Have you ever seen an expansion joint?

You see them in driveways, sidewalks, stucco walls, bridges, skyscrapers.

Stress will cause cracks, now the cracks usually aren't an immediate problem, they can be unsightly, but over time, the cracks allow moisture in, in the colder climates that can be a real issue.  So the idea of expansion joints is to control the stress, create natural breaking points to prevent actual cracking.

They come from natural day to day things, activities, weather, aging.

Bill Phillips in his book body for life has a similar system. His idea is you eat right and exercise properly six days a week and take a day off. He knows that if your program is a seven days a week, eventually you'll crack, that can really mess with your psyche. So he puts expansion joints in his program.

Even in the Bible created a day off, a day of rest. Mark 2:27 The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.

Do you answer your phone 7 days a week? Do you take a day off?

Do you have expansion joints in your life?

How Google Docs taught me to win in a multiple offer situation.

One of the really cool things about Google Docs is, up to 10 people can work on a document at the same time. Literally you can see what each other is typing in real time.

Recently I had won a bid on a multiple offer situation (there were 5 offers) for my client. I ran into one of the other agents that I saw showing the place, he asked me if I had gotten the place. With a little pride in my step, I said yes.

After talking to him for a minute, he shared that the loan program his client was using, it was with a major bank, the loan officer told him they needed 45 days. Wow! You see they were not on the same page.

When I was writing my offer, I got on the phone with my loan officer and said we need to close at the end of the month. He said he needed 30 days. 30 days would have put us about 7 days into the next month. The problem that created was,
1. We would have added 23 days of interest to our closing cost.
2. The seller had an FHA Loan and they would have had to pay a months interest too.

After having this conversation with the loan officer he agreed we needed to close before the end of the month.

I had already spoken to my preferred home inspector to see what his availability was.

So I get the accepted offer, ordered the inspection at 9:30 on a Monday night, we completed it by Wednesday, I had ordered the appraisal Wednesday morning knowing that we could cancel Thursday morning if need be.

We had the appraisal completed by the following Monday morning, leaving us two weeks to finish up a borrower that already had all his stuff into the lender.

There were other things that helped us win the bid. The way we we worked out the closing cost.... that's another story.

The point I want to make on this transaction is. The agent and the loan officer need to be on the same page when structuring an offer, it needs to be a Google Doc.

You know what your buyer wants and needs, hopefully you are talking to the listing agent and finding out what the seller needs. Now with that info in hand, I am talking to the loan officer and we are working through the offer scenario.

If not, it can go a couple of ways. You can write deadlines the lender can’t make, you can write deadlines that the seller doesn’t want and not get the bid.

We find ourselves closing down 2012. There are lot of post or articles about business plans.

First I was going to write an article about goals and plans, not because everyone is, because it is important to have a plan...

Then I thought of doing a survey and having a questionnaire for you to fill in, then I thought I won’t get enough responses for it to have a real significance. The reason most won’t do the survey is because they don’t have a plan. To fill in a survey will make you admit to yourself you don’t.

Then I decided to simply ask the thought provoking questions, not for me, BUT for you. It is always my goal when I teach a class, write an article to make the student or reader think.

So I am going to ask you some questions, I want you to be honest with YOURSELF.

Do you have a goal(s)?
Is it written down?

Do you have a plan?
Is it written down?

Do you have a schedule?
Is it written down?

Do you have a budget?
Is it written down?
Do you have help in the form of a coach or mentor?

Now here’s the most important question of them all. Why not?

Now I really want you to do some soul searching. I know why we don’t. Do you?

I am a big fan of Seth Godin. I had the good fortune to see him speak live in Atlanta. Besides being the author of fifteen international bestsellers that have been translated into over 35 languages. He is the master of short and sweet blog post.

Here is his 12/6/12 post

When everyone has access to the same tools

...then having a tool isn't much of an advantage.
The industrial age, the age of scarcity, depended in part on the advantages that came with owning tools others didn't own.
Time for a new advantage. It might be your network, the connections that trust you. And it might be your expertise. But most of all, I'm betting it's your attitude.
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2012/12/when-everyone-has-access-to-the-same-tools.html

What a lot said in a few words. Without much surprise I gravitate towards the technology statement.

