Real Estate Views from St Pete

Did you know that Florida is the lightning capital of the United States? The linked article has some interesting information on that, but my point is that as agents in Florida, we need to point out to our clients that they should have protection for their electronic equipment and their homes. We have lightning strikes, power surges, momentary brownouts - all things that can cause havoc with our computers, digital clocks, etc.  Having a UPS for our computer equipment is mandatory. The local power company has protectors they can put on the lines to your house.

We purchased a system that attached to the power where it enters the house, from a local company called Ditek. It wasn't too expensive and was installed by a local electrician (I actually heard about the system when the electrician was doing some repair work on a house I had listed).  It was there on our house, forgotten, for years. Then one morning we had an early morning runner ring our doorbell (waking us up) and telling us that he saw and smelled smoke from the side of our house. We also noticed that the power was off. When we went out to check, we saw a large char mark going up the side of the house from the Ditek box.  We called Ditek, they sent out an electrician who confirmed that lightning had struck (or one Heck of a Surge). Ditek manufacturer a new box that was customized for our home, and had it made and installed by the next day.  How can you beat that for service? Well - there was NO COST for the equipment or labor, as Ditek had guaranteed it for life.

When the power came back on - there were absolutely no problems with all of my computer equipment, and nothing in the house was damaged!  The surge protection system had handled everything. You can be sure we tell our clients about that option. 

 Sharon Simms, Real Estate Agent serving St. Petersburg, Florida, the Gulf Beaches and the Tampa Bay area.   

The real estate market in Pinellas County, Florida (St. Petersburg, Clearwater) is similar to many parts of the country - lots of inventory, fewer buyers and flat or dropping prices. More details are on my website. Hurting the most are speculators that bought preconstruction. I had a neighbor e-mail me yesterday asking to help them avoid a foreclosure - they bought a preconstruction townhouse in MiraBay, over in Apollo Beach, closed on it nearly a year ago and have had it on the market with a local agent there, but have had no buyers. 

When the market says your home is worth less than you paid, and there's no buyer, you have three choices to avoid foreclosure:

1) sell at a loss;

2) rent, with negative cash flow;

3) pay the mortgage, insurance, taxes, homeowner fees, utilities and maintenance and wait for the market to improve enough to absorb all the inventory.

The good news for our area is:  it's a great time to buy.   

Sharon Simms, Real Estate Agent serving St. Petersburg, Florida, the Gulf Beaches and the Tampa Bay area.   

There are some terrific blogs on ActiveRain that are really worth keeping. I don't always remember who wrote them, or when, so I want to keep them myself.  Print them out? Not only does this waste trees, but I never get to filing and the page is effectively lost forever. 

If you have Adobe Acrobat (the whole program, not just the reader), you can just "print" the article, but change the printer from your designated printer to Adobe .pdf  and then save it.  I have a big folder called Articles, then subfolders labelled by topic, and then save the blog there. In the same place I save news items or anything else that I'll want to retrieve, by topic. 

You can also use SnagIt to save a page, a scrolling window, a selection, etc  -  again you decide where to save it and in what format.

Sharon Simms, Real Estate Agent serving St. Petersburg, Florida, the Gulf Beaches and the Tampa Bay area.    

Bob Pavey pointed out in a blog comment that many agents are now taking jobs, and still trying to be a real estate agent. Understandably, they need cash flow to survive, but it's easy for them to forget that this business is all about serving the customer. It may work to be showing property as well as having a 9-5 job  -  after all, there are many buyers who want to look in the evening or on the weekends. But, what happens when an offer goes to contract, if the agent is unavailable when the title company and loan processor are only working during business hours? How can you represent a Seller properly if noone can answer agent questions or schedule showings during working hours?

What about forming a partnership with a more experienced and productive agent, who might appreciate someone to work with their buyers during evenings and/or weekends?

How about becoming a buyer's agent for a team, with the understanding that you're only available on weekends, or during particular hours?

Perhaps you could share the cost of an assistant with other agents, so that someone is available to service your clients during working hours? If 5 of you share an assistant, you'd only be paying for one day's time, but getting coverage for all 5 days?

You might also think about hiring a Virtual Assistant and having your phone forwarded to the assistant.  Perhaps you could contract with a Showing Service to set up appointments for your listings.

