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400 Albertson's Jobs Leaving Boise

November 8, 2006

When SuperValu bought Albertson’s last summer, I wondered why they would need duplicative staff in Boise when their headquarters was in Minnesota.

Now the handwriting is on the wall.

According to an article in the Idaho Statesman, at least 400 Albertson’s jobs will leave Boise in the next 18 months and that may be just the beginning.

All 400 jobs are in the merchandising and marketing departments.

SuperValu officials said last Friday that they will “keep evaluating” which corporate jobs to keep in Boise.

Yeah, right.

The employees are being offered similar positions in Minnesota with relocation benefits, but it remains to be seen how many will accept the company’s “offer” to relocate to balmy Minnesota, known for having mosquitoes with landing lights and wheels (wonder if they have West Nile Virus there??)

Many of the affected employees were relocated to Boise within the past two years, and I can only imagine that they’re a little weary of having their lives continually disrupted by “the company” in order to keep their jobs.

About 2,100 Albertson employees will remain at the Boise location (for now).

How will this affect the Boise real estate market?

Hard to tell.

We certainly don’t need 400 more homes on the market now, but not all of those 400 people will move out of our area.

In the past, layoffs at Micron and Hewlett Packard barely caused a ripple in the market, but that was at a time when the Boise real estate market was stronger.

Boise is a great place to live and most people will do just about anything to stay here.

We’ll get through it.

It could have been much worse.

The Masturbating Monkey

November 7, 2006

It was my first day in residential real estate, back in 1974.

I had been in real estate a couple of years, having begun my career selling recreational lots at a beautiful subdivision in the Sierras called Pine Mountain Lake.

When we finished selling out Pine Mountain Lake, I decided to learn the residential side of real estate and joined California Realty in Santa Clara.

On my first day in the office, I attended the weekly sales meeting, which included a motivational pep talk, a review of new listings/haves/wants, and then we headed out on the weekly “office tour”.

Office tours are a relic of the past now, but back then it was a way to impress sellers by parading our agents through new listings and telling sellers “you have a lovely home”.   It didn’t accomplish much, but it made our sellers feel good.

We toured a couple of typical subdivision tract homes before coming to a property that had an abundance of, shall we say, a “character”, off Capitol Expressway.

The home was down a muddy, potholed dirt road beneath a couple of scraggly old oak trees at the base of a hill. 

It was mostly noteworthy because a private pilot had bored his V-tailed Bonanza into the ground nearby on a foggy night while on approach to San Jose airport a couple of weeks earlier.

Some would have said that the property had some “deferred maintenance”, but the blunt truth was that the place was a pit!

Since I was the new kid in the office, I got to lead the other agents through the house, starting with the kitchen, then down the hall to the back of the house.

As I opened the door to a hall bath, I was stunned to see a duck floating in a bathtub full of brackish, black water, cheerfully quacking at his new visitor.

Taken aback, I made my way through the rest of the house and out the back door to check out the back yard.

Our office manager, Jim Ridgeway, was trailing me as we walked out onto a rickety wooden walkway behind the house.

As we rounded the corner, I heard a screeching sound that drew my gaze toward the tree limb above me.

To my amazement, there was a monkey hanging upside down, by his tail, in one of the old oak trees.

And, he was gleefully masturbating.

I must say, the little guy had a big grin on his upside-down face and seemed to be having the time of his life.

I turned to Jim, speechless.

Without showing any emotion, Jim simply smiled and said “Welcome to real estate, Phil!”.

I’ve had many interesting experiences during my real estate career, but none as memorable as that one.

Can any of you top that one?

How 'Bout Them Website Leads . . .

November 6, 2006

The internet has forever changed how real estate is done.

But, some agents don’t realize that it has changed again ~ just when they thought they had it all figured out.

For many Realtors®, it’s a matter of putting up a templated website, forcing visitors to register in order to get their contact information, then hoping they respond and buy a home.

In other words, they have an internet business card that is totally ineffective.

Perhaps a little harsh, but unfortunately true.

Believe it or not, that actually (somewhat) worked a couple of years ago.

But, these days, savvy website visitors have learned how to game the system and get the information they want without revealing themselves and risking (gasp!) talking to an agent.

For example, my website (www.BoiseReal.com) has had an astounding number of visitors with the same name.

How is it that so many people are named Ben Dover, M. Mouse, and I. M.  Mee these days ??

And, there have been many visitors with incredible phone numbers like (000)000-0000 and (111)111-1111.

I don’t know about you, but I have never been able to talk the phone company into giving me a rock star phone number like that!

Seriously, the days of attracting naïve, compliant website visitors who will willingly give up their contact information are pretty much behind us.

The average real estate consumer these days is 35, web-savvy, and probably knows more about computers than the average Realtor®, (which doesn’t take much).

That consumer wants information without having to deal directly with an agent, and most wait until late in the homebuying process to personally communicate with an agent.

I used to require registration to search MLS, but I recently removed that requirement in an effort to establish a more honest, open relationship with my website visitors.

There was no reason to continue requiring registration when most of the registrations were false and useless.

The reality is that we have moved beyond the days when a website was a direct sales tool; it is now a way to build a bridge to prospective clients ~ a way to establish a trust relationship.

Real estate websites are, more and more, becoming educational tools for consumers and a way to demonstrate how we do business to prospective clients.

The old ways no longer work as they once did.

Those who embrace the new way the consumer wishes to do business will prosper; those who don’t will wish they had.

Boise Industrial Real Estate Booming

October 28, 2006

While Boise area residential real estate catches its breath, the industrial warehouse sector is booming, according to an article in today’s Idaho Statesman.
Companies seeking to expand or establish a new presence in Boise are having difficulty finding existing warehouse space that meets their needs.
Michigan-based Weller Auto & Truck, Inc. envisions Boise as the hub for its expansion into the Western U.S. Market, but had trouble finding available warehouse space with the 20 feet of floor-to-ceiling clearance they needed, so they will be spending $1.1 million to build their 11,000 square feet of expandable warehouse space.
The current vacancy factor for such space stands at 4.8% and local commercial brokers are saying lease rental rates have climbed 10% this year.

The Appraisal Game

October 28, 2006

Consumers often believe that appraisals are the absolute gospel truth about a property’s value.

If the appraiser says it’s worth X, then it surely must be worth X.

Those of us in real estate know that appraisals are subjective and that they are simply one person’s opinion of a property’s value.

Skilled, experienced appraisers know many subtle ways to “adjust” to comparable sales to come in with a value equal to the sales price.

And, appraisers are under enormous pressure to “bring in the number” on appraisals because they know they won’t see any more appraisal business if they start screwing up loans for the lender giving them their appraisal assignments.

Some lenders are now trying new “AV” (automated value) appraisals in an effort to speed up loan processing and remove the human variable from the appraisal process, but automated value appraisals are also subject to inherent inaccuracies.

The best indicator of a property’s value remains what we all learned in Real Estate:101 ~ it’s worth what a willing buyer will pay for it.

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Phil Hoover
Real Estate Broker
Phil Hoover, Inc

BoiseBlog.com


(208) 938-5533

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