There has been a decent pick up in the sale of Hood River Real Estate. Our local trends are mirroring that apparent feeling that we are bottoming out, the same as the sentiment found elsewhere. That does bring into question, was the Northwest in synch with the rest of the country, but less impacted? or are we lagging the rest of the country? (Some estimates are by two years! Boy, I’d hate it if that were true)

It’s becomming clear to me that we are in synch with the rest of the country, and are experienceing some bottoming, but we are by no means out of this, anytime soon. I’ve been commenting to clients that there are so few markers of where we are at, that I’ve fallen back to intuition. I’ve been trying to determine how I feel about this market, and then map that feeling back to a point in previous cycles I’ve experienced. From my experience, I think we are halfway. We’ve got another long year ahead of us before things start to improve. I’ve always been a fan of the best inventory coming at the front end of a recovery, and the best deals are at the back….so we’ll see.

I’ve been pondering how “value” is measured in the market at the moment as well. I was reminded of a certain client a few years back, who bought a property because of the square footage. The house was quite plain, and so people didn’t buy it because of it’s perceive plain-ness. Over the ensuing couple of years, he managed to solve all of the perceived problems of the house, and was able to extract some great value.

These days, it really appears that “quirkiness” properties that have great attributes, are not being valued correctly. A bunch of years ago I used to write about the “quality penalty” where if your home wasn’t *exactly* right, you were penalized ruthlessly on value. Now, I’m seeing that this cycle is a bit oversold. Really interesting properties with pretty small “quirks” (OK, and some not so small) are practically being ignored. I think there are some values there.

Price reductions have caught fire. You’d figure about August it would really start up, and I think a bunch of people have jumped the gun and are marking down. The markdowns are significant, and I think they will help. They have ripped apart a deal or two though.

Actually closing a deal however, continues to be challenging, but everyone is going to have to change, or go away. It used to be that my number one question from clients was “when will the loan documents be here?” now its “Did I get my Loan?”

The HVCC (Please see my Prior post) has caused some headaches and delays, but it’s not the worst thing in the world. Even the new restrictions on disclosures, the HERA disclosure and cooling off adjustments (Please see that post) are just shifting the structure of deals. I’m pretty happy about that. Managing a transaction for the largest asset you’ll ever (well, most of us, anyway) own, should be handled by people who handle negotiating, networking in real time, counseling skills. people who are expert at communicating across distance in real time. (That usually means having e-mail on your phone, at a minumum) There used to be an old tip in Real Estate, something about looking at a person’s shoes to indicate how much money they have (seriously) These days, there’s a cell phone version of that. If your realtor doesn’t have a phone that accepts e-mails and doesn’t text. Drop ‘em.

That’s it for this month, I’ll try to post more frequently than once a month from here on out……probably a good idea, given the shifting landscape.

Social media is quite the darling thing these days isn’t it? Has anyone figured out how to use it for Real Estate effectively? (Check out the Video)

Sure, in some big cities, I even saw a guy in vancouver who has a facebook page and all his clients fanned him…..yeah, like that will work out here.

How should social media platforms work out here in Real Estate? Here’s what I’ve been working on, and so far, it seems to be working ok for me……

1. Don’t use FB for Business, especially Real Estate business! It just doesn’t work. Far better is linked in.
2. I’ve been using twitter personally, (mauim) and I just started to real estate tweet. (copperwesthr) I can see some great use there, but I’ve not revved it up yet.

That’s as far as I’ve gotten……Social media seems like a great tool for this marketplace, it’s just how it’s deployed that matters. What really matters, though, is that going forward, you have to be conversant with Social Media platforms and networking to be effective in this day and age. A simple cell phone isn’t going to cut it anymore.
Stay Tuned!

Get Ready! More laws coming down the pipe! (watch the video or read below)

HERA (The Housing and Economic Recovery Act) has amended the Truth in Lending act. This matters to everyone because it will change the way we all do business. The way deals will get put together will change, and it will put people in a tailspin if they aren’t ready.

Here’s the highlights:

1. Requires timeline of 7 business days from receipt of initial mortgage disclosure to closing
2. Requires Three business days from receipt of appraisal to closing
3. If the rate on your loan changes by more than 1/8th of a percentage point, a new lending disclosure is required, and there is an additional 3 day timeline.

There are other elements to the amendments to the Truth in Lending act, but these are the most impactful. If you look at it from a consumer protection framework, this makes sense. That is, of course, if you believe that the banks were entirely the bad guys, which I can tell you from experience, is not entirely the case.