Benefits of staging!

February 1, 2009 · Francis G. Bautista · 7 Comments

After writing my blog on “What is staging?” I am following up with the benefits of staging and the return in dollars to the seller. After some thought, I called a friend, Yvette Thoma, who was a San Bruno Prudential Realtor and who has gone on to successfully open “Let’s Stage it” a local staging company.

She was kind to provide me with some real numbers and facts. Per Yvette Thoma “Out of the last 25 homes staged in 2008, “Let’s Stage it” clients in San Francisco recieved 3% above average market asking price and in some cases 8% above asking. The homes also sold in half the time.” Per Yvette “the cost of staging is much less than your first price reduction!” Lastly “Staging is not a expense it is an investment and is tax deductible.” Read more

Buyers…are You Commitment Phobic?

January 28, 2009 · Julie Cleland · 6 Comments

You’ve made the commitment to buy a house. You’ve committed to a lender and gotten your pre-approval letter and now it’s time to go looking. When it comes to choosing your Realtor(R), you’ve decided to take a different approach…find as many Realtors willing to work on your behalf. You’ll give the business to the one that actually finds the specific house you want. Sounds like a good plan, but is it? Are you hurting yourself instead? Read more

Have We Hit the Bottom

January 24, 2009 · Nicole Machado · 5 Comments

I was reading the January/February 2009 edition of the California Association of Realtors Magazine and came across this article I thought I would share. The article has good facts with a positive economic forecast for 2009 and the graph is a great visual representation of the history of the market.

To read the full article click on the thumbnail image of the article below, then click once more on the article to make the content larger.

Open House TOOOOO Crowded ???

January 20, 2009 · Shokoofeh Nowbakht · 9 Comments

Last week I had a really busy open house. I don’t know if this is particularly good. I don’t know if I were able to answer everyone’s questions and concerns. I tried to respond a little loud so that everyone in the room would hear me. I didn’t always had a chance to greet everyone as soon as they walked in the door, or hand them a flyer soon enough. I don’t think the buyers like a too busy open house either. I have heard complaints from my clients that he couldn’t move in the hallway, couldn’t see the kitchen well enough, or didn’t get a chance to check out the garage as well as he wanted. Read more

Is Your Agent a Twit?

January 17, 2009 · Jean Joh · 5 Comments

Recently, many people in our office have been learning more and more about social networking sites, such as twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, FriendFeed…you get the idea. One of the questions I hear often is, “How is twitter going to help me get more business? What good does it do to let people know what I had for breakfast?” The basic answer for this is that this is just another way to make more contacts, put ourselves in front of more people, and hopefully become known as the “real estate experts” in our area. But another question comes to mind: “How do my clients benefit from the fact that I’m on twitter and other such sites?” Here are some reasons why it might be beneficial to you to have an agent actively engaged in social networking on-line:

Fannie Mae Short Sale Webinar

January 13, 2009 · David Wang · 7 Comments

Do you know what a short sale is?

Doing a routine search for properties today I came across a very good 20 minute video on what is a short sales put on by Fannie Mae. We have been working with short sales for over a year and have had the explanations given and have had the explanation received many many times already but this is short and good. The slides are good and to the point the Audio is clear and crisp it is short enough for clients to get through without losing focus.

As a client I would believe this more than an agent i just met because we all recognize the name Fannie Mae and with all the government oversight they are receiving they have to watch their P’s and Q’s. Read more

Open House drawing Black Friday Crowds…

January 12, 2009 · Nicole Machado · 8 Comments

With the Holidays behind us, buyers are back on the Real Estate scene scoping out the latest inventory. This weekend I held a home in SSF open. I had over 65 groups come through and even ran out of fliers & ended up staying well after 4pm as buyers kept showing up. I can’t remember the last time I ran out of fliers or had to stay longer then the open house was scheduled. I felt like I was at a department store on Black Friday and everything was 50% off!
The home was a single family fixer, in a desirable neighborhood. I figured there was an abundance of buyers because it was the first weekend of scheduled open houses, come to find out it wasn’t just my open house that faired well to the buyer’s scene, it was everyone’s.
Every Monday morning my office has its sales meetings. In the meetings we take count of how many people came through our open houses. Today the count was 400. Those are huge numbers which gives us all something to ponder… Buyers are out in droves, prices have come down and interest rates are historically at all time lows, has the market hit its threshold? What are your thoughts? All I can say is when it’s your time to buy or sell, it doesn’t really matter what else is going on around you. That’s the beauty of Real Estate.

Loan, Gift or Partner to Help Children Buy A Home?

January 9, 2009 · Lee Ginsburg · 6 Comments

As parents we all love our children and only want to help them. In the Bay Area parents almost have to help with a down payment. Do you give your children a gift or a loan? Is it better to be a co-borrower with them? Maybe be partners. If you help one child, you have to help the others. California is a community property state and that creates other issues. It is difficult to bring it up but more than half the marriages wind up in divorce and gifting child money to purchase a home is possibly giving your child’s ex-spouse a very generous gift. Asking a child to sign a promissory note is not always comfortable. In many families Money is a “taboo” subject. I helped my son purchase a home with the idea he was to pay it back when he could. My wife and I always had a good relationship with my son so we did not see any need to have a signed document. Hope that does not come back to bite us. He got engaged a year later and married a short time later. Read more