Bingo.
Tell that to the Japanese. They've only had 13 years of decline.
Posted on 09/18/2006 9:10:42 AM PDT by Hydroshock
Bingo.
Tell that to the Japanese. They've only had 13 years of decline.
If you are good, you are good, and your clients do not forget you. And if you are smart, you saved some for the leaner years. I retired before the huge R.E. boom, but the investments I made have given me a comfortable living, praise God! It seems these deep lulls occur every 10 years or so, and it does weed the industry out. But you are a sharp guy, so hang in there, MM.
"I just cannot fathom what was going on in your case."
I couldn't figure it out either. There were at least four agents who blew us off. My wife and I moved to Saint Paul after closing on our house in California. We were staying with her parents, and wanted to find a house as quickly as we could so we'd be out of their hair and in our own place.
We weren't all that picky, really, either. We started looking the day after we got there in our moving truck full of everything we owned.
We started by going to open houses and just driving around looking for For Sale signs in neighborhoods we were interested in. This was after a long time studying back in California on the web.
When we would tell an agent at an open house that we were determined to find a house that week and had cash in the bank to pay for the house, I expected every agent to pounce on us and get us the house we wanted. I was shocked when that didn't happen. In fact, I was shocked at the whole real estate business and how stupid most of the people we encountered were. We sold our California house ourselve, letting the title insurance company handle all the paperwork.
What was even stranger, I thought, was that even when we had made an offer, and the good agent was doing paperwork, nobody in her office seemed to know what to do with a cash sale. The forms just didn't match with that concept. I had to suggest that they put the selling price in the down payment line on the form and zero in the amount financed line. Very strange, indeed.
Odder still was the slowness of the title company in supplying us with a dollar value to put on the cashier's check. 24 hours before closing, I had to call the title company and yell at them to get a number so I could go to the bank and have the check made up.
I guess cash just isn't used in real estate transactions. If there's no financing, nobody seems to know what to do.
Over-supply of new homes will clear out in the next 6-9 months then demand will be up again.
When the Real Estate market is good everybody and their brother/sister gets a license and makes some money in spite of themselves.
When the market slows, they go back to being teachers/housewives or whatever they were before. I've been doing this for the past sixteen years and got started in a down market.
The stock prices of the home builders are up again today.
I have bought and sold five homes in my lifetime and have never used a real estate (realtor) company. I don't see the need.
Concerning too many real estate agents in the business - my stepmother once told me: "Everyone's business is no one's business." - meaning that too many people working a single market means there is not enough business to make a living for any of them.
It could or could not become a catastrophe....depending on the the morgage bankers' attitudes....they don't HAVE to raise the interest rates on their customer's ARM's, the contracts just state they COULD raise them! The smart banks will hold back raising the interest rates so high that they begin to force their customers to default. If it got to be such a drag on the economy, even congress could step in and legislate a moratorium on ARM interest increases!
Real Estate companies are always hiring regardless of the market. Everyone knows someone who needs to buy or sell a house. Once that intial "pipeline" of easy deals is closed, they then have to build their own client base. The large Real Estate companies like Long and Foster bring in new agents in my wife's office every month. Most don't last a year. The company doesn't care. They get 50% of the commissions and just hire someone else.
Thats the reason Century 21 has been around. Get somebody new, sell their relatives house and take most (more than 50%) of what they earned.
They tell the "new" agent they will take 50% then when the deal is in the works inform them there is also "corporate fees" that the broker doesn't eat, comes from the agent.
I can't help but wonder why you have an obsession with this topic.
New home sales lowest since 1991 per WSJ flash traffic.
Does not surprise me.
New Developement homes are less expesive. Often the develper gives self financing.
I'm not sure if your linking the potential real estate debacle with the stock market bubble burst is totally valid. Millions of folks have ARMS and other "creative type" loans, as opposed to the limited thousands of folks who lost millions in the stock market...(yeah I know there were spin off effects such as 401k losses, but the bubble burst a year before 9/11 so there were other aggravating circumstances related to the stock market...as a matter of fact look at when the court decision came down on Microsoft and look at the nose-dive in the markets the day after!)
The real estate effect you are talking about involves many millions of folks...who vote! You think the fed's will really let that many voters(LIBS and CONSERVS) lose their homes and go bank-rupt?
Gotta love those realtors who have those ridiculous "headshots" type pictures in those homes for sales magazines.
in LA they buy time on the movie theatre pre show countdown!
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