, when kids don’t have access to subsidized school meals, Second Harvest helps local soup kitchens and agencies feed approximately 20,000 children.
So if you’re looking for volunteer opportunities or a place to donate food or money, Second Harvest is terrific group. I’m going to add it to the list of charities I support, and with the help of Second Harvest, Rainmaker Properties will be doing a food drive during the holidays this year.
For more information, here’s the contact information: Second Harvest, www.2ndharvest.net, (408) 266-8866. If you know of anyone who needs food assistance, call the Food Connection Hotline: 1-800-984-FOOD (3663). juarez breast augmentation Raiders of the Lost Ark psp
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I received a voicemail today from an apparent nearby neighbor to my new Gest Ranch listing at 1934 Limetree Lane in Mountain View
.
Here’s the transcript of the voicemail…
“This is not Gest Ranch, it is not Blossom Valley. You need to learn the area, you also need to learn how to prepare a home and how to write it up. This is appalling that in the best neighborhood of Mountain View you would write it up like this. I am astonished and I will make sure that none of the people I know will ever use you.”
The caller didn’t leave a call back number or name.
I must say I was pretty hurt by this voicemail. As most of your know my background
, I take my job as a real estate professional very seriously, try to do the best that I can, and do what I can to provide Silicon Valley with a real estate company with a holistic approach to serving clients and “paying it forward” back to the community. Reputation is everything and having a woman feel this angry towards me and my services is quite upsetting.
My first reaction was to feel defensive. I wanted to give the seller a “piece of my mind” and let her know that she was the one with her facts wrong. Looking at the Santa Clara County title reports, 1934 Limetree Lane is listed in the Gest Ranch neighborhood. County title reports are not always correct, but they area usually a good reference point for real estate agents.
As for the Blossom Valley neighborhood, this neighborhood is comprised of four neighborhoods (Springer Meadows, Varsity Park, Blossom Valley Estates and Gest Ranch) fitted together on either side of Cuesta between Springer and Miramonte Avenues.
As I started to take into consideration a few more things about the angry caller’s tone in the voicemail, I came to a realization that it doesn’t matter if I was right or wrong, she was going to think the way she did and there’s nothing that I can do to stop that. The is the first hateful voicemail I’ve gotten my entire real estate career and I must say that regardless of it’s validity, this type of call sucks. I hope I won’t ever have to hear another one of these for awhile.
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You always hear businesspeople say that building long-term relationships is critical.
You wonder, “What does that really mean?”
It’s a legitimate question. At Rainmaker Properties, it means providing service even when someone is no longer technically a client.
As an example, we helped a couple buy a house in Mountain View and it was in perfect condition before closing. Once the clients moved in they noticed a chronic leak that resulted in some pooling water that could easily lead to mildew or mold. They contacted us for help.
We talked with the developer and used our powers of persuasion to encourage him to fix the problem. He had built and sold the property a few years earlier and our clients had actually bought it from the first occupants. Thus, he was not legally obliged to make the fix.
Yet we strongly urged him that it was in his best interest to do so. After all, we pointed out that he’d benefit from good word-of-mouth referrals and we mentioned the fact that we might be involved in recommending or selling one of his homes to our clients in the future. Here, our diplomacy and negotiating skills were enormously beneficial.
When the developer agreed to do the job, here’s where agent Edmund Yue truly went beyond the call of duty to ensure the client was happy with the resolution. He kept in touch with the developer and called and met with contractors. And when he found the homeowners wouldn’t be able to be home, Edmund even waited at the property for the contractors to arrive and do the work
Our clients were kind enough to write a public review of our business at Yelp.com
. Here’s some of what they said.
“…Alex has been there at every step and he is still there to give us advice. He is truly our lifelong agent.”
“… Edmund is honest and goes beyond what is expected of him. I would recommend him to anyone and I will definitely go back to him for our next home purchase or to sell our home.”
We’re, of course, always grateful when clients appreciate our efforts and have faith in our abilities. It reinforces our belief that providing ongoing service is important to our clients and that it is the right way to do business. Such a level of commitment is what separates us from our competition and really differentiates us with limo-like service in the Silicon Valley real estate industry.
We believe our clients are a blessing and they provide us the ability to build a successful business.
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I spoke with Craig Skylar of KRON 4 News My Lucky Stars 2: Twinkle Twinkle Lucky Stars movie full
about today’s big news of the government bail out of mortgage giants Freddie Mac
and Fannie Mae and what the effects this has on Silicon Valley residents trying to enter into the real estate market.
