SuburbanDigs

Win Some, Lose Some

I don’t think I’m being corny when I say that every listing that comes my way is a gift. Earlier in my career, when I had very few of them, I wondered what it took to become a real player in the marketplace, someone who would regularly be called in to compete for business. These days, while I have many times the personal inventory as a decade ago, it’s still impossible to fathom why some people trust you implicitly from the get-go and others choose someone else to work with when you know you’ve done a fine job presenting yourself.

Twice this week, listings for which I competed went to someone else. In both cases, the sellers (or sellers’ families) took copious notes about my ideas for sprucing up their house while educating them to the changing market and realistic pricing, and then didn’t use me. In one case, the grandson even called me twice for the names of contractors he should use to make my suggested repairs.

In the other case, after rushing back from a summer vacation weekend to catch out-of-town family interviewing Realtors until 5 pm Sunday night, (“yes, of course we want to see your PowerPoint!”), following up with detailed staging proposal the next day – which was never acknowledged – I received this lovely note in response to still another email I sent their way last weekend:

“Sorry I haven’t gotten back with you but things at home and work have been crazy. We decided to go with another Realtor but really appreciate the interest and effort you gave to us. You had some really great ideas which we will most likely use on our [own] home.”

Do tell. My ideas, which have always gotten me in trouble, are good enough to take to another state but not good enough to list a little house in my own town.

About a decade ago, I worked with my first million-dollar clients. Young and beautiful, they were full of promise. They drove a convertible. They drank lattes and sometimes brought along one for me. When you’re a novice agent, it’s not so easy to find expensive people who trust you and I treated them with kid gloves over a period of several months while they waited for the absolute perfect show house. I literally bounded off the gurney after an important CT scan in Manhattan to rush back home to meet them. Bucking up as I met them, I didn’t say I had been on intravenous just an hour before or that I was actually quite tired. We roamed through the mansion of the week, for which they expressed incredible enthusiasm and promised to make an offer the next day.

In fact, I never heard from them again. Through my time in real estate, I have come to believe that, in those instances when I really go the absolute extra 10 miles, rise up from the sick bed, cut short a vacation, work on a national holiday or in the middle of a snowstorm, or disappoint my husband and family in some way because I’m convinced clients need me desperately – those are the times when…nothing happens; when I don’t make get the listing or make the deal. At times like this, I find myself asking, How much is too much? When is value-added just a joke on me?

Once a Realtor has invested considerable time in a client without an outcome -- a conclusion to the exercise -- it’s incredibly difficult to pull back and speculate if and when that person will make a successful offer. I’ve discovered that some people, no matter how energetic their search, will never buy. They’re predisposed to a fear of spending too much, of the commitment inherent in a house sale and, in some cases, they just can’t make a decision. Our job, at that point, probably is to convince them not to buy or sell and just be happy with who they are and where they live.

Weird, but true!

Screwy Summer

Over the last several weeks, as mortgage companies, banks and hedge funds have seen their investments depleted and their ability to function compromised, we Realtors have been waiting for the the proverbial other shoe to drop. Yes, by now there are 5 million unsold homes on the market nationally. Bad news pours forth from the nightly news and newspaper headlines. Some sellers, saddled with adjustable mortgages with higher interest rates coming due, are on tragically on target to lose their homes. Many sellers have been waiting a year or more to find a buyer. Some probably never will, now that mortgage guidelines have so tightened that only the strong will survive...iffy appraisals, lots more questions about the application and documentation, and, finally, an endless underwriting period. It used to take two, three, maybe four days at the very end to have the mortgage package reviewed. That's doubled or tripled in many cases. Not to mention the down payments needed now. No more 100 percent financing...even 95 percent is suspect. Credit even a smidgen compromised? No go for buying a home. Will it end with no business in this business that has been so good to us?

