rmasse10's Blog: Ranting

In the Tampa Real Estate Market and our MLS states that when an agent puts in a commission on a listing that is a short sale or bank owned, the commission that is in the system must be paid, no negotiating.  So here is the dilemma, I have a short sale that is basically approved and the bank is only willing to pay 3.5% commission.  OK, so now the other agent wants me to split my commission...Like I said, don't ask because the answer is no.  But wait, it gets better...I may have felt some level of compassion, but the listing also states that the current price is approved by the lender and I know for a fact that the contract has fallen thru twice because of financing.  In addition, the property was never put into Pending status as the MLS rules state that it…

OK, so this happened to my wife today.  She has been trying to get paperwork together for a Tampa Bank Owned Homes.  She has approval on the offer so that is no problem.  The problem comes in when she is trying to submit the paperwork to close.  The company hired to be the middle man to put together the paperwork is totally incompetent.  We have had to resend original copies now 3 times overnight each time $20/mail and now they want it sent again.  This over things that if they read all the paperwork completely the first time, we would have been limited to 1 overnight max.  I watched a cat fight occur on the phone between my wife and the woman on the other end as they both were screaming at each other.

My wife, after the phone was thrown across the room,…

I haven't had any of these happen to me lately but I have had my fair share and have heard around the office of other agents suffering from Rude Clients, Clients that expect agents to take them on a Taxi Ride around town just so they can write off their trip for taxes, babysit, you get the picture.  I think with the Tampa Real Estate Market the way it is being a buyers market, some buyers seem to feel that they can make everyone run around like mice in a cage and we Realtors will just do it.  Guess what, that will only last so long with un-seasoned agents, and won't fly at all with seasoned agents.

Like I said, I have had my share, and I give everyone that I deal with (since I am no longer a buyers agent it doesn't matter but every now and then I will…

OK, so I think the banks are starting to figure out that they stand to make more money (or should I say loose less) by processing short sale offers instead of making it to the foreclosure process.  Working in the Tampa Real Estate Market, which is improving, the Tampa Foreclosures market is moving quicker in terms of offers, but not closing.  Lets take a look at a few examples.

Example 1. My wife takes out some first time home buyers and they are interested in this one property.  The price is listed at $125,000 and they put in an offer of $97,000.  The bank, after  4 weeks says no way.  Ok, so the clients move on and are still looking and then we see that the property went thru foreclosure and is now bank owned.  The property is now listed at…

The title may have thrown you a little bit as Mirror Matching and NLP techniques are something that really "Good" Realtors tend to initiate with clients.  Mirror Matching is when you attempt to match the style and attitude of the person that you are communicating with, hence the name, and I won't go into NLP as it is a little more complicated to explain.  But this is where the problem is. 

What I have been seeing from many Realtors in the Tampa Real Estate Market, and especially in the Tampa Foreclosures arena, these agents that are assisting the banks in selling their homes (ie bank owned or soon to be), these Agents are taking on the attitude of the bank.  They have become rude, take multiple offers and don't put the properties pending when the first…

Interesting article just published in one of the magazines I get from being a member of the Florida Association of Realtors.  The data was put together by the National Association of Realtors for the Florida Association of Realtors (say that 10 times fast).  Anyway, I am a huge advocate of Social Networking which most of you already know.  I Blog, Vlog, have accounts on Facebook, LinkedIn, Myspace, etc and most of that works for me automatically with some maintenance on a weekly basis.  Being in the Tampa Real Estate Market, which seems to be fairly competitive, it takes these added tools to stay on top of my game.

Anyway, NAR created a profile of 2007 buyers in the Florida Market and found that 38% of buyers found their home thru the use of Social…

Boy, I must just love writing about this...or should I say complain about this.  I have read the reports and blogs indicating that the banks are getting short sale friendly...I guess I just don't see it.  It must be some bank like "Freds Bank" that is getting friendly because the big boys don't seem to be reacting that way.  So property in the Tampa Short Sale process are likely to yield the bank more money than if they transition into the Tampa Foreclosures category.  But hey, what do I know, I am just a stupid Realtor, who just so happens to understand basic accounting.  So let's do the math for a second here...A short sale property will probably cause the lender to loose maybe up to $40,000-$60,000 depending on the amount owed on the home, and…

Here we go again (or at least here I go again).  The Tampa Market has been pretty active lately, especially for Tampa Foreclosures, Bank owned and Short Sales.  I can tell you for a fact that people want to buy homes, have the money and the credit scores to do it with (my wife has one client that has a score of 825) and the offers are being written (my wife, in the past 2 weekends has written up no less than 13 offers) and with all this going on, cannot get more than 10% of those to the next level.  Seems that the banks still don't know what to do with these offers other than hold them until they get enough of them and then make a decision.  Well, that can backfire on you just as fast.  The buyers out there don't want to wait so they just pull their offer…