"Today Show" portrays "tricks by Realtors" to promote their listings

(To be published Thursday, June 2, 2011 in the Denver Post)


By Jim Smith, Realtor

Perhaps you saw the “Today” show this Tuesday (the 7 o’clock hour) in which Matt Lauer interviewed Barbara Corcoran about “tricks by Realtors to increase interest in homes.” Here are my notes on what was said, and my insights as a Realtor.

First of all, like so many people, Matt used the term “Realtor” as a synonym for “real estate agent.” As I have pointed out before, one should only use this term when you could substitute the phrase “member of the National Association of Realtors.” Every time Matt said “Realtor,” he meant “real estate agent.” Only half of the nation’s real estate licensees are Realtors, i.e. members of NAR.

Back to the substance of what was said…

1) There is no consistency among the hundreds of MLS’s in the country — no “gold standard” in Barbara’s words. In fact, NAR does have standards which it expects the Realtor-owned MLS’s (such as Denver’s) to adopt as rules and regulations. (I’m on the Rules & Regulations Committee of Metrolist, the Denver MLS.)

2) Listings only display the current listing price, not the original listing price, but if you ask, the “Realtor” (i.e., listing agent) will tell you. My comment: zillow. com, the popular consumer real estate website, accurately portrays the entire listing history of each home with dates, amounts and percentage of each price change. Realtor. com displays “Price Reduced” on such listings, but gives no details.

3) Listing agents will “refresh” listings and do other “tricks” to make a listing look like it is new on the market, when in fact it has been on the market a long time. My comment: Metrolist is about to implement a rule (pending Realtor association review) requiring that any listing be “expired,” not just “withdrawn,” for 30 days before the “days on market” counter resets to zero. Again, even so, zillow.com tells you the real story.

4) Square footage numbers can be manipulated. My July 15, 2010, column described how various websites will feature different square footage figures (main, finished or total) for the same listings. (Read that column at http://www.jimsmithcolumns.com/.) Our MLS is not misleading in this area.

5) Pictures can be manipulated to remove power lines, etc. My comment: Metrolist will fine any listing agent who does that. He/she may, however, remove trash cans and other non-fixtures from listing photos.

6) “Just available” in the description means owner died on premises — a strange and inaccurate comment to put on the air!

Did you know? You don't need a landline for Qwest DSL service

I suspect that quite a few Coloradans keep their landline with Qwest because that landline carries their DSL service. Recently I found out that this is not necessary. I canceled my landline and still have DSL service from Qwest. Saved about $40 per month. Since I didn't want to lose my home phone number, I ported that number to one of the secondary phone lines at my company, where it forwards to my cell phone. I could have also ported it to a cell phone. They assigned a new phone number to my landline, then canceled the phone service, leaving only DSL service. It went very smoothly. People still call my old home phone number and they still reach me!

Generating solar power on a rainy day

I just checked my inverters and today (cloudy and rainy all day) my home system generated 13 kWH by 5 p.m. -- probably 15 kWH by sunset later.  A lot of people don't realize that PV works even without direct sunlight.

My listing in Applewood, then one in Arvada, were hijacked for a rental scam

It has become common for Nigerian scammers to post rental offers on homes they don't own.  It seems that they find homes for sale online, then advertise them for rent at half the market value (e.g., $600 per month).  When you reply to their posting, you get this story about how they took a sudden job as a missionary in West Africa or some such lie, and they can't show you the house.  You're asked to fill out a rental application and send them two month's rent (by Western Union or Moneygram) and they'll then send you the keys.  The rental application provides enough information for identity theft on top of losing your money. This scam has been attempted on enough of my listings (four in the last year or so, two in the last two weeks) that I created a small sign that says "NOT FOR RENT" to hang from my yard sign as soon as I get the first call from a would-be renter who was smart enough to call me. I also ask the would-be renter to find the posting again and flag it as a scam.  I don't know if anyone actually fell victim to this scam, but would like to hear from anyone who has! Note: When you click on any posting on craigstlist, the following warning appears in a yellow box above the posting: "Beware any arrangement involving Western Union, Moneygram, wire transfer, or a landlord/owner who is out of the country or cannot meet you in person."  Too bad most people don't notice that warning...