It has drastically changed many industries such as the travel, music, news...

As for the real estate industry, it wasn’t that long ago you had to drive to your broker’s office to use a computer to search the MLS, and if it was busy day, you had to wait to get on a computer and sometimes the computer you were dialing into was busy.

Before that if you wanted to research, you had to go the broker’s office and use the microfiche machine. Plats were in books... It was not feasible for an agent to own all that,  forget about color printing and mailers. That was an expensive proposition.

Now we all have the same access to the same inexpensive data and technology. Some people use it and some don’t.

I am always amazed at how much people shy away from technology. People say things like, I’m not real good with computers. What I’m hearing is “I choose not to take advantage of the greatest leveling of the playing field in a few hundred years".

It wasn't ago that only big brokers could have full blown MLS search on their site.

Think about, for a few grand you can create a studio and have a news or any other type of talk show. The same goes for musicians. Recently you had to kiss the ring of some record label exec. Now for the same money as the news studio you and some friends can create an album while living in different parts of the world.

So it really comes down to attitude, doesn't it?  So how’s your attitude towards technology? Are you running towards it?

Will Technology Replace the Real Estate Agent?

This thought has been lingering around since the early to mid 90’s. Here we are almost 20 years later and the real estate agent is very central and critical to the transaction.

Yes technology has permeated itself into the industry. Years ago all the listings were in a book, the new book came out every two weeks. If you wanted to see what was available you had to seen an agent. Then the listings went online, there was a big rumbling throughout the land. But instead of replacing the agent it has made agents more productive. The ability to search for homes has made the buyers a little more educated about the inventory when they show up. The ability to take photos, videos, scan, email, color print, GPS and so much more.

Now tablets are stepping up the game a little more, a buyer can look at a house, the agent can prepare an offer and the buyer can sign it on the tablet. The offer can be sent to multiple out of state people, you can have a video conference, each party can electronically sign the offer and that’s it.

So why hasn't the agent been replaced? It’s the human factor, it’s the emotional aspect that technology will not be able to deal with in
the foreseeable future. Home buying, you noticed I said home and not house buying. Home buying is an emotional thing and not logical.

It’s a Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs kind of thing. Most buyers don’t know that they are making an emotional decision. They will convince themselves with a version of logic to justify their decision, but be clear the final decision was based on an emotion.

This is where technology fails. Walking beside a family that has lost a loved one and now has to sell a property, leading a family through a short sale. Helping a young first time home buyer navigate the whole loan and buying process.

Then there is pricing, appraising is an art and not a science. Computers cannot pick up on the value nuances of stigma or that if you can hear traffic that the value is lower...

Because you you have two emotional parties trying manage the process of selling and buying and all the issues that come along with it, the professional agent is very essential. A real pro knows that the clients are wigging out in some form or another, they keep everything calm and on task.

If you are not a football fan you have no doubt at least heard about the NFL Referee Lock Out and debacle.

Here is a post from Facebook that Chris Nichols a fellow agent posted. He posted this on an National Association of Realtors Facebook Page.

There has been much discussion on technology replacing real estate professionals. I just want to thank the NFL's replacement refs for proving you can never replace a professional!

Pros in any business are sought after and valued.

Now to be fair to the replacement refs, they were clearly out of their league and normally are not playing at that level.

They were not pretending to be NFL Refs, the owners were pretending they were NFL refs to save a buck.

I just closed a transaction with a client and they showed up at closing with a present for me. I was paid handsomely for the transaction and do not expect anything more than that.

The wife said I went above and beyond. 

As I listened more about what she was saying, all I really did was my job.
She said things like, you answered your phone, you returned emails quickly, you did what you said you would do. If people think that is above and beyond then that's sad.

You see in most professional service businesses, there are NFL Refs and let's just say the others. The problem we face is that we are playing at the same time and the consumers have a hard time time telling the pros and the dabblers apart until the game has been blown.

As I was going through my list categories for this post, I realized I didn't have a category that was for "show up and work" or "answer your phone" The only category I had that I felt made any sense is "Mindset"