J. Philip's Briarcliff, Ossining & Westchester Real Estate Blog

I was contacted by an Associated Press reporter who was writing a story on the housing market in the Northeast, and the story ran yesterday. This is the 2nd time in a month I have been contacted by a national news outlet with a subsequently appearance in their venue. Last month it was ABC World News. You should have seen my 2-year old son go nuts when he saw Daddy on the TV. 

This time around, I asked the reporter how she found me, and she said "Active Rain." 

The only appropriate thing to say is THANK YOU, Active Rain. 

One of my clients was also interviewed, and she is quoted in the story. Since the object of all marketing is to get found, it is a powerful testimony to consistent blogging that if a reporter can find me, so can a consumer. And they are. 

Search the MLS like an agent here. New York's Premier Short Sale REALTOR. Read my short sale bog here. See the New York Photo blog here. J. Philip Serves Briarcliff Manor, Ossining, the River Towns, Westchester County, and the bedroom counties of New York City.

 

• J. Philip Faranda, Broker-owner, J. Philip Real Estate, LLC. 2010 Vice President, Westchester-Putnam Multiple Listing Service. 
• Read my short sale blog here. 
• J. Philip Serves Briarcliff Manor, Ossining, Croton, the River Towns, Westchester County, and the bedroom counties of New York City.
• Free MLS Search! Register for a Free Listingbook account and search the MLS like an agent. 
• I'm hiring agents. 
• Agents: Subscribe to the 40 Somethings Group. Reach Phil at (914) 723-8900.

All content/images, unless noted, are the property of J. Philip Faranda & may not be used without permission

According REALIST, to the public data provider for the Westchester -Putnam Multiple Listing Service, the median price for a single family home in April of 2009 was $491,250. After peaking at over $700,000 in 2005, this is the first time in a long time the median price has fallen below half a million dollars. 

We are also at a low ebb for transaction totals; 2008 was a deplorable year, with fewer than 4000 titles transferred. 2009 is on pace for fewer than 2500 single family homes sold. In 2005 there were over 6000 sales. 

This means that home values have dropped almost 30% from their peak and transaction totals are down almost 60%. 

The available inventory remains high thanks to the flood of REO's entering the market weekly. As unsustainable as the Bubble may have been, the decline in wealth is staggering. We aren't out of the woods by a long shot, my friends. 

Search the MLS like an agent here. New York's Premier Short Sale REALTOR. Read my short sale bog here. See the New York Photo blog here. J. Philip Serves Briarcliff Manor, Ossining, the River Towns, Westchester County, and the bedroom counties of New York City.

 

• J. Philip Faranda, Broker-owner, J. Philip Real Estate, LLC. 2010 Vice President, Westchester-Putnam Multiple Listing Service. 
• Read my short sale blog here. 
• J. Philip Serves Briarcliff Manor, Ossining, Croton, the River Towns, Westchester County, and the bedroom counties of New York City.
• Free MLS Search! Register for a Free Listingbook account and search the MLS like an agent. 
• I'm hiring agents. 
• Agents: Subscribe to the 40 Somethings Group. Reach Phil at (914) 723-8900.

All content/images, unless noted, are the property of J. Philip Faranda & may not be used without permission

I was contacted by someone out of the blue asking me to show them a home for sale in Eastchester. They found it on Zillow, which isn't uncommon. I looked up the address on the MLS and it came back with "no properties found." Checking Zillow revealed that the home was for sale by owner. So I called the owner and set up an appointment as if I were calling any other home listed for sale. No sheepish query if they were cooperating with brokers or explanation of my intentions. "When can I show it."

Thursday. So I showed it Thursday. The outcome is irrelevant to my point (no interest from the buyer if you are keeping score), but these people are smart to cooperate with brokers. I don't think I was the only one to contact them, so maybe someone else primed the pump. The more eyeballs on the house, the more likely it will sell. And people working with agents are the more serious (and qualified) buyers.

Will the people save money selling themselves? I highly doubt it. The sale of real estate has too many moving parts to be reduced to a bottom line increased by the addition of a broker fee. I recall, for instance, a home seller whose ineptitude killed half a dozen deals for over $700,000 who finally sold after a year for $600,000. But he saved on the commission. Forget that he lost tens of thousands of dollars in the process! 