Beware of robo-calls claiming to be from Coors Credit Union

Both my wife and I, within a couple hours of each other, received robo-calls to our Golden landlines from 207-289-2055 claiming to be from Coors Credit Union saying that due to several fraudulent attempts to access our account, our ATM cards had been deactivated.  We were told to press "1" to be connected to the "security department" at which point we were prompted to enter our 16-digit ATM card number and probably our PIN to "reactivate" our account.  This is a phishing scam, and neither Rita nor I fell for it, but if you have an ATM card, beware that you don't fall for it!  It's a sophisticated operation that matches phone numbers to local banking institutions.  I wonder whether they only launch these calls on weekends when they know victims can't contact their bank right away.

Great Opportunity for an Equine Veterinarian

Rita and I just returned from a weekend memorial service for my brother, Pete Smith, a well-known equine veterinarian who created what is arguably the best equipped rural equine facility in the country.  Now, the Milliron Clinic in Athens, Ohio, is in need of a new equine veterinarian to take over.  The facility and staff can't be matched anywhere.  To help the family find that new vet (who could start as a staff vet) I produced two videos while we were there.  One video is a 13-minute guided tour of the facility.  The other is a longer video of interviews with clients who are waiting for you to show up and saying how terrific the facility and staff are.  (Both are in Windows MovieMaker format.) Please share this with any equine vet you know who might be interested in this great career opportunity!

Will We See a Slump Now that the Tax Credit Deadline Has Passed? I Don't Think So.

Metrolist data for the first weekend in May provides an encouraging answer to the question that has been on all Realtors’ and sellers’ minds for months — would the housing market stall after the federal tax credit deadline of April 30th passed?


Keeping in mind that some contracts from Saturday and Sunday may not have been reported by Monday night (when I did my data gathering) here are the encouraging data: During the first weekend in May, 19 single-family Jeffco homes went under contract, including two million-dollar homes. The previous weekend, 40 went under contract, with the highest priced home listed at $775,000.

While this represented about a 50% decline in contracts from a week ago, it was actually higher than the first weekend of May 2009. During that weekend a year ago, 16 single-family homes went under contract.

But that was just Jeffco, which did better than the metro area as a whole versus last year. In the entire MLS last year, 107 single family homes went under contract that weekend, compared to only 85 single family homes going under contract last weekend. That’s a 21% decline, but not bad at all, considering how many homes sold last month.

But that was just single-family homes. Condos and townhomes are another story. The drop in sales for that sector is quite dramatic, although I’d point out that one weekend’s sales in this smaller market segment is not a good measure of the market. We should probably wait until mid-May or later to draw any conclusions, but here is the raw data.

During the first weekend of May a year ago, 29 condos (4 of them in Jeffco) went under contract and have since closed. This year, only 14 condos went under contract during the same weekend, none of them in Jeffco.

The poorer performance of condos and townhomes compared to single-family homes is understandable, given the fact that they are a common purchase for first-time homebuyers and there was a serious run on those listings during April. We should probably be pleased that there are even 50% as many of them selling this May versus last May, given last month’s sales activity.

One factor favoring home sales going forward is that many buyers not eligible for tax credits figured that prices would drop in May for those homes which didn’t sell by April 30th. They are now jumping into the market, targeting homes with major price reductions — and there are many such listings.

Do We Have to Put Up with Train Horns at All Hours?

