18 Questions For Every Home Seller (Part 18) e-book

18.       What if winning bidder won’t buy?

Online bidders who have validated their identity and provided credit card information take auctions seriously and rarely try to renege on their winning bids. If they should do so, a $300 or $500 penalty will be assessed; the second-highest bidder is then contacted and allowed to purchase the property.

If the winning bidder backs out after they send the cashier’s check for the earnest money deposit, the sale cannot be cancelled without the forfeit of the deposit funds (which usually is substantial more than the credit card penalty.) The non-refundable nature of the deposit funds was made clear in the terms and conditions agreed to by the winning bidder.

Additional services

Sellers unsure about meeting all mandatory disclosures required by the state, looking for help with marketing that will maximize your pool of serious buyers or bidders, or hoping for help with contracts? Oresy.com offers these services at a fraction of what standard real estate brokerages charge. These optional services will be handled by a real estate professional in your area:

●     Promote and conduct two open houses

●     Post the property on Oresy.com

●     Create a YouTube video “walkthrough”

●     Market the property worldwide (making sure your property will be found by major search engines and be “search engine optimized” for maximum visibility)

●     Oversee the online auction or negotiate a traditional real estate sale online

●     Gather all disclosures mandatory in your state

●     Order ‘Natural Hazard Disclosures’

●     Post the property on MLS as any broker would

●     Revise contracts after you receive offers/bids

●     Guide your sale through the escrow process

Value

When it comes to the bottom line, what does Oresy.com deliver? Here’s a representative example of how much our selling methods will save you?

Example property sale price: $300,000

	Commission paid (traditional broker)	Total	Savings
Traditional broker	6% commission	$18,000
Scenario 1: Sell on Oresy.com with a buyer’s agent	2.5% to buyer’s agent ($7,500) plus Oresy.com fee ($1,500)	$9,000	$9,000
Scenario 2: Sell on Oresy.com without a buyer’s agent	Oresy.com fee ($1,500)	$1,500	$16,500

Conclusion

Enormous changes are taking place today in the real estate industry. The ‘network effect’ of the Internet promises easier sales and better prices for sellers that leverage the most appropriate of the selling methods now available. Partner with professionals as appropriate for your property, the market you’re selling in, and your level of confidence in doing some or all of the work once done primarily by brokers and agents by yourself.

Most surprisingly for many sellers, online auctions have become a great path for many; the cost of selling is reduced by thousands of dollars and sellers are able to select among several methods of auction.

Whatever options you exercise in the end, we at Oresy.com hope this guide has opened your eyes to new options, clarified issues of greatest concern to would-be sellers, and helped you begin to formulate your path to the handshake that sells your property.

George Avram

Broker/Owner/Real Estate Auctioneer

Continental Realty Inc.

16 Crow Canyon Court Suite 100

San Ramon CA 94583

DRE# 01422589

925-548-5461

www.24by7bid.com

18 Questions For Every Home Seller (Part 13) e-book

13.       What's in a good offer?

Offers are absolutely not just about the price. Before you "ratify" the offer (sign on the bottom line to turn the offer into a contract), consider a few indicators of good offers.

If you don’t have a good agent, it helps to have an understanding of current real estate loan standards, such as interest rates, fees, and financing timelines to confirm that the offer's financing is not overly optimistic. Bonus points if the buyer is pre-approved (a lender has confirmed buyer's income, employment, etc.) since this means you're dealing with someone serious about purchasing rather than someone simply testing the waters.

A good offer is fairly simple: I want to pay you X dollars, this is how I'll pay you, and I want to finish this by date Y. But most offers contain at least one contingency clause that predicate the transaction on certain conditions being met. Don't be put off by this; the good news is that it means your buyer has at least given some careful consideration to the offer.

George Avram

Broker/Owner

Continental Realty, Inc.

16 Crow Canyon Court Suite 100

San Ramon CA 94583

925-548-5461

www.24by7bid.com

DRE# 01422589

HAPPY HOLIDAYS

18 Questions For Every Home Seller (Part 10) e-book

10.            How Are Homes Sold Today?

Current real estate trends are in serious flux. The Internet age has brought more information, services, and selling options than ever. Simultaneously, recent wild ups and downs of real estate markets around the world have made most buyers, sellers and lenders more cautious than ever. And even the old hands at real estate game who have bought and sold more than once before may not know about current selling methods.

