May 14th, 2007 Bob
The real estate industry has many long standing traditions which are being tested in today’s market. Fees as a percentage of sales price were once a given in every real estate transaction– that’s a fancy way of saying that the price of your house dictates how much we make for selling it. But this tradition is being challenged as never before.
The Internet has empowered consumers with an abundance of information, making them better able to negotiate and ask the right questions before hiring any service professional.
Experience Matters
Yes, it does. But I’m talking about the home-selling experience of the consumer. Once you sell a home or two of your own, it becomes obvious that the real estate sales professionals you hired are all basically doing the same thing. And that’s the point I’m trying to make: Why should the price of your home dictate how much you spend to hire someone to sell it if that person is basically doing the same things to sell an $800,000 house and a $400,000 house? Our answer is that it shouldn’t. This is why flat fee listing makes so much sense.
What we do on each home we list
- MLS and Internet marketing: you’ll be on the local MLS, Zillow, Trulia, and craigslist
- Yard sign
- Lock box
- Professional Showing Service (verifies and schedules showings for brokers who want to bring clients to see your home)
- Virtual Tour (5 video shots and 6 professional still shots of every home)
- 100 Professional Glossy Fliers: we don’t make them, an actual professional does, but we pay for them.
- Legal help:
- we take care of all the paperwork, contracts, negotiations, and closing
- CMA: we’ll look at all the sold homes and current listed homes in your area to help you determine the best sales price of your house.
We’re not a traditional real estate company
Absolutely not. We know that our service is not for everyone. We ask our clients to do a couple of things to help us keep our costs down. Things like:
- Hold your own open houses: we feel that you are the best person to hold the open house because your motivation is to sell your house, and you know the most about it. We’ll advertise the open house for you and will provide you with open house signs.
- Refill the flier box when it gets low.
- Communicate with us via email, phone, fax, and our website. If you’re the kind of person who wants lots of face-time with your agent then we may not be the company for you. Our primary means of communication with all of our clients is through our incredible website, telephone, email, and faxing for documents. We actually require that all of our clients have access to a fax machine, and email in order to work with us. There’s lots of Kinkos locations in our service area if you don’t own a fax machine, and many of our clients receive faxes this way.
We think it makes sense to charge clients the same price for the same service. It doesn’t matter to us what your house price is. We’ll offer you the same outstanding service for the same price every time. There’s no sliding scale, no hidden fees, no caveats. Just one low price for an effective marketing package every time.
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May 13th, 2007 Bob
Our company would like to wish all the Moms out there a very Happy Mother’s Day.
We enjoyed our Mother’s Day with another terrific meal at the Village Bistro on 120th Ave in Westminster. A wonderful brunch for our little family.
Best wishes to all the moms!
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May 12th, 2007 Bob
Here’s a quick look at some Boulder, Colorado real estate stats for 2007. 
| Statistics for Boulder |
| Prepared 05/11/2007 |
| 1 Qtr. (2007) |
| Category |
# Sold |
Sales Volume |
Avg Price |
Median Price |
| Residential |
173 |
125,804,232 |
727,192 |
580,000 |
| Attached |
144 |
39,284,733 |
272,810 |
256,625 |
| Income |
15 |
18,052,850 |
1,203,523 |
720,000 |
| Lease |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
| Commercial |
7 |
3,066,000 |
438,000 |
498,000 |
| Vacant Land |
2 |
1,255,000 |
627,500 |
627,500 |
| Farms |
1 |
824,000 |
824,000 |
824,000 |
| 2 Qtr. (2007) |
| Category |
# Sold |
Sales Volume |
Avg Price |
Median Price |
| Residential |
85 |
54,410,795 |
640,127 |
539,000 |
| Attached |
105 |
27,878,431 |
265,508 |
239,000 |
| Income |
5 |
5,769,500 |
1,153,900 |
1,070,000 |
| Lease |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
| Commercial |
4 |
5,410,000 |
1,352,500 |
1,300,000 |
| Vacant Land |
1 |
412,500 |
412,500 |
412,500 |
| Farms |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
Another list compiled for the NAR:
| Colorado Association of REALTORS |
AREA: Boulder County |