After hearing a piece about "Quiet Zones" on NPR this past Saturdary morning, I googled "quiet zones on trains" and found this page on the Federal Railroad Administration's website.  I wonder whether we can implement horn-free zones here in Jeffco under this ruling instead of being wakened at all hours by these loud horns.  Here's the web page text -- go to the page itself at http://www.fra.dot.gov/Pages/1318.shtml for links within FRA's website giving more details:

Final Rule on the Use of Locomotive Horns at Highway-Rail Grade Crossings


In response to a legislative mandate, FRA has issued a Final Rule on the Use of Locomotive Horns at Highway-Rail Grade Crossings. This final rule, which requires that locomotive horns be sounded as a warning to highway users at public highway-rail crossings, took effect on June 24, 2005. The final rule provides an opportunity, not available until now, for thousands of localities nationwide to mitigate the effects of train horn noise by establishing new "quiet zones." The rule also details actions communities with pre-existing "whistle bans" can take to preserve the quiet they have become accustomed to.

Qwest DSL does not require having telephone service

Recently I asked Qwest a simple question -- Must I have a landline in order to have DSL?  The answer was "no", and I bet a lot of people are keeping their Qwest phone line because they don't know that.  You can save quite a bit of money ($30 per month or so, depending on options) by having Qwest discontinue your home phone service. If you have a cell phone, why not?

Anyone who calls your home phone number after you make this change will get a "disconnected" message instead of a "new number" message, so be prepared for that.  I found a way around that problem by "porting" my home phone number to one of the secondary numbers at Golden Real Estate and having it forward from there to my cell phone. 

Another consideration for me in not having a landline was my fax machine.  As far as I know, you can't fax using a cell phone.  The way I got around that is to scan outgoing documents to my laptop, then email them.  For incoming faxes, I have an efax number.

My real estate column this week profiles Steve Stevens of Golden

I'm really proud of this week's "Real Estate Today" column (published today in the Denver Post's Jeffco editions) because it profiles Steve Stevens and what he has done to push his home way past "net zero." 

Read it at http://www.jimsmithcolumns.com/.  It will inspire you to ask what YOU could do to improve the energy efficiency of your own home (and car!).

I'd love to hear your reaction to it.

Change of cell phone number

Greetings.  If you've been using my iPhone number, 720-273-3046, to call me instead of using my advertised number of 303-525-1851, please don't use that 720 number anymore.  Effective on Monday, Jan. 4th, I am porting 303-525-1851 to my iPhone account.  The 720 number will disappear, and there will be no forwarding information on it.  Thanks!

Just Back from the Realtor Convention & Expo in San Diego

[Published Nov. 19, 2009, in the Denver Post - Jeffco editions]

Those of us who traveled to San Diego last week for the National Association of Realtors annual convention and trade show really lucked out on the weather, leaving before the snow storm began and returning after it ended..


I did attend one of the educational sessions, and I did enjoy several non-real estate activities such as visiting the Wild Animal Park and cruising San Diego Bay. But, for me, the major value of such conventions is the “expo” — the opportunity to get current on technology and products being introduced. In that regard, the NAR convention is the “daddy of them all.”

Being an iPhone owner, I was particularly struck by how many vendors offered apps for this device which has already transformed the practice of real estate.

It was only a year or so ago that I had an ordinary cell phone — no email, no web capability, nothing at all, compared to today’s smart phones. Nowadays, it’s hard to imagine being a successful Realtor® without a smart phone. My wife, Rita, who is not in real estate, now realizes that she, too, must discard her cell phone and get an iPhone. I heard this weekend that there are 50 million iPhones in use today.

In a previous column I mentioned zillow’s great iPhone app which, curiously, zillow was not promoting at their booth.

Other vendors, however, offered something zillow doesn’t offer — a branded MLS IDX search engine, something I look forward to offering as soon as I can install it. Look for more about this feature after I get it up and running.

What will make such an app unbeatable will be a GPS component which allows you to search the MLS listings closest to where you are standing with your phone.

There were other technologies being promoted, of course, but the iPhone has definitely captured everyone’s attention and imagination — and with good reason.

Taking it all in at one trade show is like drinking from the proverbial fire hose — it’s simply impossible to do justice to what I learned this weekend. It’s only appropriate that the same kinds of technology allowed me to be completely in touch with my clients and business throughout the convention and expo. Indeed, I sold one of my listings while I was in San Diego.