Let’s take a look at the most important methods used today to sell homes in the United States. Keep in mind that each has advantages and each has limitations and costs. Every seller must decide which is right for their property, their market, and their financial considerations.

Traditional sales offline

The most familiar method of selling real estate in the past is your least likely option today: with or without the help of a broker, you estimate the value of your house to calculate an asking price, put out a “For Sale” sign, list the property in the real estate section of the local paper, hold open houses, and hold your breath for an offer in the ballpark of your expected price.

Traditional sales online

Anyone who uses a broker or auction service will automatically be listing their property on one or, more likely, many online sources. If you prefer the “For Sale By Owner” approach without a selling agent or broker, a quick online search will provide dozens of services that are happy to list your property. Some, like the site Oresy.com can list your home for free. 

Others provide very basic listings for free (and you should take advantage of as many of these as possible) with more comprehensive listings and promotional extras available for a fee. Be aware that some of these services exist only to collect your contact information so that a broker can then offer you his services.

Auction-based sales offline

Want to sell your house in a shorter, more predictable timeframe? Want to let the marketplace value your home instead of playing the guessing game of putting a price tag on your home? Want to avoid haggling with an interested buyer? Consider the auction-based alternatives. There are basically two varieties of auction-based sales offline for homes. Just about all auction methods allow you to select a few different kinds of auction. The most common type is the standard auction: the “outcry” model seen commonly in movies where bids begins very low and each successive bidder cries out a higher bid. When no other bids are heard, the last bid takes the item at that price. Dutch auctions begin with an astronomical price, which is dropped when no bidder is found. Eventually, a bidder likes a price and buys the item. The auction then often continues because other, similar items are still available. The auction continues with the price dropping until all items have been purchased. (Traditional real estate sales are essentially this method: a broker prices a home high when it debuts on the market, then typically drops it after a few months on the market. So patient, experienced buyers will wait until an attractive property drops and then drops again. If another buyer snaps up the property, the buyer simply waits for another attractive property to begin the process over again.)

One method employs a professional auction service. In exchange for marketing and auctioning the property, such services typically charge up to a whopping 10% of the final price. In exchange, the auction service not only conducts the auction; it also provides marketing services to attract a field of bidders. This method is analogous to using a broker to sell your home traditionally in that you are giving up a substantial chunk of your property’s value in exchange for professional help in the sale.

The other method resembles the “For Sale By Owners” approach in that you market the home yourself and conduct an auction yourself. This method, sometimes called the “5 Day” sale because the house can theoretically be placed on the market, marketed, shown, and auctioned in less than a week. The idea is to generate interest in the property by starting the bidding at about half the estimated value of the property, then showing the house for only one weekend so that potential buyers see each other at the Open House and competitive bidding is thereby encouraged.

If no competitive field of bidders emerges, the auction is cancelled and the process begins again a few weeks later. How can you hold an auction yourself? You don’t. Instead, you would use a conversational round-robin approach where buyers are not necessarily pre-approved and bids are not binding contracts. You simply talk to each bidder about their offer, then compare offers and find the highest. You return to the potential buyers and ask them to beat that offer. This continues until you have your highest bid. The seller can fall back on the second- or third-highest bids if the highest bidder is unable to secure financing or for any other reason backs out.

Auction-based sales online

The term “online auction” might suggest to you the sale of autographed baseballs, electronic gadgets, and maybe even automobiles at sites like eBay.com. But houses? How can anyone sell something as valuable, complicated, and life-changing as a home from a website?

As you’ve probably guessed, online auctions for homes resemble offline auctions and traditional real estate selling more than they do an eBay bidding war over rare LPs. You will need to market, inspect, and otherwise show and prepare your home for sale just as you would otherwise. The key difference with online auctions is the potential to eliminate some of the biggest selling expenses (the fee normally paid to brokers or conventional auction services) while harnessing the Internet to advance your marketing and to conduct the auction itself.

The advantages to online auctions are several: minimal expenses, broad marketing, and a variety of auction types so that you can choose the process that suits your needs. We’ll look more closely at these options in the Oresy.com section at the end of this book.

