Fish Balls was just accepted for distribution in Apple’s app store Friday and I need some feedback from people!  If you have an iPhone or iPad, please take a moment to download my free game. It’s a FREE casual strategy game that is a billiards style brick breaker designed to be simple to learn but challenging to master.

You can find out more about my game at the new website for Fish Balls or simply download it.  It’s currently available for the iPhone and I have an Android version in the works.  Best part about it is that it’s a non stressful, refreshing game designed to be challenging while not aggrevating.  I designed it to not be random at all.  It simply react to your touch.  Enjoy.

****UPDATE**** Here’s the trailer video.

If you love the home, plan to live there and enjoy the amenities, then great, it’s the home for you. If you think you have another reason, you should remember that they can become a real estate nightmare for many, many different reasons. Here’s one of them, financing.

Lately condo financing has become much more difficult. On a recent transaction for a new construction condo conversion down in Littleton, I ran across a couple financing issues that I now know to check out early in the buying/selling process to make sure the property is salable.

Legal Actions A legal action taken by(or against) the HOA may make financing the unit impossible leaving only cash/owner financing as an option. This is a very bad thing if you own one of those units or don’t have cash.

Investor concentration. To high and the investor concentration in the condominium complex may tank your deal! This often information comes over on the HOA certification letter that is usually required for conventional financing. While the ratio may change and loosen up a bit in the future for conventional financing it is still important to find out what this ratio is as soon as possible. Sometimes a simple phone call to the home owners association may be enough, other times, it’s a little more formal. Anything over 30% should be enough to bring it up with your mortgage broker. Sometimes for conventional financing, that in itself is a deal killer. FHA financing allows the investor concentration to be up to 50% but the buyer should know about the issue as it could impact the future resale if the situation doesn’t chance. If you feel this could be a a concern, be proactive so that there are no surprises later.

HOA Default Rate. This is another piece of info from the HOA. Greater than 15% could be mean trouble. The lender would be concerned that the default in the HOA payments may suggest future deficiency in the HOA accounts and perhaps deeper problems. If the lender would be worried, so should your buyer. At the least, he should be informed of the potential issue.

HOA Financial Reserves This should be greater than 10%.

Now there is a home purchasing program that will finance these properties. FNMA (Fannie Mae) sells some homes with HomePath financing. That means that they’ll finance the property. They usually don’t require the HOA certification. The downside is still this, if the buyer wants to sell later, FNMA won’t be there to offer financing.

There are many more reasons to be concerned about the financing for a condo, especially these days.
Check out RealEstateUndressed for another possible issue.

Plumbers and electricians often get paid just to show up. Appraisers get paid to show up. Inspectors get paid when they show up. Real estate agents on the other hand, are often expected to give their opinions for free before they have even been hired. An experienced agents opinion could be worth thousands of dollars to the homeowner by the time the home sale reaches fruitition. So why do agents give away their best ‘stuff’ for free?

I can’t help but wonder if the National Association of REALTORS and large brokerages have effectively homogenized the value of agents. It’s in all of their marketing. Claims that working with a paticular brokerage or working with a REALTOR alone is what will guarantee great results. I wonder if people believe that.

I would recommend to any agent to reconsider how they go about their business. How they handle listing appointments and what advice they give potential buyers when discussing a paticular property, especially before getting something in writing.

Do you view yourself as a commodity? Are you really that easily replaced? If you have a unique knowledge and can offer advice that will help people make thousands more on their homes and save them countless headaches, shouldn’t you act like it? Do you communicate your value proposition effectively? Do you prove it in the service you offer?

It’s all about how you are going about your business each day. Chances are, if you don’t value your time, no one else will either.

Builders use price per square foot for an area to help project their potential profits compared to their cost to build.

Investors can screen neighborhoods for homes that are significantly below the average price per square foot for the neighborhood.

For you and I. We need to be more specific. One way is a comparative market analysis or CMA.

There is one certainy though, to determine the value of a property, you can’t simply take the square footage and multiply it by the area’s PSF or even the comparable home’s PSF. It’s just not going to get you where you want to go.

As an example, I once met a man that built a massive addition on the back of his house. He added over 2000 square feet (SF) to his home. He then did the calculation; my home is 3400SF X $200 PSF = $680,000. Unfortunately, he simply added massive rooms without any appeal to them. He added only one jack and jill style bathroom for the 2000 SF he added. That was supposed to be a shared master bath. Needless to say, buyers didn’t see it and had a 100 other options for under $680,000 that were superior.