I thank my lucky stars to have landed in the NY-NJ-CT tri-state area long before I even thought of going into real estate and found my second career here. The NJ market that I work in, just a few miles from the City, has been good to hard-working agents. We've prospered. Our clients have prospered. It was too good to be true, perhaps, but the good part lasted so long that even though we knew a change was coming, it took a long, long time and, while it stayed away, our market thrived beyond all expectations.

Thing is, it is not so bad even now where we are. Our company's in-house mortgage entity collapsed some days ago, but a strong local bank picked up the business and, against expectation, even these deals are closing. In the past few days, we on the Baldwin Dream Team sold a wonderful house at full price after just a couple of days on the market. We sold a condo. We rented a luxury condo. We brought buyers to another property, priced around $700,000, and that one, awaiting the seller's decision,  looks rosy for us, too. Business, in other words, could be much worse.

One of my real estate brokers once said that the most important real estate concept is that the buyer pool is constant. Fueled by life changes -- marriage, parenthood, divorce, growing families, diminishing families, death -- real estate rolls along. The dips come when the buyer pool gets nervous or fed up and steps back. Those who don't have to buy just wait. But those who do...are still around, still looking to find a place to call their own. We just have to find them and help them feel relaxed enough to make a deal. Zipping around the other night at dusk with a cute, young couple on the cusp of marriage, I thanked my lucky stars for their good fortune. We really don't need multiple offers to make this real estate work the way it should. We just need people like this who want to move forward with their life plan despite bad press and menacing lenders and a surfeit of worrysome economics.  It's time to thank them, one by one.

Cat's in the Closet?

     Let’s see. My blood pressure went up this week over…missing cats and a client who fell down a flight of stairs while holding her toddler. In real estate, it’s the little stuff we sweat as it comes tumbling down some days, in one deal after another.

     My sellers decided to put their home on the market while they were on vacation. Their cats like to slither out the door so I put notice in the MLS listing and a sign on the front door to caution agents against feline escape. Most real estate agents know cat behavior well. There often are more cats living in the houses we sell than people.

     One of three tabby/white felines that I couldn’t tell apart in this rambling Victorian, Peanut had been just fine a few hours before, when I last showed the house. After hearing from the cat sitter, the owner called me from her woodsy outpost in Vermont, her voice trembling. The sitter then called me. She’d looked in every closet, in the dark basement, under beds. No Peanut. It was nearly 9 pm. My husband thought I might be home for good but I went out to join the search.

     Nerves frayed, we trolled the house again, left food on the porch, called her name, shook a box of cat food. Silence. Then...was that Peanut on the landing? We counted 2 other cats under the dining room table, rolling about, oblivious. Peanut. Strolling down the stairs, all mystery and attitude.

Next day, my cute client from from the the other coast brought her parents to see the big house she and her husband thought might be the one. We strolled through its attractive, sizable rooms, surveyed the large property. Her small child played on the swing set. One last look on the second floor just as I’d walked down to the foyer. Above me, a thunderous bumpty-bump-bump-bump. Seven uncarpeted stairs. She clutched the baby and both slid with a giant thud onto the second-floor landing.

     Silence. Baby screams. Mommy screams.

     All was well. A big scare but no bones broken. No baby boo-boos.

     This is a ready-for-anything business.

Remembering Harriet

(Note: While I wrote this piece the day Harriet passed away, I did not post it until early July.)

We lost one of the good ones today. Her name was Harriet Epstein. Around the time I entered real estate, she did too. We never did a deal together but I always heard nice things about her. She left the business after several years. She was married again, happily so and, I guess, didn't need the relentless pressure of real estate in her life. When our office moved to larger quarters nearly 4 years ago, she was cajoled out of retirement to become the front desk manager. Harriet had an interesting background. Now in her fifties, she did not look like someone who had once hung out with rock musicians. In her younger days, though, she had been married to George Wadenius, a member of Blood, Sweat and Tears.

Her nurturing ways made such a difference in an office of dealmakers. When I was on the road, I could always count on Harriet to look up a price or an address. She knew how to fish out errant files after I swore they were missing forever. We talked about our kids, hers just about the ages of my own. At one point, we introduced our daughters, hoping they'd be roommates after college.

