Equal Opportunity Housing

Karen Fiddler, a Mission Veijo real estate agent, recently wrote on her ActiveRain blog about an experience with a client that wound up forcing her to make a decision to drop the client based on discrimination and fair housing laws. Typically, when you hear the words discrimination or fair housing laws it is about an agent making a comment that is deemed discriminatory or in violation of the fair housing laws. This case, however, might help shed some light on why we, as Realtors®, sometimes can’t answer your questions.

Texas Real Estate Forms

Section 18.A. of the Buyer Representation Agreement states:

Broker’s services are provided without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, sex, disability or familial status.

Section 21.B. of the Residential Real Estate Listing Agreement Exclusive Right to Sell states:

Fair housing laws require the Property to be shown and made available to all persons without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, sex, disability, or familial status. Local ordinances may provide for additional protected classes (for example, creed, status as a student, marital status, sexual orientation, or age).

Personal thoughts

When I get to either of these two sections when signing a buyer or seller to an agency agreement, I do the same thing every time. I read the statement (they are located at the end of the documents with several other important notices) to the client and add a note about my personal feelings on discrimination. Although I am only required to satisfy the law, I simply don’t discriminate. End of story. There’s no need for it in my business practice and I don’t have any reason to discriminate. It’s a shame these laws are even needed.

Fair housing laws were designed at a time when they were very necessary and they were a great idea – pushing us towards a more democratic, egalitarian society. If you experience discrimination in housing, you have rights and you should know them. The Department of Housing and Urban Development provides an excellent fair housing fact sheet and information on how to file a complaint if you feel you’ve experienced discrimination in housing.

In Karen’s case, she was being asked to help her clients find an area for them which matched their ethnicity. Although it has been argued before that this is not discrimination, for real estate agents, it is a dangerous question which could lead to a lawsuit. Unfortunately, as with all laws, the pendulum has swung further to one side than the original law (in my opinion) probably meant to. Realtors® should not steer their clients to particular areas of town based on race, religion, etc., but if a client specifically wants to live somewhere that fits that specific demographic, they should be allowed to and (again, in my opinion), their agent should be allowed to talk to them without fear of a lawsuit. Of course, the problem then is that the agent is acknowledging that there is some sort of separation between different areas (ie. that’s the Jewish part of town or that’s the area where all the Italians live) – and in the eyes of the law, that could be negatively viewed as discrimination.

The trouble with it is that if we didn’t need discrimination laws in the first place, we could probably talk more openly on the subject. I’ve always felt that part of the reason that discrimination still exists is because we spend so much focusing on pigeon-holing everyone. The Census wants to know your racial background. Demographic information for neighborhoods is often broken down along racial lines. By continuing to break everything down by these classes (race, color, religion, national origin, sex, disability or familial status) we create our focus on the distinctions between them and allow the “differences” between us to be marked, tagged, and flagged – which can easily lead to discrimination.

I encourage everyone to be equal opportunity people and as far as my business practice goes, everyone is welcome.

As usual, I must disclose the fact that I am not a lawyer and therefore can’t give legal advice. The opinions I express about discrimination are in regards to my personal beliefs and although they follow the law, they are not necessarily one and the same as the law.

If you’re interested in reading about fair housing laws, check out this post by Patricia Kennedy, a real estate agent in Washington, DC, which opens up the question of whether the fair housing laws are unconstitutional.

photo courtesy of Seattle Municipal Archives

You can help change San Antonio.

I have a bit of a headache. I’m tired. I’m a little more than frustrated. San Antonio real estate is in serious danger. If you’ve been reading this blog regularly, you may have noticed recently that there have been quite a few articles about listings and the San Antonio MLS. They have been written after a few hours researching homes for my clients and seeing some poorly presented listings.

The problem?

