In California, with very few exceptions, the seller is legally obligated to disclose any and all material facts that may affect the desireability of the property for sale. This can mean almost anything... the neighbor's dog barks when a plane flies over, the toilet leaked 2 years ago but you had it repaired and have had no problems since. Even seemingly trivial things, if not disclosed, can come back to bite you.

Here is an example: A seller lists for sale an older home with a radiant heating system (i.e., a heating system where the water runs through pipes in the floor after being heated in a boiler.) The seller, an elderly man, thought the heating system worked just fine. The listing agent, new and inexperienced, did not order a radiant heat inspection (not required but it would have been a sensible thing to do.) The buyers purchased the home "As Is" but they also did not order a radiant heat inspection. About 3 days before escrow closed, the heat did not come on so the seller hired a professional to check into it. It turned out to be a little gas valve that had plugged. It was replaced, and the escrow closed.

Now, several months after the escrow closed, the buyers claim the heating system does not work. They have discovered the seemingly minor problem that ocurred (but was not disclosed to the buyers) just 3 days before escrow closed, and are now claiming that the seller failed to disclose a problem with the heating system. They are demanding that the seller replace the entire heating system, to the tune of about $20,000!

I have no idea how this is going to play out. The principals are not my sellers or my buyers (thank goodness) but I tell this story to reiterate to sellers how important the disclosures are.  A simple clogged gas valve (value about $150) would not have caused the buyers to back out of the transaction, but if it had been disclosed and acknowledged by the buyers, prior to escrow closing, the buyers would have absolutely no reason to make their current claim. "As Is" means "As of the day the contract is ratified." If malfunctions occur during the escrow period, the seller has an obligation not only to repair that item but to disclose the problem to the buyer.

The moral of the story is that it is always better to disclose everything, even seemingly trivial items, and let the buyer decide what is important to them or not.

Have you dreamed about being a Realtor^®?  Making your own hours, working when you want, driving clients to see beautiful houses in your dream car?  Fantasized about lunch in cozy, out of the way places while you present glossy portfolios of properties to prospective buyers? Take a look at a week in the life of a real-life Realtor^® and get a glimpse of what this demanding and rewarding profession is really like.

Monday

Monday morning in a week in March.  It is 9:00 am.  Realtor^® Lynne Mercer has just arrived at her Palo Alto Coldwell-Banker office.  The weekly office meeting is just beginning.   For the next hour the agents will discuss legal and market updates, open housesboth the ones they have just held over the preceding weekend and the upcoming ones for the next weekendupcoming listings and problems they share, market trends, and other issues. One important feature of the meeting is the "Wants and Needs" sessions, where agents try to scout for inside information for their buyers or sellers.  One agent might say, "I have a buyer looking for a 2000 square foot house close to a good school in Palo Alto or Menlo Park, does anyone have a listing coming up that I could link up to?" 

As soon as the meeting is over, agents will be readying ads for the weekly newspapers on listings they already have up and properties they are about to put on open house for the next weekend. The ad deadline is noon on Monday. Then off they go to tour the new Coldwell Banker listings, especially those where the listing agent has asked for assistance in setting the price. Monday morning is a hectic time for this Realtor^®. 

When lunchtime comes, she goes swimming and then back to the office to catch up on email, a daily task that takes at least an hour of her time.  In addition, taking messages from her voice-mail takes at least another hour and that does not count the time it takes to return the calls. When this is finished Lynne can finally turn her attention to the meat of the days work.  Later in the day she is meeting with two different buyers, one at 5 PM and one at 7PM, to write offers on two different properties. Two hours is a very short time frame for writing up an offer, especially with first time buyers, so Lynne spends the rest of the afternoon pre filling the offer forms and disclosures as much as she can and preparing comps so the work will go more quickly. She barely finishes when the first buyers arrive, gets the offer written and makes copies for the buyers, and is escorting them to the door when the second buyers arrive. She repeats the process with the second buyer, and after that buyer leaves she "packages" the two offers prepares the presentations for the next day with the hopes that her buyers will win the prizetheir new Peninsula home.  In addition, she will catch up on paperwork from the Open House she has held over the weekend and follow up with people who came through.  On this particular Monday of a week in March, Lynne left the office at 11:00 pm for her drive home. It has been a thirteen-hour day with only the time out to swim and Power Bars and a salad brought from home for sustenance.  But if the offers are accepted the next day, it will be worth it.

Tuesday

On this Tuesday, Lynne has the two offers to present, which she has prepared on the previous day.  Preparation of an offer for a buyer requires consultation with the buyer to make sure that every aspect is understood and agreed upon in advance, plus review of all of the disclosures and reports, again to make sure the buyer understands and there aren't any "red flags" in the reports.  Then the agent writes the offer, makes copies and prepares everything into a "package" that includes all of the above plus a cover letter, offer summary, preapproval letter, and information about the buyers.  One copy will go to the seller's agent, one to the seller (two if the seller is a couple) and Lynne will need a copy herself in order to make the actual presentation.  Each offer takes two to four hours to prepare, and that is why she has remained so late at the office the night before.  There is no guarantee that, after all that time, it will be her client's offer that is the winning bid on either presentation. 

