A Griffith Listing

Real Estate Services by Jon Griffith

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Slave to the Lender

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There’s a relational dynamic that many people neglect or aren’t even aware exists when they consider purchasing something with debt.  It’s the master/slave dynamic.  When you borrow money from someone, regardless of the time-frame you’ve agreed upon to re-pay that debt, the debt must be repaid, or there’s risk of bad things happening.

As a consumer, I have a say in what products or services are of value simply by choosing to do business with that company.  In other words, I vote with my wallet.  If I don’t agree with something a company does, I don’t have to use their services.

When you borrow money, something is usually used to secure the loan accompanied by an evaluation of your “debt score.”  In the case of a house, the house itself becomes the security instrument that the lender uses to ensure they’ll get paid.  That is why your rates can be so low.  In the case of consumer credit cards or personal loans, since there’s usually nothing put up for security, your rates will be much higher as the lender shifts the risk to you.  They make more money that way.

Collecting payments from you can be a costly process, depending on the type of loan you’ve taken.  When you buy a house, your payments are typically handled by a company you never chose to do business with.  In 2002, I purchased my home using a mortgage broker who promptly sold the note for my house to Countrywide Financial, who was acquired by Bank Of America who subsequently released the note to Greentree Servicing.

I had no say in the matter except that when I signed my closing docs, I gave consent to this phenomenon.  Perhaps I could have retained more control over who I was choosing to do business with had I refused to these terms, but at the same time, perhaps I would not have closed on my first home.

Now, as a debtor, indebted to repay a loan serviced by a company (Greentree) with whom I would never choose to do business, I am stuck with their garbage services and practices until I either pay off the note, or they release the servicing responsibilities to yet another collection company.

This is one example of how borrowing money can put you into a situation whereby you have no control over who you choose to do business with.  Thus, the borrower is slave to the lender.

Proverbs 22:7 – The rich rule over the poor and the borrower is slave to the lender.

 

Please Reply with Remove in the Subject Line IS INEFFECTIVE

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Spam is a serious problem.  If you send bulk e-mail to people who have never heard of you, nor expressed an interest in your products or services, then you’re simply being a pest, and you’re breaking the law.

I’ve seen on more than one occasion someone implement the old “reply with remove in the subject line” method.  The problem with this is that the e-mail address that your “remove” system is going to verify against is the one that I’m sending my reply from.  In many cases, it’s not the e-mail address that you used to send the message in the first place, because I’ve chosen to forward mail from multiple addresses to one location.

The “remove” method is ancient in digital years.  It’s also impossible to know if you’re actually using an automated script to remove addresses, or if you’re manually removing them when you get a message that says “remove” in the subject line.  The latter method is a joke.

The Right Way

Whatever you’re using to send bulk e-mail should provide a link at the bottom of your messages that allows for single click un-subscription.  When you send me something I don’t want, I should not be expected to do any work to eliminate future mailings.  I shouldn’t have to be inconvenienced by your system’s antiquity by forcing me to write YOU an e-mail to ASK you to stop sending mail that you weren’t supposed to send me in the first place.

If I can’t one-click unsubscribe from your message, I can guarantee I’ll never use your services.


Borrowing Your Life Away

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One For One Exchange

Imagine two men in a field, each holding something the other needs.  Both men put a reasonable amount of time into acquiring the items.  Eventually they will come to an agreement about them and will exchange the items.  The value placed on each item is called utility, which is a measure of the relative satisfaction one derives from a good or service.  In this particular example, neither men will be exchanging more than just the item, which means no monetary value can be placed on them.  In fact, the reason they are both willing to part with their item, is because of the perception that each of them will increase their utility through the exchange.  If both men believe their utility will increase, then we’ll probably see an even trade where both men will walk away satisfied.  It also may indicate that they are the only two people interested in those items, and that there may be no way to measure a market value based on a currency system.

One For Many Exchange

Let’s give these two characters a name.  We’ll call them Joe and Bill.  In this instance, when Joe and Bill meet, Joe sees that Bill has something that he could really use, which would increase Joe’s utility significantly, but Bill looks at what Joe has and decides that he could use what Joe has, but doesn’t necessarily need it, and isn’t really excited about it.  Bill’s utility isn’t going to increase much.  Something has to give at this point.  This is where negotiation comes in.  It’s likely that Joe is going to have to offer more than just his item to Bill in order to get Bill to make the exchange.  So, Joe gives Bill his item plus a few other things, or perhaps whatever is being used in that day for currency.  Of course, we have to consider that in times when government has failed, people revert to a system of bartering, where goods and services become the currency until a government that the people can trust defines a new monetary system.