One day, I was, as usual, searching for a lost file and klonked myself on one of the metal cabinets. Harriet found the file and remarked that she seemed to be bruising herself a lot. She showed me a huge black and blue mark on her arm. Had she seen a doctor, I asked? No? I said I hoped she would check it out just to make sure nothing was wrong.

As a cancer survivor myself, I probably know more about symptoms of everything than most people. Beginning when I was diagnosed, I spent the next several years reading about illness and death, from "Why We Die," the great book by Sherwin Nuland, to a very large tome called "Diseases - Causes and Complications" to another, "Symptoms and Early Warning Signs." Not a cheerful hobby, but it seemed right at the time and I learned alot and am glad I don't need to do it anymore. I hoped Harriet wasn't sick, but I suspected something was wrong.

Not long after, she was diagnosed with leukemia. Since then, Harriet has been in and out of treatment at Hackensack University Hospital. There weren't that many good days, but she did manage to attend a few of our company parties, hold her first grandson, keep in touch wit our office via her daughters, who were so close to her. She remained in the thoughts of everyone who knew her.

Some months ago, I sent her a note saying I remembered her every day. I wasn't expecting a response but in her careful handwritten response she said hearing from me brought tears to her eyes. And her note brought tears to mine.

After two rounds of chemo, Harriet was well for a bit, then not so well. She came down with a side-effect of leukemia treatment that makes you just as sick as the illness. Her doctors favored a bone marrow transplant but no match was found so Harriet had a stem cell transplant. The first weeks, she rallied and went home until a threat of infection put her back in the hospital.  (I hope I have the facts and chronology correct, but they are close enough!) My colleague, Deborah, was still speaking to her several times a week and Harriet remained upbeat, though very, very tired.

The last few weeks have been exceptionally busy our real estate world. Up early, check dozens of emails, run all day, yap on the cell phone until the battery's dead, meet contractors for estimates, counsel clients worrying about scary home inspections (among other things!), pitch for new business, all this and moments in between to hyperventilate, worry and kvetch. It all seems so very important and it is important.

When you're well, you can't imagine what it's like to be sick, to have a life-threatening illness. Fighting for your life either makes you stronger mentally or takes you down. Harriet believed she would one day be well for her family and was thus able to endure misery and pain.

Her funeral service was packed. The rabbi said he'd presided over many such sad events but none in which there were so many people in one room, mourning a loss. He said that, speaking to Harriet's family and friends, he'd learned that she was universally loved and appreciated for being a good person.

Such a simple notion. So hard to achieve.

   

Changing Market Blues

In the old days -- Spring 2006 -- we in NJ real estate could virtually promise a seller that the home would sell in a weekend or two. That didn't make the rest of the transaction any easier, necessarily, but it did make real estate agents fell pretty good about themselves. It also made sellers very, very happy.

This spring, while some lucky houses priced really pro-actively still get multiple offers and sell in a snap, others simply don't. Agents who have been in the business since the late Eighties or early Nineties, when the market was as slow as molasses, are abt to reminisce (with a wince) about having 27 listings at once, not a one under contract.

We're not at that point, certainly, but even having one or two listings that, despite herculean effort, recently just sat there, unloved, is a responsibility I take seriously. I don't know about other agents, but I wake up mornings thinking about the house, the house, the house. It always feels better if I've done my share of the showings. One of my more expensive listings this spring I showed to 6 different clients --  25 percent of the showings in the first weeks. But neither my peppy demeanor nor the home's very real virtues that would have made it a winner just months ago (updated kitchen and baths, finished basement, hardwood floors) had little impact on buyers. A price reduction didn't do the trick right away, either, although the home did end up doing well for its owner after scaring us all to death.

Still, we're hearing of buyers who insist on offers 20 or 25 percent under the asking price. Sellers take it personally. My house? Worth less than I paid for it five years ago? No way. I'd rather rent.