If you're not available when an agent needs to show your property, you may well miss the opportunity to have your home shown at all. So - of you're not going to be available when needed, please make arrangements to have your business covered......

or else put your license with a referral company, and earn a referral fee while your clients are working with a good agent. You may even make more money this way, since the closing rate should increase. In any case, you'd be doing less work, so you could enjoy family and friends on the weekend, and some needed down time to recharge your energies. Instead of a part-time agent, you could be a full time referral agent, all while making money on another job.

Sharon Simms, Real Estate Agent serving St. Petersburg, Florida, the Gulf Beaches and the Tampa Bay area.     

It had to happen. Builders have been offering more and more incentives for the sale of their homes, especially inventory homes. The larger builders have been land banking sites for future development, and securing options on parcels from 400 acres to 2,000 acres. Undeveloped acreage for residential use was selling for over $50,000 per acre, and in some cases, when applied to the useable portion of the land, close to $100,000 per acre.

Many of the builders are now dropping their options, and some are selling land they already purchased. Owners are calling developers they turned away a year or two ago, and going down their list of backups.

St. Joe Company is the largest private landowner in the state of Florida. They transferred their focus from being a paper company to being a real estate development company. They bought, then sold a real estate company (Prudential Florida Realty, which they renamed Arvida). They got into home construction, and now they are getting out of that. St Joe has been a huge development force in the Florida Panhandle, where they have most of their land.  

Sharon Simms, Real Estate Agent serving St. Petersburg, Florida, the Gulf Beaches and the Tampa Bay area.     

There have been a lot of comments to my blog on the CBS (call before showing) electronic lockboxes. Pam brought up that many agents in her area of Tennessee don't know how to use the code, which has been a horrible problem. Rather than give up using the CBS lockboxes, which offer so much in terms of both appointments and security, we take a proactive approach to the agents who haven't learned to use them.

When we'd ask, "Do you know how to use this code?" the vast majority would say Yes, or Of Course. Part of this response was apparently an ego problem, so we started asking, "Would you like us to review the process with you for using this lockbox?" and get more agents wanting instructions.  There are two problems - 1) the agent doesn't know how to input the code into their keypad; and 2) the agent tries to use that 7 digit code instead of their 4 digit personal code in the lockbox.  We always suggest that they put the code into their keypad while they're alone in the office or at home, before they are out with clients. Then, they can forget about the code, and open our lockbox exactly the same way that they open every other one.

We'll suggest they input the code into their keypad while we're on the phone - then we can be sure they're doing it step by step. They're excited when they hear the confirming beeps and glad to know how to use them. If they're not showing until the next day, we tell them that we'll keep the same code on the box until the following day (we can change the code whenever we want, for security purposes), and they should repeat this process again the following morning (the permission to use code is disabled in their keypad at midnight every night), which will then be repetitive - and gives them an opportunity to call us again to go over it, before they embarrass themselves in fromt of a client.  In several years of using these, we've only had one agent once that none of us could walk through the process, and we referred her to the MLS help line.

Sharon Simms, Real Estate Agent serving St. Petersburg, Florida, the Gulf Beaches and the Tampa Bay area.     

Most agents prefer to show homes that have a lockbox - it's easier to fit into their showing schedule, they don't have to deal with another agent present, or a seller still at home. Many sellers are uncomfortable with this - they know or have heard of agents who don't make an appointment, despite the instructions in the MLS, who then arrive at the door, ring the bell or knock on the door, get no response, and let themselves in. More than once an owner has been surprised in the shower, or has been otherwise occupied. 

The CBS coded lockbox provides a compromise. The agents lockbox key won't work by itself on a CBS lockbox - they have to call to get a special code to enter into their lockbox in order for it to work on that home. Gee - means they have to make an appointment.  That's it - just make an appointment, enter a code, and your key works on this lockbox just like any other.

We used to have the lockboxes programmed at the Board, which was a real pain - now we can do it ourselves, and we can change the security code as often as we want. 

Sharon Simms, Real Estate Agent serving St. Petersburg, Florida, the Gulf Beaches and the Tampa Bay area.     

We've blogged about coolers and a child's box for showings, but what else is in your showing kit? 

