Those crazy real estate professionals

[perfectfire]

[The Tim]

Latest posts on SREP:

01.18.09 - Do You Have Septic or Sewer?
01.14.09 - Proposed Amendment to the Distressed Property Law!
01.13.09 - Short Sales and Excise Tax
01.09.09 - A look back to 2008 With a Resolution for 2009: "Just Say No"
01.08.09 - Happy Birthday Elvis
01.07.09 - Hot Off The Presses! Revised Home Valuation Code of Conduct
01.07.09 - What is the impact on your future ablity [sic] to purchase and/or refinance?
01.06.09 - $1.75 is a Bargain!

8 posts in 18 days, maybe one of them interesting. The P-I may not be officially out of business yet, but it looks like SREP is effectively dead already.

[Lake Hills Renter]

Kary spends all his time pissing on people at RCG.

[davidlosh@davidlosh.com]

In terms of Real Estate blogs this one is best.

Another real estate agent suggested I blog for business. That's what it's called. So I read blogs from the west coast for a while before posting a comment on Rain City Guide. Ardell tore me up one side and down the other worse than anything I've gotten here. OK fine, I kept reading.

It was on the Real Estate Professional site that some one made a comment that was attacked by what was termed "the flying monkeys." It turned out to be people from the http://www.seattlebubble.com site in Seattle Washington.

It was horrifying.

Then the same thing happened over on the Rain City Guide. Ardell posted something completely off the wall that sounded like Real Estate stuff, but had nothing to do with anything.

The "flying monkeys" allowed me to interject some comments into the Rain City Guide until it got to be way too much. There is very bad information there that solely attempts to promote mortgages and discount brokerages, attorneys being a big part of that.

In reading other Real Estate sites I find the same feel good posts to make the site more "sticky." Pretty pictures, cute stories, and a good dose of in depth analysis goes a long way with consumers.

Real Estate is not rocket science. The threshold is low because it is a hard job. It is NOT a commissioned sales position. It hard, dirty, disgusting work. It is fixing rot, dealing with renters, and being smart enough to buy and sell well. It is a business of brutal negotiations.

People in the Real Estate business are in it for life. Real Estate is an addiction. It's the juice. You buy it, sell it, see it for the dirt it is, and the possibilities it can be. You make numbers in your head and know to the penney the price of a water heater.

In the world of Real Estate sites this site fits Real Estate the best. It's the home of the "flying monkeys." It's brutal.

[perfectfire]

Lets revisit the 6 factors from the original "crazy" post that started this whole thread.

1. The Boeing Factor:
Layoffs. Some orders put on hold or cancelled.

2. The Microsoft Factor:
First layoffs in the history of the company. Vendors and contractors not having their contracts renewed. Expansion plans put on hold.

3. The Google, Expedia factors:
Expedia stock price way down and rumored to be going private. Google going through layoffs and shedding contractors en masse. Significantly scaled back expansion plans in Kirkland.

4. New commercial development in Bellevue factor:
Commercial development in Bellevue has slowed considerably with many projects on hold.

5. Luxury players moving to the Eastside factor:
Retailers are getting hit, but high-end retailers are being destroyed. Neiman-Marcus specifically just went through a bunch of layoffs.

6. The local mortgage factor:
Forclosures increasing at an incredible clip. Meanwhile closed sales are down in the gutter.

That's a whole lotta FAIL, but about par for the course for a Realtor®.

[davidlosh@davidlosh.com]

I just read the first page of this post today for the first time. This must have been the begining of the "flying monkeys" reference. Yes, in hind sight the post by Debra was miscalculated.

This week after meeting some of the people who frequent here I've been thinking that there is very bad information about Real Estate filtered through the internet. One comment made to Mack in the original Real Estate Professionals post was very on target, he has only been in Real Estate during the good times. A very large majority of agents have been in the business less than ten years.

Real Estate changed in that time dramatically.

