Real Estate Services by Jon Griffith
It’s because of my father that I have integrity. It’s because of my father that I am who I am today. Phil Griffith is a very hard-working man who has a very strong work ethic which has found its way into my character. I thank you dad for being there to advise me throughout the years.
Don’t forget to call your dad today!
In the time honored tradition of posting non-real estate related material on a real estate website, I thought I’d join in by offering a “Random Musing” as Jay Thompson of the Phoenix Real Estate Guy calls it, of my own.
May 31st was a difficult day.
Unlike any other normal day of the year, I found myself in the cool pines of Show Low enjoying near perfect weather in anticipation of a short, but difficult day ahead of me. You see, I had entered the 5th Annual Deuces Wild Triathlon to test my skills away from the negotiating table. A triathlon is a 3-discipline event which starts with a swim, followed by cycling, then by running. I do not excel at any of them, but I do enjoy it. Working out is a great way to burn off emotional steam and signing up for a race is a great motivator.
The night before the race, we had arrived to find an available hook-up overlooking Fool Hollow Lake, one of the most beautiful camping grounds I have seen in a while. We enjoyed the pre-race gathering and attended a small service put on by Fellowship of Christian Athletes where JR Rosania (pictured to the right) gave his testimony. What a stud.
After the athlete dinner, we crashed at the campsite. I slept in my car, which was surprisingly comfortable.
Negotiating an open water swim is far more difficult than negotiating a purchase contract for a new home. The swim is the first leg of the race. The water was somewhere around 53 degrees. Entering the water was actually easy because of the wet suit, and I even thought that I might perform. I tested my stroke, got a feel for the water, and prepared for what was the most difficult swim I had ever experienced.
Within 200 meters of the start line, I was already anaerobic, gasping for air, and certain I would have to call it quits. I was so ready to end it, but something unexplainable pushed me forward. I just couldn’t give up. I had traveled 3 hours, paid an entry fee, and trained for 5 weeks (perhaps the cause of the trouble.) There was no way I’d quit. Thankfully, I finally made it out of the water, nearly in last place.
After making it through the hardest part of the race, the rest wasn’t so bad. I completed the cycling portion and moved on to the run. I felt great during both, but unfortunately cramped my right calf 2.5 miles into the run. It slowed me down considerably, but I made it.
Challenging myself in disciplines that I have never excelled at has made me stronger. It has fueled my desire to continue to improve both physically, emotionally, and spiritually. If you have never pushed yourself to complete something that you thought was otherwise impossible, you have not yet lived. Consider doing something above and beyond what you ever dreamed you could do!
From time to time I throw up a statistic in the form of a graph so all of you number geeks can get a grip on what’s happening in the market today. An interesting fact to ponder is the pattern that, regardless of the market conditions and consumer spending levels, the behavior pattern of those who are actively buying and selling real estate remains fairly static. You’ll notice that the trend this year changed between March and April. The following graph should explain itself. Roll your mouse over the graph to interact with it.
Take a sampling of the month of may over a 3-year period. You’ll notice that in may of 2005 there were 9,890 home sales. In the same month one year later, there were only 7,573 sales. One year after that, 5,795 sales in May. Each year, the number of sales in May dipped by a rather significant amount. This year, we have a new trend brewing with 5,667 home sales, only 128 less homes sold this year than did last year in May.
Think this has a bearing on the condition of the market? Leave a comment if you have a thought!
During my adventure as “The Executive Apprentice” little did I know that I would actually be working for a company with the name Realty Executives. As a full-time Realtor in the state of Arizona, I have found new adventure in a much more exciting and rewarding career. One of the most valuable experiences I have had in the past 5 months was developing this very blog as it paved the way for many new ideas to help build my real business.
My approach in the blogging community has shifted from “making money” to “helping others.” I have taken the knowledge of blogging, WordPress, plugins, web-development, you name it to my primary website at https://agriffithlisting.com where I contribute as much of my Real Estate knowledge as time allows to help you determine if you want to use me to purchase a home or sell your home. It has been a success already, driving my unique visitors from zero at the end of april to over 800 as of today. I know, that’s not a whole lot compared to the rest of the “blogging world” but you must remember that in real estate, one transaction is a good transaction and if the response rate is 400/month and I find myself one trusting client out of 400 potentials, then only 1/4% of the traffic will help me make a fairly substantial living over the next 12 months.
Don’t think that real estate is easy work. It’s not, and it involves a large amount of prospecting, which most people just hate to do. I am not one of those people.
I could look upon the time spent on The Executive Apprentice as fitting because it really has ben an apprenticeship. After 4 months I have secured 2 listings and have a trusting buyer who is very happy with the work that I’m doing to find them a perfect home in Scottsdale Arizona.
With a bit of creativity and technical knowledge, I have been able to quickly publish information about both of my seller’s properties on indiviually hosted “Showcase Property Websites.” Feel free to see what they look like.