• Cell Phone.  My Palm Treo is a must - not only for communication, but because it if my lockbox "key" with its infrared beam that talks to the lockbox. It also has a calculator, a mortgage calculator, a still camera, a short video record, a microphone for notes, and a TO DO list.
• Digital Camera. Pocket sized preferred. The phone camera can be used in a pinch, but for the quality photos you want to give to the buyer, use one with good resolution and a wide angle lens.
• Electronic measuring device - for answering questions like  how big is this room? or how high is the ceiling?
• Small measuring tape -  to determine whether a particular piece of furniture fits in the room.
• Compass -  a little 1" is fine, but often someone wants to know what direction they're facing from a porch.
• Pen or pencil - to sign in or to let the buyer make notes
• Small notepad  - business card size works well -  you may want to leave a note for the seller or agent

What else do you carry in your showing kit?

Sharon Simms, Real Estate Agent serving St. Petersburg, Florida, the Gulf Beaches and the Tampa Bay area.    

It's always interesting to see an old house being moved a few blocks away to preserve the home while freeing up the property for new development. In driving buyers around, we'll often point out a house that was moved.

Photos on the front page of both the St. Petersburg Times was an article and photo showed a house being moved on Tampa Bay. Not just a house, a beautiful house, a big house. The house was a Queen Anne Victorian, painted blue with white trim, built in 1910. The house has 5,000 sq ft and was moved with its porte cochere, turret, and wraparound porch. I weighed 220 tons, and a carriage house was behind it on the same barge. The house was moved 25 miles, from the Manatee River in Palmetto, Florida (Manatee County) up the shipping channel of Tampa Bay and then down the Little Manatee River near Ruskin, Florida (Hillsborough County).  More photos at the Tampa Tribune. 

Spectators from the house's old home and it's new home, as well as the curious, lined the waterways to see this spectacular site - a colorful three story home being moved in its entirety along the water. The barge was 45 feet wide by 145 feet long.  

The house was priced right, really right - $1.00 - but the moving cost is estimated at $250,000. Kim Brownie was the house moving contractor. Brownie comes from a lifetime of moving houses - a business started by his grandfather, which Brownie took over at age 19.  Now his son, Jeremy, works with him as well. 

Sharon Simms, Real Estate Agent serving St. Petersburg, Florida, the Gulf Beaches and the Tampa Bay area.    

One of the biggest shocks for many people moving to Florida from other parts of the country is the size of the lots. They may be looking for a lot with 1-5 acres. In most of the developed parts of Florida, this isn't going to happen - unless you're looking at luxury homes in new developments - and even many of those have small lots.

In the Old Northeast section of St. Petersburg, Florida, a typical lot is 50 ft wide. In many new community developments in the surrounding areas lot widths are 50 ft.  This weekend, in previewing a new development near Orlando, 5 bedroom 3 story homes, in the $750,000-$1,250,000 range were on 35 ft wide lots. These were detached homes!  It's hard to believe you can get over 3,000 sq ft plus garage plus pool onto a 35 ft wide lot - but they can, and they do, and people buy them. From the outside, the homes are very close together and you feel squished - but when you go inside, it's quite spacious and open, and the views from the home are spectacular - wide, open, interesting.

It's all about perception.  What does it feel like when you're in a home? How would it be to live there? We shouldn't make assumptions - we need to check things out, so that we can prepare our clients for what they're going to see and how they're going to feel - the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Sharon Simms, Real Estate Agent serving St. Petersburg, Florida, the Gulf Beaches and the Tampa Bay area.   

No condos have sold in the last three months on St Pete Beach between $600,000 and $700,000.

That statement is what made the difference with the sellers. This weekend we were negotiating an offer on a condo I have listed on St Pete Beach, Florida in the upper 600s. It's a new condo and was already listed below the appraisal done less than two months ago.  The offer came in $75,000 less than list price. 

The first response is emotional.  No way!  Didn't you tell them it's already below current appraisal?  Yes, I did. Do you want to buy it for this price? That's what you're doing if you don't negotiate. Buyers are scarce, and monthly payments for a vacant condo continue.  Here's a buyer - do you want him, or should he buy one of the hundred of other condos available?