I have never been more convinced that a real estate agent must be “with it” technologically to be competitive in today’s industry. If you’re unhappy with that fact, you can blame the iPhone.

18 (or more) Questions to Ask When Interviewing Your Next Listing Agent

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Published Nov. 5, 2009, in the YourHub.com section of the Denver Post:

I completely sympathize with sellers’ frustration and sense of powerlessness when it comes to putting their home on the market. Should you try to sell it yourself and save on commission? How do you know which agent to hire — and what will it cost? Should you hire your brother-in-law or risk alienating him (and your spouse) by hiring someone more qualified or more familiar with your area?
Perhaps making the process more scientific will help (especially with the brother-in-law issue), so I have prepared a set of 18 questions to ask the agents you interview, including your brother-in-law, which will give you a little more confidence that the choice you end up making is fairest and makes the most sense.

 I’m sorry that space limitations don’t allow a full explanation of all the questions, so feel free to contact me if you don’t understand any of them — such as the first one:

1. Do you subscribe to Showcase service on realtor.com, and will you make full use of it for my home? (Browse realtor.com’s listings in your ZIP code to see how this service can help to promote a listing.)
2. Do you promise to complete every possible MLS field describing my house, and not just the mandatory fields?
3. Will your MLS listing of my house be syndicated to 20 or more consumer websites? (The MLS has a free service called “ListHub” which does this, but each broker must opt into it for his listings.)
4. Will you also post my home for sale on craigslist.org — and how often will you refresh it?
5. Will you produce a virtual tour (what realtor.com calls a “Featured Tour”) of my home? If so, which vendor will you use? (If this agent has any current listings, they should be on realtor.com, where you can compare his “Featured Tour” with those created by other vendors for other agents. You’ll see that their effectiveness varies greatly. I favor visualtour.com’s.)
6. Will you produce a video tour of my home, and can you show me a video tour you have produced for another listing? (If he does videos, they will be on his realtor.com listings if he has “Showcase” service, which leads me to question #7…)
7. May I have the address of one of your current listings so that I can see how it is marketed on realtor. com and elsewhere? (Google the address for “elsewhere.”)
8. How many of your listings sold in the last year, and how many of them expired or were withdrawn without selling? (You may want to have another agent verify this data, since it requires MLS access to do so. This can also help you to verify whether the agent you are interviewing is being truthful with you.)
9. Will you provide a staging consultation to help make my home show its best?
10. Will you do email blasts or distribute printed flyers telling other agents about this new listing?
11. Will you promote my listing at the various weekly Realtor marketing sessions and/or hold a broker open house?
12. (Optional) Will you hold regular open houses for as long as I want you to do so?
13. What is your commission, and will you reduce it if you sell my house yourself (no co-op commission owed to a buyer’s agent)?
14. Will you reduce your commission further if I hire you to represent me in the purchase of my next home?
15. Will I get feedback from you on every showing by you, and will you actively solicit feedback from other agents who show my home and tell me what they say?
16. Will you mail out “Just Listed” postcards so that neighbors and others will know that my home is on the market?
17. Does your company, or you, have a website on which your listings are promoted?
18. How else will you advertise or market my home?

Bonus question: Will you pay a referral fee to my brother-in-law if I hire you despite family pressure?
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Fraudulent Claims of the $8,000 tax credit

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I heard on NPR a few days ago that there is an enormous number of fraudulent claims for this tax credit and that the IRS is unable to challenge fraudulent claims for the $8,000 tax credit without doing a full-blown audit! No proof is required, it appears, that the taxpayer is a first time home buyer or that they have actually bought a house!


Any legislation extending the tax credit should include a provision putting some controls on this raid on the Treasury!

