Should I Buy a House in the Bay Area?–Running the Numbers

Home_page043005The Real Estate Cafe is redesigning it’s main web site and we’d like to invite our clients and others to comment on some DRAFT text.  Would the following three keywords and positioning statements make you want to work with us rather than one of our competitors?

RECREATE
As nationally recognized consumers advocates, The Real Estate Cafe has been pioneering new business models that help home buyers and sellers save billions of dollars for more than a decade.

COLLABORATE
The Real Estate Cafe partners with it’s do-it-yourself, tech savvy clients and rewards them with unrivaled commission rebates.  You can also pay for our services "a la carte" on an hourly and flat fee.

EDUCATE
Knowledge is power and The Real Estate Cafe teaches its clients how to "beat the system" through educational seminars, blogs on important topics like the real estate bubble, and peer-to-peer communication through it’s unique "Tipping Policy" where we PAY YOU for your opinion!

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Educating & celebrating “do-it-yourself” clients in real estate

DewarswantedOver the past decade, The Real Estate Cafe has had the privilege of working with some extraordinary home buyers and sellers who are not afraid of doing parts of their own real estate transactions, and who do extraordinary things in their own personal and professional lives, too. 

To launch our new "FSBOs on Steriods" seminars and to celebrate our 10th anniversary, we will profile a number of past "do-it-yourself" clients through a series of "Do’ers profiles."  Some of our baby boomer clients and blog readers will remember the original "Dewar’s profiles" from the 1970’s, or it’s recent revival.  The Real Estate Cafe’s current and past clients are notable, too:  one recent Cambridge client is building a "do-it-yourself" air craft in his garage, and another friend is one of the nation’s leading advocates for "do-it-yourself" funerals. 

What’s the "do-it-yourself" movement got to do with real estate?  That story will unfold in subsequent blog postings.  Stay tuned to learn how you can save thousands of dollars in your own real estate transactions by doing some of the work yourself, and hiring professional help "a la carte" from The Real Estate Cafe’s menu of services.  If you are thinking of selling your own home, visit our step-by-step guide online or attend one of our upcoming seminars to learn how you can save money and save lives by "doing-it-yourself."

What’s in a [real estate blog] name?

The excerpt below was sent to a fellow real estate blogger in San Francisco who wanted to know why The Real Estate Cafe named it’s blog, "Counter Intelligence:"

"Over the past decade, we’ve used a handful of restaurant metaphors to communicate that we provide services to our clients "a la carte," and that we’ve encouraged our customers, clients, and any others to share their perspectives peer-to-peer to get a more insight into what’s really happening in different segments of the real estate market in Greater Boston and beyond. 

In cafes, those kinds of conversations usually occur over coffee tables and sometimes at lunch counters.  Since the real estate industry puts out so much self-serving spin (see our recent blog post on the National Association of Realtors anti-bubble reports), we felt it is important to provide a forum for alternative perspectives, hence the name "Counter Intelligence." 

Call it anything you like, we’re delighted when anyone visits our site, and doubly delighted when they share their opinion in writing or by calling our reader line, 617-876-2117, and recording a brief sound bite [for our real estate podcasts]. 

New Kinds of Real Estate Services

5060pageviewsThe self-sufficiency and perseverance displayed by some of The Real Estate Cafe’s clients is simply amazing!  This particular client, an out of state buyer, has viewed over 5,000 pages of MLS listings via our self-service "virtual office website (VOW).  Needless to say, that would be an exhausting and expensive task if one of our agents were doing the work.  Instead, the buyer does their own work, making the process more efficient and less expensive for themselves.

One of our goals is to invite our clients, and blog readers, to share their perspectives on the housing market, neighborhoods, and "extreme househunting" techniques they have developed on their own.  As comments come in, we’ll share them here so check back often.  If you are already one of our clients, call us at 617-661-4046 or email RECafe@mac.com to find out how you can earn commission rebates by posting comments to this blog.  True to the metaphor of a cafe, we call it The Real Estate Cafe’s "Tipping Policy."

Wouldn’t you love to talk to another home buyer who has looked at 5,000 homes online?  That’s the kind of peer-to-peer conversation The Real Estate Cafe is hoping to host online and off in 2005 via this blog and our upcoming series of educational and networking events.  Stay tuned for more information.

Real time “comps”

Link to recent press post Inman re "real time real estate."

Instead of developing a "CMA" type of report that describes sold data, I’ve
been using the "pending date" instead of the sold date.

 
Reason?  The market is changing so much on a daily or monthly basis,
that considering "comps" may not be as accurate if the sold date is used, as
much as using the "pending date."  If you develop a list of 6 houses that
sold in August to compare those sales with an offer you’re making today, then
what if the market has been in a decline since March?  How much of a value
difference may there be from properties that went pending in the spring,
compared to a property on the market now?
 
Some, if not all of those 6 "comps" could have sold last spring.  As
we know, listing agents and appraisers will often use the "comps" that best fit
the subject being appraised rather than an objective assessment of the sales
data.
 
So, next time you structure some type of analysis, why not use "pending
dates" instead of "sold dates" to make any comparison to a subject property
you’re trying to negotiate for on behalf of your buyer clients?
 
I suggested this to one of the "honest" appraises we typically use
here…he said he’s only using month old "comps" because there is an ongoing
decline in values here.

Alternative fees for home buyers: Still the “Unfinished [r]Evolution”?

Four years ago, June 7, 2004, Banker & Tradesman quoted The Real Estate Cafe in a page one story entitled, "MLS Policy Statement Fuels Commission War."  The skip page read:

Unfinished Evolution

During the last decade or so, alternative services — such as flat-fee, listing-only or fee-for-service models — have been offered to home sellers, but there haven’t been a tremendous amount of choice for buyers, according to Wendel. 

This is one of the untold and unfinished pieces of this [real estate r]evolution," he said.  Wendel, who charges $100 an hour rather than charging a commission, has been offering a full menu of services to both buyers and sellers for the last 10 years.

Do you think the residential brokerage community now offers enough alternatives to the traditional real estate commission?  What kind of money-saving options would you like The Real Estate Cafe to add to it’s Menu of Fees & Rebates?  Should we bring back our $3,000 and $5,000 flat fees, first offered when we opened in 1995, or continue to focus on hourly fees?

Would you like to see the traditional, two-sided real estate brokerage commission uncoupled so home buyers and sellers can BOTH maximize savings in an open, competitive market place?  If you are not familiar with the issue, watch this 90 second video.  Why hasn’t this happened already, and what will it take to get there?  Your ideas are welcome on the "divorcing" commissions section of our wiki, or in the comments section below. 

See what we mean about the "Unfinished [r]Evolution" in real estate brokerage fees?

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