A Griffith Listing

Real Estate Services by Jon Griffith

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E-mail and Websites for REALTORS, The Basics

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As a REALTOR, you need to maintain a digital presence.  At minimum, you need an e-mail address.  You could choose to use a free e-mail provider, or you could do it the right way, by registering your own domain name and making up your own e-mail address.  For example, you@yourdomain.com.  The only way you can achieve this is by thinking up and registering your own name.  Do this at Godaddy.com.  Register it for a year, so you don’t over commit to a longer period of time, in case your name doesn’t work out for you, and don’t privately register it.  You don’t need ANY other extras.  Just the name.

Once you have the name, you can do whatever you want with it, but the first thing you’ll need to do is establish your e-mail system.

Your best bet in our current internet climate, is to subscribe to Google Apps for Domains.  You can do this by visiting http://www.google.com/apps.  You get a 30 day trial, and after that, your cost is minimal.  It gives you a platform full of organizational and collaboration tools that are perfect for what you do.  Setup is a breeze, and the web interface works with every computing device and browser that exists, so you don’t need your own computer to manage the information, and the information remains updated, live, across every device you have, inherently.

The second task that is associated with your domain is establishing a website.  Find a hosting provider you trust, create your account there, then tell them that you already have Google Apps for Domains set up.  They’ll need to help you configure an account with them so your mail still goes to Google’s servers and not to theirs.  The last thing you want is a proprietary e-mail system hosted by a web-hosting provider, as they are sub-standard and do not play well with the rest of the online world.

You’ll want to lean towards WordPress as the framework upon which your site is built.  From there, you’ll choose from a host of free site themes, premium (paid) site themes, or custom designed themes.  Then, you’ll have your choice of free plug-ins to enhance your site, and/or paid plug-ins for features such as IDX property searches.

Once you have these two major components of your domain in place, you can forge ahead worrying about little more than providing good quality content regularly.

Ditch the PC and Switch to a Mac

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As a former PC technician with over 20 years experience in distribution, retail, networking, and repair, I abandoned the world of Windows and PC’s in 2010 with the purchase of a new MacBook Pro and my efficiency has gone through the roof.  Short of a few hardware issues here and there, the most maintenance I’ve had to do on my Mac involved backing up my data and replacing the batteries in my Bluetooth wireless keyboard.

I don’t use a PC for anything, and I don’t print documents.  All of my business is done digitally between my MacBook Pro, my iPad, an Android Nexus 7 (non-Apple) mobile tablet, and my iPhone.  That’s it.  That’s all I need to conduct every form of business I encounter.

If you’re looking for someone to help you solve your PC problems, you may want to check out Data Doctors.  I’m in the efficiency business, and the most efficient and problem-free path to getting more homes sold and more business done, will be found on a MacBook.

There’s an initial investment, but count the cost of your time, and the initial start-up costs to owning a MacBook are well worth it.

Stop Using Paper Altogether

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I’ve been a REALTOR for 3 different brokerages.  I’ve closed dozens of real estate transactions.  I’ve also trained and coached some of the top producing agents in the Valley of the Sun, Phoenix, AZ.

In every one of the environments that I’ve been a part of, there wasn’t a single day that passed where someone didn’t have an issue printing a document. It didn’t matter how well the office computers and network were designed, the problem still persisted.  Even after building a 9-office network, following industry standard practices, I was unable to prevent printer related problems, no matter how hard I tried.

Some of these problems at times were due to standard maintenance issues.  Some of them were due to the computer that the user was printing from, often owned by that person, and almost ALL of the problems occurred on Windows based computers.  The only actual reason I found that was causing the issue was the expectation the REALTOR had of the technology tools that the brokerage had put into place.

Brokers do NOT educate REALTORS in basic computer literacy says http://www.workbootsnerd.com, and 99% of the printer problems I’ve witnessed on a day to day basis have been directly related to what the agent expects the printer’s capabilities to be contrasted by the level of computer literacy that particular agent possesses.