Technological Convergence Has Greatly Improved the Practice of Real Estate

Published in the Denver Post, Oct. 22, 2009:

It’s awe inspiring how cellular and other technologies have converged to revolutionize the practice of real estate in recent years. The primary platform for this convergence is the “smart phone” — a generic term for the BlackBerry, Apple’s iPhone, Palm’s Pre and similar products.


Let me paint a few scenarios, and you’ll see what I mean.

Scenario #1: I’m in my car and my iPhone rings. I push a button on my steering wheel and the caller’s voice comes across my car radio, which is silenced automatically. (This is Bluetooth technology.) The caller is a client wanting to reserve my free moving truck for later in the week. Stopping at a red light, I consult my Outlook calendar on the phone and confirm a date and time. At the next red light, I enter the reservation on my calendar, confident that it will be on my laptop next time I look at it.

Scenario #2: I have a buyer in my car and we pass a home that sparks his interest. I open the Zillow application on my phone, and it displays a satellite view of that location with a red icon for active listings and green icons for every other home. I can touch the red icon and instantly get the essential MLS information about the house. Touching the other icons gets me a similar amount of information about them, including when they sold and for how much.

Scenario #3: Another client is a flight attendant who flies internationally, so calling her on her cell phone is not practical or affordable when she’s in Rio or Paris or Hong Kong, but I can text her and get a text response the next time she’s on the ground, without worrying about what time zone she’s in. (If she had a smart phone, we could exchange email on our phones.)

Scenario #4: I come across a property that a client in New York would really like. I pull out my phone, shoot a video with my own narration, and email it to him on the spot.

There are countless other scenarios I could share. Another favorite device is my car’s navigation system. When showing homes, I can enter several addresses at a time, view them on the map, re-order them as I wish, and then let the voice guide me from one listing to the next without taking my eyes off the road to look at maps or directions.

Technology continues to make me more effective and productive — and, fortunately for my clients, I readily adopt it!

The Job of a Listing Agent Is Not to Sell Your Home, But to Get It Sold

Published Oct. 15, 2009, in The Denver Post



There’s a popular misconception that the job of a listing agent is to sell your home. I beg to differ.


The real job of a listing agent — prior to negotiating a contract and representing you through the transaction — is to maximize exposure of your home to buyers and to the agents who represent buyers. Understand this, and you will find it much easier to select the right listing agent, because it’s far easier to compare the marketing skills and practices of different listing agents than it is to compare their selling abilities.

First, recognize that fewer than 10% of listings are sold by the agents who listed them. That’s why we have an MLS. Next, don’t mistake simply putting the home on the MLS (which is all many agents do) with true marketing.

True marketing to other agents as well as direct buyers begins, but must not end, with full data entry on the MLS, beyond those few fields that the MLS requires. It means, for example, putting in room dimensions and locations and using the full public remarks field to describe the home’s selling points. It means uploading ten high-quality pictures, not just one exterior picture. And it means producing a “virtual tour” using a good vendor (I prefer VisualTour.com).

MLS data entry is just the start. True marketing must include non-MLS efforts that are still targeted to agents as well as buyers, such as flyers to the agents’ offices and email addresses. The agent’s listings must be syndicated to 20 consumer sites like zillow.com and trulia.com, and must be man-ually entered on craigslist.org. The virtual tour vendor will do its own syndication, so it’s important for the description on the virtual tour to be more extensive than just captions for each photo.

Then there’s realtor.com, which will carry every MLS listing for free, but only in stripped down format with just four pictures and none of the public remarks from the MLS. The only way to get good exposure on realtor.com is to purchase “showcase” service and then utilize it. Some companies (like mine) buy that service for all their agents, but it’s up to the agent to actually go into realtor.com’s control panel and enter those enhancements.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking that because most listings are sold by other agents that getting on the MLS is all it takes. It takes so much more, and that should guide you in your agent selection.

How to Evaluate a Listing Agent:
 

Performance Criteria


Of course, you’ll want to know how many listings the agent has (and where), and this you can easily verify online. The real question, however, is how many of his listings have sold in the last 12 months and how many expired without selling. How many homes did he sell himself, including his own listings? But beware: agents know that you cannot verify this data, so you should be skeptical. If in doubt, get a different agent to obtain this data for you.