| Housing Statistics |
MONTH: April 2007 |
| |
BD/ASSN: Longmont & Boulder |
| |
| UNITS SOLD BY TYPE & BEDROOMS |
| Single Family Unit Sales |
| Price Class |
2 or Less |
3 |
4 or more |
Condos |
| $0 - $29,999 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
| $30,000 - $39,999 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
| $40,000 - $49,999 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
| $50,000 - $59,999 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
| $60,000 - $69,999 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
| $70,000 - $79,999 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
| $80,000 - $89,999 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
| $90,000 - $99,999 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
2 |
| $100,000 - $119,999 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
2 |
| $120,000 - $139,999 |
1 |
4 |
0 |
13 |
| $140,000 - $159,999 |
2 |
5 |
2 |
17 |
| $160,000 - $179,999 |
4 |
2 |
0 |
14 |
| $180,000 - $199,999 |
4 |
3 |
4 |
17 |
| $200,000 - $249,999 |
1 |
16 |
8 |
36 |
| $250,000 - $299,999 |
3 |
20 |
9 |
17 |
| $300,000 - $399,999 |
2 |
17 |
41 |
21 |
| $400,000 - $499,999 |
2 |
11 |
27 |
2 |
| $500,000 - $599,999 |
3 |
7 |
16 |
1 |
| $600,000 - $699,999 |
0 |
12 |
5 |
0 |
| $700,000 - $799,999 |
0 |
3 |
7 |
2 |
| $800,000 - $899,999 |
0 |
3 |
8 |
1 |
| $900,000 - $999,999 |
1 |
1 |
4 |
0 |
| $1,000,000 and over |
0 |
2 |
17 |
0 |
| Total |
23 |
106 |
148 |
145 |
| UNIT SALES BY TIME ON MARKET |
| |
Single Family Unit |
Condo/Co-op |
| 1 - 30 days |
36 |
16 |
| 31 - 60 days |
69 |
37 |
| 61 - 90 days |
44 |
35 |
| 91 - 120 days |
32 |
10 |
| More than 120 days |
96 |
47 |
|
Total # of Active Listings
Single Family
End of Month |
2318 |
| |
|
Total # of Active Listings
Condo/Co-op
End of Month |
977 |
| |
|
Total $ Volume Sold
Single Family Units |
$133,609,295 |
| |
|
Total $ Volume Sold
Condo/Co-op |
$33,926,671 |
| |
|
Single Family Unit Sales
by Type of Financing |
| Conventional Fixed |
229 |
| Conventional ARM |
16 |
| VA Fixed |
0 |
| VA ARM |
0 |
| Owner Will Carry |
0 |
| Assumption |
0 |
| FHA Fixed |
7 |
| FHA ARM |
0 |
| Private |
1 |
| Cash |
19 |
| Other |
5 |
| TOTAL |
277 |
|
| Source: IRES, LLC database, prepared 05/12/2007 |
|
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May 11th, 2007 Bob
The best design and motion graphics studio in Denver is Blue Fruit. Jason Metter owns and operates the company and we feel lucky to have worked with him on our design elements.
Take a look at his latest design on the wrap for our company car:
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May 9th, 2007 Bob
And Realtors wonder why we get such a bad rap? I don’t. I’ve had several calls this week from potential buyers who have made contact with the Listing agent over the past few weeks and now they want me to represent them as a buyer’s rep. Unfortunately, I can’t do it.
Why not?
Procuring Cause. It’s one of the dirty little secrets of the real estate industry. A listing agent who goes out to a property to show some potential buyers his/her listing gets an offer from these buyers a few days or weeks later submitted by a buyer’s agent whom the potential buyers never mentioned. The listing agent can now claim procuring cause, and if the transaction closed, he/she can go after the buyer’s reps commission. Basically, the listing agent can claim he/she was the primary reason that the buyers ended up purchasing the property. All because he showed them the property first.
Sounds kind of like a dog pissing on his territory doesn’t it? Trust me, it’s about as graceful and evolved as watching a mangy mutt mark his territory. Greed, plain and simple.
But the agent’s job should be to sell the house, you say. I agree. Totally. Is it so difficult to open the doors of your listing to someone who may be interested in buying it?
Sad.
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May 8th, 2007 Bob
So you’re a residential specialist who wants to try commercial real estate on for size. Why? Because a client of yours wants to buy commercial space for his growing business, you’ve helped him with finding a home in the past and he figures- hey, why not ask you? You seemed to know what you were talking about last time we did a deal.
This is a recipe for disaster. For both the agent and her client. The person who came to me with this scenario was about to make a huge mistake. I urged her to hand it over to someone with some experience.
Commercial real estate is a totally different ball-game with rules that are more complicated, and players who are generally much more experienced than the average residential specialists.