Today's Star Ledger cheerfuly reports that "Jersey Bucks Housing Decline." While sales nationally declined 6.6 percent through March 31, only the Northeast saw an actual rise of 1.2 percent in housing sales.. During the first quarter of 2007, sales rose 7.6 percent from the previous quarter -- a "sturdy increase," according to one expert. Hmmm.

In fact, starting in April, with ferment in subprime market and tightened lender restrictions, it hasn't been quite so sweet. It's just that the offial statistics haven't caught up with reality: There are more houses listed on the GSMLS, which serves our area, than in recent memory, over 33,000, where there were 19,000 little more than a year ago.

That means buyers in our area have more to choose from after years of virtually no inventory. It also means they are experimenting with some of the lowest offers imaginable: $40,000 under asking? $100,000 under asking? $350,000 under asking? As you're writing some of these numbers on a contract, you wonder how such extreme leveraging will help the economy. An adjustment in the market? Just a little tweak and all will be well? Or will it be a convulsion that shakes the marketplace to its core? And just when we really wondered about all this, we have a listing this past weekend that defies reality: Four offers, all over asking, happy sellers, happy buyers, just like the old days. What is going on?

Making Friends

The 2006 National Association of Realtors Profile of Home Buyers and Seller statistics found that homebuyers are now 2400% more likely to find the property of their choice on the Internet rather than in a home book or magazine!

Meanwhile, Realty Tracker, an online foreclosure portal, interpreting the NAAR's 2007 Member Survey, suggests that Realtors "rethink where and how they spend their money, given NAR's interesting statistic that "websites generated a shockingly low percentage of leads, suggesting that they're more suitable for information-gathering by existing clients or prospects than as lead generators...The median number of customer inquiries originating from Realtor websites was a paltry four."

So where are all these online consumers going? To a small number of prominent Realtor websites, mine (NJDreamHouses.com) included. Don't get me started on why so many Realtors are generating so little internet business, except to say the Internet is a two-way street, best when interactivity is the core business tool. Just having a site sit there, filled with canned "information," won't draw prospective buyers or sellers. Never changing what's on the site -- that's the kiss of death! Without content, interestingly provided, regularly updated, there's nothing to keep people coming back. Without constantly constantly refreshed listings, there's no temptation to explore a site and, in an instant, real estate surfers will flit way. Without a system for recording who's coming and going and remembering who they are, the chances of making friends goes way down. Without tracking people, they'll just find someone else to love.

Making friends? Isn't that what Friendster and MySpace do? Most real estate agents (median age in the US, about 55) aren't usually connected to the hipster world of online connectivity, but they can learn something about one of the things the Internet does best -- link people who otherwise would never have "met." That linkage is the beginning of...well, buyers and sellers who need to know there's someone more human that the Wizard of Oz at the other end of a Realtor website. It's the beginning of building a business, day by day by click by click.

May 31, 2007 I'm going to be expounding on these themes as the speaker at Number1Expert.com's "Webinar" series for Realtors nationwide. Sounds like fun!

 

Bad News Business

Real estate is a funny business to outsiders. At dinner parties, they wink and say things like, "well, you certainly got into the right profession"...as dollar signs emanate from each wink. They also want assurance and advice that the did the right thing by buying this or that property. They love to hear stories from the trenches. I don't know about other Realtors, but I like talking business, I have lots of stories and enjoy these little interchanges.

Real estate is also cruel much of the time. Most people probably couldn't take it, the daily dose of crumbling deals, buyer offers that don't cut it and result in loser phone calls from listing agents just before bedtime, scary home inspections, sellers dying a thousand deaths each day their properties don't sell and suggesting if they lower the price, then how about adjusting your commission, as well?

Most cruel of all? Sellers with whom you have a cordial relationship of longstanding who choose to work with another agent out of expedience/financial gain/lack of loyalty.

Of all the cruelties, that's the one demanding a good cry. If you've developed a relationship with people, if they've been to your home and you to theirs and, through the years, they've thanked you profusely for putting them where they are...then, discovering they've listed with someone else is cause for hurt and upset and a smidgeon of bitterness. These feelings pass quickly, because there are other clients waiting who don't need to know that this is a bad day for you.