He ended up selling for $385,000 or $113 per SF. For him, using price per square foot to determine his value sent him down the wrong path by more than 40%.

1. Put contact details in a code on the back of a business card. This will make it easy for people to add you to their phone contacts.
2. Put it in your craigslist ads. Techy and bored, your target audience might just use their phone. This is probably the best way an online to online link might be effective.
3. Place it in the last slide in a video upload, where a normal link wouldn’t work.
4. Have the code start a text message to you requesting more information about your service or a property.
5. Put QR-codes on your flyers that link to a specific landing page for that property for more info.
6. Link to a youtube video tour of the property…put it on your sign or box flyer.
6. Use a QR-code to drive traffic to a specific neighborhood IDX search on your website.
7. Yard signs to peek the interest of the tech savvy.
8. Create a “send this home to a friend” email straight from the yard sign.
9. For farming with postcards, link to a neighborhood report with specific sales information for your farm area.
10….umm… I ran out of ideas, feel free to put your number 10 in the comments.

Why should you do one of these? Because it’s cool, it’s free, it calls for immediate (easy) action from the client and it’s another way you can track your results.

Here’s a cool site to check out what QR-codes can do. —> QRStuff.com

The award for “BEST DUMPSTER DIVING” goes to the alley between S. Broadway and Acoma St, just south of Evans.

“Downscale but diverse”, we are apparently the place to find everything from old bikes and “half-drunk cans of beer from a dive bar” to half a bag of jelly donuts. I guarantee the donuts were not from my house. We are an ‘up and coming neighborhood’. Even though we still have a few rough edges, we do have great garbage.

It’s nice to be recognized.

Maybe it’s a sign of the times.

[via Westword]

My deepest apologies for bringing down the neighborhood with this preforeclosure listing but the truth is, I got the job done for my clients in a difficult market. Not to mention my sales in the neighborhood remain the highest priced non-builder resales. But it begs the question, How much responsibility does an agent bear when it comes to home values? Can real estate brokers actually drive prices up or down or do we simply enable the transaction allowing the buyer to pay what the seller will accept?

Some people believe that the agents are bringing down the neighborhoods.  Thus, this anonymous phone call.

P.S. In case you were wondering. There is no such thing as an anonymous anything anymore. A Google search of the telephone number, his work number, gave me his employer. An insurance company. Insurance sales people are licensed in Colorado. A half hour cross-referencing names between the licensing database and neighborhood homeowners gave me his name and address. The FSBO around the corner that had been on the market for almost 2 years.

Gateway Village Denver, cO

As you know we just listed this spectacularly remodeled home for $169,900 on Monday.  Today is Wednesday.  This speaks to just how prompt you are as a buyer’s agent.  Thank you also for excitedly calling me from the property to let me know you were putting together an offer and that you will need a response this evening.  Needless to say, this marked a bit of a high point for my day.

Thanks for sending the 40MB scanned offer directly to my email in separate pieces.  In the email,  I could not help but notice the long list of letters following your name.  You are certified as a specialist in residential property and since you passed the $225 dollar class, you are now an expert negotiator, congratulations.

Unfortunately,  it appears your offer is going to fall a little short.  Let me explain.   Prior to listing, I spent quite a bit of time with my client determining exactly where the property fell with regard to the competition.  That is no doubt why you, who have been feverishly trying to find a property for your buyer, noticed that my listing was the best property available in the area that falls in the price range that your client is looking at.

Thanks for making me aware of the sold comps as well.  You must think that I had not considered them when arriving at the list price but I actually have.  You see, just because one floor plan sells for a price does not mean that is the absolute value of the property.  Apparently, some appraisers like to compare properties by the condition and the square footage.  So a similar home, a little smaller than my listing, that sells for a price that suggests $120 a square foot was an appropriate price may suggest my larger home is also worth $120 SF.   Of course, that’s not an absolute either but is an actual method some people use to find value when homes tend to vary a little bit from one another.  Either way it doesn’t matter, we are only asking $101 per SF and the appraiser will have no problem seeing the difference between a distressed property and a non-distressed property. 

As a general suggestion, when you want to know what a home is worth, you probably should not start by comparing it to a foreclosure or short sale…unless of course it actually is.  This home is not a foreclosure or a short sale.  In fact, as you had noticed, this property is not distressed in any way.  It is actually quite nice, or as you point out, perhaps too nice. 

