Useless Conversation

[Salamok]

If you know your market, just use a local MLS website and call the listing agent directly. If they're pulling the 3% split with the buying agent, you might be able to knock an easy 2% off. Tell the listing agent you're just going through an attorney and they can pocket an extra 1% if they knock the 2% off the price...after all negotiations are done.

The problem here is the selling agents are lazy fucks who can't be bothered to waddle their ass down to open up the house for "some unqualified dufus" who isn't using a buyers agent.  Oh yeah and it undermines their stranglehold on the market if they do it anyhow.

[Sky]

We have no exclusive buyer's agent in hundreds of miles. I went looking.

Ended up using a friend's husband. When I need to buy another house, I'm doing something like what you recommend. Just getting my license and setting up shop a few months beforehand with a local broker.

I've toyed with the idea of becoming an EBA but in a small market, I can't even imagine how quickly I'd be blacklisted by every conniving sonofabitch in the region.

[Salamok]

My wife has an inactive Real Estate license, occasionally she will reactivate it for friends and such and just give them half of the commish back as a closing gift.  I would have her leave it active all the time but part of the scam is that MLS/Superkey access is usually tied to being an active member of the NAR and once you add all the crap up it is around $2k a year in fees.  

edit: also after having spent hundreds of hours dorking around with MLS I have come to realize that nearly all of the realtors out there have pretty much zero clue on how to effectively mine that data for your benefit.  Successful Realtors are people persons and dataset manipulation isn't usually in the wheelhouse of those type of folk.

[ghost]

Yeah, me getting a license isn't in the cards.  Plus I'm selling, not buying. 

[Salamok]

Yeah, me getting a license isn't in the cards.  Plus I'm selling, not buying. 

Usually when selling you want to go with an agent that specializes in your area, drive around and see who has the most signs in front of homes for sale in your hood.

[ghost]

That's not a bad idea, I suppose, but then I got to thinking that if they had that many signs in my area they may not give the house the attention it deserves. 

[Sky]

Reality is that if you price it right, the volume dealer is probably your best bet. They're seeing the majority of traffic of dumbasses who don't know what dual agency is, so they get a ton of eyeballs.

I'm absolutely selling with the guy who was the listing agent on my house. He doesn't dick around, sets the price for most of the neighborhoods. It's gotten to be a game with my fiancee, watching when a house that's on the market for 3+ months suddenly has one of his signs out front and sells within a couple weeks.

But we're not average folks, we love to drive around and surf the MLS for fun. Part of why I'm considering it, I've been watching the market for about nine years actively and grew up here. I know all the neighborhoods, I know the transitions and history (going back to the pre-revolution!); and especially all the cool little nooks most people don't know (my house + yard is one of them).

[ghost]

The pictures of your yard do seem awesome.  As for the agent thing, you should do it! 

[croaker69]

12 GB mailbox?  Gah what the heck is wrong with people.  Seriously I know people with 7 years of email that can keep it under 2 GB no problem.   

On a side note what are people using to transfer large files these days?  FTP, Dropbox, yousendit, box.net, sharepoint really do not fit our requirements.  We want something that integrates into outlook like yousendit but we can host ourselves. There is a cisco one which is god awful expensive http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ac49/ac0/ac1/ac259/ironport.html and one by ipswitch  http://www.ipswitchft.com/Products/MOVEitDMZ/AdHoc.aspx  which is also god awful expensive. 

VMware has Project Octopus "Coming Soon."

[Selby]

So my ex wife went to get a car loan and found out she still owes a $150k.  Turns out our bank when we sold our house didn't send off the paperwork to the credit agencies and it shows that we've been delinquent in paying on a house we don't own anymore.  And trying to get the bank to give a fuck and correct it is a maze of telephone directories.  This is going to be fun!

[Murgos]

But we're not average folks, we love to drive around and surf the MLS for fun.

So, I am in the middle of buying a house.  Use MLS or, if you can't get an unrestricted login Redfin.com if it's active in your area is pretty good.  At least I've never noticed a discrepancy between their listings and the mls listing.  Zillow.com is okay if you have no other options but they aren't very good at staying up to date, they will often have stuff as available that sold 6 months ago or stuff listed that just isn't actually for sale.

