I can remember back in 2002 being implored by Mike Fanning, Windermere VP of Technology at the time, to invest in a digital camera. The idea was that as a modern real estate agent I would have the ability to snap digital photos of a listing for upload to the MLS or (this was really hot) a custom Windermere photo gallery.

It’s true. Just about five years ago not everyone had a digital camera, and not every listing on the MLS had a picture.

Then I can remember, a couple of years ago, standing in front of a group of Windermere agents imploring them to put away their digital cameras and hire a professional photographer. We had gotten to the point where a few snapshots weren’t enough. With the rate at which buyers were searching properties on the web, we had to make a great presentation on-line.

And then yesterday, at our last office meeting of the year, I handed down a new directive: embedded video.

Face it, you’re already there. How annoyed do you get anymore at a web page that requires you to actually read big blocks of text in order to get the information you’re looking for? (Like this one!) Video is the new killer app on the web. Why do you think those YouTube guys are gazillionaires? Read the rest of this entry »

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1. Everybody else wrote on it. You can find knowledgeable commentaries here, here, here and here. OK, that last one may be a bit over my head.

2. The federal funds rate is a short-term economic tool that the Federal Reserve uses to manipulate the money supply. The cut is intended to spur the economy on a macro level. It’s effects on the local real estate market are all indirect at best.

3. It’s boring. C’mon, this is a boring post.

4. The best plain-english article that I’ve read on what the action means to mortgage rates has already been written at CNBC.com. I could have plagiarized it, but that seemed like a lot of work at the time.

5. Maximizing the sale or purchase of your home has little to do with what the Fed Chairman says or does. Those market forces are all beyond our control. So let’s worry about the things we CAN control - marketing, merchandising and pricing strategies. Now those are topics I could talk about…

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It’s Monday evening, and as is often the case, I find myself doing whatever I’m doing with Monday Night Football on in the background. I’m not a fan of either of the teams that are playing, but it’s the NFL and it’s in high-def. Maybe when my wife gets off the phone with her cousin it’ll get switched to Grey’s Anatomy or something, but for now I’m getting a little football fix.

Ron Jaworski, a former quaterback and current analyst/commentator caught my attention with his evaluation of tonight’s quarterback play. He borrowed the old real estate axiom of “location, location, location” to describe how a successful passer delivers the ball to his receivers in a way that allows them to make a play, while limiting the risk of an interception.

Well, being a successful, licensed, full-time, professional football fan - I can tell you with certainty that there’s another element to becoming a successful quarterback that Jaws has just omitted from his analysis.

Completing a pass in the NFL is about putting the ball in the right location for sure, but any coach or player will tell you that just as critical is the timing of the pass. A ball has to be delivered right on time in order to have a chance to be caught. The game just moves too fast - even the slightest hesitation leads to a missed opportunity, or worse.

Jaworski’s mantra should be “location, location, timing.” Which sounds like something my Dad said recently about real estate.

Of course, the location of a property is the one critical element that can never be changed and has the most significant impact on its value. But the other element of a succesful real estate purchase has to do with timing. Making a mistake with regards to timing can be the “fly in the ointment” of an otherwise sound financial decision. And the risk isn’t just in possibly buying at the top (apologies to those who bought in late 2005), but also in not buying at or near the bottom.

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So I’m obviously in the market for a new car, and being a textbook Gen-X’er I’ve done all my research on-line. I’ve settled on a new 2008 Honda Accord EX-L Nav. (I know, it’s not very sexy, but you want your high-tech, mobile Realtor to have a smart and practical side, right?) I’ve figured out what I’m willing to pay, including sales tax and DMV fees, how much I’m putting down and how much I’m going to finance. I won’t bore you with the details, but I’ve got a plan.

So now the question becomes where am I going to buy the car and what is that experience gong to be like? As I said, I’ve done the research and determined what I’m willing to pay and I’m prepared to go from dealer to dealer to get the deal I think is fair. I’m not looking forward to it, but I’m going to be strong - do the deal on my terms or move on. Hey, I’m in the negotiation business too.

So this morning in the office, I’m talking to Brian, psyching myself up - I want to get the car in the next few days. Then Brian reminds me that we have a friend and client who is a fleet/internet manager at the Honda shop in San Leandro. Of course! I gotta call Ray and see if he can do my deal!

