Biggest RE lessons learned/mistakes made

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:


What is hard is that you can't really separate the wheat from the chaff until you've signed the contract and started working with an agent. This from a recent buyer whose buyer's agent did a great job representing the seller of our current home.

Of course they did. A buyer's agent is in name only... they know where their commission check is coming from.

70% idiots, 25% crooks, 5% ethical and helpful professionals - that's about my experience.

Realtor and my experience too

+1, and I am a realtor as well. I am consistently amazed by the poor service in this field. I just sold a 1.5 million dollar home, and the buyer's agent let the radon contingency lapse. We are not jerks, so we still allowed them to do the radon test, but they ended up paying for it themselves, as well as the mitigation. Her laziness cost them $1000, just like that. Every time I called her, she was "out to dinner" and could never talk to me. What? If I am out to dinner and you send me a counter offer for my clients to initial, I'm getting up from dinner and getting some initials so we can get the house! Her clients lived in Potomac, and she was on the older side, but she had NO HUSTLE whatsoever. The younger agents have some hustle, but no experience. Most Redfin agents that I have worked with (and I bought my third investment property with Redfin) are the worst. The realtor I worked with didn't even own a home - I was teaching her stuff (it was at that point that I got my own license). Personally, I am a licensed attorney, I own multiple properties, I am a landlord, I have built properties from the ground up, and when it comes down to it, I just have a great instinct for real estate and truly love doing it. I have a lot of hustle and am a bit of a bulldog, and that is why I have successful buyers in this crazy market. I'll never forget a listing agent saying to me, "we had a better offer, but because you were so responsive and professional, we went with you guys." My listings are cleaned, staged, professionally photographed, and marketed beautifully. I don't understand why some (MANY) realtors allow such crappy photos of their listings.

Hi there fellow 20 percenter as in 20 percent of the agents do 80 percent of the business. Although in my market it is slipping to 10 percent.
Everything you say is true but my favorite is people who call me to see my listings because they don't want to bother their agent. Damn straight I will show them the listing and sell the benefits of the house to them. When their absentee agent writes the offer, I struggle through the transaction because that is why I am paid to do. After closing, I start getting referrals from the buyers and when the buyers sell in two years, they call me not their buyer agent. The public recognizes the value in a good agent, but there are so few of us. Fine by me -- easy to compete against the 80-90 percenters

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Change your HVAC air filters ever 3 months
Get your dryer vents cleaned yearly (fire risk)
If your plumbing has a studor vent (look it up), replace it every 5 years (learned this the hard way)
Install a battery backup on any sump pumps
Get your gutters cleaned regularly
Dont' let small maintenance items build up -- they will become bigger problems later.

Is there a service to clean dryer vents?

Any handyman service does it.

[Anonymous]

Don't trust realtors to act in your best interest.
Check next door for bad neighbors, meth labs, etc.
Don't get too wigged out by inspection reports
Don't buy a house near water or flood zone

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Don't buy a house where the bordering neighbor planted bamboo.

Just walk away.

+1

[Anonymous]

Buy in zones with GS ratings of 9 or higher
Buy as new as possible
Try to teardown and rebuild if you want maximum profit

[Anonymous]

It all comes down to price.

Not getting any showings? It's the price.

Getting showings but not offers? It's the price.

Getting offers but no closing? It might be something else...but it probably still has something to do with the price.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It all comes down to price.

Not getting any showings? It's the price.

Getting showings but not offers? It's the price.

Getting offers but no closing? It might be something else...but it probably still has something to do with the price.

As a buyer, how can I know for sure if the house is getting showings or offers?

[Anonymous]

I'm so glad we went with a discount realtor like Redfin when we sold our condo.

It sold 2 days before it was supposed to come on the market for over asking price. The realtor hardly did anything. We took the "coming soon" pictures ourselves. They never even had to take the professional photos or have an open house. I realize how insanely lucky we were to be in that situation.

It would've broken my heart to pay 2.5% to someone who just did a consultation, 30 minutes of negotiation, and reviewed the contracts for a couple hours.

