Mark Wisterman's Paradise & Lake Oroville Real Estate Blog

Is this technology thing terrific or what.

Late last week I showed a home to a first time home buyer in the Lake Oroville real estate market. She liked the house enough to make an offer on it last Saturday evening  through the online bidding process that the seller had established.  No paper offer to write and no signature needed when submitting our bid.  I simply discussed the offer terms with the buyer and from my desk and computer  in my home office I entered the online bid.

Come Monday morning I received an e-mail, on my iPhone, at about 6:30 am informing me that the seller had responded to the offer by sending us a counter offer. I immediately called the buyer, discussed the counter offer and decided to submit a counter offer to the seller’s counter offer.

I submitted the new terms to the seller. After about an half hour I received another e-mail letting me know that the seller had accepted our new terms. I promptly called my buyer to inform her of the good news.  After congratulating her and discussing the next steps in the process, I ended the call and hung up the phone.

It was then that it hit me. Read the rest of this entry »

As the interest in solar energy continues to grow in the Oroville, Ca and Paradise, Ca real estate markets a whole new set of concerns and potential problems lay in wait if owners of Oroville and Paradise homes don’t plan accordingly.

Earlier this week I received an interesting article from Lorna Joseph, the Branch Manager of our local Bidwell Title and Escrow office, that has been published by the California Land Title Association.  The article discusses some of the potential new issues that may come about as the expansion of the use of solar energy continues to grow.

Most specifically it discussess the need for solar users or potential solar users to consider the consequences of not having guaranteed access to the sun.  I know, I know, everyone has access to the sun right? All you have to do is walk outside on a clear day in the Lake Oroville or Paradise real estate markets and the sun is so bright that you gotta wear shades. While that is true for you, it may not be true for your home.

The article asks you to consider what may happen when you have your solar collectors installed to catch the most amount of light, only to have your next door neighbor plant some trees or do some home remodeling that blocks, or significantly inhibits, the sunlight from reaching the collector panels. Imagine spending $30,000 – $40,0000 for a solar energy system only to have it rendered useless by two or three big trees.

The most practical solution to this issue, according to the article would be the negotiation of easements between property owners where one property owner would receive assurances from the other that the sunlight which travels over the neighbor’s property would always be available. Of course this assurance is going to have a price attached to it. But if reasonable, the price may be more that offset in the energy saving cost realized by the solar owner.

It seems to me that this is going to be a very thorny issue going forward as more and more homes become solar equipped.  With the number of tall pines in the town of Paradise, for example, it could be nearly impossible to procure a sunlight easement as you may need 3 or 4 homeowners to grant an easement to their sunlight. Negotiating an easement with one homeowner is difficult enough. Trying to negotiate with more than one may take divine intervention.

The moral of the article: As with anything, be sure to plan ahead and consider all the pluses and minuses before moving ahead with any home project.

READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE

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As my final posting of 2009 for the Lake Oroville real estate market I was planning on doing a small recap of real estate market stuff for the year. But as I set down at my computer this afternoon to compose another one of my compelling and informative blog posts (laugh here), I quickly came to the realization that, for just the next couple of days, it might be a better use of this space to reflect a little on where we were when this year began and how far we have come.

You see, last year at this time I was pretty much sitting alone in this big ol’ office space with a bunch of empty desks hoping against hope that I would be able to get through just one more year of slumping sales and keep my head above water. To be totally candid, it was not a good start to a new year.

A lot has changed since that January of 2009. Just about the time I was feeling at the end of my rope, a former associate of mine approached me about coming to work for me. Steffan and I had started out in the real estate business together in 1994. I has always respected him for his ethics, honesty, and putting his client first. Plus, he is an all around nice guy. So, aboard he came.

Just a couple of months before this, I began working on one what I thought was one of those escrows from hell. The kind of escrow that you work on for 7 MONTHS and never get the deal done. (yikes). Turned out that because the transaction took so long, the other agent and I spent quite of bit of time on the phone together.  As we got to know each other better it began to seem to both of us that she would be an excellent fit in my office. We had the same work ethic, we both believed in doing the right thing, and in addition to her amazing commitment to her clients, she also understood that real estate will be impossible to do going forward without the tools of technology. It took a while for Christi to make the move but she finally made it.