With the news of bailout, stocks ended the day on a good note. With consumer confidence up and stability with the government stepping in to help Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, it will be interesting to see the long term effects this will have own home ownership here in Silicon Valley.
————————–
Just last week in Cupertino, I spoke with KRON4’s Kate Thompson about Silicon Valley schools and the impact they have on the local real estate market.
I feel blessed that this month I’ve had some great opportunities to share my views in the mainstream media.
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The mark of a good agent is adaptability. What works to get one buyer a great home may not work in another sale—and a smart agent knows when and how to pivot on behalf of a client.
Case in point: I recently represented first-time homeowners in the purchase one of the Sunnyvale’s largest townhouses in the highly desirable The Gardens tract in Sunnyvale located near W. California and Mary Avenue. This Sunnyvale townhouse was listed at $699,000, and my clients submitted an offer for $685,000. By the time my clients’ offer was to be presented, there were two other offers, so my clients increased their offer to $705,000.
I asked the listing agent if I could present my clients’ offer last. That way, the sellers would be ready to make a decision, and I could probe for information about the other offers so I’d know whether to recommend that my clients adjust their offer.
We arrived to the appointment before the first presentation—but nothing happened. As we sat in the parking lot, no agents came or went. Maybe there weren’t really three offers. Or maybe the listing agent was presenting my client’s offer first.
Time to pivot. I called the listing agent, who told me the other agents were “running late,” I asked her to call me after the other two offers had been presented. An hour later, we got the call. Another pivot. I asked the listing agent if my clients could sit in on the presentation. That turned out to be a blessing. Small talk revealed that one of my buyers worked at the same major high-tech company as one of the
sellers, and the techies bonded. My buyers’ offer (which was not the highest) was accepted—and the sellers even shaved $1,000 off the buyers’ offer as a courtesy.
The moral is that a great real estate agent always think of ways to give their clients a leg up. By having my clients come to the presentation and by scoping out the parking lot to be sure we would be last to present, we were able to outsmart two agents with solid offers. Make sure you choose an experience agent who knows when to pivot on your behalf. car accident lawyers maryland
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By putting your confidence and trust in Rainmaker Properties, you help us give 10% of our income to support charitable causes, education, the arts, social services, and volunteerism. As we are half way through the 2008 business year, we’ve already raised over $50,000 for our communities.
Below are a few of the organizations that we support. As we serve more clients and have the opportunities to serve more charities, I’ll add to the list…
Abundant Life Christian Fellowship
Hidden Villa
China Sichuan Earthquake Relief Fund
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Many of the agents in Silicon Valley do just about the same thing. They send fliers to your home and sometimes e-mails to your in-box, but glossy fliers or flashy e-mails tell you nothing about their experience or ability to serve their clients.
How do you choose a reliable real estate agent to represent your best interests?
Check out the strength of their network, which speaks volumes about how well they meet their clients’ needs. Start with their blog—if they even have one. As you read, ask yourself whether it’s written by someone who’s smart and dedicated to helping people just like you buy or sell a home. If an agent contributes time to writing a blog, then it may show their experience and commitment to their clients and the industry.
Next, check out testimonial and social media Web sites. Many of these sites are comprised of unsolicited testimonials or detailed experiences working with a particular person. Some of these site may include Yelp My Best Friend’s Girl dvdrip or LinkedIn flagyl gardnerella . I’m humbled that so many of my clients value my services and proactively recommend me to their friends, family, and even strangers—especially since I work entirely by referral only.
One of the best social networking sites I’ve been using is Facebook zovirax ointment
It’s a great way to get back in touch and keep in contact with friends and family members. I was able to find a few friend half way around the world that I hadn’t been in touch with for over a decade. I’ve also conducted business through Facebook
.
For example, after one of my clients presented an offer on a property, I hit radio silence. I couldn’t get feedback from the listing agent. So I did a title search to identify the property owner and sent the
owner a message through Facebook to confirm that my client’s offer had been received. The result was a signed contract. (I understand that there’s a reason for buyers and sellers to hire agents and I don’t recommend contacting the other agent’s client, but their are times when proactive out-of-the-box action is required.)
It’s one thing to read a resume, but networking sites give you a much fuller picture of who a person is. Look me up and let me know what you think.
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