The sellers accepted a price about 95% of list price. My investor sellers were lucky - they made money over what they paid for the unit, at a pre-construction price 2-1/2 years ago. Many similar purchasers are deciding how much of a loss they're willing to take to stop the outflow on money every month.

Sharon Simms, Real Estate Agent serving St. Petersburg, Florida, the Gulf Beaches and the Tampa Bay area.   

No, but they can be sliced and diced in so many ways. There was a headline in the business section of this morning's St. Petersburg Times "Home sales drop, prices climb" and one of the graphs showed a 10% increase in median sale price in the Tampa Bay Florida area to $237,800 (August 2005 to August 2006). Now this will no doubt encourage local sellers to expect higher prices and this may be the headline they remember - but the statistics were for a three county area, Hillsborough, Pinellas and Pasco. That covers a lot of geographic area and many different markets. Hillsborough and Pasco, for example, have much more new construction than Pinellas does - so the price climb may not refer to a typical new or old house, but to the mix between larger and newer homes and older smaller homes.  When you look at  just Pinellas county, you'll see that the median price actually went down 12.4% for the same period. Then if you look at a particular neighborhood, figures will also vary, as will statistics for 2 bedroom homes vs 4 bedroom homes. 

So, slice and dice your statistics and look at them in different ways, so that you can review all the aspects with your sellers - and buyers. And analyze what goes into the statistics and whether that's appropriate to the conclusion.

Sharon Simms, Real Estate Agent serving St. Petersburg, Florida, the Gulf Beaches and the Tampa Bay area.   

We always keep a box in our trunks and in our office with things for children - non-damaging, non-noisy things. Some children's books, some stuffed animals, little squeeze houses or balls. When you're going through trade shows, some of the giveaways may be useful things for your collection.

If you know parents will be bringing a young child to closing, bring some things to amuse them, just in case the parents haven't. Don't bring markers that will damage the table of the walls, but an etch-a-sketch might work. Don't bring little papers and glue - but bring a few stickers that easily peel off. Again, the items in the truck box will work also. And if you're able to amuse and/or hold the child, it really takes the pressure off the parents. 

Sharon Simms, Real Estate Agent serving St. Petersburg, Florida, the Gulf Beaches and the Tampa Bay area.    

Kristal's post on deceptive checks led me to comment on deceptive invoices. I hate receiving invoices that then say in small print at the bottom, This is Not an Invoice. A recent problem has been with the publication ACT Buzz. I subscribed for a year, since we use ACT, but decided not to renew. For months, I've been getting invoices that say in small print that they aren't invoices, only an invitation to buy the product. We've sent them back with comments, have called them, and everything else, but still they come. They are in envelopes that look like invoice envelopes.

Adding insult to injury, they have now started (more than once) in sending these "invoice envelopes" with PAST DUE marked in bold red across the face of the envelope.  They still say inside that this is not an invoice, but how embarrasing to have what look like Past Due invoices going through your office mail system.

Yes, there ought to be a law....

Sharon Simms, Real Estate Agent serving St. Petersburg, Florida, the Gulf Beaches and the Tampa Bay area.    

We've all blogged and commented a lot about the high commissions builders and developers are offering on inventory homes, that some developers pay an increasing fee for each sale you put together in their development, and other incentives they offer. This weekend I was invited to tour two new developments in the Orlando area, so my husband and I went up for the weekend. It was interesting that one development offers a 3% selling commission - but - if you sell to an international client your commission goes up to 7%!  I found that a very interesting concept, and one I had never encountered before.

Sharon Simms, Real Estate Agent serving St. Petersburg, Florida, the Gulf Beaches and the Tampa Bay area.    

It's when things go wrong that you see someone's real mettle - their integrity, and whether they step up to the plate.

Several years ago I sold a home where I was representing both the seller and the buyer (that was back in the days when Florida had disclosed dual agency). The home was in a neighborhood that had reclaimed water (a system that takes waste water, processes it in a treatment plant, then sends it back through a separate piping system to be used for landscaping purposes - it's much less expensive than metered water and not as restricted if there's a drought), the seller said that he had reclaimed water, and I saw the purple fittings that indicate reclaimed water. Naturally I put in the MLS that the property had reclaimed water.