Towards the middle of the year, as Christi and Steffan got settled into their new desks, I had the opportunity to speak to another agent or two about making the move to a better office. Although it seemed clear that they were not happy where they were, they were hesitant to make a move. Which, as it always seems to, worked out  perfectly.

Steffan suggested that I talk to an agent that he thought would be good to have in the office. Not only had I never worked on a transaction with her, I can’t say for sure that I had ever met her. Trusting Steffan’s opinion as I do, I finally arranged to meet with her. Robin subsequently joined the team in August and I must confess that had I not hired her I would have missed out on working with a very loyal person who will do nearly anything for her clients. I also appreciate Robin for her honesty and ethics.

It is said that things happen for a reason. In each of these cases it was all the right reasons.

So here I sit with just a little over 6 hours left to this year of 2009, amazed, once again, at how far I have come in just 12 short months.  3 awesome associates to work with, nearly $7 million dollars in sales, and finising in the #2 spot among all Lake Oroville real estate office that don’t deal mainly with foreclosures.

To Christi, Robin, and Steffan I say thank you. To our valued customers, I appreciate your loyalty. To those of you who we will meet in the coming year, I say, in advance: Thanks for placing your trust in us. We promise to make your real estate transaction as easy as possible.

Please be safe tonight

For real estate print ads that is.

When I first got started in the Oroville real estate business in 1994, virtually all of the advertising  to market a property was done in print media. We used either the local papers, or the traditional real estate magazines, or a combination of the two, to make buyers aware of  properties that were listed for sale. 

After Al Gore invented the internet (sorry for the political satire there) things began to  change. There was a new way of advertising that hardly anybody knew how to take advantage of. I remember a conversation with my then broker, Bob Beever, about the internet. Something neither one of us knew that much about at the time.

He said, “Mark, Why do we even need the internet?” and with my wealth of understanding of technology at the time replied, “I have no idea.”

Despite our lack of understanding the technology at the time, we made the leap of faith to launch one of the very first real estate web sites in the Oroville market.

Fast forwarding to today we find that the internet is by far the dominant media real estate consumers use to find their next home. The numbers speak for themselves. In 2008:

73.6% of All Americans had internet access

78% of all home buyers we using the interenet to find their next home

20% of home buyers used a newspaper or magazine to find their next home

33% of home buyers use the internet to search for a home more than 5 times a month

Being that we are already more than halfway through 2009, it is a pretty good bet that all of these numbers, except the one related to newspaper and magazine users, have increased.

The result of this change in consumer behavior have sent those print publications that depend on the real estate business into a financial nosedive. Causing some major newspapers across the country to eliminate their real estate sections all together. Locally I have seen the results too. The local real estate magazines contain only half the pages they used to have, and our local weekly shopper magazine that at one time had something like 12 pages of real estate ads now has barely 3 pages devoted to real estate.

Interestingly though, as this shift has taken place, many real estate agents and their offices, at least in this town, are still stuck in their old ways; preferring to have little or no internet presence for their seller’s properties. In fact, one of the offices in town that is associated with one of the largest real estate franchises in the world, does not even have it’s own local website, preferring to only use their parent company’s website on which to place their listings. 

I admit that I too am still using print media for my listings. It is something that I would like to discontinue as the resources I expend on print could go a long way toward expanding exposure to my listings online. So why do I do it?  Because many sellers are also not quite up to speed on the technology either. There are some that want to see their properties in print not realizing that only 20% of buyers are actually seeing the property advertised that way. As I continue to counsel sellers on the benefits of online marketing I will redirect resources from print and into more internet marketing.  Fortunately, for my sellers, I have the resources to do both during the transition.

Today’s moral of the story for sellers: Print media is quickly becoming an thing of the past. Insist that your agent market your property where  buyers are actually looking: Online!  And be sure to check out their personal websites before letting them work for you.