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Part-Timers In Real Estate

I recently closed two transactions of sales of my listings that were sold by part-time agents.

One of those agents also had a part-time broker who was nowhere to be found and she couldn’t even figure out how to complete the purchase agreement.

I ended up writing her contract, using my home inspector, and my escrow officer to get the transaction closed in 11 days (before the buyer’s loan program expired).

Which brings me to my point:

Real estate is not my hobby.

I’m a dedicated full-time professional with 36+ year’s experience who has closed thousands of transactions.

Real estate is my chosen profession and those of you who have worked with me know how focused I am when it comes to getting the job done for my clients.

Why would anyone entrust the purchase/sale of their most valuable asset to a part-time agent?

November 18th, 2008 Posted in Inside Real Estate |

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Quality Homes Scarce In Some Boise Areas

I recently helped one of my best repeat clients find and purchase a home for their son.

Their chosen area was The Bench because their son will be attending BSU.

To our mutual astonishment, we spent 5-6 full days looking at 10-12 homes a day before finding only one home that met their (very reasonable) criteria.

We immediately made an offer and got it into escrow within a matter of hours.

We looked at 60-70 homes ranging from $125,000 to $170,000 and all but one was in poor condition, poorly-located, difficult to see due to tenants not allowing showings, misrepresented as having a garage when it had been converted to a family room, etc.

We also encountered several listing agents who never returned phone calls to arrange showings of properties lacking lockboxes.

Small wonder only 1 in 10 listings are selling these days.

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Are You Upside Down In Your Home?

The real estate profession is home to many slang terms, one of which is “upside down”.

When someone is upside down in their home, it doesn’t mean they have to walk around standing on their hands.

Instead, it means they owe more than they would realize if they sold their home.

Unfortunately, many buyers who bought with little or no down payment in 2005-2007 have become quite familiar with this phenomenon.

Photo Credit: www.offbeathomes.com

November 16th, 2008 Posted in Inside Real Estate |

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Boise Real Estate Info – Crawlspace Moisture

I dealt with three home inspections this week and two of them turned up moisture in the crawlspaces.

Nearly all of our homes in the Boise real estate market are built on raised foundations with crawlspaces underneath.

Very few homes in the Boise real estate market are built on slab foundations, but slab foundations sure would help eliminate our crawlspace moisture challenges.

We have an underlying layer of clay in many parts of the Boise area, which acts as a barrier to groundwater percolating into our soils.

This, along with faulty finish grading of lots, over-watering of lawns, and downspouts dumping rain water onto the ground alongside foundations often leads to moisture in crawlspaces.

Bad

One of the homes that was inspected this week had faulty grading of the side yard that actually sloped toward the home instead of away from it.

That makes you wonder how the home ever passed the building department’s final inspection, but I have seen this situation many times.

To correct the problem, the seller of this home has hired a contractor to remove the plastic vapor barrier and dry out the crawlspace with fans over a period of several days.

Then, a landscape contractor will bring in additional topsoil and grade it so that it slopes away from the home.

Fixing these problems can be costly.

I have been involved in several transactions where remediation of crawlspace moisture cost $10,000 or more.

Some of our better builders are now installing perimeter foundation drains that pipe runoff water away from to a dry well (a pit full of drain rock that extends below the layer of clay).