Offers are not the only part of the schedule for a Realtor^® 's Tuesday.  Tuesday is also San Mateo County tour day.  On Tuesday, all the new listings in San Mateo County are open for realtors to look over for prospective clients.  If they find something that they like, they will come back later with the clients at the clients' preferred time; first they must look over the houses.  The San Mateo Tour frequently lists 200 houses, with the list available the day before.

Today, Lynne must skip the Tour for she has to submit the second offer she prepared the night before to an office in Los Altos by 10 AM. That seller wants to review offers privately with the listing agent. At 10:30 she meets the other buyer she met with Monday afternoon at City Hall in Mountain View for a quick check on the city regulations for removing a tree the buyer wants removed from the front yard. Lynne has warned her that this might be a "Heritage Tree" and she may not be able to remove it without permission from the city. Then from noon to 3:30 they go together to the property the buyer hopes to buy for a general inspection The offer is non-contingent and the buyer wants to have their own inspection, so it must be done prior to submitting the offer. At 3:30 she drives back to Palo Alto to make that buyer's offer in person to that seller's agent at 4 PM.

This second buyer has insisted on writing an offer for less than asking price, even though the listing agent is expecting 6 offers. Although she knows there is almost zero chance the offer will be accepted, Lynne still makes the presentation in person and gives it her best spin. Two hours later she learns the inevitable… the sellers have chosen to accept another offer. But there is better news on the offer that was dropped off in Los Altos in the morning.  There were six offers there too, and that seller chose to counter three. Ours was one of them, so that buyer is still in the running!  At six pm she is back in Los Altos to pick up a counter-offer on the first bid, which she will now take back to the client.  At 7:30 pm she finally makes it to her office to fax the buyer's acceptance back to the listing agent, then face the voice-mail, email catch-up for the day.  It will be another late night.  

Wednesday

Wednesday Lynne spends the first third of her day (what most of us would call the first half) catching up on viewing properties from the tour she missed the day before. Just before noon she hears from the listing agent on the second property from Tuesday. Lynne is delighted to learn that their offer is accepted, despite being the second highest offer. The offers were close but the listing agent knows Lynne's reputation and encouraged the seller to accept her offer based on his confidence that Lynne will get the job done and the escrow will close without problems.  In the afternoon she attends a continuing education class which she needs to keep her license current.  On Wednesdays, she may also choose to go on the Los Gatos, Saratoga tour if she has a client looking for property in that area, but not this week. 

Thursday

Thursday begins earlier than other days, for Lynne has been active in Kiwanis throughout her career, serving as President of her club in 2002-2003.  Her club meets weekly for breakfast at 7:30 am.  After breakfast, Lynne will go on the Cupertino tour. Houses in Cupertino and Sunnyvale will be on view from 9:30-1:00 pm.  Then she will show a property to a client and head to a house she is about to list where both a staging consultation and the general inspection are scheduled to go on within the same block of time, a time efficient arrangement when it can be scheduled that way.  When all of this is finished she heads for Kinko's to pick up her 800⁺ newsletters to deliver the next day to the person who will finish preparing them for mailing. Finally, back at her office she can tackle the usual round of paperwork, email and phone calls.  The tour list for Friday will be available, so she can decide which houses to look at.  If all goes well, she will head home by 10:00 pm., a touch earlier than on Monday or Tuesday.

Friday

Friday begins with an hour of phone calls to schedule inspections and staging consultation for another listing that she will have ready for the following week.  Back and forth in the telephone tag, co-coordinating everyone's schedules so that the owner/seller can be at home when the inspectors and stager are available, and she can be there as well.  Then she will head out to the Friday tour, about 100 houses in Mountain View, Los Altos and Palo Alto are open for viewing from 9:30 – 1:00.  Lynne cuts her tour short so she can head back to her office to hear offers on a Menlo Park listing in which she is the seller's agent.  For the next three hours she will hear offers as buyer's agents come to her office.  A little before three she will be on the road again to be present for a staging consultation for another listing, and she will deliver her newsletters to the person who is finishing them for herluckily both appointments are in the same neighborhood so it shaves a few minutes off her driving time.  She returns to her office to prepare to show properties to clients the next day.  There is still the email and voice-mail to catch up with and realtors do not take the weekend off, so she can't postpone it to Saturday.

Saturday

Saturday from 9:30 in the morning until 1:00 pm Lynne shows the properties she has selected to her first pair of clients.  From 1:30-6:00 pm she will take a second couple around a second set of properties.  The weekend before she will have spent most of Saturday preparing and printing her newsletter, which she mails out once a month. 

Sunday

Sunday of this week saw a few free hours in the morning, and then she was on-site for an Open House from 1:30-4:30 in the afternoon.  At 5:00 she had a listing appointment to try to obtain a new listing.  That appointment took two hours.  Sunday she actually was home by 8:00 pm.