The first is located in Gilbert at 564 Aviary Way, and the second is also in Gilbert at 1028 W. Tremaine. Each has its own site and each also has its own virtual tour thanks to the genius software developers over at http://www.slideshowpro.net who have developed a REALLY easy way to publish photo galleries through Flash.?
In February, I spent a rather inordinate amount of time developing the very blog you are reading. I started from scratch utilizing pieces of CSS code that I gleaned from the brilliance of others and began building the layout for this site. Since I was impressed with the type of following Darren Rowse had built at ProBlogger.net, I thought I would give it a shot, and thus The Executive Apprentice theme was created and I began writing frantically to keep up with the rest of the blogging world.
It became very tiring very quickly and there was little reward. My focus was all wrong. I was too interested in developing some sort of mastermind marketing plan to generate passive advertising income overnight that I forgot that offering value to the reader was the key to keeping people interested. I then realized that the only thing that could successfully keep my writing up to par would be real life experience.
If you think you can sit down and write about nothing hoping someone will read it and find value in it, and your focus is one thing and one thing only (money) then you may be doomed to fail. You really have to have something of value to offer your prospective readers.
One of the attempts I made at cashing in on blogging (granted, I know I didn’t really give it enough time and the reason for that was unemployment) was hooking myself up to entrecard and project wonderful. Not so wonderful. Entrecard turned out to be a group of sad bloggers trying to click their way to stardom through credits they’d earned simply by visiting thousands of sites over and over again. That turned out to be a complete waste of time. Project wonderful was implement way too quickly to be effective. The time committment needed just to manage the advertiser content was way too intense. I also implemented some google advertising, but the results consistently offered competing products and services to mine and my inexperience has proven to be detrimental to the development of a solid advertising campaign on my site.
So, I thought I’d give away something for free to generate traffic. I offered an Ides of March 19″ Flat Panel display thinking it would generate a boat load of traffic. After all, who wouldn’t want a free computer monitor? I had plenty of stock at the time, and I thought giving one away would be good publicity for the site. Basically it backfired when I found out that I would no longer be working where I was working and I suddenly had no income. I had to abandon the contest and sell the monitor to recover my losses. To those of you who entered the contest, I offer my sincerest apologies. There were only a handful of people who even took notice.
So, onward and upward…
…and who pays them?
Before I was a REALTOR, I was a consumer, and I bought a house. Fortunately for me, or maybe it wasn’t so fortunate, my REALTOR was my father. He also owned the house that I purchased. This worked both for and against me, but we won’t go into that now. The point is, I had no idea how REALTORS made a living prior to diving into the business myself, and you may also have questions about how we get money on our european wallets.
Real estate agents are 100% commission based jobs. That means, we don’t get a paycheck unless we do business. Makes sense. Open up shop, provide a service, get paid, or sit on the couch all day wondering what to do.
Real estate agents also work as sales agents under a real estate Broker. That broker typically collects a percentage of what we make to cover the costs of running the company. At Realty Executives, we pay a premium to use the name while we conduct business according to their standards and the standards of the Arizona Department of Real Estate and the National Association of Realtors.
If we don’t sell a home, we still pay our broker, mortgage, utilities, etc. So we’re always in a position where cash is flowing out, but not always in a position where cash is flowing in. We’re also in a business where we need to be available when most of the rest of the world is not. This means that we sometimes have to work on the holidays that you get to spend having fun. On the other hand, we have the freedom to “take a lunch” whenever we want.
What does having a Realtor cost the Buyer? Answer: Nothing. Zero. Zip. Nada.
When you meet me for the first time and express an interest in purchasing a home, I assess how serious you are about purchasing, and then I begin to spend money on you to help you find that home. Searching for a home with a REALTOR costs you only time. You will spend nothing out of pocket, but we will commit a large portion of our business day(s) and marketing budget to provide you with the most pleasant showings as we possibly can. We fill our tanks, fill your stomachs, and become your city tour guide for the duration of your search. If you purchase a home without using us after spending all that time, we don’t get paid, but we also don’t hold it against you, because you may not have known, which is why I’m writing about it. 🙂
When the seller hires a broker to sell their home, the broker charges them a commission to do so. When that broker lists the property on the MLS, they indicate how much of that commission will be paid to the agent who brings YOU (the buyer) to the table to purchase the home.
The buyer won’t have to open their wallets until an offer is accepted, at which point a series of events begin that justify why the selling broker is willing to pay us in most cases half of the agreed upon commission.
What does having a Realtor cost the Seller?
The seller is the one who has the highest expense. From fixing up their property to staging it, the seller will bear the majority burden of cost in selling a home.
When the seller strikes an employment agreement with the broker, they typically agree to a set commission of the final sales price of the home and they offer a portion of that to anyone who brings a buyer. When the property closes escrow, the funds owed the listing brokerage are distributed according to the agreement between the two brokerages and each real estate agent is paid accordingly.