Search the MLS like an agent here. New York's Premier Short Sale REALTOR. Read my short sale bog here. See the New York Photo blog here. J. Philip Serves Briarcliff Manor, Ossining, the River Towns, Westchester County, and the bedroom counties of New York City.

 

• J. Philip Faranda, Broker-owner, J. Philip Real Estate, LLC. 2010 Vice President, Westchester-Putnam Multiple Listing Service. 
• Read my short sale blog here. 
• J. Philip Serves Briarcliff Manor, Ossining, Croton, the River Towns, Westchester County, and the bedroom counties of New York City.
• Free MLS Search! Register for a Free Listingbook account and search the MLS like an agent. 
• I'm hiring agents. 
• Agents: Subscribe to the 40 Somethings Group. Reach Phil at (914) 723-8900.

All content/images, unless noted, are the property of J. Philip Faranda & may not be used without permission

I have blogged before about the difficulties Zillow has caused. Typically, their "Zestimate" has caused people to 2nd guess the more accurate evidence on the ground and either over or undervalue a home, killing a possible transaction. The galling thing about it is that the more compelling evidence is right under their nose from the MLS, but that one number on a zillow page (which, by Zillow's own admission is typically off by 11% or more in Westchester County) has killed everything. 

However, this past week, Zillow zigged instead of zagged. My seller clients were agonizing over whether or not to accept an offer; the buyer on the other side was a parent buying a home for their son and his family. Pre approval letters help, but after several stops and starts in a 9-month odyssey, nothing could be taken at face value. I saw accepting the offer as an acceptable risk; my clients were once-bitten and twice shy and sought more certainty about the buyer. 

It is a daunting question. Is the buyer for real? Is the buyer qualified? Can this person really afford to buy a home for their son? Just where do they live now? That question resonated. I was asked if I could look the prospective buyer's address on Zillow for some insight. The address was on the binder, so we looked it up. Since Zillow's median margin of error in Rockland county is under 10%, we could expect a reasonable ballpark figure, as well as ascertain whether or not the buyer lived in a van by the river, a garden apartment, or a mansion.

According to Zillow, the buyer lived in a 5 bedroom, 3 bath, 3100 square foot home with an estimated value of about $650,000. Definitely not a van by the river. Still a skeptic, I ran the address on the MLS and found a 2004 sale for $800,000. Why did I need Zillow when I have the MLS and public records? I don't. But my clients don't have the MLS. If they had thought of that question hours after I left, they would have gotten the confirmation they were looking for. Lord knows I have seen enough deals die when people looked something up on Zillow, so it is about time. As Zillow gets more accurate, I have less to fear. 

Zillow still isn't off the hook for me. However, I have to give credit where it is due, and whether or not I was present at the time, they helped me make a sale. I hope it isn't an anomaly. 

Search the MLS like an agent here. New York's Premier Short Sale REALTOR. Read my short sale bog here. See the New York Photo blog here. J. Philip Serves Briarcliff Manor, Ossining, the River Towns, Westchester County, and the bedroom counties of New York City.

 

• J. Philip Faranda, Broker-owner, J. Philip Real Estate, LLC. 2010 Vice President, Westchester-Putnam Multiple Listing Service. 
• Read my short sale blog here. 
• J. Philip Serves Briarcliff Manor, Ossining, Croton, the River Towns, Westchester County, and the bedroom counties of New York City.
• Free MLS Search! Register for a Free Listingbook account and search the MLS like an agent. 
• I'm hiring agents. 
• Agents: Subscribe to the 40 Somethings Group. Reach Phil at (914) 723-8900.

All content/images, unless noted, are the property of J. Philip Faranda & may not be used without permission

According to Inman News, Wisconsin's largest real estate brokerage has adopted a policy of excluding the listings of non-traditional brokers from appearing on it's site in home searches. This is not good in my view, for several reasons. 

