Happy New Year!
December 31, 2009
Wishing all of you a Very Happy & Safe New Year Celebration. We hope that this year will bring you and your families plenty of Joy to share with those that surround you.
Peace+Love+Friendship = Prosperity in 2010
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Virtual Real Estate BarCamp January 4, 2010
December 31, 2009
I wanted to share with my fellow real estate colleagues and related industries personnel an awesome opportunity. On Monday, January 4, 2010 the Real Estate Tomato has organized the second Virtual Real Estate BarCamp. The event will take place virtually — that is via phone conference calling and on the internet. You will not have to leave the comfort of your home and your warm jammies (if that is what you want) and you will learn how the social media and online tools can assist you in becoming current in the industry. You will learn things like how to use Flickr, Twitter and Facebook to promote yourself, your listings, you products. Check out a list of the sessions here.
This is an all day event from 9-4 but you don’t have to spend all day, you can come in and out at your convenience. No one will know if you left the room. So you can pick and choose from the list of topics and learn more about them. Here is your chance. I attended the first virtual barcamp a couple of months ago and was able to glean valuable information.
Perhaps the best part of this whole thing is that it is FREE. Sign up for it here: Virtual RE BarCamp Registation
The second best part of this is that JK Real Estate is organizing a Meetup after the day long event for those of you who live in the Truckee North Lake Tahoe area. Get out of your jammies and join us. It will be located at the 50/50 Brewing Company, 11197 Brockway Road, Ste 1 in Truckee, CA. Here those of us who have been educated will be able to exchange ideas and information over a beer. We’ll be there from 5pm til 7pm. If you want to let us know to expect you, just give us a call at 530 400-0531 or e-mail at info@tahoetruckeehomesales.com
Come on, do yourself a favor, register!!! Look forward to seeing you on January 4, 2010 9am-4pm VIRTUALLY!!
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Short Sale Mahem from Another Aspect
December 31, 2009
You know, Banks have gotten a really bad rap lately. Yes, they did do some pretty risky and unconscionable loans over the past 6-7 years but you know I have been dealing with a really nice “negotiator” at the bank of America and yesterday, after 6 months, the short sale that I was working on crashed and burned, and it wasn’t the bank’s fault. The property in question has been under contract twice in the past 6 months. The first one involved a loan and for reasons that I don’t want to go into right now (would take too much time). It did not succeed even though it had bank (the seller’s bank) approval. The good thing about this failed attempt is that I was able to ascertain just exactly what the bank wanted. Armed with this piece of information, I was able to find an agent who had a cash buyer and was willing to pay the closing costs that the bank would not accept. 15 day escrow . . . . . well you guessed it, the buyer decided after 15 days to pull out of the contract. Bummer for everybody!
After 20 years of working in this industry, you would have thought I would recognize all of the warning signs of something too good to be true. Well, maybe I did but was just thinking that just this once, things would work out.
When the press reports about the difficulties we are having getting these about to be foreclosed upon homes sold, they don’t mention that the banks aren’t always the ones that stymie the deals. Yes, they are difficult to work with, unless you follow the rules. On this particular transaction, I felt that the bank was totally up front about what they would accept and considering that the loan amount was $640K and the sale price that they agreed to was $379K, I am sure you would agree that this constitutes the bank working with the seller, the buyer and the real estate professionals.
Yes, this time it was the consumer who messed up the deal.
Oh well, enough of this feeling sorry for myself — back to the drawing board. Back on the Market!
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Truckee Tahoe Real Estate Sales Comparison 2006-2009
December 24, 2009
A real nice lady called me day before yesterday and asked if I could help her with some statistics. She wanted to know a few things about the period from 2006-2009 with regards to real estate sales. 1) what were the local building permits pulled; 2) how many short sales and bank owned property sales there had been; 3) how many sales there had been.
I was unable to give her an answer on the distressed sales stats (short sales and bank owned property sales) because our multiple listing service has not kept track prior to June of 2009. Too bad, that would be interesting and valuable information. I frankly don’t know from where this information could be gathered without lots of work and room for error. As to the building permit stats, I told her to look at the Town of Truckee website (where I found the graph for my previous post). But our multiple listing service covers much more than just the Town of Truckee and I’m not sure how one could pull this information out of any county statistics.
I was however able to give her the information she asked for with regard to residential sales in our multiple listing area. So here is the table I put together for you all too!! Numbers, Numbers, Numbers. Not sure what they mean but here they are — more numbers:
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Truckee Residential Building Permits Down from 2008
December 22, 2009
I was exploring the Town of Truckee’s Website today and came across this chart that clearly shows that the amount of residential building permits issued this year as of the end of November are down from 2008. This should come as no surprise to any of us in Real Estate or the rest of the financial world. One must look at the bright side though, there is a lot of older inventory that is getting moved in the absence of new builds. I know that doesn’t do much for the contractors that live in the area and I am truly sorry for their plight. Here’s hoping that the new year will begin to show some movement in this area. But for now, here are the stats:
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