And while the average residential deal sails smoothly from the contract, to counter, through inspections, to closing. The average commercial deal involves multiple lawyers on both sides, hard core negotiations, complex building code, tax issues, property valuation, and players who are accustomed to swimming with and surrounded by sharks. I’m not suggesting that these are unscrupulous people, just the opposite. These are players who respect experience and will not cut you any slack if you’re a residential rookie taking her first dip in commercial waters. Your mistakes will cost you money. Period.
Leave it to the experts. We like Barbara Jaynes at The Laramie Company. She’s tough, smart, and has 17 years experience.
Barbara’s info:
Barbara@laramiecompany.com, phone: 303-573-0302
And for those of you residential specialists who may think that we’re fishing for referral fees: we’re not. I’ve never liked referral fees, and I won’t take one for sending someone to Barbara. Our company policy is that we don’t pay out referral fees and we don’t accept them when we refer business to other brokers.
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May 7th, 2007 Bob
Leave it to a biker’s mecca like Boulder to come up with that name for its newest condo development project. For those of you who never got a chance to watch the incredible Texan Lance Armstrong spank the French for an unprecedented seven straight years on the Tour, a peloton is the main group of riders in a bike race.
With prices starting in the 300’s, The Peloton takes its place on the Boulder real estate scene by offering amenities like:
- on-site dog park for off-leash roaming…that’s huge in Boulder, as it’s a pretty big dog town
- proximity to 29th Street shopping
- Pearl Street eateries, shopping and crowd-watching
- CU campus
If you’d like more information about this or any other chunk of Boulder real estate, just give us a call at 303-415-2541, or visit our website.
For those of you who are actively searching for a condo or other real estate in Colorado right now, here is the scedule for The Peloton taken right from the developer’s website:
- Spring 2006: Site deconstruction and other site preparation work
- Summer 2006: Construction began on residences and the parking garage
- Fall 2006: Pre-sale activities began
- Fall 2006: Construction begins on the community building
- Summer 2007: Community building is completed
- Early 2008: The first residences are complete
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May 6th, 2007 Bob
Anthony Valdez of ElkHorn Enterprises is an honest man. I had him come out to my house recently to take a look at my shake roof, with the idea that I’d need partial replacement of the front portion as that’s what several other roofers have told me.
Anthony immediately cautioned against jumping in and replacing entire sections as it would be costly and might not address the real issue: flashing. My roof repairs might be as simple as replacing a little strip of metal where the roof meets the walls.
It’s wonderful to run across a man who takes his job seriously and is fighting to save me money from day-one. It’s a subject that’s close to my heart as my own company attempts to save our clients as much money as possible.
So if you have a cedar shake roof and live in the Metro Denver and Boulder area, give Anthony a call at 303-564-8669.
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May 3rd, 2007 Bob
Have you seen hotpads.com yet? If you are looking for a rental then you should flat-out run to this website. hotpads probably can’t threaten craigslist as far as overall listings and, obviously, brand recognition. But just give these guys a chance. I predict that within 18 months hotpads will become one of the top online destinations for renters searching for a place to live.
Why will HotPads rise so quickly?
In real estate, as the old adage goes, it’s location, location, location. hotpads sticks to the online version of this adage with: user-interface, user-interface, user-interface. They’ve got some great, intuitive tools, a cool look, and tons of information. All set up in a way that makes in convenient, fun, and incredibly usable.
Just take a look at their heatmaps below:
Anyone looking for stats on an area will be thrilled with the heatmaps offered by hotpads. Again, this is a site geared towards Colorado renters. If you are interested in Colorado real estate, then you should visit our site to begin your home search.
Once in a while I get customers who are looking for inexpensive housing, and sometimes when the harsh reality of the market sets in, especially if these folks are searching for Boulder real estate, then I’ll advise them that a rental might be more inline with their current situation. Inevitably, then next question they ask is: “can you help me find a rental?”. Now I’ll have an answer for them. Go to hotpads.com.
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May 2nd, 2007 Bob
One of the great things about living in Colorado is having such easy access to nature. If you’ve ever visited the South Denver Metro city of Littleton then you might remember it as a great suburb of Denver. A place where you can get a great house, for a good price, and your kids can attend some really fine schools.
But did you also know that Littleton sports one of the Front Range region’s best mountain bike trails? Check out Waterton Canyon if you ever get the chance. It’s a phenomenal trail with some of the most spectacular views imaginable.
Just another reason to love this state!
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