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Listing Agent Mistake Part 1

It has always amazed me why I get the following call

“ring, ring”---“ring, ring”

Jesse Gonzalez: Jesse Gonzalez

Suzy Super Buyer Agent: May I speak to Jesse Gonzalez

Jesse Gonzalez: Speaking

Suzy Super Buyer Agent: Oh…Hi Jesse, my name is Suzy and I am calling about that property you have listed on 19^th Ave., are you working any offers?

Jesse Gonzalez: I don’t speak about the details of any of my offers I receive with anyone other than my client however, I can tell you that any offer you submit will be presented to my seller.

Suzy Super Buyer Agent: You can’t tell me if you got an offer?

Jesse Gonzalez: No, I am not at liberty to discuss my clients offers with anyone other than my client. I can assure you that if you provide me with an offer from your buyer it will be presented.

Suzy Super Buyer Agent: Well….(un-comfortable pause) I just want to know if you’re working an offer because I don’t want to waste your time, I know you are really busy.

Jesse Gonzalez: Suzy, it’s my job to present any and all offers to my seller so, if your client writes up an offer, it’s not wasting my time to present that offer to my seller.

Suzy Super Buyer Agent: So, you aren’t going to tell me if you have an offer?

Jesse Gonzalez: I can tell you that if your buyer wants to make an offer I will present it to my seller.

Suzy Super Buyer Agent: I don’t understand, does that mean you don’t have any offers?

Jesse Gonzalez: No, what that means is if your buyer wants to make an offer, I will present it to my seller for consideration.

Suzy Super Buyer Agent: Jesse, if you could just help me out here, I can prevent everyone from wasting a lot of time.

(long uncomfortable pause)

Suzy Super Buyer Agent: Jesse are you there?

Jesse Gonzalez: Yes, I am here

Suzy Super Buyer Agent: Did you hear the last thing I said?

Jesse Gonzalez: The last thing I heard was that you didn’t want to waste anyone’s time.

Suzy Super Buyer Agent:  So, are you going to help me out?

Jesse Gonzalez: What was it that you need me to help you with?

Suzy Super Buyer Agent: Never mind…don’t worry about it. (click, hangs up phone)

So, the conversation above wasn’t a hypothetical situation, it actually happened and happens often. In fact, it happens to me so often that I am 100% confident that many listing agents out there are complying with these request without ever once verifying what they can or can’t do from their clients, the sellers.

I don’t know about your State’s laws and regulations on client confidentiality however, I do know what is in my client’s best interest and many times….if not all the time, it’s not in my clients best interest to inform buyer’s agents if I my seller is currently working an offer.

For many of you, that is all I would have to say and you would understand why I believe this is the case but, I am sure I need to break this down for some of you so, let’s do it together.

So, my seller got an offer on his property, he has 2 days to consider the offer and get back to the buyer. To keep the timeline easy to understand, let’s say he got the offer on 1/1/11 and the buyer’s offer time limit is 1/3/11. Obviously, during negotiations, the property is still active in the MLS and the appointment desk is still scheduling showings. Why would I let this happen?

Simply stated, my seller reserves the right to continue to market the property up to Binding Agreement because, hopefully we will continue to get offers and hopefully, one of those other offers will be better than what we got. This is in my client’s best interest and truth be told, it’s my job to make this happen, if possible. This gives my client the potential to receive the maximum possible from the market place and as a broker who has a fiduciary responsibility to my seller……I better be making sure his interest is above my own.

Ok, so…..it’s 1/2/11 and my seller hasn’t made a decision, better yet, I tell my seller not to respond to the buyer’s offer till we absolutely have to in hopes of getting another offer. It’s early afternoon on the 2^nd and I check my email….BOOM! Guess what, it’s another offer, from another agent for my seller. Now my seller has two offers to consider instead of one……..this is vagenious! (yes…I said VAGENIOUS, VAGENIOUS, VAGENIOUS) LOL

Now, could you imagine what would have happened if buyer’s agent number 2 would have called me before showing the property to his buyer and I told him….”Yeah, we got an offer, we are negotiating it now”? Do you believe this agent would have told his buyer that the property was under contract and no need to see it? As the guy from the Men’s Warehouse says…..”I guarantee it” That’s right, instead of my seller looking at two offers and being in a better situation than before, he would be looking at a single offer, struggling to decide how far he can push the envelope with this single buyer. At the very least, with two offers he can run the clock on the time limit’s, negotiate each one individually and take the best offer or, notify all agent of multiple offers and let them battle it out.

So, hopefully you see my point, it’s not in my clients interest to tell any buyer’s agent how many offers we are working if I don’t have permission from my seller and or if I don’t have a offer from said agent.

I get why the buyer’s agents are making the phone call….they don’t want to put their buyer’s in a multiple offer situation however, if you are a listing agent and you are disclosing to these buyer’s agents just how many offers you are working before you have talked this strategy over with your client, in my humble opinion, you are in violation of your fiduciary duty and are in breach of your client’s trust. Granted, you may never get caught doing this…..some of you may not even have any hang-ups working with buyer’s agents to cheat your sellers out of money but, make no mistake, if you disclose this information, that is exactly what you are doing.

Because the last prediction I wrote last week was such a success, I thought to myself, why don’t I blog a bit more about my predictions so, here it is.