You’ve heard me go on and on about it before – listings that lack descriptions or photos, wrong information, sideways photos, poorly mapped properties (sometimes on the other side of town), foreclosures with one picture with someone’s thumb covering half the camera lens, builders’ listings without anything more than a floor plan of the house (even though it’s an inventory home and the home is fully built)…all these details that are being forgotten, or worse, ignored.

These little details are what help sell real estate. With a large percentage of buyers looking online and just about every real estate agent in San Antonio using the MLS, we can’t afford to watch these details be overlooked. Heck, they’re not even details – these are the basic building blocks of any real estate listing – San Antonio or elsewhere.

Help save San Antonio real estate from itself.

You’re probably thinking, “but, I’m not a real estate agent. Aren’t they the ones who should be fixing this?” Well, you’re right – our industry does need to work harder on things like this. I hate to say it, but it’s true. Yet you can help San Antonio sellers and make the real estate industry a better place. How? It’s not as hard as you might think.

Think of everyone you know. How many of them have a house for sale or are thinking about selling their home? Most people know at least one person who’s selling their home. Would you want your friend to have a house on the market that isn’t selling because someone thought that taking photos from their car window (so that you can see them in the side mirrors) is easier than getting out of the car? Homes with poor listing photos and descriptions can still sell, but San Antonio buyers are more likely to pass by that house without ever stepping foot inside it. With all the technology in real estate available today, there’s no good reason to not make every listing look the best it can.

So what do I need to do?

Simple. Call your friend and have them request a copy of the MLS sheet from their listing agent. Don’t just go online and google the property or look it up at Realtor.com – many of the online sites will look different and most of them don’t carry all of the information on a given property. The MLS is the best source for the most detailed information available. Have them look at the MLS listing, their real estate agent can set them up in the San Antonio MLS so that they can view what a buyer would see (have them request the “Agent Custom” view as it provides the most detail). It’s that easy. Tell everyone you know. You can even email this post to your friends so they know why you’re doing this (there’s a new handy-dandy “Email This Post” button down below). Just get them to look it, please, for the good of the real estate industry here in San Antonio and beyond.

A bit of disclosure.

Some might think that I’m writing this in attempt to get you to tell your friends to work with me. You wouldn’t be 100% wrong. Of course, I’d love their business. However, if they have a listing agreement with another agent, I can’t do anything for them. This isn’t really about me, this is about them. I’m tired of seeing consumers paying commissions and getting less than stellar service. We all conduct our real estate business differently in San Antonio, but these are basic things that shouldn’t be falling by the wayside. I have an interest in my industry growing and improving and little things like these can make huge steps towards those goals.

There are plenty of amazing Realtors® in San Antonio, but I am seeing too much of this and it’s not a couple of isolated incidents. It’s too common of an occurrence. A simple email and some investigation on the part of your friends who are selling and we could help stop a good portion of it. It’s a small step, but it’s definitely in the right direction, so go ahead and email, call, and tell your friends! As Dee Snider once famously said, “We’re not gonna take it anymore.”

photo courtesy of D3 San Francisco

The San Antonio MLS

Read any real estate blog and you’ll quickly learn that Realtors® love acronyms and abbreviations. One you’ll hear more often than not? MLS. Short for multiple listing service, it’s what agents use to help you find a home in San Antonio (or wherever you may live). Simply put, it’s a giant database of homes for sale that is available to Realtors® in San Antonio.

MLS (or Multiple Listing Service) lists all of the San Antonio homes for sale at any given moment. While it is one of the most complete databases of San Antonio homes for sale, it is by no means a list of every home for sale. Homeowners may opt out of the system and in San Antonio, the broker must be a member of the San Antonio Board of Realtors® (not every real estate agent is a Realtor®). For sale by owners can be listed in the MLS through a brokerage, but they can not do it privately (that’s a complicated enough issue that it deserves its own blog post).