A Real Estate professional lives by the numbers. A property is worth what it will rent for. There is a return on investment. Dollars go in to make a profit. Investment in Real Estate can off set regular income by tax advatage. By tax advatage I mean deducting mortgage payments as business expenses.

Real Estate is a business. Real Estate is a multi trillion dollar business. I would venture it is the biggest business in the world, because I think every inch of the world is owned by somebody.

By now some of you must have figured that I'm a lousy real estate agent. I have opinions and express them freely. Yes, the price of Real Estate was unsustainable in 2006 and I told everybody to sell. By 2007 it was beyond comprehension. People held out, wanted more money, but I sold, and investors sold. Lot's of investors unloaded in 2005,2006,2007.

The amazing part is that Real Estate Professionals didn't hammer at the basics of Real Estate. There were good purchases in all of those years.

We forget that at the time if a property was on the market more than a month it was a "dog" listing. It was over looked by agents who were making comments about not looking at anything over a week old, or was it a day on the market. Two investor I know got very good deals by making low, low, low offers that were accepted. One guy was offer 50% of asking price. Today he doesn't seem so stupid because some people needed to sell for a variety of reasons.

Real Estate is a business, not a sales job. You're either addicted to the business or not. I can tell you what most Real estate addicts will tell you that Real Estate is a great business except you have to deal with real estate agents.

Yes you need an agent and the agent should be working in your best interest. I am a pit bull. When you hire me I work for you. I take my job very seriously. My analysis is complete. i refuse to write bad deals for my clients, Writing bad deals is what radfun is for.

When I market a home it is a serious business of getting it to look like a bargain. I only list properties i personally believe in. it has to have value. If you have trouble seeing the value I can explain it to you in depth. It's more than statistics or data. In many cases it's an intangible.

A buyer or seller, for the money paid in commisions should get value from an agent. A commision is really pretty cheap for what a good agent can probvide you in negotiating skills. There are many good agents. You would need to look for them and get them to agree to work with you. Most good agents are interviewing you as much as you are interviewing them.

I'm sorry things got so far out of whack. They never should have by all that is the basics of Real Estate. There are rules that got broken, but it was a time of mass hysteria.

[Notorious A.R.T.]

[The Tim]

[redmondjp]

I just have to laugh at this idea that we can somehow shoot a silver bullet and "stabilize" the housing market (in other words, STOP the price decreases) without any regard to the underlying financial fundamentals that have governed housing prices for decades (well, up until 2001 or so).

Anybody looked at the housing market in Flint or Detroit MI lately? In some cases, they can't even GIVE houses away! Now should the government go in and try to 'stabilize' the RE market in that area? Surely they should qualify or at least be near the top of the list! But to what end? Should the gov't decide that a 3/1 house should cost on average around $100K and then try to make that happen across the nation? Wouldn't that be fair?

Stabilizing the housing market (even if it were possible) wouldn't really do much to stem job losses at Microsoft, Boeing, the automakers, and at many other places. Might save a Starbucks or two!

OK, I'm done, going to call in my claim for last week's unemployment now . . .

[The Tim]

Nice , JP. Too bad they will never get it.

The thing that drives me crazy is that our nation went from having a relatively sound economy built on manufacturing and innovation to having a sham economy built on consumer spending, real estate appreciation, and leveraged financial trickery.

Then, when the sham falls apart as it was destined to do, the reaction is not "oh dang, that was stupid... we should never have thought this was a good way to operate an economy." Instead, the response is "oh crap, somebody bail out housing and prop back up the house of cards!!!"

[jon]

[perfectfire]

Gee, what got her panties up in a bunch? Is it because she has (note the the one listing it says she has is actually listed by another realtor according to the MLS if you check redfin). BAIL ME OUT! ANYBODY THAT DOESN'T SUPPORT BAILING ME OUT IS TERRIBLE, SICK PERSON!

[WestSideBilly]

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