This week, people whom I've know for more than a decade, went elsewhere. They'd become friendly with an executive at another company and so were inviting me and a representative of that organization in for chats. Pollyanna that I am, I approached the appointment in a positive way because I couldn't quite believe that based on our history, they'd flick me off once I'd given them insight into preparing their home for the market and offered a competitive commission and my own energetic approach to doing the job well.

After waiting almost 3 weeks for their decision, I figured they were going in the other direction. Still, when word came, it hurt -- and why is it, to give you time to digest the disappointment, that people can't call you BEFORE the listing pops up on the MLS? The phone message came shortly after. In no way should this decision to interpreted as a criticism of your very real talents, Roberta.

No, of course not.

I was on my way to the office when I heard the news. I already have a cold, so it didn't take much to bring on red eyes and stuffed nose. I cancelled a lunch appointment and went home and made eggs, my favorite comfort food. My husband was running out to an important meeting and I didn't want to make a fuss. After all, he'd heard this little jag before. "Well, this hasn't happened a while," he said, sympathetically. No, it hasn't, but it still hurts.

Then, my Baldwin Dream Team colleague, Tamima Friedman, called to say the two offers she'd written yesterday had both been rejected. Our conversation was interrupted with news -- also not so good -- about a foreclosure we're involved in selling. Oh, just a day in the trenches. Then someone called me from Manhattan. He was in the City for a job interview today only and could he drive out to NJ to see some properties?

I dried my sniffles. I had been meaning to call the people who had rejected me, but what was the point? Over and out with that relationship. In with the new. That's what keeps you going in this business. That, and the loyalty and affection that most clients, through thick and thin, reserve for me. It's a blessing.

A Sigh of Relief

With real actors, at some point they get to see the show/movie they're in. Then, they go out and publicize it with a little confidence. In reality TV, no such luck. So, when my clients, friends and family continually asked me over the past months about "Bought & Sold," I just shrugged. Who knew what to expect? Until tonight, at least. A couple of short clips of the series are now up on YouTube. What a relief to see I come across plausibly, as myself! I'm really quite perceptive in one clip as a analyze the iffy influence on parents on their adult children's home-buying choices; and wonder why a delightful property hasn't sold in the other clip. You can go to http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=BoughtandSoldfromHGT to see exactly what I mean.

"There's no question, when you are an adult child and you bring your parents in to comment on your life decision, it can go all wrong...they can give out some really negative vibes." That's what I said. I am a parent, myself, and my kids, both adults living away from home (but not yet homeowners), often tell me to stop being so negative. I try! It's not exactly negativity I offer them. It's caution. It's fear. That overwhelming sense of parental protection so hard to kick, even after our kids have long proven that they can really do it -- life -- themselves. I know it well. So, I am well equipped to identify it and understand it when it rears up early on in a potential real estate transaction. The adult kids love a house. They come two or three times to see it. They obtain a mortgage preapproval. They visit schools and investigate commutes. Then, they bring mom and dad, some of whom will be gifting part or all of a down payment.

Parents of adult children may not have bought or sold a home of their own in decades, but they freely give advice and, in some instances, seem quite grim at the notion that their offspring are now ready to put down roots. Often they are just horrified by today's prices and their worry spills over, even if their child makes lots of money. They also may not get the new post-Millenium taste preferences or need to be near shops. Or, they don't feel their child is developmentally ready for home ownership.

What I can't do is intrude on that delicate family moment. I can explain about old houses. I can discuss the town in question. Wax fondly on my own experience in Essex County, NJ. Use my own children's attachment for the area as a way to show how wonderful the place is. And then, I wait. Sometimes the story ends happily. Sometimes, there is great support for and pride in the purchase, as it turns out in the episode you'll see in a few weeks on "Bought & Sold." Both sets of parents visit the sprawling wrap-around-porch Victorian in Glen Ridge, NJ the kids are buying. They enter the large foyer, admire the warming vintage fireplace by the door, gaze at the spacious living room and intricate bannister detail. Their hearts are open; their smiles and nods truly supportive. It is a wonderful thing to behold. I think to myself, if I could only bottle the pride and love in the room at this moment -- and sell it!