The MLS is one of the Realtors® greatest tools as it provides updated, accurate (as accurate as it is when it was entered) information on the homes in San Antonio. With it, we can set multiple criteria for your home search and have an email of homes that meet your needs in a matter of minutes and have the MLS continue to send you properties as they appear on the market or changes are made (such as a price change). Although I’d love to take credit for sending you a list of properties at 4 AM, it’s just the San Antonio MLS doing it’s job (although I have been known to be up at that hour searching for properties for my clients).

But, I can do all the research online myself…

With the abundance of real estate search sites available to consumers these days, some people think they have no need for the Multiple Listing Service. Although I love the proliferation of technology that has made searching for a home in San Antonio much easier, I have to disagree that the MLS is of no value. The difference is in the data. Many sites such as Trulia, Zillow, and even the search tool right here on this site rely on one of two ways (or both) of getting their listing data. The first is syndication. When I have a new listing, I enter photos, descriptions, and info about the home into a syndication website. It then sends all the data out to the various sites that contain real estate listings. The second way sites get their data is through MLS feeds or IDX (click the link for an excellent explanation of IDX, or Internet Data Exchange). Although these feeds provide data about the homes in San Antonio currently for sale, the data is not always updated quickly (causing you to see a home as an active sale, when in fact it has already been sold) and is not as complete as the data available in the San Antonio MLS.

Don’t be afraid to start your search for a new home online, but be sure to target your search and when it’s time to get a little more serious, contact a local Realtor® and dive into the world of the San Antonio MLS.

photo courtesy of br1dotcom

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Sixteen was ok, but twenty five is great news.

The San Antonio MLS (Multiple Listing Service) has just announced it’s latest upgrade and with it comes a feature that I couldn’t be happier about. More photos! Previously, when listing your home, agents were allowed up to sixteen photos to best showcase your home for sale. Now with nine additional photos possible, we can show your home in even finer detail.

Sixteen photos usually allows me to show most of the rooms, the front, and the back of a home. Now with twenty five available slots for photos, the possibilities have opened up even wider. Perhaps your home has some cool architectural details or the neighborhood amenity center needs showcased to truly let your home shine – now we can do it within the San Antonio MLS (in the past I have used blog posts, virtual tours, and other listing websites to showcase other features when possible).

Buyers love listings with photos.

I see it everyday, buyers who don’t like a home because there’s not enough information (mainly photos) for them to get a feel for the home before they go see it. Buyers want more photos. I get requests from clients asking, “Do you have more photos of this home?” or “Can you call the agent and see if they have more photos?” Although I think we’ll see a slow adoption of this new upgrade by some agents in San Antonio (there’s still agents who don’t even use all sixteen photos), you can be assured that I’ll be going photo-crazy! In addition, I will continue my use of additional photos on this blog, other sites, single property websites, virtual tours, and more.

If you currently have your home for sale, call your agent and ask them to take advantage of this new feature in the San Antonio MLS so that buyer’s searching for homes have what they’re looking for and can make better decisions about your home. If you’re thinking about selling your home and are not yet working with a San Antonio real estate agent, I think you know who to contact. (Hint, hint.)

photo courtesy of Lincolnian (Brian)

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Shhhh… Don’t Tell The Neighbors.

Today, in an email from Trulia, I noticed an interesting question about short sales and disclosure. Real estate agent Cathy Cataletto of Staten Island posed several questions to agents across the nation regarding short sales and how we (and if we) are to disclose them (real estate laws vary widely by state) to potential buyers. Her question was not born of ignorance, but the sort of question where she was looking to start a conversation around the topic to see how agents across the country differed in the disclosure of short sales.

After writing my answer, I thought it might be something good to cover here, as we do see many short sales in San Antonio (not as many as some states, like California). As a brief primer, a short sale is when the bank agrees to take less money from the sale of your home than what you owe on your loan. This can be a list price below what you owe, or a a price above what you owe, but after closing costs and Realtor® commissions are subtracted, you wouldn’t have enough to pay off the balance of your loan. Basically, you come up “short” when paying off your loan. Short sales are notoriously difficult and time consuming, but with the right people by your side, they can be done and can be a great alternative to foreclosure.

