Real Estate Experts

<p> Why would a Realtor promote their Facebook page by putting the link on everything then restrict the visitor from seeing any information about them? Would it not be prudent to restrict personal information to close family and friends, but professional to treat other visitors as potential customers by providing some business information? </p> <p> As a Realtor who&#39;s looking at expanding my professional image as well as my contacts, I find it disturbing when I click on a link that a fellow Realtor has provided then can get no further than the message that they don&#39;t allow outsiders to see any additional information about them. Enlighten me please, fellow Realtors. </p>

How do I get Realtors to see the value of home staging their properties and how it will help their clients to get their homes sold faster and for the best possible price?

I work for a short sale negotiation company. We have one of the best negotiators in the business running our team. She has done over 2000 short sales and formerly was with one of the biggest banks out there. She has negotiated on both sides of the table so her list of contacts is tremendous. We charge 1% for negotiation services. I am on the phones throughout the day developing relationships with realtor's. Some use our business, and of course some don't. I am trying to better understand the mindset of a realtor and would like to know if anyone has any suggestions or tips on how to be more effective in my communication with them. Thanks!!

Hello! We're really hoping you can help us....my wife and I own 2.2 acres in alabama, free and clear, and we have started the process of building our primary house on it. Our understanding was that we would be able to use the value of the land as part of the down payment. Our builder has said that the construction cost would be $350,000. The bank appraiser came back and gave the finished property a valuation of $390,000, and valued the land at $50,000. The bank said they would loan us 75% the value of the home, $292,000 and change. Now here's where we need help....MY understanding was that if I subtract $292,000 from the $350,000 that we need to build the house, I get a figure of around $58,000. I thought the $50,000 that the land is worth could be used as collateral towards that $58,000 that the bank needs us to put in......BUT, the bank just sent us this "equity injection worksheet" that puts all this in a different scenario. Their worksheet adds the cost of home ($350,000) to the cost of the land ($50,000) and comes up with a total "cost" of $400,000. They then list "less loan amount -$292,000" and print the figure $108,000 as "required equity from owner" Basically the rest of the letter says "you need to put in $108,000, but we've given you 'credit' for the $50,000 that your land is worth, so now you just have to put in $58,000" Is this how it works? or is this just the bank we're dealing with? Please help....this is way more than we thought we'd have to put down considering we own the land free and clear! Thanks in advance for any help! Charles

In the state of CT: What is the property owner responsibility for bedbugs if the entire apt building was insect free and treated and then dirty or unclean tenant moves in and has tracked the bedbugs in? Could it be responsibility of the tenant?

<p> <strong>Like any skill or craft I&#39;ve always found it helpful to remind myself and practice the basics.</strong> Juggling 1000 things at once I&#39;ve found myself cutting corners, especially in my sales and marketing process... <strong>months go by and I wonder why business isn&#39;t as good as it used to be last year???</strong> </p> <p> &quot;<strong>Oh, well it&#39;s because of the economy...&quot;</strong> &lt;-- it&#39;s only an excuse!<a href="http://www.turnkeyflyers.com"><img height="194" src="http://activerain.com/image_store/uploads/5/5/7/7/6/ar133709770167755.jpg" width="260" /></a> </p> <p> <strong>Corner cutting starts with simply not &quot;smiling&quot; when on the phone or in person,</strong> then it moves into skipping the simple sales or presentation steps when previewing properties or during listing presentations. <strong>Cutting corners is cutting your commissions.</strong> </p> <p> <strong>Luckily, you remind yourself, like I do, from time to time and practice the basics.</strong> For me, it starts with the simple <em>&quot;toastmaster&quot;</em> pitch process. </p> <ol> <li> <strong>Tell them what you&#39;re going to tell them</strong> </li> <li> <em>Tell them</em> </li> <li> <em><strong>Tell them what you&#39;ve already told them</strong></em> </li> </ol> <p> <strong>It&#39;s simple foundation <a href="http://www.turnkeyflyers.com">template</a> to any type of sales, presentation, or negotiation that can be adapted to any type of situation.</strong> Where I find it super helpful is when I take buyers out to preview properties. </p> <ol> <li>I tell them how many homes well see today, where they are located, how much time it will take, and what my professional opinion is out of the bunch. </li> <li>I stick to my agenda and do as I said, adapting along the way if necessary. </li> <li>I wrap up over coffee, tea, or dinner; reviewing how many homes we saw, what homes they liked, and close with my professional opinion. </li> </ol> <p> <strong>I find this process highly useful and valuable to my clients</strong>. It helps calm the nerves, gives them something to look forward to, and establishes confidence in me knowing I&#39;m on top of the ball. Moreover, it&#39;s highly impressive to buyers and allows me &quot;not&quot; to sign agent buyer agreements <em>(which, I&#39;ve found to be very bad for building quality referral generating relationships).</em> </p> <p> <strong>From time to time I like to remind myself and practice the basics.</strong> It the easiest and cheapest way to jump start my business. </p> <p> <strong>What do you do to &quot;jump start&quot; your business? I&#39;d love to hear about it!</strong> </p>