The transaction went fine, inspections were done, and the closing was smooth. Shortly after the closing, I got a panicked call from the Buyer who said that the city water department had red-tagged his system and locked it off, pending payment of an $1800 connection fee - seems there was reclaimed water to the property, but the seller had never paid for it, he had just tapped in to the system!   

My immediate response was that I was on my way to the utility department with a check to have it turned on. I'd represented the home with reclaimed water, and that's what the buyer was entitled to. I'd deal with the seller later, but in any case, it was my responsibility and a quick turnon was essential.  Situation dissolved/resolved - buyer happy.

Later I discussed the illegal tap with the seller, who had bought another home nearby (through me). He did agree to pay half of the cost, but it was still a $900 lesson for me.  Added to my listing checklist is to verify through the city that a reclaimed water connection is legal. 

Sharon Simms, Real Estate Agent serving St. Petersburg, Florida, the Gulf Beaches and the Tampa Bay area.   

What do you get for the person who has everything? Something unique and memorable, of course. Once we had a street named for a person, so that when she drove home every night she drove along Barbara Street. It was a small street, and there were no homes on it at the time, so it was easier to do than renaming a main street, but it made a great impact.  Instead of thinking, I can't, think How Can I? What's been your most unusual gift?

Sharon Simms, Real Estate Agent serving St. Petersburg, Florida, the Gulf Beaches and the Tampa Bay area.   

We try to do everything possible to make our closing smooth and stressless. This starts with scheduling the closing, at time of offer. We prefer to avoid the following:

• last day of the month
• Fridays
• Mondays

No matter how much advance notice there is, many lenders schedule working on the closing package based on the day of closing, rather than work from the contract date, and on the last day of the month there can be a LOT of closings to process. (Apologies to those few lenders who are wonderful and get the package to the title company days or a week ahead of time). Title companies are also very busy on those days. Get ahead of the pack and have yours processed for the day before.

Fridays are also popular closing days, and leave the possibiity that if anything goes wrong, the wiring of funds is delayed, etc. everything stops for the weekend and the parties have three more days to wait, instead of one. Mondays are the third least desirable - there are leftovers from Friday, and people are just getting into gear. (I've heard, though I have no verification, that you also don't want to buy a car that was manufactured on a Monday)

Every little thing you can do to help a smooth closing, helps. 

Sharon Simms, Real Estate Agent serving St. Petersburg, Florida, the Gulf Beaches and the Tampa Bay area.   

We've advertised abroad in several publications, both in English and in German. Great distributions, great marketing, great for making your sellers happy about the extra exposure - but for us, no results (unless you consider calls from other international publications results). International business is about relationships and trust, as I've mentioned before. Remember Florida swampland sales? That's what people from other countries are afraid of.

Joining - and participating in - the CIPS groups, the international section, and FIABCI are ways of making contacts, but it's not just joining, it's really getting involved.  Trade shows can lead to relationships and business, but not by going just once. They don't know you seeing you once. Go back to exhibit at the same trade shows year after year after year.

Locally, join an International Trade Council. And again, don't  just join, participate. Work on the committees, let the other members get to know you, how you work, how you think, what your values are. People need a relationship with you before they refer to you. Like clients, they have to build a relationship with you and trust you - after all, they are putting their own reputation on the line. I've had far more success with referrals from attorneys, bankers, and accountants than I have success from ads.  It's not a quick fix, but it's enduring business relationships.

Sharon Simms, Real Estate Agent serving St. Petersburg, Florida, the Gulf Beaches and the Tampa Bay area.  

We think we speak the same language as clients from the US, but don't make assumptions - many real estate terms are different. What about the simple term SURVEY?  We know it's measuring the ground and positioning the house and other buildings on that plot, and noting easements and rights of way. To the Brits, a survey is a home inspection. NOTARY - for us it's merely someone with a license that identifies a person and signs to that effect - but a notary in other countries can be a very official government person. Get to know what different words mean, so that you can be communicating instead of just talking to each other. Buy a book on business customs and terms, attend a CIPS class. 

p.s. - if you working with clients from Finland - you should know that they probably won't be concerned about what's written in the offer/contract - in the Finnish legal system, it's intent that matters, not how something is worded.

Sharon Simms, Real Estate Agent serving St. Petersburg, Florida, the Gulf Beaches and the Tampa Bay area.