• After a long battle with the Department of Justice is finally over for the NAR, one of it's members is now virtually inviting another case to be filed. The last case did not exactly go well for the NAR, and was bad for the public's perception of REALTORS.
• When a consumer searches for homes online on a broker's site, they expect to see the search criteria set up in a way that benefits them. They want to see all the available listings, not just the profitable ones. The move is therefore anti-consumer. 
• It could easily be construed as an anti-competitive maneuver by the Department of Justice. The DOJ prohibits policies which are solely in the interest of brokerage and not consumers, and I can see an argument to the contrary. 
• Can you say "bully?" Non-traditional brokers in Wisconsin pose no threat to the state's largets brokerage. This strikes me as an ad-hominem attack. Home sellers who are cost-conscious are more likely to go For Sale By Owner in the absence of discounters, so it isn't like the firm is protecting their most likely prospect base. Wisconsin, by the way, has one of the largest local For Sale by Owner websites in the USA. Coincidence? You decide. 
• Too many people already view the real estate industry, especially NAR members, as running a cabal. I hear accusations of collusion, price-fixing and other anti-consumer practices far too often. 

Search the MLS like an agent here. New York's Premier Short Sale REALTOR. Read my short sale bog here. See the New York Photo blog here. J. Philip Serves Briarcliff Manor, Ossining, the River Towns, Westchester County, and the bedroom counties of New York City.

 

• J. Philip Faranda, Broker-owner, J. Philip Real Estate, LLC. 2010 Vice President, Westchester-Putnam Multiple Listing Service. 
• Read my short sale blog here. 
• J. Philip Serves Briarcliff Manor, Ossining, Croton, the River Towns, Westchester County, and the bedroom counties of New York City.
• Free MLS Search! Register for a Free Listingbook account and search the MLS like an agent. 
• I'm hiring agents. 
• Agents: Subscribe to the 40 Somethings Group. Reach Phil at (914) 723-8900.

All content/images, unless noted, are the property of J. Philip Faranda & may not be used without permission

The words jumped off the page:

 "It troubles me that I am not identified as the listing agent. The way this listing is displayed it looks like you are. I feel taken advantage of."

This was an email sent to one of my agents from a competing agent in our MLS who googled the address of one of his listings,  and lo and behold, saw my agent's photo in the sidebar as the showing contact on a search page. He was indeed troubled. I decided to call him and see if I could turn that frown upside down. 

I asked him if his website had a home search feature. It did. I asked him if I were to find my own listing on his site whether or not it put me down as the contact or him. It was, after all, his site; would he want it to make my phone ring or his? The truth was that if I went to his company's site or his personal site that my listing would have my information buried in the small print for compliance and his or his firm's contact information would be prominent. That's just the way it works. "It," by the way, is IDX, or Internet Data Exchange. IDX is the means by which MLS data is supplied to real estate broker websites for home searches. Any broker website you search for a home on is probably an IDX type of platform.  

Moreover, the site he found his listing on was one that people would go to in order to find a buyer agent, not deal with the listing broker; it was antithetical to the site's purpose to suggest the contact agent was the listing agent. Of course, the whole thing was foreign to him, and without more of a basic underpinning of knowledge of IDX he couldn't know that. 

This must be how wars begin; that pesky lack of understanding. So I took the time to tell him as much as I could, because you never know when we might cross paths again. I want to build bridges, not burn them. 

The upshot is that a very experienced, honorable agent simply misunderstood the direction the Internet was taking in this growing spur of the Information Highway. He's still getting his mind around it, but more importantly I am fairly certain that I won a cold shoulder over to a warm colleague. 

Search the MLS like an agent here. New York's Premier Short Sale REALTOR. Read my short sale bog here. See the New York Photo blog here. J. Philip Serves Briarcliff Manor, Ossining, the River Towns, Westchester County, and the bedroom counties of New York City.

 

• J. Philip Faranda, Broker-owner, J. Philip Real Estate, LLC. 2010 Vice President, Westchester-Putnam Multiple Listing Service. 
• Read my short sale blog here. 
• J. Philip Serves Briarcliff Manor, Ossining, Croton, the River Towns, Westchester County, and the bedroom counties of New York City.
• Free MLS Search! Register for a Free Listingbook account and search the MLS like an agent. 
• I'm hiring agents. 
• Agents: Subscribe to the 40 Somethings Group. Reach Phil at (914) 723-8900.

