All Forum Posts by: Andrea Townsley

 Thanks very much for taking the time to reply. Good ideas. 

I'm a new agent and I look at the "market watch" reports within the MLS system twice a day. This includes new listings, expireds, pendings, price changes, and closings. I can see what is selling fast, what is sitting, what upgrades they have or if they're in bad shape, etc. I am mostly focused on my farm areas but I am always looking for specific buyers and also my investor husband. Knowing days on market and how that is trending is helpful info for us both.

We homeschool so we get around town quite a bit so I am always looking at what is opening or closing, new developments popping up, when builders have started breaking ground, where are the traffic problems, etc. I try to pull off into at least one neighborhood each time we go out so I can see what the neighborhoods themselves are like versus just what is shown in listing photos.

I look at the county auctions for foreclosures and tax deed sales.

I actually look at my junk mail which helps me get a feel for who’s who in town, which restaurants are popular, which other agents are dominating the advertising market, and get ideas for others to partner up with like cleaning services, lawn care people, insurance brokers, etc.

Just always gathering knowledge about the city, whether it helps me immediately or down the road when speaking with a potential buyer or seller. You never know what conversations you might have that end up in them wanting to work with you.

Oh and let’s not forget the local “word of mouth” groups on Facebook...for better or for worse.

I grew up in this city so that works to my advantage but we moved away for about a decade and a lot changed in that time.

@Anthony Wick

I like your strategy and as a renter myself, I wouldn’t mind it at all if it was phrased like this.

Our initial lease stated that they could do inspections quarterly. A lot of leases state that but I’ve NEVER had a landlord actually do it. These people wanted to do it more often than is allowed and I finally told them no and told them quarterly are these dates: x, y, z remaining in the lease term. It was very awkward to just have someone walk around our house looking at stuff and truthfully I have no idea what they were looking for.

When we renewed they dispensed with the inspection clause, thank goodness. It really just felt like invasion of privacy and trying to catch us doing something wrong.

But if it was phrased like you said as a maintenance inspection, that would make me feel more comfortable, and every 6 months is more reasonable than quarterly.

All that said, we became landlords unintentionally when we had to move out of state. I wish we had done some kind of inspections bc our initial tenants absolutely trashed the place just due to their lifestyle and cost us about $15k. Second tenants had holes in the walls, an exterior door they had busted in, wood floors ruined. Several grand more to fix that up. It would have cost less to fly down every six months to take a look.

@Frank Patalano

My hubby is the investor and it's very hard to locate fix and flip deals here. Wholesales are way overpriced, almost nothing comes across the MLS, there's not many auctions for homes (mostly land), REOs go straight to market at market value (mostly dubbed investor specials) and we're not sure the best way to go about finding distressed properties aside from alerts I get for lis pendens (which as I understand it, is not the point at which we want to get involved). It's getting frustrating bc we wanted to do some flips with hard money first so we will have more to put down into a buy and hold, but the way the market is looking, I'm seeing more rentals that would work right now. But truthfully we need the cash that a flip would bring to get some personal stuff paid off before we start with rental properties.

Also, on a personal note, when we were planning a cross-country move, I was finding awesome older homes (late 1800s) for so cheap! Like $15-25k. Turned out they were in a crime ridden and economically depressed area (north side of Milwaukee). That CAN work if you’re into Class D rentals! But my point is that things aren’t always as they appear, especially if you’re not familiar with the area and can’t even drive by the place or see the neighborhood.

They may not actually be on the market. I see stuff on Zillow and other sites and cross reference with the MLS and they're not active now for one reason or another. Some have been withdrawn, some closed recently, etc. Zillow does not pull just from the MLS and it's not updated in real time. You'd have better luck with Realtor.com as it's hooked into the various MLS systems across the country but in my experience it's also not 100% reliable.

@Alma Gomez

How is it easy for the agents? I’m in FL and we have two standard contracts we use but filling them out (properly) takes time. It’s also not just that we fill out a contract, we are taking the time to look up and curate listings for you, take you for showings on an on-call basis since time is of the essence, reading disclosures and engineering reports, etc. This is what I do for my investor customers.

If you find an off market deal, you should not even need to use an agent as they won’t even get paid out of the deal unless the seller agrees to pay them or you are willing to pay them for help with the contract and negotiations.

We are not just money hungry, we work for our keep. But we don’t work for free.

I did mine online, 63 hours. I’m sure it was more or less considering it’s completely self-paced. Some was audio but most were slides that I had to read. Each section (18 or 19 of them) also had supplementary notes that I read through, terms and definitions which I did not, and two 10 question quizzes to pass before moving on. There was a 100 question practice test then the 100 question final test, each of which took me around 45 min even though 3.5 hours were allotted for them. I was sooo glad to be done! It was a lot of reading. Took me about 3-4 weeks to finish it all and I’m a fast reader and good test taker, just for reference.

To add, it's not that hard to monitor the MLS yourself via Realtor.com. If you want to see something, contact the listing agent and ask for a showing. They'll be happy to get the full commission and not deal with a buyer's agent.

@Steve H.

I’m a brand new agent so take this FWIW.

Part of the issue is that there can be confusion over who the buyer was working with and which brokerage gets a commission if there is no exclusivity agreement. Most of the arbitration ($$$) that happens at the local boards is over who gets commission for bringing a buyer.

Ethically, I always ask if someone is already working with an agent. If they say yes, I’m not going to waste my time pulling listings or any such thing. There is always the chance they will find someone else to work with, usually unintentionally, so having that agreement in place helps if there is ever a dispute over commission.

That said, my husband is an investor and if their company finds something off market, I’ll pull comps but they need to deal with the real estate attorney and closing themselves if I’m not getting paid. My time is valuable, too.

Investors can be particularly difficult to work with bc deals can be harder to find. I almost never find anything on the MLS to suit them. My role is more when they are ready to sell again, so it does partially behoove me to help with the front end of the deal so I can get paid on the flip side.