Your agent, if you get one, will try and do the least amount of work possible (you aren't his/her only client) so they will get some vague concept of what you are looking for and then just shit out an automated search results thing ever day or so and that's what you see.  If you take the initiative with MLS or the others you can look at every house available in a wide swath of area(s).  This is much better for finding deals and neighborhoods that you hadn't previous considered or even knew existed.  Really, get familiar with every listing that is anything like what you want, cherry pick out of those and get the agent to show them to you.  Pay attention to town borders, if you are just searching by town a great property 100 yards down the road may be available and you will never see it because it's in a different town.

Yes, you are doing most of the work the agent should be doing, however, fuck that.  This is the biggest thing you will ever buy in your life.  Be informed, be a driver of the process and not a passive observer.  Also, the registry of deeds is public information as is the tax assessors records use both of them to get some facts about the property before you make an offer.  You can find out a lot, sometimes they have floor plans and histories of renovations or additions, you can get details of loans and liens and determine how much wiggle room the seller probably really has on price.

Above all though, be patient.  New stuff is listed daily and after a very short while you will get a handle on what it is you really want/will accept and then you can move quickly when something just right comes along.

[ghost]

Yeah, it's worth getting the free credit reports (not score) every year to make sure there's nothing funny on it.  It's going to get even more important as scammers get more access to our information.

[Bunk]

I'm plugging my own company's stuff here, but what the hell.

Check out the Realtor's websites in your area and see if anyone is setup with Market Snapshot. Basically, it's a product to allow the Realtor to auto generate a report using MLS data, showing listings and recent sales over the last three months. You just fill in the form and get the report - the Realtor get's your email address out of the deal.

If you find one, when you fill in the form, switch it to a "buyers" report and you get the option to search by price range in a given zipcode, rather than the defualt seller version that looks for loose comparables to your home.


A good Realtor is one that actually knows the area. Mine was actually able to look at the other units for sale in my building, and tell me off the top of her head what upgrades they'd had, location within the building, that sort of thing.

[Merusk]

So my ex wife went to get a car loan and found out she still owes a $150k.  Turns out our bank when we sold our house didn't send off the paperwork to the credit agencies and it shows that we've been delinquent in paying on a house we don't own anymore.  And trying to get the bank to give a fuck and correct it is a maze of telephone directories.  This is going to be fun!

How long has it been there? IIRC after a year the onus is on you to get it corrected, not them.  

Contact the credit agencies individually to dispute each mark and go through their processes to clear it up, and I *think* the info has to be sent to the agencies from the creditor not from you, so working through the bank right now is just wasting you time.


If you're using Zillow note they have been and continue to be largely useless.  At the height of the boom they listed my house as being worth $20k less than I'd bought it for.  Now, when nothing in the neighborhood has sold for more than $150k in 3 years they list me at $175k.  If I could get that for my house I'd sell tomorrow.

[ghost]

Yeah, Zillow is useful for somethings.  Price is not one of them, although I suspect it may vary from area to area.  Don't they depend a lot upon the tax value of the home?

[Merusk]

From their site:

The Zestimate (pronounced ZEST-ti-met, rhymes with estimate) home valuation is Zillow's estimated market value, computed using a proprietary formula. It is not an appraisal. It is a starting point in determining a home's value. The Zestimate is pulled from data; your real estate agent or appraiser physically inspects the home and takes special features, location, and market conditions into account.  We encourage buyers, sellers, and homeowners to supplement Zillow's information by doing other research such as:

The proprietary part says "We're not telling." The values I've seen always said to me "out our ass, based off of tax evaluations."   I know my house is tax-assessed at $186 and I just haven't bothered challenging it since my rate's low enough (I pay $1800 a year in taxes) that it wouldn't save me enough to be worth the hassle.

[ghost]

So I have 3 agents coming in for interviews.  I have a list of questions that I am going to ask and am pretty stoked about the selection.  They all had that "it" thing on the phone except for one guy who just had his dad die, so I'm going to give him a pass for now. 