All content/images, unless noted, are the property of J. Philip Faranda & may not be used without permission

As Westchester County area home sellers are finding out, there are more buyers out there; that doesn't equate to happy endings. Here is an unscientific example of the pattern I am seeing:

• The house is listed for a price the sellers feel good about. Not great, good. Shwings the first few weeks, then nothing.
• The price is lowered once 2-5%. A few calls and showings, no offers.
• The price is once again lowered 3% or more after no offers. Showings do not increase.
• Frustrated, the sellers are faced with the market changes of the past 90 days. What few sales in their category there were are dwarfed by enormous unsold inventory. They then lower the price to the next price point. If they were at 215k, they go to $199,900. If they were are $569,000, they get below 550k.
• An offer comes in at 90% of the new, lower asking price. Hoping to meet in the middle, the sellers make an aggressive counter offer. The buyer comes up a few thousand, leaving a large divide. The buyer agent informs the listing agent that the buyer has 2 other homes in mind.
• Here's the fork in the road: The sellers acquiesce and get sold, or buy their house back for the 10k or 20k difference in price and wait out another buyer as we enter the summer.

I see the same pattern all over the New York Metropolitan area. It is the same in Westchester as it is in Queens. Rockland, Putnam and Dutchess counties are all in the same boat. Huge inventory gives buyers options, and they are are committed to not overpaying or being stuck in a house they can't sell if the creek runs high in a year or two. The nice people who took care of their home and hope to reap what they have sewn are competing with distress sales, bank owned REOs, short sales, and other under cutters. It is a battle they can't win.

Are the buyers out? Yes. Are they the same buyers we saw 5 years ago? No way. They either sat out the boom and have cash, or they finally sold in this market and seek in the buying end what they just lost in the front sale. The only examples of over the asking price, multiple bid situations are on extremely cheap bank owned foreclosures.

Buyers have re-entered the market place because the media told them to, just like how they left when the media told them to. They are far more frugal, very nervous, uncertain about whether or not this is the right move, and zealous in their due diligence. Co op buyers want the building financials before making an offer; single family home buyers want to know if there is an adverse lien or high mortgage before moving forward.

It is all a byproduct of the lessons learned of the "damn the torpedos" era we just left, where buyers would do anything to win the bidding war, logic be damned, and sellers would do anything for another $10,000, good faith be damned.

America, we made our bed, now we are laying in it. Until this swollen inventory ebbs, buyers have too many options and too much leverage for sellers to call any shots.

Search the MLS like an agent here. New York's Premier Short Sale REALTOR. Read my short sale bog here. See the New York Photo blog here. J. Philip Serves Briarcliff Manor, Ossining, the River Towns, Westchester County, and the bedroom counties of New York City.

 

• J. Philip Faranda, Broker-owner, J. Philip Real Estate, LLC. 2010 Vice President, Westchester-Putnam Multiple Listing Service. 
• Read my short sale blog here. 
• J. Philip Serves Briarcliff Manor, Ossining, Croton, the River Towns, Westchester County, and the bedroom counties of New York City.
• Free MLS Search! Register for a Free Listingbook account and search the MLS like an agent. 
• I'm hiring agents. 
• Agents: Subscribe to the 40 Somethings Group. Reach Phil at (914) 723-8900.

All content/images, unless noted, are the property of J. Philip Faranda & may not be used without permission

For my 200th blog posting (!!) -I was prompted to write this after someone pointed out a mistake I made but did so without being nasty. This occurred early in my career when I worked in Rochester with my old college rommate Kevin and his father Paul at their company. Both trained me in the business, and I owe my career to them.

Paul was the broker and owner of the company (he still is) and operated out of a converted house in a commercial zone on a busy street on the border of a residential neighborhood. The house needed painting, and Paul decided on a beautiful shade of burgundy. It was a similar shade to brick. However, the entire building had to be primed and, Rochester being the place that it is, it rained for 4 consecutive days after the priming.

Oh, and the primer was a Pepto-Bismal shade of pink.