If you price appropriately and are in a decent neighborhood, there's no reason not to go with a discount realtor.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Buy in zones with GS ratings of 9 or higher
Buy as new as possible
Try to teardown and rebuild if you want maximum profit

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do not trust realtors. Even if you've done extreme due diligence, interviewed a few, and picked one that comes with great referrals from people you know. Just don't trust them. They are playing with your money, and their incentive is much more to push you fast and to either bid high (if you're a buyer) or accept a low offer (if you're a seller). Get their input, but verify it is what is actually best for you.

Read the chapter in Freakonomics about realtors if you want proof.

My neighbor, a realtor, pretended to be a friend for 8 years while I lived in the house. I figured I would use him to sell when ready.

After I signed the paperwork, he began pushing for selling to the latest/lowest bidder. Day of closing, he somehow altered the contract to include some additional BS fees. I called him out on it, his face turned red, and everyone around the table was disappointed in him. terrible experience.


After the house sold, both him and his wife gave me the cold shoulder as if we are now strangers. what a long con he played.

+1

Thank you fro bringing this up. This is a very common problem. NEVER hire a "friend" or neighbor as your realtor. Ever.

Agreed. You'll be surprised at how many of the people around you are agents or trying to be. Dh and I toyed with moving for a few years and if ever it came up, agents appeared out of nowhere. People I wouldn't trust the care of plants were pushing to be our agent. Every other sahm I know is trying to do real estate. So many people will push themselves or a relative on you. Don't do it!
It ruined my relationship with my salon guy because I wouldn't consider his brother who has exactly 1 real estate transaction. Because of the nature of the work, agents, particularly those starting out, have the deportment of a late night tv telemarketer or televangelist.

+1

Every SAHM is a "realtor". No thanks.

But only after they fail at MLM and staging

+1

Not all realtors are bad, but do not go with a "neighborhood" realtor, or a "friend" or relative. Ever. There wis also a poster that REALLY hates realtors, and must have been burned rather badly. Use one or not, but a few are quite good at what they do. If you can't afford one, fine - but there are a few good ones.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Avoid buying a house with big trees on the lot. Huge hassle and expense keeping them trimmed, dealing not just with leaves in the fall but branches and debris falling year round.

Oh good lord. This is just stupid. What would you recommend? Bradford pears?

+1

Crazy. Be careful who you listen to. LOL.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Avoid buying a house with big trees on the lot. Huge hassle and expense keeping them trimmed, dealing not just with leaves in the fall but branches and debris falling year round.

Oh good lord. This is just stupid. What would you recommend? Bradford pears?

+1

Crazy. Be careful who you listen to. LOL.

In the first 15 mph wind, those Bradford pears will snap in two.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Avoid buying a house with big trees on the lot. Huge hassle and expense keeping them trimmed, dealing not just with leaves in the fall but branches and debris falling year round.

You learn something new with every buy and this is what we learned with our last home. I can't believe we didn't notice that our home was south of all the old growth trees. They were all leaning over our home. Poor root systems and rotted trees that looked healthy meant that every wind we had deadfall- from small and annoying to huge branches that would kill someone. The trees were in a no mans land that national parks/DC would not claim but apparently we couldn't trim them. So much junk would drop in our pool from the tulip poplars and our pool cover was torn several times by falling branches, furniture was broken, slate was cracked from large branches falling. The finale was a tree falling in the derecho and our SUV being totaled.

I still love trees though- I'm just more careful and notice them before I buy.

[Anonymous]

Water, water, water. It can be the biggest threat to your home. And this may be kind of off topic but "don't sell." As in, if you can, when you're ready to move on from house #1, try to rent it out if you can get within $100-200 of the monthly mortgage payment. That renter can continue building your equity in that property, which one day could be a valuable source of income.

Signed, someone who wishes they had held on to their condo in LA from the mid-2000s.

[Anonymous]

Don't buy a house with someone you are not married to.