9:00 am to 7:00 pm, ten-hour days are the minimum for Lynne.  Days ending in the office at 11:00 pm are frequentthree to four times a week, and real estate is a seven-day a week career opportunity.  So if you like long hours, driving, phoning, more driving, more phoning and constant people work, this is a good career for you.  Lynne is one of the top seller's in her brokerage, of course; it is possible to work less and earn less.  But like all professionals who are self-employed, realtors cannot count on when the next client, the next sale, and therefore the next paycheck, will appear.  So it is really necessary to keep seeking clients and accepting them even when the calendar already seems full.  Lynne says she has cancelled more than one vacation at the last minute because somebody called and they wanted to list their house, right away!   

Not all deals are smooth transactions. Sometimes after all the phone calls, meetings and paperwork, a seller or buyer pulls out at the last minute.  This is one of the reasons the agent must have multiple clients and more transactions planned ahead.  If the client is a buyer, and the prospective seller has pulled out, the search for a new property will begin again.  In the end, everyone will be satisfied.  Even with its frustrations, Lynne says, "I love this work because at the end, you have happy people on both sides."

It is clear that she does love it, for in addition to her success, her energy, enthusiasm and commitment are evident in everything she does.  This challenging career isn't for the faint of heart, those who like a great deal of free time, or many secondary interests.  Like most self-employment, being a Realtor^® is about hard work and long hours, as well as being able to withstand rejection and keep on going.  Consistent effort pays off in the rewards of success and knowing that you have a career you can pursue for as long as you choose.  It is good to be able to get up in the morning with that kind of purpose and satisfaction.  

(c) by Marguerite Manor

All Rights Reserved

I read the other day that Realtors with two years of experience or less earned median incomes of $12,850 last year, according to the National Association of Realtors. (For more details go to:

http://www.rismedia.com/index.php/article/articleview/13478/1/1/).

That is very close to U.S. poverty level of $12,830 for a family of two. Why does this not surprise me?

There is a perception among the geeral public that real estate agents are all millionaires. And, we don't really do much to make all of that money. Just stick a For Sale sign in the ground and an ad in the paper, hold an Open House, and walk away with big bucks!

The reality is very different. First, real estate agents almost always are "independent contractors" which means, among other things, that they don't work for anybody. This applies even for agents associated with big brokers like Coldwell Banker, Century 21, and others. There is no base salary, no expense account, no paid vcacation leave (in fact, no vacation leave at all), no sick leave, no employer paid insurance, etc.

An agent gets paid when they close an escrow. Period! In between times there are dues to pay, overhead expenses (the phone, the car, the gas, the computer, ads, promotions, educational expenses, to name just a few. The commission paid at the close of escrow must be enough to pay all those expenses and leave some left over for mortgage payments, food, and general living expeses.

AND, the agent does not get to keep all that money. In most instances there is at least a four way split, sometimes more if there is a referral involved. The agent gets only one piece of that great big pie. That is, after they close the escrow.

One problem facing newer agents is that first one has to find the clients. It isn't easy. It involves many long hours and a lot of effort. Agents tend to work 7 days a week, and long hours every day. It is not uncommon to meet with a client after the client gets off work, write up an offer, deliver it to the seller's agent (or better still, present it in person to the seller with the seller's agent on hand), egt a counteroffer, rush back to the buyer to get it signed, and then get it back again to the seller's agent. It could easily be midnight or later by the time all this is done, but the next day is another full day, with tours, meetings, inspections, etc. during the regular working day and then meeting with clients after hours.

The good news is that income tends to improve after a few years, as the agent gets known and develops a base of prior clients who can be a source of referrals for new business. But it doesn't happen overnight, and that is probably why the real estate industry has one of the highest dropout rates of any industry I know.

Am I complaining. No, I love what I do and I just happen to be very good at it. I make a comfortable living, but I do work very hard and I earn every penny I make! Just like most of the rest of the world. 

Very few companies in any industry make it 100 years. But Coldwell Banker has beaten the odds.

We have such a sense of pride and accomplishment in turning 100 years oldor as I like to say, 100 years young, explains President and CEO Jim Gillespie. To be at the top of our game at this stage in our history is just tremendous.

One of the reasons I work for Coldwell Banker is that is always strives to offer the clients more than other brokerage firms offer. They are very much in tune with the trend in real estate to be internet driven, and are providing both their agents and the clients they work with the tools they need to maintain the competitive edge.

Coldwell Banker originated in San Francisco shortly after the great earthquake in 1906, but it has thrived and continues to grow. In recent years the company has added more than 70,000 sales agents and 1,500 offices to become an international powerhouse.

Even so, Coldwell Banker never loses sight of its original mission, to provide honest assistance to people in need of housing.  With special emphasis on agent training and technology, Coldwell Banker earns and maintains the trust of people everywhere.

For more information on Coldwell Banker's history and current philosphy, go to: http://www.rismedia.com/index.php/article/articleview/13371/1/1/