Because of the weather and a weekend, we had a pink mess for 7 days or so. One morning we retrieved a very nasty anonymous voicemail. The caller was spitting venom but didn't have the guts to leave a name. The guy must have assumed that the primer was the building's permanent color, because he was complaining about how the house didn't fit in with the neighborhood, and called the building a "pink flamingo."

My broker was bemused by the message, and replayed it for me a number of times with that one eyebrow up like he was Spock. "Come on Phil, we're going out shopping."

So we hopped into his car and went to every department store in town. We cleaned the entire stock of plastic pink flamingos on the west side of Rochester completely out. Then, this crazy guy and his loyal page spent the bulk of the afternoon placing plastic pink flamingos in the front yard of the office. We put them in lines, made families of several little ones following a big one, one "speaking" in front of 4 others, you name it. There were probably 40 plastic flamingos in the front yard.

And they stayed there for weeks while we all giggled about the aneurysm the anonymous curmudgeon must have been having over the look of the place now. "That'll send him straight over the edge," smiled Paul. He'd adjust the little buggers every morning when he arrived too.

Instead of a week of pink at most, our anonymous complainer got about a solid month of a large pink monstrosity with a flock of 40 plastic flamingos nesting every time he drove by.

If anything, business improved. It got people talking, and those that knew Paul knew he was up to something. The next time I'm in Rochester visiting I think I'll bring a few plastic birds back with me. You never know when you'll need some.

 Search the MLS like an agent here. New York's Premier Short Sale REALTOR. Read my short sale bog here. See the New York Photo blog here. J. Philip Serves Briarcliff Manor, Ossining, the River Towns, Westchester County, and the bedroom counties of New York City.

 

• J. Philip Faranda, Broker-owner, J. Philip Real Estate, LLC. 2010 Vice President, Westchester-Putnam Multiple Listing Service. 
• Read my short sale blog here. 
• J. Philip Serves Briarcliff Manor, Ossining, Croton, the River Towns, Westchester County, and the bedroom counties of New York City.
• Free MLS Search! Register for a Free Listingbook account and search the MLS like an agent. 
• I'm hiring agents. 
• Agents: Subscribe to the 40 Somethings Group. Reach Phil at (914) 723-8900.

All content/images, unless noted, are the property of J. Philip Faranda & may not be used without permission

Imagine you are selling something-anything-on the open market. If we broke down the walls of time and space and put everyone who might be interested in what you are selling into one big room, it is obvious that the more people there are in that room, the better chance you have of not just selling, but selling at a good price. The fewer the people exposed to your product, the longer the odds of a favorable sale. 

Now imagine that you are selling the very same thing on a desolate roadside where only a few passers by will ever see you. Anyone who stops and looks has enormous leverage. If you don't sell to them at the price they offer, you have no other options. It's them or the highway. They've got you. 

Putting a home on the Multiple Listing Service puts your home in the proverbial crowded room. The MLS is, in a very real sense, THE market. It absolutely dwarfs the number of people who might casually pick up a supermarket home magazine, get their fingers dirty perusing the classifieds, or those who might happen to stroll by your home and see the sign. If you don't think the MLS is THE market, just try convincing an asset manager at a bank to not multiple list a foreclosure to get it sold. Or find me a divorce decree that mandates selling a home that forbids listing it with one of those useless, overpaid brokers. Both the judge and asset manager would agree that if the home isn't listed, it isn't truly for sale. 

Now...even though 99.9% of brokers would agree with what I have just written, there are some brokers & agents, many of whom are here in the New York area, who would try and convince you that keeping it off the MLS is in the seller's best interest. These agents are trying for something we call in the industry a pocket listing. A pocket listing is the agent's little secret, and their agenda is one thing, and one thing alone: to sell the property to their own buyer and avoid splitting their commission with a cooperating broker. The metaphor is perfect: instead of your home being openly displayed "on the shelf," it is in the agent's pocket (think of a shady guy opening his coat, displaying cheap watches), hidden from public view, and only shown to someone who isn't working with another broker. Pocket listings are sometimes called a "office exclusives." The name is prettier, but the intent is the same. The object isn't exposure, but secrecy. Secret houses don't sell very well. 