George Avram

Broker/Owner

Continental Realty, Inc.

16 Crow Canyon Court Suite 100

San Ramon CA 94583

925-548-5461

www.24by7bid.com

DRE# 01422589

Year's Failed-Bank Tally Rises to 92 with Closings in Arizona and Florida

Following a month without a single bank failure, state and federal regulators stepped in over the weekend to seize community-based lenders in Arizona and Florida after losses pushed the institutions’ capital levels below acceptable thresholds.
This latest pair of closings brings the FDIC’s tally of failed banks for the 2011 calendar year to 92. Officials with the FDIC have said for some time that institutional failures stemming from the real estate downturn and economic

recession have peaked and are now trending lower. The 92 failures as of mid-December this year is indeed well below the 157 that became insolvent in 2010 and 140 in 2009.
Western National Bank based out of Phoenix was closed late Friday by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which appointed the FDIC as receiver. Western National operated three branch locations, with $144.5 million in deposits and assets totaling $162.9 million.
The FDIC brokered a deal with Washington Federal, headquartered in Seattle, to assume all of the deposits of Western National Bank and purchase all of its assets. The FDIC says the Arizona bank’s failure will cost its insurance fund an estimated $37.6 million.
In Crestview, Florida, it was Premier Community Bank of the Emerald Coast that found regulators at its doors Friday evening. Premier Community Bank had two branches, $112.1 million in deposits, and $126.0 million in assets.
Summit Bank, N.A. in Panama City, Florida, agreed to step in and take over the failed institution, assuming all deposits and purchasing all of its assets. Premier Community Bank’s closing is expected to cost the FDIC $31.2 million. (Carrie Bay - dsnews.com)

18 Questions For Every Home Seller (Part 3) e-book

1.            What’s happening in real estate?

Just fifteen years ago, the real estate broker was at the center of most home sales. Sellers as well as buyers and agents depended on the broker and the broker’s “multiple listing services” book (MLS) to bring a property to the attention of the marketplace.

Online technology brought about a revolution in this marketplace as in so many others. The main change is the elimination of the middle man, a process known as disintermediation. For example, travel agents have been largely replaced by direct purchases from web sites and antiques are now often auctioned off online by the owner rather than in an auction house by an auctioneer.

In the 1990s, the first wave of Internet-driven change overtook the real estate business. For example, it quickly became possible to comparison shop for home loans among many, many lenders. As real estate services moved online, the online MLS became available to agents as well.

More recently, such listing services have become accessible to the consumer. Individual buyers can now search real estate listings almost as easily and thoroughly as a veteran broker or agent, and indeed most home buyers today begin on their own, browsing listings. Finding a compelling listing, these buyers might visit and even bid on a property before they have ever consulted a real estate agent or broker.

To be sure, real estate brokers and agents are still consulted -- particularly by those accustomed to the traditional business model. But the process of disintermediation continues and there is simply too much money involved in the purchase or sale of your home for a seller not to ask: what is my agent doing to earn a percentage of my home? Why can’t I do that job to avoid handing over a piece of my home’s value? Much of this book will address such “value proposition” questions and the corollary, is there an agent or consultant who really is indispensable and worth the expense?

Stopping by Carl’s office

“Carl, how did you sell your home? I heard you sold it online in an auction?

“That’s right. We considered auctions because I had a new job to start and renting for months looked really expensive. But the auction not only sold the house in a couple of weeks. It also fetched us a competitive price and cut our broker fees dramatically.

“I’ve auctioned off skis and a computer online. But a house?

Well, you’re right. A house isn’t the same as a household commodity like skis -- you need a specialized online auction service where serious buyers are following the listings. I used Oresy.com.

“I don’t get it. Who’s going to bid hundreds of thousands of dollars based just on a few pictures online?

“No, that wouldn’t work. Actually, you market the house like crazy and photos of the properties do go up on the site. The point isn’t to sell them on the house via photos but to convince them to see the property in person. Then you ‘Open House’ previews, provide inspection reports, and so on. The bidding happens online in a fixed timeframe.

We’ll look at Oresy.com and the process of selling your property there in the last section of this book.