I have been closing sales for 5 years without needing to print a single page.

 

Have I printed?  Yes.  Have I needed to?  No.  Today’s digital tools empower you and eliminate the headache associated with printing paper documents.  Let go of the printer.  It is a cost center.  Not only does it cost in materials, it costs you in time.  Your competition is paperless.  I can teach you how to be paperless too.

Outsourcing

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In 1994 I traveled the nation with a company called Camfel Productions. It was a fantastic experience. During that time I journaled every night. Every once in a while I type up a page and add it to the blog here, and that’s why you’ll see some posts dated pre-blog era. The problem I’ve faced is the amount of time it takes to re-type them. Even at 80+ wpm on a good day, it just doesn’t make sense for me to re-type the entire 80 pages, single spaced, when I already spent 10 months night after night typing it once.

So, I decided I’d dive into my first elance.com experience. I’ve outsourced the work to someone in Canada, as here profile seemed to be the most impressive. I thought at first I could just scan the documents and have OCR convert the scan to text, then just copy and paste the results into my posts. Unfortunately OCR doesn’t do very well with faded dot-matrix print.

The total cost? $50.00. I figure it represents about 10 hours worth of my time, and that’s not what I want to be doing, so, why not? I’ll let you all know how it goes…and in fact, you’ll see more posts with 1994 dates on them soon :).

How Much Should a Short Sale Cost?

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What could be worse, in times of financial hardship, than receiving news from your real estate agent that his or her services will cost you, out of pocket, before any work begins?

Now that would be adding insult to injury.

In a normal real estate transaction, the cost to sell a home is typically on the shoulders of the home-owner who has hired a listing agent to market the home.  A rate is negotiated, and the resulting fees are split evenly between the listing broker, and the selling broker, and these fees are drawn from the proceeds of the sale of the home at closing.

A short sale is a different beast altogether, because it’s assumed that the homeowner has fallen on hard times; specifically that they owe more on the house than it will sell for (see the article “What Does It Mean to Be Upside Down in Your House”)  When the amount you get at sale is less than what is owed, the seller either needs to come to the table with cash out of pocket to bridge the gap, which most cannot do, or seek out the approval of the lender to release the property for less than is owed.  Sometimes the lender will ask the seller to sign a personal note for the difference.  This is commonly asked, but rarely agreed to.  This happens all day long and for good reason.  Banks aren’t in the real estate business.  They’re in the money business.

The prime time  for a short sale to be approved by a lender is when it’s clear to the lender that the home is headed for foreclosure, or there’s an inevitable need to sell due to other unforeseen circumstances.

In the event of a short sale, whereby the seller has no money left over when the house sells, how do the REALTORS® receive compensation for their work?

That’s easy.  Fees are built into the transaction and paid for by the lender releasing the note.  The banks know that it takes time and expertise to properly sell a home, and since they aren’t in the real estate business, they’re more than happy to partner with REALTORS® to ensure the job gets done.  Selling your home short of what you owe lightens the blow on the property values in the neighborhood which is an additional plus for the banks, as they may own multiple properties near your home.  Save one, save many.

So, on a house that sells for $120,000.00 that has a payoff of $150,000.00, the bank will subtract the broker fees and closing costs from the final sales price, resulting in an even lower net payment to the bank.  In this example, it’s possible that the bank will only receive a payment of $105,000.00, maybe more, maybe less.  It all depends on what they’re willing to take.

What this ultimately means is that you, the home-owner, receive top notch professional representation at ZERO OUT OF POCKET COST to you.

There are implicit associated costs when you sell your house for less than you owe, but they come in the form of a temporarily affected credit rating, and potential tax consequences.  The impact upon your credit score if you foreclose is far greater than if you sell short.  What does zero cost mean to you?

It means my services are completely free of charge to you.

But what if we don’t want our credit to be affected?

