Perrysburg Blog

Well, that was fun.

If you were a buyer!

Median Prices in Perrysburg:

12/2008

Median Price, Active Listings – $199,900

Median Price, Pending Listings – $175,000

Median Price, Closed Sales – $180,000

409 Single Family and Condo Properties on the Market

29 Pending in Dec.

23 Closed in Dec.

11.4 months of inventory remains on the market as of 12/31/2008

Residual Inventory DOWN to 288 vs. 356 on 12/31/2006.

My comments:

More and more sellers are quiting.   Just taking their houses off the market.   Many are renting.  Some are short – selling.  Some are being foreclosed.

Many sellers are actually SELLING.

Amazing but true!   You have to have some equity and a plan (and a good agent – but I digress!) and a healthy respect for current market conditions.

Here is the chart – what is the truth?   The chart tells the truth.

I don’t.

Not in business.  Not in real estate.

I was surprised to see naked, shameless shilling.  By two public figures.

Begging for miracles.

The first was Toledo’s mayor, Carleton Finkbeiner begging for people to please help Toledo and to go buy GM, Ford, and Chrysler automobiles. (What about the Honda’s made in Ohio?  Too bad!)

Really?  People with unknown employment futures?  With too much personal debt?  With rising taxes?  We need to go out and buy a new car?  With OPM?  (Other People’s Money)

With car loans?

I have a message for Mayor Finkbeiner- Toledo’s problems stem from TOO MUCH debt.   Simply taking on more debt will never help Toledo, its corporations, or its citizens.

Then I heard real estate broker/celeb Barbara Corcoran shilling about 12 houses all around the country on the Today Show with Al Roker.

Corcoran opined that with Obama’s inauguration that in real estate “Everyone in my field is feeling really good”!  Really?

Oh my.

This is delusional.  Amazing.  And hard to stomach.

Again, pushing homes on people who cannot afford them – not the recipe for economic revival America needs.

The market needs shillers, politicians, and lawmakers to leave it alone.

Let it work.

Stop goosing lending.  Stop incentivizing debt. Stop trying to “fix” the market.

No one can fix the market.  Ask the citizens of Iceland.  They tried.  They are all broke.

Prices will find their own level – honest prices.

Some people will suffer.

Some people will go broke.

Some people will be hurt.

But that is the only way to fix things.

For people with a really strong stomach – please read what always happens when dishonest people with ulterior motives try to sell you something you don’t need and cannot afford -  Michael Lewis’ “End of Wall Street”.

Pass it along. (N.B. Lewis writes with real quotes and strong language – you are thus warned)

These lessons need to be learned – and learned fast.

And the shillers need to be silent.

In my brokerage/management job I have to work hard to train and educate my own Sales Associates.

One of the tools that I use is a stats/analysis program that ranks area Realtors by their sales and recent ability to close deals.

Based on what I am seeing, many agents are not making it.

Not even close to making it.

A cursory read of the Toledo Legal News usually shows one or more real estate agents being foreclosed with each passing week.

And if you visit enough local stores . . . you will see real estate agents, busy as greeters, cashiers, sample ladies, and other retail jobs.   (As Seinfeld says . . . “Not that there’s anything wrong with that” – there isn’t)

But many of these same real estate agents are still working as “full time agents”.

I am skeptical of the service level they provide.  And I am skeptical that their new employers know what they are doing on the job . . . “I will get you the price on that home – can you wait a minute while I ring up this customer?”

I also know that it takes a lot of time and energy and effort to manage a transaction, sell a house today, and to prospect and market for buyers and sellers.

Leave out the fact that agents working “real jobs” cannot find time to be trained or coached.  They cannot learn from and interact with other full-time agents.  They are, by nature, divided in their loyalties and time commitiments.

I was at a two day training meeting last week in Arizona.

There was not one single part-time real estate agent there.

Not one.

Pretty soon the bills must be paid for real estate agents to remain members of the local Board of Realtors.

I suspect that there will be some big changes at that time – who is in and who is out.    Not just in Toledo, but all around the country.

When I was a young boy, we moved to Perrysburg.   From Chicago Illinois.  My parents contracted with a builder to build a new home in the hottest new subdivision in Perrysburg.   It was called “Three Meadows”.

I did not care about the wooded lot.

I did not care about the bike trails.

I did not care about the very efficient and well designed road layout and platting of the subdivision.