I predict that 2011 may actually end up seeing the highest number of foreclosures in our nations recorded history.

Reason # 1: Lack of substantial job growth.

 I do believe that with the extension of the Bush tax cuts the Federal Government passed a couple weeks ago, our Government instilled some…….just some…..confidence in the business community to spur a very modest growth. You have to keep in mind, the extension of the Bush tax cuts was a tax hike prevention or, in other words, the business community is at a wash, one way or another. To elaborate a bit further, the business community had already been working under the cuts with no growth so, an extension of the cuts isn’t going to do much to grow the economy because, it really doesn’t change the underlying systemic fundamental problems. I am not saying that we should have allowed the tax cuts to expire because if that had happened, we would have made problems worse by raising taxes on everyone in a distressed, possibly depressed economy. I am for the cuts but, I don’t believe they are going to make that big of a difference because, the true problems are not addressed. The cuts were nothing more than a lesser of 2 evils.

Reason # 2: 5, 7 and 10 year ARMS (Adjustable Rate Mortgages) adjust in 2011.

During the height of the sub-prime mortgage bubble, we saw people getting  5, 7 and 10 year ARMS. Take 2011 and count back  5 years and you get 2006, the early days of the bubble build up, 7 years back you get 2004, when sub-prime lending was really breaking out of it’s shell and of course, 10 years back, 2001 when people hadn’t even heard of sub-prime lending. My point is, in 2011, 3 different types of very popular sub-prime, bubble building ARMS are going to reset, this is more resetting than we have every seen during this crisis. I can’t even imagine the carnage.

Reason # 3: Government Home Retentions Programs Prevent a Real Estate Bottom.

HAMP is the single greatest home retention failure of this Obama White House. 75% or more HAMP participants default out and end up in foreclosure however, what HAMP does do is buy these people time. In some cases a year or more. So, John Smith, homeowner is 3 months behind, applies for HAMP which takes an additional 2 months to get preliminary approval, John pays his preliminary discounted mortgage regularly for 5 months and then defaults off, 6 months for the bank to catch up with the default and file foreclosure paperwork and 3 months to foreclosure and evict, then 6 months before the home hits the market. Add it all up and you get 25 months or 2 years before a home hits the market from the time the homeowner defaults. So, look at it this way, Government has contributed 2 years worth of underlying inventory to an already 3-5 year inventory of distressed property simply because Government wants to save people’s homes in the name of reelection. This is bad no matter how you cut it.

Reason # 4: Energy Prices will Rise to un-precedent levels.

It was just 2 days ago that BP (British Petroleum) announced that they are re-working their 2011 budget with the premise that gas prices in the US will rise to $5.00 a gallon. Fuel cost effects every aspect of our daily lives. It’s not just how much you pay at the pump. It’s how much it cost the truck delivery man to deliver the goods to your local grocery store. Over 90% of the goods you buy at a grocery store get there from a truck and that truck can only get there when it fuels up its tanks. If that fuel increase goes up on that trucker we can expect to see prices for individual goods to increase as well. A absolute correlation between prices of goods and price of logistics is fact and this is a law of supply and demand that can’t be broken.

Reason # 5: Risk of inflation becomes a real concern in 2011.

Instead of speculating about inflation, 2011 will be the year we actually start talking about what percentage inflation will rise. Increased trade deficits, continual devaluing of the US Dollar, continual movement towards a green agenda and, high federal debt will move inflation up. This will be done in order to stem off a collapse of the dollar because of continual devaluation.

Reason # 6: Credit Tightening.

As a direct result of the foreclosure fall out that I predict will occur in 2011, we will see an increased credit tightening. Now, personally, I don’t see this as a bad thing, I am of the opinion, a home is not a right, it’s something you earn and if you can’t earn it, you don’t deserve it. None the less, since the Community Re-investment Act, this country has been on a drunken binge of “everyone deserves credit” and it had everything to do with our real estate bubble however, times are changing and banks are going to have no choice but to tighten credit standards so they can reduce their risk for losses. This will increase housing inventories and work towards a further across the board housing price drop but, it gets us closer to a bottom and the ability to rebuild.

Reason # 7: Unforeseen National Crisis.

It was once told to me that luck favors those who are prepared and bold. Unfortunately, this Country as a whole is not prepared and our threshold to make big bold global decisions has all but disappeared since the Obama administration has taken a apologetic, appeasement stance on the World stage. This has done nothing but embolden our enemies and provided safe havens in countries that are less than cooperative. I can’t predict an unforeseen national crisis but, I can imagine a “what if’ scenario and it’s not pretty. The best I can say here is that we should be preparing for the worse and hoping for the best but, that is most definitely not happening with most Americans, let along our Government.

In conclusion:

Any one of the above reason I listed is enough to truly hurt the housing industry. If you couple all of these things together in one hit, it stands to reason, can the housing recovery even take place in 2011. My opinion is no, a housing recover won’t take place in 2011 because if we were to resolve any one issue, we would still have 6 others threatening the recovery. In other words, the housing industry has too many uncertainties, Government influence and, was much more devastated by the Community Reinvestment Act and sub-prime lending than anyone wanted to really tell the American public. I hope for the best but, I have prepared for the worse.