Brink of Stardom

More than two decades ago, I followed Lionel Richie around on tour, interviewed his friends, family and Commodore bandmates and (as Roberta Plutzik) wrote a book about him, the "authorized" biography of one of the biggest singing stars of his day. My agent thought it would be a bestseller, coming on the heels of the mega-selling Michael Jackson bio from the same publisher, but it didn't do nearly as well. People loved Lionel's records, but reading about him? Not really!

But the legacy continues willy nilly. A couple of years ago, I was taped as a talking head on the Lionel and Nicole biography on E!Entertainment, with billions of airings ensuing since. Now, on the brink of being on HGTV's "Bought & Sold," it seems like everybody is once more exclaiming, "I didn't know you wrote a biography of Lionel Richie."

The information is prominently mentioned in my bio on the HGTV website, further morphing this career curiosity into something strangely alive after so many years on the shelf. Actually, Dustin Hoffman was a lot more interesting to work with. A long time ago, I spent a day with Dustin for a profile piece. It was my second interview with him, the first having been on the set of "Kramer vs Kramer." We hopped in and out of taxis as he shopped for a Manhattan brownstone and I had a lot of fun and got some great, off-the-cuff quotes. He liked the piece when it came out and called me to say so (a personal celeb-journalism career high, that call!). I asked Dustin if I could write his biography, but he said he wasn't ready. Now that would have been a great Roberta Baldwin bio tidbit.

Managing Expectations

A very nice email arrived the other day: "I've really been enjoying your posts on suburbandigs.com and NJDreamHouses.com. I appreciate your common-sense insights and sense of humor. Your recent post, 'The Dream House' also got my attention because I often observe the same dismay in the eyes of many NYC buyers. As a Home Inspector, I frequently find myself having to manage the expectations of the buyer. Often, they have never been responsible for maintaining a home and they have grand expectations of the way their new (old) home 'should be'."

Following a weekend's real estate activity, we try to get "feedback" from other agents on our listings. On one million-dollar-plus listing, an agent told me: "They love the yard. They love the space. They love the detail. They love the location near the train. They don't like the fact that the is no double sink in the kitchen."

In fact, there are 2 sinks in that kitchen, but at opposite ends of the room! How annoying! Seriously, the aforementioned "grand expectations" that buyers exhibit may well be part of our "do anything to get it...whatever it takes" collective cultural perspective. Every week on "Survivor" or "American Idol," contestants swear they will do anything short of killing competitors to get what they want.

When this drive is applied to 50 and 100-year-old houses, it's tough. A century ago, children were "seen and not heard." There were few "family rooms." Sunrooms on the opposite side of the house from the kitchen were favored. Fifty years ago, basement dens far, far way from mom in the kitchen or dad in the garage were also popular.

Today, everybody wants to watch their kid play in rooms attached to the kitchen. Finished basements have also seen a resurgence of popularity, but I think that may be because so many people find old basements creepy and scary and having something in the house that isn't spiffily complete is hard to accept. Several times this past week, clients asked me how much it would cost to bust out the back of a home to create a den and to finish the basement.

So, when real estate agents show houses, what we're really doing is "managing expectations." Too small implies someone doesn't have enough money to live well. How can we make them feel better with what they have? Sometimes I feel as if I should be carrying milk and cookies on my travels with buyers. We should sit down in someone else's kitchen, nibble and sip, feel how it really is to BE in that home.

A good house is like a second skin. It makes you feel warm and content. Even if there is no great room off the kitchen, there are other pleasures to be had in the homeowning experience -- really!

(Tune in for more about real-estate expectations beginning April 29 at 10, when Roberta and colleagues at RE/MAX Village Square debut on HGTV's new series, "Bought & Sold.")