judyo's Blog: All Categories

I've had a seller for quite some time that finally got an offer on his Lockport townhouse for sale.  The original offer was within $10,000 of his new, lower list price.  Not bad in today's market.  But I couldn't get him to budge from his asking price.

After much chiding from the buyer's agent, I kept my cool and told him that my seller feels he can get full price, maybe not today, but soon.  The agent came back with an offer only $5,000 off list price.  My seller would still not budge.

My seller used to be a real estate agent

I have dealt with many ex-agents over the years and they know enough to be dangerous.  When I requested him to initial the area on the contract that states he was rejecting the offer, he got angry and told me that isn't…

My real estate partner meets a lot of people due to her bartending job in Orland Park, IL.  She met a guy a while back that was having a beer because his wife was shopping in the nearby Orland Park mall.  My partner, a friend I met in 6th grade, has a way with words and has no shame to admit she is a REALTOR and a bartender. 

She owned a couple of her own bars but sold her last one a couple years ago and went back into real estate.  Another REALTOR friend is part-owner of a popular restaurant/lounge and offered her a postion, which she gladly accepted.  She brings in the clients and I do most of the rest of the work.  She isn't computer literate but likes to sit open houses so we work well together.

So this guy actually calls us as his listing was about…

I have passed up more listings in the past year than I have the entire 26 years I've been in the business, and it's leaving me questioning if maybe I should take a break with my current listing system.  I just returned home from a listing presentation for an Oak Forest condominium for sale that was an expired listing but these sellers cannot afford to sell right now.

I get listing appointments from people finding my websites, referrals and past clients.  I also send out a postcard program to expireds and fsbos, although there aren't many fsbo's left in my area.  My websites are already up so unless I want to pay someone to help me create a landing page or something special for sellers, I can let my sites do the work they're already performing.

I'm…

It's that time to go through statistics for 2008.  Actually, I guess I'm a little late, but with the many towns I work in it takes a while to get all the stats updated.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that my hometown of Oak Lawn, Illinois, held up better than I would have thought.  Yes, everything is down, but as far as price, I expected a bigger decrease.

Single Family Oak Lawn homes only decreased in amount of sales by 11.6% and by average sales price 11.9%.  With all the doom and gloom going around I expected the value to have been worse.  I guess I'm reading too much data for areas harder hit like Florida, Las Vegas, California, Phoenix, etc.

Oak Lawn Condos and Townhomes had a larger decrease as far as units sold, down 34.6%, but the average…

Thanks to my friends here at REW, my husband and I bought a condo in Scottsdale, AZ over the New Year holiday.  My husband, a musician, had a New Year's Eve gig at Maggiano's in Scottsdale with a friend of his. 

We had been talking about purchasing a condo but this gig made us do more than just talk about it.  I had a little buyer's remorse at one point (read about it here).  But just prior to our trip I started getting really excited figuring out which properties I wanted to see.  And like any eager buyer, I had fun looking at all the different properties available.

We joke that you know real estate is bad when we can afford Scottsdale.  We figured we had to do it while prices were right.  I believe that Arizona will once again increase in prices to the…

I've had this problem many times over the years and I hate when I see on listing instructions that the agent needs to set the appointment.  They rarely answer their cell phones and you have to leave a voice mail.  And some don't respond.

I'm just shocked that in this market some agents don't respond in a timely manner to set appointments.  I had a request to show one property a prospect found on my new custom REW IDX.  I found out when the buyer wanted to view the property and went to set the appointment. 

A couple of days went by without a response from the agent.  I spoke to the buyer, who found another property to view, that the agent had to set all appointments and wasn't responding.  He was able to view the other property.

On the 3rd day I finally…

It's not quite finished yet as I need to add some more search features and more data in the Detailed Report, but I'm just giddy about my new REW custom IDX.  It's too soon to start appearing on the search engines for specific listings and I'm wondering how long it takes to get some of those new pages spidered and indexed.  I believe my page count has about doubled but I don't remember exactly how many were shown as being indexed before.

Fun With Snippets

I thought I needed to call Morgan to get a step-by-step guide to using snippets but one day when I had nothing going on I sat down and tried them out and found success.  I love being able to show all of the Orland Park homes for sale starting right on the Orland Park page.

I'm still working the snippets…

A couple weeks ago I was spending hours excitedly going through Scottsdale, AZ listings sent to me by my agent with a fine tooth comb.  My husband and I would love to be snowbirds in AZ and figured if we wait until we're ready to retire Scottsdale prices will be unattainable for us at that time.  I do have hope for the future of real estate!

We figure if we don't buy something now to get our foot in the door of AZ property ownership with current affordable prices and interest rates, we'll regret it.  We will be visiting AZ at the end of the month (it coincides well with a New Year's Eve gig my husband has with a musician friend that lives in Gilbert) and will be viewing properties then.  We will be pre-approved buyers.

And then I read this post

I'm an…