We work by referral, we’re about creating a great experience, and we’re always negotiating towards win-win solutions. Whay can’t a car dealer, in this day and age, work on the same principles?

They can.

Within 15 minutes, Ray gave me, over the phone, an out-the-door price that was almost $500 less than the bottom-line number I was looking for. He assured me that if I called ahead, he could get the car and the paperwork ready so that I could get in and out in under an hour. No haggling, no checking with his manager, no optional undercoating.

I was stunned - in a good way. This is how it’s supposed to work. This is why you work with people you know. No pressure, no guilt, no need to rush down there. Just the peace of mind to know that I’ve got a guy who will take care of me when I’m ready to buy a Honda.

Hey Ray, thanks. Thanks for the deal, and thanks for the reminder. I’ll see you soon.

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Much thanks to the staff at Celebrations Christian Preschool in Brentwood for putting on another amazing indoor-carnival last night. I appreciate the work and the patience that goes into the productions that they do on a fairly regular basis. And while the kids bounce around oblivious to the whole thing, it demonstrates to me the commitment of the staff - the energy and the detail that goes into these things is exhausting to me, and I was only there for about an hour!

It was our last Christmas show at Celebrations. (All three of our girls have gone there for preschool, so not only do I feel a part of the family over there, I feel like a shareholder.) Anyhow, Rachel (and C) worked hard on her lines for the past couple of weeks and while I was a little nervous about how she’d handle her first moment in the spotlight, she absolutely nailed it. I was proud to tears, while the other parents oooh-ed and aaaw-ed at Rachel’s animated delivery.

Yep, that’s my kid.

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There’s a lot of excitement brewing around the investment opportunities that are becoming available in light of the ongoing foreclosures and REO auctions in the real estate market. But be careful how you play this game, there are as many scams out there as there are opportunities.

Ever hear those ads on AM radio that promise to teach you a simple no-money-down, no-experience-needed, magical method of becoming a real estate investor at a three-hour seminar? Or the newest one, the guy who says he can teach you how to fix-and-flip properties for big profits - just like he does on TV? (My four year old daughter has figured out that what she watches on TV isn’t real, so why does this guy think I’ll fall for that?)

A friend of mine shared an article in Money Magazine with me that seemed to expose one of these scams. The article is about a training program that teaches investors how to make money on foreclosures. Granted, foreclosure investing is a complex business and there’s plenty to learn, but the article makes this training sound like little more than lessons in cold calling. And while this journalist found plenty of folks putting out thousands of dollars for the course, he didn’t identify more than one succesful student of the program.

It’s just a reminder, there’s no free lunch. Foreclosure investing is a profitable business (one of my best friends does very well at it). And this market is going to provide tremendous values in the form of REO properties and bank foreclosure auctions. But like anything else, if there’s an investment opportunity that sounds too good to be true, it probably is. So before you write a check to some “Guru” to learn how to make money in this real estate market, talk to someone who’s actually doing it. And if they make it sound really hard, then they’re probably telling the truth.

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Once again I turned on my computer (atually, it’s a computer that Brian let me borrow until the insurance company replaces mine) and in my news feeder there’s a new article about how bad the housing market is. OK, the article is about NAR’s latest home sales statistics, which indicate that prices are dropping and homes sales have slowed to the most desperate pace since they started keeping the statistics in 1999.

While I’m sure all of their research and numbers are accurate, and it’s true that the housing market has slowed, these national housing numbers are mostly irrelevant to you and me, or the guy down the street who’s selling his house.

To say that prices are down 5.7% this month, or that sales are off 20% year over year is misleading. It’s like saying that it’s 55 degrees and partly cloudy in the United States right now. There just isn’t a national real estate market. It’s a very localized business.

Your neighborhood may be worse off than the national average, or it may be doing better. Like the weather, it depends where you’re at. It’s always 5-10 degrees cooler on the Castro Valley side of the hill than it is in Pleasanton. When it’s warm in the East Bay, it tends to be foggy and cold in the City. You know how it goes. And so does the real estate market. While Pleasanton and San Ramon are holding-up well, markets like Tracy and Hayward are languishing.

There’s a lot to say on the markets, bt my point this morning is that these national statistics that the media runs around with really need to be taken with a grain of salt. If you want to know what’s going on in your neighborhood, talk to a local expert. And if you’re trying to figure out what to wear today, don’t use the satellite image of the entire country, get a local forecast!