The only way to protect your credit from the effects of a short sale (which are far less damaging than foreclosure), is to sell the home and cover the difference between what it sells for and what you owe, so the lender will report your account as “Paid in Full.”  Either cash at sale or a note for the deficiency will accomplish this.

If you have any questions about the process of preventing foreclosure, whether you’re just now considering it might be a possibility, or you’ve already received a Notice of Trustee sale, please contact me today: (602) 312-3262

Eighteen Thousand Dollars to See a Movie?

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Yes, believe it or not, in order for you and your spouse to see a movie and have a soda every week, it will cost you $18,200.00.  Keep reading, and you’ll see how.

How you look at life does not determine whether or not something is wrong or right.  Although, when I consider financial matters, since money and math are synonymous with each other, and math doesn’t lie, the application of a “philosophy” to the way you manage your money doesn’t make sense to me.  I think that any philosophy that gets creative in the spirit of proving math wrong is a flawed philosophy.

One plus one is two.  That’s it.  Just two.  Math doesn’t lie.

Sometimes I like to look at things on a micro scale in order to grab hold of the big picture.  In fact, since I’m surrounded by my world and not outside of it, looking at the big picture sometimes requires an extrapolation of the micro details.

Take the concept of financial security.  In line with everything that I have ever thought, but never applied until recently, financial security means you can cover all of your living expenses using the investment income from the money you have saved.  Financial security does not mean you make enough money every year, because “enough” is relative to how much you are able to live on.  So, enough doesn’t mean anything.  It doesn’t mean that you have $100,000 or $200,000 or $1,000,000 in the bank, although that would be helpful, of course.

Financial security means you can successfully live, all expenses paid (remember, expenses being relative) on 8% of your nest egg (thanks Dave Ramsey.)  By the way, I dont consider Dave Ramsey to be another one of those financial gurus that has a “philosophy.”  I consider him down to earth, mathematically conscious, and full of uncommon sense.  Some of you might say, “old school.”  As far as I can tell, math hasn’t changed over time even though we try to make it change.

So what does living on 8% of your nest egg mean?  It means after you invest your savings in various investment vehicles, predominantly growth stock mutual funds, some of which have a proven long term performance record of around 12% annually, and you adjust for the average 4% annual inflation rate, you end up with somewhere around 8% on the average.  This is a long term plan.  There is no get rich quick without massive risk.

If you live your financial life applying basic formulas to how you manage money, it doesn’t matter whether you have a million dollars or a thousand dollars.  8% is 8% and if you can live off of 8% then you’re doing what you need to do to be financially secure.  Can someone live off of 8% of $1000.00?  Not likely.  That’s only $80.00/year.  So there is a level of realism that you need to incorporate.  But who knows, a majority of the world lives on less than a dollar a day.

On a micro scale, if you apply this nest egg rule to your money before you spend it, you can figure out how much you need to put away so you can continue your habits without needing to work.  What do you mean?  Let’s go uber micro.  Let’s say you and your wife enjoyed going to a movie once per week.  Your ticket price is $9.50 each, and you both slurp down a large, overpriced concession each time, at a cost of $4.50 each.  Your total cost to see that movie is $28.00, plus the ignored costs of time and gas to get to the movie.

So now you can ask yourself, “eight percent of what equals $28.00?”  The answer?  $350.00.  Eight percent of $350.00 is $28.00.  Since you go to the movies once per week, in order to be financially secure in this transaction, in other words, in order to see that movie “free of charge,” as your money works for you, you’d need to have a total of $18,200.00 invested in growth stock mutual funds averaging 12% over time.

It’s interesting to look at what you’re spending, then determine how much you’d need to have to cover that expense without working.  We will so often look at how much we have and then wonder what happened to it after it’s gone.  Start looking forward with your finances.  Considering that you’d need $18,200 in the bank to cover this one single activity may help you make some changes in how you spend.