In the U.S., we have our American dollar, and we agree that it holds value, but it rests upon nothing.  Not even gold.  If you think about the value of Gold, remind yourself of the last time any civilization traded Gold when the economy failed.  It hasn’t happened for many centuries, and won’t happen in the future.  Dave Ramsey spoke about this in one of his recent podcasts, outlining that the most recent brush with a completely failed economy that we have seen was what happened in New Orleans after the hurricane.  You didn’t see people trading gold, you saw them trading goods and services.  You give me a gallon of water, I give you a gallon of gas, etc.

Many For Many Exchange

The many for many exchange is just a bloated form of the  One for One exchange where it simply takes more items to reach a one to one exchange.  I’ll trade you this, this, and this for that, that, and that.  More volume, but balanced out, just like all of the exchanges.  Again, as long as there is a perceived increase in utility for both parties to the transaction, then the details of the transaction just become pieces on the balancing scale of negotiation.

Borrowing Your Life Away

The three examples above are very basic micro economic facts of life.  There’s one common theme that runs throughout, however, and that’s that the exchanges that took place above assumed that each participant actually had something to trade.  They had worked hard to find what they needed to trade, and when they found someone with which to trade, they succeeded, and walked away from the transaction happy.  Each item was owned by the other.

But what if you were standing in the middle of that field and you wanted something the other person had, yet you had nothing to offer in return, except your word that you would eventually return something to them that may satisfy them?  What would they be thinking?  They might look at this situation and think that there’s a greater opportunity to them increase utility through this transaction than if we simply traded up front.  What happens?  Well, in this case, Joe offers to Bill an item that Bill cannot pay for now, in exchange for a greater payment later, because both are now bound by time.  Bill is now obligated to increase Joe’s utility over a longer period of time, and Joe has to wait to be paid, and may be tempted to skim as much as possible because Bill isn’t going to be able to pay him right away.  Bill may have a percieved increase in utility for the “new car” he just bought, but it’s short term, because Bill has forgotten that he has agreed to pay far more than he believes the item is actually worth to him, all for the sake of having it now, for just a little bit, instead of later, for the full value.

Welcome to debt.  The bible talks about this in Proverbs 22:7 – “The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender.”  When was the last time you chose to be someone’s slave?  There is a simple solution to debt.  It’s called savings.  The reason you may be in debt is because you are not patient enough to save.  When you borrow money, you pay more than you should pay for something, and you lock yourself into a pattern of slavery until you pay off the debt.

Presenting Your Home: Photos

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80% of all buyers use the internet to shop for a home.  It takes an average of 12 to 18 months for them to actually purchase a home, from the initial thoughts of selling their home to the process of purchasing yours.  Since those people start on the internet, listing your home without photographs would be as effective as driving a car without gas.

Think about how many products you’ve been sold on because of the marketing that goes into it.  How much of that marketing contained images of people, places, the actual product?

If your house does not have a photo, people will not look at it.  They will not show it, they will not even think about it.  It’s gone, and getting them back will be difficult if the image is added too late, and here’s one reason why.  When I look for new homes on the market, I skip the properties without photos at first, then I go back to look at the ones without if I think my client would like it, based on my knowledge of the area.  If I go back at a later date and a picture has been added, it actually has a greater chance of being skipped because at that point, I’m looking for the results that don’t have photos.

The new FlexMLS allows us to search for listings based on whether or not they have photos.  This basically eliminates properties from my search if it doesn’t have a photo.

Part of my marketing plan, which is by no means an added benefit, is that I take lots of photos.  I say that it’s not an added benefit because no property should be listed without photos, period.  I don’t just take photos, I publish a property website for each listing, publicize it to as many places on the internet as I possibly can, and I create my own custom slide show for your home.

ARMLS used to offer photography services for us.  They would take a shot of the front of the property for us and we wouldn’t have to do anything, but it would only be one mediocre photo.

ARMLS announced today that they would be discontinuing this service and they offered the following reasons for the change:

  • Over half of the listings currently in TEMPO were marked “do not photograph” when they were entered into the system.
  • 80% of the half that WAS photographed by PhotoReal had their exterior photo replaced with one supplied by the listing agent within two weeks of the listing going active.
  • 90% of the current listing database has photos provided by agents rather than the PhotoReal photography service.

What’s the most important thing to note in these three points?  “WITHIN TWO WEEKS OF THE LISTING GOING ACTIVE.”

The fact that agents enter listings AT ALL WITHOUT PHOTOS is hurting the potential sale of your property.  List with me and I’ll make sure you don’t experience those gaps in service.

For an example of a website that I created for one of my listings, click here.