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I promised a piece on the real estate auction almost two weeks ago, so here it is. Fact is, I’ve had a lot of time and a lot of conversations to help me digest my first real estate auction experience, and I’ve boiled it down to the three elements of the day that really surprised me.

1. This is the real deal. Insurable title, no back taxes or leins, five percent down and a 30 day cash contract. Serious investors making real deals on bank owned properties. And they’re deals - serious deals. I saw several homes, nice homes that you or I would live in, sell for 100 grand under their already reduced list prices. No joke.
2. Emotion wasn’t a factor. I really believed that the purpose of the real estate auction was to create the emotion or the frenzy that would drive competing bidders to pay more for a bank owned property than they would on the open market. But that’s not what I saw. I saw sophistocated investors who had researched and valued these properties and were bidding on them in a very business-like manner.
3. It’s just the tip of the iceberg. I saw about 200 homes get auctioned a week ago Sunday. They were all in the Sacramento area and they sold from $50,000 to over $350,000. It took six and a half hours and three different auctioneers working in non-stop twenty-minute shifts. It seemed huge at the time. Then I recollected some of the  historical numbers that are being thrown around regarding foreclosures and sub-prime loans. And I realized, this is only the beginning.

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Sorry I’m late. I was supposed to write a post last night, and the plan was to write about the live real estate auction that I spent sixteen hours participating in on Sunday. But I had a little mishap on my way home and well, I’ve got a new post in mind.

I headed out of the office a little early yesterday. It is after all a holiday week, and I’m already in a holiday mood. We had a really good Monday Sales Meeting I thought - lots of good feedback on the discussions around social networking sites as well as an intense exchange around the auction that took the meeting a half hour past our regular stopping point. It was a small group (holiday week) but a really productive time together.

So I’m sneaking out early to get home to the Broncos on Monday Night Football.It’s dark already at 5:00pm as I head up Vasco Road towards Brentwood. Vasco is famous for deadly head-on crashes, although there have been relatively few in the past three years since I moved out here thanks to road improvements and speed enforcement by the CHP. In fact, just last night officer Joiner of the CHP was telling me that Marsh Creek Road between Clayton and Brentwood is the new hot spot for deadly head-on crashes.

Vasco Road still presents it dangers however, evidenced by the fact that I was having said conversation with Officer Joiner on the shoulder of that very highway last night.

You see, about halfway through the 19 mile stretch from Livermore to Bretwood, some guy who had failed to tie-down his overstuffed armchair was stopping right in the middle of traffic to make an illegal u-turn to retrieve his fallen furniture. (It’s a good thing he did, a Lazy Boy in the southbound lane isn’t a good thing for anyone.) So I, along with the three or four cars between me ant the pick-up truck came to a dead stop, right there in the single northbound lane, in the dark, on Vasco Road.

Read the rest of this entry »

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I made some new friends this evening, a really nice couple from San Ramon who were referred by a colleague. This couple isn’t the typical real estate client, at least not typical to me. They’re introducing me to the emerging world of real estate auctions.

We’re all aware of the real estate markets in California that are over-saturated with inventory, and we’ve heard plenty about the sub-prime mortgage meltdown that created this situation. Now comes the product, or the result of those markets: the liquidation of that inventory through public auctions.

Good or bad, these real estate auctions are going to be around for a while. Some industry folks I know have warned against the emotion and excitement that’s created by the auction process, suggesting that the event can drive prices up to and even beyond market value. Others, like my new friends, have had experience at these auctions and are certain that there are deals to be had.

The real estate auction we’re headed to on Sunday is being conducted by Hudson and Marshall and looks to feature over two hundred homes in the greater Sacramento area. My friends have picked a few houses that they like and they’ve scouted them out. They’ve done some research to determine what they think they’re worth and what they’re willing to pay. They’re looking at purchasing up to three homes - assuming they can secure the bargain prices that they’re hoping for.

So we’ll head up there on Sunday morning to drive by some more houses, and hopefully get inside to view some of the properties that we’re serious about. And then we’ll be at the Raddison by one o’clock to check-in and get our seats. What happens after that, I can’t be sure. But I can tell you this - it won’t be the last real estate auction in Northern California.

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