RAVING FANS REDUX

One more satisfied client and another RAVING FAN. I try to live my life in real estate as reflected in the famous quote by Vince Lombardi:

"The quality of a person's life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, regardless of their chosen profession"

-Vince Lombardi

Dear Tim,

We can't begin to express our gratitude for all of your help during what can only be described as a difficult transaction. We firmly believe that your unending patience, negotiating expertise, communication skills, and professionalism were often the only things holding this contract together. You never pressured us at any juncture, and you were always willing to intelligently discuss issues with us instead of telling us exactly what we wanted to hear. Both of those qualities are difficult to find in a buyers agent, and they distinguish you as an honest and outstanding Realtor. We won't hesitate to recommend both you and Keller Williams to everyone within earshot.

After all, we love telling the story how you turned a potentially nightmarish transaction into a successful home purchase!

To thank you , we were going to include.....with this card.

Enjoy and Thank You,

Sara & Jasun

I edited the information that describes the gift the buyers wanted to bestow upon me. Certainly an unnecessary action on their behalf. I must say that you were probably the most educated buyers I have ever worked with and Sara knows more about real estate than most agents in this town.

I do look forward to working with all of your friends in the coming years and I will be honored to receive any referrals from you.

THE INCREDIBLE TRIPLE CLOSING HIGH WIRE ACT or,

(In the words of Dierks Bently) WHAT WAS I THINKIN'?

So there we are squirming at the closing table at 10:45 a.m. on a Friday morning. The sellers are anxious because they must step into their U-Haul and drive three hours to a walk-through and the closing of the new house they are purchasing. The closing company told us we could pop in at 10:00 a.m. and sign the HUD-1, drop off the deed, collect the proceeds from the sale of the clients existing home, and have them off in time for them to attend the closing of their new home hours away.

A funny thing happened on the way to the triple closing. No, that is not a new sport in the upcoming Olympics. It is a daring high wire act performed by Realtors, attorneys, and closing agents when there are three contingency contracts in play and all scheduled to close on the same day.

The single overriding important factor in maintaining your balance on the high wire and not tumbling to earth in agony in this situation is HONESTY. A secondary factor in this performance is for the type A personalities to take a chill pill and allow the professionals do their jobs. Unfortunately in the real estate business, the population of successful pros seem to be littered with overbearing type A's. I'm not sure the cause but that will be a post for another day.

A quick description of the choreography involved in our high wire act is as follows. Client A is relocating 3 hours away and agrees to a contingency purchase offer from client B. Client B must sell their existing home prior to purchasing client A's home. The contingency is removed in a week and client A places a contingency offer on a property hours away owned by client C. Of course the flaw in the performance exists because all three homes must close on the same day. Another problem arises with the Client C property 3 hours away. Since the Realtor representing client C does not know any of the actors in the first two transactions, and because she is an overbearing type A personality that treats other Realtors she doesn't know as school children, she constantly harasses and complains to the parties involved in the first two transactions.

For all of you type A Realtors out there I offer the following. Just because they do "IT" a certain way in your market, and just because certain lenders, attorneys, Realtors, and mortgage brokers are oily in your market, does not make it "SO" in my market. So, in an effort to improve our professional image I suggest that you take a chill pill and allow the pros to do their jobs. Enough of the editorial and back to the main feature: the high wire triple closing on a single day.

After awaiting the HUD-1 that turned out to be 45 minutes late, the broker walks in with the correct documentation and a big fat check for my sellers. They happily jump into an overstuffed U-Haul truck and head down the highway to the final closing of the day.

A successful triple closing pulled off by a group of professionals in State College, PA. with a bit of static coming three hours away. It is incredible to think how real estate transactions are so connected and what a web they weave.

The pros pulled off a triple contingency closing on a single day without any difficulty and at a total value of more than $700,000. Of course some of us never doubted the outcome.

INTERNET AD SPENDING SET TO OVERTAKE ALL OTHER MEDIA

That is not a headline I created but it dovetails with my last post relating to the source of buyers in a real estate transaction. A recent article (http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.san&s=65282&Nid=33013&p=204904 ) detailed the emerging trend in advertising. The headline was in the industry periodical, ONLINE MEDIA DAILY, and the article describes the trend of advertising dollars flowing away from printed media and traditional television and into the new media relating to the internet.

