Hosting a successful open house

We showed some Placer County homes to our clients yesterday, which included visits to three different open houses. Our clients did not spend more than 1 minute in each open house because of the trash, dirty clothes, beat up cars in the driveway and street and worse yet, the seller/tenants walking around. Yep! You read that correct, the homes were beyond dirty and the seller/tenants were home during the open house. It was a disaster to say the least.

So agents, if you are planning an open house, here are some tips directly from our clients, as well as many other potential buyers who were also at the open houses, albiet briefly. They were making comments and jokes back and forth as they were leaving each home. 

First, clean the home, stage the home and keep the dogs and humans away. Potential buyers want to snoop, they want to talk about the home, they do not want the dogs barking and they do not want the seller/tenant listening to their private conversations about the home. If you are dealing with small kids or stubborn seller/tenants, no worries, send them bowling or send them to lunch for a few hours. Second, be at the open house, or have one of your new agents there. They need to be handing out a CMA, talking about the home, the history of it, any updates, etc. Potential buyers want to know these things and when no one is there to answer their questions, they leave.

Lastly and most importantly, price the home properly. Do your research and do not price the home $25k above the highest and most recent comp just because Placer County is a sellers market right now. Two of the three open homes yesterday were priced well above market value and were absolute junk. Those homes will most likely sit for a few weeks or months, so be mindful of the area and good luck!

    

Credit repair tips

We just had one of our buyers tell us that they needed 60 days to close escrow because their loan officer told them they needed to clean up a small collection on their credit report. This opened up a can of worms for us since their loan officer already told us that they were pre-qualified and homes are selling so fast here in Placer County, that a 60 day escrow is sure to get our offer rejected. So for those of who are buying a home, buying a car or motorcycle, just want to see what your credit looks like, want to clean up a derogatory trade line or just want to maintain your good credit rating, here you go! First, look at the open trade lines on your report for accuracy. The most common credit killers are old utility bills or HOA bills from a previous residence that you did not know about. Contact these agencies and make the payment, but make sure they give you a receipt and that they report the "paid" account to the credit bureaus. Tip; it takes 30-90 days for the repaired account to help improve your scores, so plan any purchases accordingly. If your credit is good but your score is low, then there are two possibilities. First, your credit line to current balance is too high or you just do not have enough credit depth. These are easily remedied by either paying the balance down or attempting to get your credit limit increased. These will typically raise your score and that is an excellent thing to have, as almost everyone is judged by their credit rating! Remember this is free advice so please use caution when working with creditors and good luck!     

Struggling home owners punished again

For the last 12 months, I have been watching a scary trend forming here in Placer County California. The resale and short-sale inventory has started to shrink, the foreclosure signs have started to disappear, we are back to multiple offer situations, purchase prices are going above comparable sales again, appraisal waivers are even coming into play again and interest rates are continuing to decline. This gave me flashbacks to 2005, when there was a buying frenzy that ended in.......well disaster! Guess what, in some parts of the Country, it is happening again. Good news for young buyers and those buyers who were previously priced out of the market, but bad news for the struggling middle class. Here is why. The largest banks and the Upper class jokers running them got $700b bailout, while we got $0. When the jokers running the two largest banks in the Country (Fannie and Freddie) got in trouble they took $ millions in bonuses and then got $140b from the Treasury while again, we got $0. Here is where it gets really good. Now that there is a shortage of homes on the market, Fannie and Freddie are foreclosing on us as fast as possible. They are declining short sales and taking homes back very quietly and quickly so that they can get them back on the market asap. I would be o.k. with that if the Treasury would share the profits with us or allow us to pay $0 in taxes for 2013, but I know that is just a pipe dream. I can confirm all of this via a single property that we watched here in Roseville, Ca. The struggling home owner owed $288k, the owner of the note was Freddie Mac and the comparable sales were between $200k-$240k. Freddie Mac foreclosed on the home for $238k in December and by February 20th was cleaned, painted and back on the market for $295k. That is not a typo. Stay tuned!