There is no scenario I know of where a a pocket listing is in the seller's interest. Exposure is limited, cooperation from brokers who might have a buyer is cut off, and possibilities are diminished. I have had instances where sellers have asked me to keep their home off the MLS because they only wanted me to handle the perspective buyers, but that thinking is mistaken. Committed buyers often have their own agent. Even those that don't have a buyer agent may know full well that I work for the seller and be unwilling to have me handle both sides of the transaction. It doesn't work. 

The benefit of a pocket listing to the listing agent is twofold. If they do find a buyer, they don't have to split the commission. Is that buyer the best one? Who knows? Why should they care? If it closes, they made a double commission. They also have an opportunity to use the listing to pull buyers in that they'll sell another house to. They put an ad on Craigslist, jettison the buyers with agents, tell inquiring agents it is sold or off market now, and solicit all the other phone calls from uncommitted buyers to use them when buying a home if the pocket listing isn't to their liking. A wise seller would never allow their home to be used like this. There is nothing wrong with picking up buyers from a listing, but only if the agent has made a 100% effort to sell the listing first. There is nothing 100% about a pocket listing. 

Buyers should also beware of a pocket listing. You are dealing with an unscrupulous agent whose motivation is money only, you have no agent representing your interests, and there may be less recourse if you have a problem or complaint with that agent. Practice business in the sunlight, and avoid the dark alley of a pocket listing no matter what side of the transaction you are on. 

Search the MLS like an agent here. New York's Premier Short Sale REALTOR. Read my short sale bog here. See the New York Photo blog here. J. Philip Serves Briarcliff Manor, Ossining, the River Towns, Westchester County, and the bedroom counties of New York City.

 

• J. Philip Faranda, Broker-owner, J. Philip Real Estate, LLC. 2010 Vice President, Westchester-Putnam Multiple Listing Service. 
• Read my short sale blog here. 
• J. Philip Serves Briarcliff Manor, Ossining, Croton, the River Towns, Westchester County, and the bedroom counties of New York City.
• Free MLS Search! Register for a Free Listingbook account and search the MLS like an agent. 
• I'm hiring agents. 
• Agents: Subscribe to the 40 Somethings Group. Reach Phil at (914) 723-8900.

All content/images, unless noted, are the property of J. Philip Faranda & may not be used without permission

Paul Krugman is a lauded economist, but he leverages that credential to preach to the echo chamber that is the New York Times readership. In today's screed, Krugman makes a big fat lie in his assertion that Ronald Reagan is to blame for our current economic problems. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion; they are not entitled to their own facts. My comment is as follows:

 As a real estate broker, I find the following quote problematic:

"Reagan-era legislative changes essentially ended New Deal restrictions on mortgage lending — restrictions that, in particular, limited the ability of families to buy homes without putting a significant amount of money down."

This is disturbingly untrue. The New Deal introduced the FHA and the FHA-Insured mortgage program, which is the grandadaddy of all low down payment (3% in New York) mortgages. It is a good program, and its neglect during the Bush years created a vacuum in the market that was filled by the sub prime catastrophe.

Before the FHA, there were no mortgages that didn't require a significant downpayment. FHA solved that and helped tens of millions into ownership responsibly. It was part of the solution.

It always disturbs my when Dr. Krugman leverages his credentials to make unsustantiated assertions to sate his hatred of Reagan, who chose not to keep him on the presidential advisory team in 1983.

I do not feel further elaboration is required. He lied. 

 Search the MLS like an agent here. New York's Premier Short Sale REALTOR. Read my short sale bog here. See the New York Photo blog here. J. Philip Serves Briarcliff Manor, Ossining, the River Towns, Westchester County, and the bedroom counties of New York City.

 

• J. Philip Faranda, Broker-owner, J. Philip Real Estate, LLC. 2010 Vice President, Westchester-Putnam Multiple Listing Service. 
• Read my short sale blog here. 
• J. Philip Serves Briarcliff Manor, Ossining, Croton, the River Towns, Westchester County, and the bedroom counties of New York City.
• Free MLS Search! Register for a Free Listingbook account and search the MLS like an agent. 
• I'm hiring agents. 
• Agents: Subscribe to the 40 Somethings Group. Reach Phil at (914) 723-8900.

All content/images, unless noted, are the property of J. Philip Faranda & may not be used without permission