NOTE: If the agent says he or she has a buyer for your home, make him or her prove it by signing a two-day listing agreement (not on MLS).

Marketing Criteria

Do NOT ask how he will market your home. Instead, ask for the address of one or more current listings. How he markets other listings is an absolute predictor of how he’ll market yours. Google the addresses. Look for them on realtor.com and REcolorado.com and see how they are promoted compared to similarly priced homes.

On realtor.com, make sure that the agent has Showcase service which allows for headlines, 25 pictures, virtual tours, video tours, extensive sales pitch, etc. If he doesn’t have those on his current listings, he won’t have them on yours.

Sewage Back-Up Not Covered WIthout Separate Endorsement

Mike Bailey of State Farm tells me, in answer to a question, that sewage back-up is not covered in the standard homeowner's policy.  If you have a finished basement, you'd be well advised to pay the extra $25 or so for an endorsement adding that coverage to your homeowner's policy.  Good advice!

I learned SO MUCH from today's Tour of Solar Homes in Golden and Denver!  I'll share some of what I learned in next week's column.

Don't Miss "The Diary of Anne Frank" this weekend at Golden High School

I was blown away by how good this production was.  I happen to sit next to the aunt of the 16-year-old student, Jamie Nagode, who played Anne Frank so amazingly, and I got some inside info -- like the fact that her prom date is the boy who plays Peter in the production.  In one scene Anne and Pete share the first kiss for each of them... Their roles appear to have drawn them closer to each other.

The cast was uniformly great in their acting, and were great at staying in character while the action was elsewhere on stage.  Especially nice was the fact that they all stayed in character and on stage throughout the 15-minute intermission.  As Jamie's aunt explained, "They couldn't leave their hiding place, after all."

The audience gave Jamie in particular a standing and prolonged ovation at the end, and she certainly deserved it. 

Don't miss this production.  The last two performances are Saturday, Oct. 3 at 2pm and 7pm.  And if you do miss it, ask to borrow the DVD of tonight's performance which I ordered during intermission!

Appraisers Don't Give Value to Solar Installations -- Here's Why

I spoke today with Beth Hanlon, an appraiser active in Jeffco and the Foothills, and she said that she cannot assign more than token value (under $5,000) to a photovoltaic installation on a home, because the underwriters would disallow it.  This, she said, would apply regardless of how recent and how productive the PV (or solar thermal) array is.  For instance, I installed a $60,000 PV and $10,000 solar thermal system on my own house a couple years ago, and these two systems save me hundreds of dollars on my electric and gas bills every month. (My energy bill for this 3,600-sq.ft. ranch is about $50 per month.)  No matter, she said.  She couldn't get even a reasonable percentage of that investment approved by any underwriter.  Moreover, if the installation detracts from the curb appeal of the house, Beth will actually deduct for it.  (Since my house faces north, you can't see either of my solar installations from the front.)

If the Obama administration wants to promote clean energy such as PV and solar thermal (not to mention geothermal, which is never visible from the street and an even greater investment), it should consider regulating the valuation of these systems by underwriters.  For example, assign a reasonable life (15 years at least) to these systems, and require a minimum valuation based on its bona fide installation cost, depreciated over that lifetime. 

A homeowner who installs an energy-saving, greenhouse gas-reducing system should be able to recoup at least as much on that investment, percentage wise, as they do by updating a kitchen or bathroom!  The kind of regulation I'm proposing has the additional advantage of not costing any federal tax dollars. 

Moreover, why spend tax dollars incentivizing people to install such systems when the return on investment only applies if you keep the house forever and not if you sell it!  Under the current situation outlined by my appraiser friend, I would NOT advise anyone who isn't going to live in their house for at least 10 years to invest in a PV or solar-thermal or geo-thermal system other than just to feel good about doing so.