The most important point to remember for sellers of real estate is quite simple. By 2011, spending of advertising dollars will reach $61.98 billion dollars and overtake newspapers as the number one medium for advertising dollars.

Sellers, please remember this point. If you want to reach buyers for your homes you will continue to reach them via the internet rather than in the printed media. Find a Realtor that has the best internet strategy and have them detail the strategy to you. If they tell you their internet strategy is a listing on Realtor.com run quickly away.

Of course you can find an internet savvy Realtor by calling Tim Rogers at Keller Williams Realty in State College, PA.

ATTENTION HOMESELLERS!

WHERE DO BUYERS COME FROM?

OR

WHY DO REALTORS SPEND HUGE DOLLARS IN THE NEWSPAPER?

A recent AP story (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20025015/) highlights the trend of real estate advertising away from print and classified advertising in newspapers. This comes as no suprise to those of us at Keller Williams but I know it may be a shocker to sellers in the local market.

Full page real estate print ad's in the Sunday paper sure look nice and provide sellers with an insurance policy, but the truth is the printed "BLING" does little to actual sell houses. In fact it is little more than comfort food for sellers. They open the paper and feel comforted to know that their Realtor is doing everything they can to sell their home.

The truth is sellers need to start ordering their comfort food from a different menu and the menu is the internet. Statistics show that more than 80% of buyers begin and continue their home search online. Yes, that's 80%. Sellers, the big question you need to ask your Realtor is, "What is your internet strategy and how will the internet sell my house?"

For those sellers that take comfort in opening the Sunday paper to see a photo of your residence, I would hope that photo doesn't lead to a nasty case of indigestion and an unsold home.

Of course, cutting edge Realtors interested in selling homes quickly will be spending advertising dollars in places where the buyers will be spending their time; online. So, don't be too concerned when you open the Sunday CDT and you don't see a full page ad sponsored by Tim Rogers or Keller Williams. Rest assured that we are ahead of the trend and we are selling houses on the internet.

We will leave the printed indigestion to the competition.

ARE THEY CRAZY OR JUST UNEDUACTED?

Several days ago I was driving through Georgia when I stopped to run in Savannah. I found a nice subdivision on the run and as I ran around the lake I had a chance to read many of the real estate for sale signs. Most of them had a sign rider stating: PRICE REDUCTION. No great surprise in the current real estate market. You could say it is a sign of the times in real estate.

The sign that grabbed my curiousity and would not let go for the balance of the sultry run (humidity had to be 100%) was the FOR SALE BY OWNER. Not the FSBO sign itself; that would be unremarkable. The note scribbled on the bottom of the sign pleading for a buyer and prohibiting realtors-that grabbed my imagination and held on tight. The hand-written note on the bright red FSBO sign stated, "MUST SELL IMMEDIATELY, ABSOLUTELY NO REALTORS!"

My first thought:

OXYMORON

defined by Wikipedia as - An oxymoron (plural oxymorons or more rarely oxymora) is a figure of speech that combines two normally contradictory terms.

That sounded about right to me but (in full disclosure) I'm a licensed Realtor in Pennsylvania. So as I continued to pound the pavement and have the blanket of humidity squeeze my lungs, I wondered what may cause a rational person (probably a professional) to be desperate to sell a house but prohibit Realtors from assisting him? That would be akin to needing a root canal but refusing the services of all dentists. Heart surgery but declining the help of all physicians, etc., etc, you get the point.

The story gets better. It bothered me so much I drove back to the house after my run and caught the owner at home. He saw my PA plates and Penn State Nittany Lion Club sticker and thought it was safe to talk to me. Long story short. He is facing foreclosure but had a bad experience with a Realtor once so he thinks we are all evil. He is going to show us (Realtors). He would rather lose his house to foreclosure than seek out the assistance of a professional Realtor that may just bring him the buyer he so desperately needs.

So, I continue to ponder the original question, "ARE THEY CRAZY OR JUST UNEDUCATED?" I have my own biased opinion of course but I've never filled one of my own cavities.

What do you think?