<p> Most of us have a good understanding about what increases a homes value; but what if we flipped the question and asked &quot;What things cause a home to LOOSE value?&quot; Here are three ways that may decrease the offer value on a home. </p> <p> <img alt="" height="170" src="https://encrypted-tbn0.google.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRnFroigNHRX8gvguE8PJJD2anstGuFxQrmrcNDz2FLXuxj2xczLg" width="256" /> </p> <p> 1. POOL. Contrary to popular belief, installing a pool limits your buyer pool. Not everyone finds pools a benefit; in fact, they can sometimes be seen a liabilities. Buyers automatically start calculating the cost of upkeep: maintenance on equipment, increase in electricity and heating bills, and lastly repairs. </p> <p> If it so happen you find a buyer that values a pool it does add a bit of value; however, it&#39;s not as valuable as you think because of &quot;adverse selection&quot; ( remember the theory from Economics class? lol). Simply, buyers will value the pool less because there is an inherent risk that the pool was not properly installed or maintained. <br /> </p> <p> 2. No garage, small garage, or messy garage. A garage is valued as a &quot;Room.&quot; So have having a 3 bedroom with no garage is perceived as a 2 bedroom; in most cases. Where garages are nominally considered are condos, town homes, or highrise living.<br /> <br /> A messy garage is almost as bad as no garage. If your sellers are using the garage as storage, buyers can&#39;t get a sense of the &quot;space&quot; and all they see is junk. One solution is to have the sellers place their items in an off site storage facility.<br /> </p> <p> 3. Poor maintenance.If you have weeds growing out of the front lawn or have paint pealing off the walls, it&#39;s time to rollup your sleeves and get to work. People will subtract the cost or not make an offer on the house. And if people think the house hasn&#39;t been taken care of, they will wonder what else they&#39;re not seeing. </p> <p> <strong>What else do you think would &quot;de-value&quot; a home to a buyer?</strong> </p>

<p> One of my web sites is in need of a redesign. It gets to Page 2 on Google for the required search term but does not really produce good results. I have had it for a long time and it has just evolved from a hand-coded HTML site to its present form which at least uses CSS. </p> <p> My wish is to switch to a WordPress site. I know Google generally thinks well of WordPress and I think I can make it more effective in lead generation. All of the pages will have new names though and most existing ones will disappear. </p> <p> I suppose I could have a 301 redirect for each page that will go away but that sounds like a cumbersome solution. </p> <p> Any thoughts on what Google is likely to make of the same established URL but with new content on a new platform? </p> <p> Bernard Gibbons </p> <p> +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++<br /> Bernard Gibbons, Realtor, e-PRO Certified Internet Specialist<br /> J. Rockcliff Realtors, 15 Railroad Avenue, Danville, CA 94526<br /> Phone (925) 997-1585<br /> bernard@bernardgibbons.com<br /> www.bernardgibbons.com<br /> DRE License #: 0131583 </p> <p> Please send me your San Francisco East Bay referrals - I will treat them like family.<br /> 25% paid up to $1m - 30% over $1m </p>

<p> I have done BPOs for them for several years. They are always very DELINQUENT in payments...the last payment I received in January was for over a years worth of BPOs. They now owe me appx $2000. Their acct dept emailed me the end of April that payment had been sent to me for BPOs done in January...I continued to do complete BPOs thru May. IAS is now well over 90 days out with payments. And BTW, the QC has no qualms about calling on Sat/Sun - day and night about questions on orders. Always amusing that BPO companies want orders completed in 48 hours and then conveniently &quot;forget&quot; to pay for months at a time. Is anyone else experiencing any problems with them? </p> <p> Thank you for any help. </p>

My husband has a job offer in a different city so we are thinking about relocating. We have currently owned our home for six years but with the way the market is, there is no way we could sell our home for what we would need to. I know that most rental management companies do credit checks now so if we have a foreclosure on out credit it would not look good. If we do foreclose on our home, how do we go about obtaining a new place to live in the new city?

<p> Okay Gang, </p> <p> What&#39;s with this new, obviously secretly installed one night while I was sleeping, program &quot;MS Word Starter 2010&quot;? Every time I open a Word file that was saved prior to 2 or 3 weeks ago I get this new program that takes over and takes forever to open a folder. Afterwards comes that crashing noise and a popup window that says, &quot;There was a problem sending the command to the program.&quot; But in the background I can see the page open in the new Word Starter 2010. </p> <p> Does anyone have a clue as to how this came about and what I can do to stop it? </p>

I had a website designer create a custom website for me about 18 months ago. I want to find someone to make some changes to the site and host it as well. I do have the files available. Can anyone suggest a company who can do this?

<p> <a href="http://wavenetwork.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/siri.jpg"><img alt="" class="alignnone size-thumbnail wp-image-2715" height="150" src="http://wavenetwork.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/siri.jpg?w=131&amp;h=150" width="131" /></a> </p> <p> Siri (your smart phone voice) draws results from the reviews of Yelp. The number of reviews determines your ranking. If a potential buyer or seller was looking for real estate agents in your city and asked Siri to search for them, any agent with a Yelp listing or reviews would appear on the results. Agents without a Yelp listing or review would not. </p> <p> Yelp is part of my <a href="http://wavenetwork.wordpress.com/real-estate-services/">Essential Real Estate Package</a>. </p>