[Bunk]

From their site:

The Zestimate (pronounced ZEST-ti-met, rhymes with estimate) home valuation is Zillow's estimated market value, computed using a proprietary formula. It is not an appraisal. It is a starting point in determining a home's value. The Zestimate is pulled from data; your real estate agent or appraiser physically inspects the home and takes special features, location, and market conditions into account.  We encourage buyers, sellers, and homeowners to supplement Zillow's information by doing other research such as:

The proprietary part says "We're not telling." The values I've seen always said to me "out our ass, based off of tax evaluations."   I know my house is tax-assessed at $186 and I just haven't bothered challenging it since my rate's low enough (I pay $1800 a year in taxes) that it wouldn't save me enough to be worth the hassle.

Zillow is pretty well known for giving price recommendations out of their ass. It's part of the business model; give the customer a random number that they know is probably wrong, so that they have a reason to contact the "expert". The product I mentioned above uses the same principal - but we just outright don't give you an estimated value and instead tell you to contact the Realtor for one. The prices we show on the other properties around you are accurate, we just don't narrow down the comparables enough to give you a true value.

[ghost]

That was my thought-  why not just call a real estate agent?  I believe that most will give you an estimated value for your house based on all the appropriate factors as a part of their initial workup. 

[Sky]

Yeah, Zillow has always been sketchy on price, because it's based on nothing, really. I like the property outlines which seem somewhat accurate for the most part.

[Abagadro]

So my ex wife went to get a car loan and found out she still owes a $150k.  Turns out our bank when we sold our house didn't send off the paperwork to the credit agencies and it shows that we've been delinquent in paying on a house we don't own anymore.  And trying to get the bank to give a fuck and correct it is a maze of telephone directories.  This is going to be fun!

Doing some research about and throwing around the citation to the Fair Credit Reporting Act will probably be worth your while.

[RhyssaFireheart]

Valentine's Day flowers just arrived.  Husband uses ProFlowers and has them delivered.  This year it's tulips and once they plump out and the buds open up, they'll be beautiful.  Red and purple flowers, my favorite colors. :D

[ghost]

I've never gotten my wife flowers.  I suppose that if I did now she would think I was cheating on her.

[Furiously]

I suggest a mariachi band instead.

[Sky]

I got her some nice blue flowers with some white roses. Card thanked Pope Gelasius I for the rampant flower slaughter.

[Samwise]

This is the first Valentine's Day in 12 years where I haven't had someone to get flowers for.  I'm not sure yet if I'm bummed or relieved about that.  

It does mean I finally get to go to the big annual pillow fight in downtown SF.  

[Ironwood]

Fuck Valentines day.

[Rasix]

Wife got earrings.  I hope that gets me off the hook for flowers.

[Ingmar]

I think our Valentine's Day plan is, play more SWTOR.

[RhyssaFireheart]

Well, to be fair, I did buy the husband a new LEGO set.  Nothing elaborate, since it's just a small car with about 60ish pieces.  That'll take him about 5 minutes to put together compared to the last set he got himself - 3000+pieces and ~3 evenings to put together.

[Nebu]

Fuck Valentines day.

I hate corporate holidays.  I'm even souring on Christmas.   

[Lantyssa]

I think our Valentine's Day plan is, play more SWTOR.

So romantic.

[ghost]

I think our Valentine's Day plan is, play more SWTOR.

So romantic.

It's probably more romantic what what the wife and I will do.

[Sky]

Fuck Valentines day.

I hate corporate holidays.  I'm even souring on Christmas.   

I use it as an excuse to patronize local businesses. The flowers are from a family that's been growing flowers dating back to the 1800s here, they have an awesome area in the cemetery down the road from my house, several really nice houses and are the nicest people. One of the girls (I say girl, she's a couple years older than me) hooked me up with my honeycrisp trees and proto-garden last year.

Do your part and take the corporate out of the holidays without losing the spirit.

[Chimpy]

Ok, those of you living in the British isles, I need to know who you think is the best provider for prepaid SIMs. Thanks.