I cared about 2 things:

1.  Getting the largest bedroom.

2.  Staying at the Holiday Inn French Quarter and running around for 3 months while the house was being built.   (There is/was a game room, 2 indoor pools, etc.  all in a day that did not know water parks, etc.  I even remember playing Pong!  My brother and I ran around that place day and night like wild hooligans.)

It was a great house on Bexley Dr.

Except when the walls started buckling.

You see, all of those builders simply dug a hole and put a basement in.

They then shoveled all of the sticky Black Swamp clay back around the basement.

And in about 10 years most basements failed.

By today, just about every basement has.

Showing houses in Three Meadows will expose you to the various methods different homeowners have had in dealing with this serious problem:

1.  The Band Aid Approach – just slap some kind of liquid patch on the cracks.

2.  The “Wall Anchor” Approach – just slap a metal plate on it and watch the walls fail around the plate.

3.  The Hide Away Approach – just put some kind of finished wall in front of it and forget about it.

4.  The Channel Approach – just put some kind of water diversion pipe on the base of the wall and watch the wall fail above the pipe.

5.  The Steel Beam Approach – just put some steel beams in and watch the wall collapse around the new steel.

6.  The Build a New Wall Approach – which involves shovels, black jack, earth moving, new tile, and most importantly removing the clay from the basement.   This seems to work since it fixes the cause of the basement wall caving in problem.

The clay always wins in Three Meadows.

And most every house I have shown/sold/listed has used 1,2,3,4,5,or 6 to deal with this serious problem.

Buying there?   You better get this issue right or it’s an equity destroying monster.

Selling there?  There are several different ways to handle this disclosure issue and sales wrecker.   You better get an experienced agent or you may someday get a certified letter from an attorney.

The clay always wins.

An odd thing happened on our first break.

Realtors from the Northern states left the conference room en mass to go OUTSIDE and make their phone calls.

I was outside with them – I had to call a buyer, a seller, and my team.

Dazzling sunlight. Flowers. Mountains to look at. And 55 degrees? 60 degrees? It felt like Summer again.

The California agents and AZ agents and Florida agents stayed inside.

If they only knew how precious weather like this is to a northerner . . . This is a photo from outside.  In January.  These people who live here are very, very blessed (and spoiled).

First of all, this is real hardship duty.  Leaving frigid Ohio and visiting Arizona.

Second of all, it’s a great meeting, one I try to make every year.  150 of the most aggressive, technologically advanced, successful Realtors in the country.  I am glad that they let me sneak in.

My early take:  2 camps.  Those that have seen the Light of Apple.  And those that are still stuck with a broken Window.

There are still agents in markets with multiple offers and growing value.  I think all three of them are here.

A LOT of great tips and tools and tactic.

This was the view from my hotel as I left this morning – the Four Seasons Scottsdale,  which my Dear Wife fantastically found at a huge discount.   Mountains.  The thing anyone from Northwest Ohio CANNOT take their eyes off of.

Sigh.

The end of another year.

And most real estate brokerages will try to find some way to claim to be “Number 1″.

In something.

“We are Number 1 in single family homes sold in Perrysburg with 3 beds and 3 car garages!!” “NO! We are Number 1 in houses sold by brokers with RED SIGNS!”. “NO! We are!!!”

Sigh again.

Well, I have an MBA. From Duke University. And we learned a lot about stats. And one thing they teach you is that if you try hard enough, you can make the stats say just about anything.

So, I personally, a long time ago, stopped worrying about who is “Number 1″. I can make anyone Number 1 in something.

But should not the customer be “Number 1″?

I can make the stats say anything.

But I can only listen in shock when customers who are not being treated like they are important call me.

And today I got a phone call or two. AMAZING phone calls. From buyers (who, by the way, are ALMOST worth their weight in gold in this market!). Buyers – who had called Realtors for help and who got no return call.

Which I find amazing. And which I was more than happy to help solve this terrible problem of wanting to look at a house and not be helped. Yes – I can help you . . . I think . . .

Number 1? The customer.

But if you are interested in what brand of brokerage sells the most homes . . . I offer you the following chart for your edification with the 2008 year end numbers. RE/MAX is the leader. And that’s just the way I like it to be!

The inmates that caused this real estate crash are now rearranging the chairs/jobs that they hold.

This article by one of my favorite authors – Micheal Lewis (his baseball book that is really not about baseball, Money Ball, remains in my office in a position of honor and to remind me to read it every once and again) wrote this magnum opus on the Great Real Estate/Wall Street Crash of 2008.

You really should read this article by him that ran in the New York Times.

Amazing. It will make you mad.

Here is the link: The End of the Financial World As We Know It.