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Attention Realtors! When posting your pics to the MLS make sure they are least 400 X 300 pixels in size (MLS format size). It’s ok if they’re larger because the system will automatically resize them. But if you upload them at this size …

(actual size of the pic taken from the Fresno MLS)

people viewing them won’t know what they are looking at
Looks to me like the this might be a contributing factor to the home being on the market over 200 days. Also looks like the seller is offering nearly $20,000 commission to have a Realtor market their property.
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Selling real estate in Fresno? What is your Realtor doing for you?

Looking to Buy real estate in Fresno - SEARCH THE FRESNO MLS

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About 2 months ago I had a Realtor list one of my properties. Other than her contacting me (or me her, because a neighbor reported that the same truck that installed her sign was the same one that returned later and cut down two dead oak trees from the property) I have never received a phone call or an email to me giving me any information as to response on my property, how the market is doing in that area, or anything.

The agent knows I am not anxious about selling the property or conducting some sort of fire sale to unload it; nevertheless, these things ought not to be so. I think a call or a simple one or two line email is in order.

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Comments / Feedback appreciated.

NAR Centennial Logo

I would be curious to know what people think of NAR and/or Realtors®.  I realize this anniversary is a big deal for NAR but I seriously wonder: does the average consumer give a flip?

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I ask this because I know that many people are absolutely clueless as to what their Realtor is doing to market their home. I was looking at the expired listings yesterday, and there were something like 84 of them and I came across this one:

Great Oppertunity

and this was followed by an 8 word description with NO PHOTOS.

Now the Marketing box in the MLS (that is where you give the viewers a detailed description of the property) allows for 1000 characters. The agent utilized only a fraction of the space available, which means that potential buyers had very little information available to them. More importantly, there were no photos. Some buyers and agents will actually only look at those that offer a picture, because proverbially, the picture says a thousand words, so even if you didn’t have any information in the description box you should have some photos.

For me the word Oppertunity says a thousand words and gives me a pretty good idea of the kind of agent handling the transaction. Little wonder that this listing languished on the market for over 6 months with no takers. Which should not be the case, because in the agent remarks this agent said this property was priced to sell. Well, if it WAS priced to sell, WHY DIDN’T IT SELL?

© Randy “Lazarus” McAtee
Owner/Broker Lazarus Realty

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… you know, those annoying Head On commercials that have managed to be HUGE success. Check it out. Pretty funny if you ask me

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Sometimes when you need to show a home tenants just don’t cooperate. Of course, if they just let you SHOW the home, I consider that cooperation, since some won’t even do that. Don’t get me wrong, some tenants are angels; just know that some are devils too

In the video below an agent is doing a showing, and as you can see the tenants could care less.

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NEW YORK (AP) — The decline in U.S. home prices accelerated nationwide in July, posting the steepest drop in 16 years….( go here for full story ).

Browsing some of the local Realtor’s web sites I came across one that had a graphic market guage on it indicating the Fresno real estate market was in perfect balance. YEA RIGHT! This market sucks, and to be quite honest its sucking even worse than I thought it would.

Take a look at the 24 Hour Stats I just pulled up from the MLS

Add the numbers in the grey to get the homes inventory that came onto the market and we have 122 properties that came on the market. Now minus from that the homes that went Contingent and Pending = 26. Then divide 122/26 and you get 4.69 which means for every 1 property that went off the market 4.69 came on the market. The reason the SOLDS are not included in the above equation is that they are the homes that went pending/contingent 30-45 days ago that actually closed. We dont really know how many of the Contingent and Pending sales will actually close. But if we replace the Pendings and Contingents with the Solds then then we have 122/21 = 5.8 …. or a ratio of about 6 to 1. VERY IMBALANCED. For further proof of how imbalanced the market is just look at the ratio of Price Increases to Price Reductions.

Now in order to state this more simply, if the equations above don’t make sense, lets just say a balanced market would look like this:

50 properties come on the market
50 properties go off the market
50 price increases
50 price reductions

that’s a balanced market - where buyers and sellers are equal.

If you need a home, it may not be a bad time to buy; but if you need to sell… it’s tough. If you’re an investor the big question is: WHERE’S THE BOTTOM? Of course, if I could call market tops and bottoms I would be in better financial shape than I am. I love to trade stocks and this chart pretty much sums up how the market treats you:

click image or here to view larger

I was once a dot com multimillionaire. I lost more money in paper profits than the average real estate broker makes in 30 years of work …. So don’t even think to ask me when then market has bottomed. Had I known the top (of the recent runup in property values) , I would have done some things differently. Many of you are probably saying the same thing.

If you have property that needs to be sold, don’t let this negative information deter you from calling me to help you sell it. If you don’t absolutely need to sell the property right now - your best bet might be to wait and ride things out. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you when it will improve - and it could even get worse ( I hope not ). One of my friends was able to find tenant for his home that he couldn’t sell. I recently got a 3 year lease option for an owner of a commercial property that was sitting on the market with no bidders.

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