Yes, my client is an investor and yes we did recently purchase this property at the public trustee’s auction.  Yes, I do believe that he should make a healthy profit on this home.  You might take note that what he paid for it at the auction has nothing to do with what the property is actually worth.  To put it in perspective, what would your client offer if we took away the appliances and features that make this home so nice?  Also, what if the home didn’t have title insurance and could not be inspected?  In fact, let’s pretend you couldn’t even see inside before you made your offer and your buyer had to pay all cash.  Clearly, this is not the same situation as when my seller purchased the property and in many ways, it is not even the same property as was purchased at the auction. 

As you explained to me, your client doesn’t qualify for the list price so it’s really not worth making a counter.  Thanks, that makes my job fairly easy though it does confuse me a little bit.  Shouldn’t the buyer qualify to buy the homes you are showing him?  Now I do not want to tell you how you should run your business but working with buyers that can actually buy the property you show them will make you much more effective.

What really confused me is that you then explained that he didn’t necessarily need all the closing costs you also asked for.   Really? 

I’ve also noticed that you seem to be using the “let’s see what sticks” method of negotiating.  Personally, I don’t believe in it.  It’s right up there with the idea that you could offer $20,000 dollars less and we should just meet in the middle.  Is that what is taught in the negotiation expert certification class?  I’d love to know because if that’s the trick, then I could save my money for the certification that says I work well with senior citizens.  So my question is,  why all the coy games?

Thanks for sending over the heavily redacted and initialed contract that seems to be filled out incorrectly.  Per our conversation, you mentioned you sort of needed that money for closing costs then mention it in multiple locations throughout the contract.  A couple years ago, the Colorado Real Estate commission changed the standard purchase contract so that, now when you do that,  I have to add them all together effectively doubling the amount you had mentioned to me on the phone.    I am sure if you had closed more than one buying transaction in the last 3 years, you probably would have realized that…then again…maybe you did realize it and were just trying to be sneaky.  I would certainly be impressed if that were the case. 

 Either way, as written, the contract cannot be accepted as is.  Of course, this makes your initial offer a bit of an exercise for all of us rather than an actual offer that could be accepted but thanks for keeping me on my toes.

As far as a counter offer goes, I’m not sure we should bother.  Especially since your buyer doesn’t qualify for anything higher than your offer.  Wouldn’t my seller be at risk accepting an offer from your buyer at a higher price now that we know he simply won’t qualify for the loan?  I’m afraid we’re going to have you talk to someone we trust at an actual bank that can let us know if we’re wasting our time or not.  Your  ‘conditional’ preapproval letter from your mortgage broker  is not a preapproval letter and we can’t treat it as such.

Again, thank you very much for your offer.  While it seems to be a complete waste of my time, it is not.   Because of your efforts, I know I have a hot property.   To be on the market just two days and to already have an offer, that must mean I’m doing something right.  I know that we must be  one of the best properties available in the area and in this price range, otherwise you would have written your offer on a different property.  This makes me quite optimistic of getting an acceptable offer worked out for my seller though I’m quite sorry that it probably won’t be with you and your client.

Sincerely,

Spencer Barron

1464 S Benton St - FlatGrass Realty

We have had multiple offers at, above and below the list price from investors willing to pay cash. Why? Because investors work from what it could be worth to them rather than the list price. Most of the offers (not all) we received from traditional buyers tended to net a value under the list price. If the traditional buyer did their homework, they would know that the home is worth much more than the list price. The list price was just a tool to attract attention or to get a cash buyer involved. The same home down the block sold earlier this year for around $170,000 and that wasn’t even a full remodel. This home could fetch $175,00-$180,000 with a good remodel.

This home’s value is being held down by a handful of local foreclosures that though comparable on paper, sold in days to investors. Some of which have already been flipped. I’m guessing most agents didn’t take the time to look at what it could be worth, the ‘adjusted retail value’ of the property.
This is just one example, if you want to see lot’s of examples, take a look at the HUD bid statistics that come out each week. You’ll be able to see all the bids. You’ll notice that the vast majority of buyers make a ‘shot in the dark’ approach to their bid rather than considering the actual value of the home. That’s frustrating for me to watch. Whereas I’m working to attract an investor offer, HUD prioritizes owner occupants over investors. This can be a great opportunity for the average buyer to put themselves into a home with a great equity position. If only they (or their agent) would do the math.