Quintessential Realty Supports Peninsula Habitat for Humanity

For those of you who have never heard of Habitat for Humanity, it is an international nonprofit organization that at its core builds and re-builds affordable housing for those in need.

Quintessential Realty has pledged a portion of our commission on each our real estate transactions to the Peninsula Habitat for Humanity's Make It Real Campaign. We are also dedicated to supporting their efforts on Build Days as well as on other ongoing initiatives.

This past Sunday by invitation we had an opportunity to join our colleagues of Habitat for Humanity East Bay for their Build-a-Thon in Livermore. As a part of International Earth Day activities, the four day build took seven homes from only their slab concrete foundations to fully framed units with exterior walls and roof trusses up. An impressive feat that really helps put ABC's Extreme Home Makeover television show in perspective.

At Quintessential Realty our mission is to help our clients find a house they can call home and we look forward to continuing to support organizations like Habitat as we all work towards a similar goal.

When does saving 75% not make sense?

If you are an investor or business person, chances are is that you watch CNBC, at least every so often. Lately a company called BuySideRealty.com has been advertising heavily on the international financial network advertising a 75% rebate of their buyside sales commission.

How does BuySide Realty work? Buyers signup for the service on their website, search for homes individually either through open houses or by making an appointment through the website for a showing with the listing agent (buyers must be pre-approved for a loan before using this feature). When a buyer is ready to make an offer, they go back to BuySide's website, enter in the offering price and other information. Licensed Realtors in the state (currently California, Florida, and Illinois) in which they want to make an offer fill out the paperwork and submit the offer. If the offer is accepted and escrow closes, BuySide Realty sends a check for 75% of the commission they received to the buyer within a couple of weeks.

Sounds simple enough right? Look for your home, save 75%. In some cases, sure. For some buyers in particular situations BuySide could very well make a lot of sense. However, before you click over to their website, let's consider a few points. Viewing homes, most buyers like having agents who can get them into multiple homes in one appointment as opposed to having to set individual appointments for several properties. Making the offer, no one knows the pricing and current market environment than a local agent who is on the ground every day. You may end up offering more than you need to or constantly be coming up short. Realtors are also often a new homeowner's best point of contact for things in the area, an out of area online agent can't provide any additional services. Concerning the rebate, in California, only rebates of non-recurring closing costs can be made at closing, anything above and beyond would have to be made outside of closing. When this is done, either a 1099 would have to be issued to the buyer or the party issuing the rebate would have a taxable consequence which would not be desirable. And one last point, rebates can be had from many Realtors, just ask. Here at Quintessential Realty we look at each situation and determine whether a rebate is appropriate for the amount of work that is done and the amount of business we receive from any give client. We try to be as reasonable as possible.

So who should use BuySide? Those people who want to do everything by themselves and only need the barebones services. Doing it yourself isn't difficult, it is however, time consuming and at times can be confusing if you don't do this work daily. We do encourage you to take a look, it's an interesting concept and a welcome one. It seems as if having a pre-approved BuySide buyer schedule a showing of one our our listings would be a good thing. Because it is a bit more of a tedious process, they are likely to only want to see something that they are truly interested in. Time will tell whether BuySide will work out, but we welcome the clearly well capitalized former founders of Web Street to the real estate business and we look forward to working with your buyers.

Is Zillow a help or hindrance?

By now most even remotely following real estate or technology have heard of Zillow.com. For those of you who haven't, Zillow is a new website currently in beta (or test phase) that allows either a home buyer or owner find out how much a given house is worth. The idea is to use as many data points, they say "zillions" but what that really amounts to is as much information as they can get their hands on.

But what most people want to know is whether it's any good and my cousin just asked me the other week what I, as a Realtor thought of it impacting real estate in general. Answering the second question first, many think it's an industry changing macro level thing much related to auto websites like KBB.com, Vehix.com and Edmunds.com which give buyers invoice price as well as incentive and rebate information, thus putting the buyer in a much stronger negotiating position. Whereas it can be seen that way from a certain perspective, all Zillow really does is provide buyers and sellers the very thing they use to determine their prices, which is just another data point. Now is it any good? If you do a couple of home value calculations, you can quickly see that while general prices for a given neighborhood can be in the ballpark and give people a start, that individual home values can be drastically incorrect as they have a 5br/3ba 2300 sqft home in my cul de sac worth less than the 3br/2ba 1530 sqft home. Also being data driven, an estimate or as Zillow calls it a "zestimate" is only as good as the data the model is being fed which in Zillow's case can be delayed so you can never be sure whether the "value" you get is the most recent possible or based on date that is a few months old.

As a Realtor, I welcome Zillow and its competitors such as RealEstateABC.com because it doesn't really decrease the need for agents, it in fact increases the need as individuals will increasingly look to professionals to make sense out of all these new data points they are receiving. The great thing will be that both buyers and sellers will be better informed which will facilitate discussion and communication so that we are all on the same page. Also, you can't beat a Realtor who is out there every day monitoring activity. The real estate market can turn on the sale of a single home and only a real live agent in your neighborhood can know that.

So the upshot is to definitely use these new tools to educate yourself, they are very good, but also be aware of their limitations so you aren't just taking the output of these websites as gospel. Very much like the financial investment industry where the disclaimer is always to consult your financial advisor before taking action on any investment advice, likewise, contact your Realtor to best dissect and understand all of this new information out there in cyberspace.