Disclose, Disclose, Disclose.

The quick and easy answer on whether to disclose short sale status to a potential buyer is an emphatic YES!! In San Antonio, we are required to mark potential short sales within the MLS and we are able to search for potential short sales for our clients. However, it is not required for us to put any information about that within the public remarks section, which the public sees when looking at homes online. I find that most agents do though, as it’s better to get the information out there and not wait to be asked.

Agents have passed on the old mantra of “location, location, location” for “disclose, disclose, disclose.”

Regardless of the San Antonio MLS’ requirements, I would still argue that we need to disclose the potential for a short sale to a buyer and their agent. Why, you might wonder? Short sales can take a long time to take from offer to closing. Imagine I’m selling a home (that I know is a short sale) and you and your agent go see it and decide you love it. You write an offer and your agent submits it to me. It could take days to months to even get an answer on a short sale offer. Would you want to wait that long? Wouldn’t you want to know up front of that possibility? Wouldn’t you be furious to find out…after you took time off work to view the home and write the offer? I certainly would be if I was in your shoes.

What will the neighbors think?

One of the points brought up during the discussion was the feelings of the home owners going through the hardship. Obviously, if you are moving towards a short sale, you are experiencing some sort of financial hardship. No one jumps up and down and says “Whoopie, we’re falling behind on our mortgage and we’re going to sell our house as a short sale!” Let’s face it, times have been tough lately and many of our friends, families, and neighbors are facing difficult times. First of all, there is no shame in admitting that you need help. Second, selling your home as a short sale is better than allowing it to move all the way to foreclosure. In fact, I’d go so far as to say a short sale is a sign of a smart, forward thinking person. Getting out of the situation (without running away) before the situation is unstoppable (foreclosure), to me, is an admirable trait.

I can understand why no one wants to share that kind of personal information with the world and even more so, the neighbors, but the options are much worse. Foreclosures are public record. Foreclosures can cause much more damage to your credit report. A short sale can be the best option when there is no way to catch up on your payments. No one wants to face it, but sometimes facing our biggest fears only makes us stronger. So, although you may not want the neighbors to know about your financial hardship, which is better – allowing the neighbors to watch as the bank sends a locksmith to your door and changes the locks one day or disclosing your home’s sale as a short sale?

If you’re behind on your payments and think there’s no way out, call your lender. Don’t let it drag on – do it as soon as possible. Speak with them – openly and honestly about your situation and how you got there. They may be able to help. Before it gets to the point that the lender is ready to foreclose, speak with a Realtor® about your options. Open up to them and let them know what’s going on. You’ll need to speak to your lender and get their authorization for a short sale (they require a “short sale package” be sent to them, your Realtor® can help you with this). Your Realtor® will then work to market the home and get it sold. It’s not a cut and dry process and the banks can be frustrating as hell with short sales. You might want to scream and you might want to cry, but you can get through this – many already have.

If you have questions about short sales, foreclosures, or what you’ll need to prepare to begin the process, get in touch with me and I’d be glad to help you move a few steps closer. It won’t be the most fun ride you’ve ever been on, but together we can get through it and back on your way to getting back to life without that weight on your shoulders.

photo courtesy of TheTruthAbout…

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Social Media And Real Estate Agents.

Yesterday morning, I received a link to an article in the North Bay Business Journal from a few friend of mine on Twitter. I had spoken to the author of the post, Jenna V. Loceff, last week as she asked me about my thought as a real estate agent utilizing social media as part of my business plan. In particular, she wanted to discuss Flickr with me as she had read my stories about what happened between me and the photo site.

Our conversation covered a lot of ground in a short span of time and some of what I said made it into Monday’s article. I was shocked to see the numbers for real estate agents’ use of social media as reported by the California Association Of Realtors® considering how California is home to some of the world’s tech giants and also an incubator for many of the technologies we use on a daily basis in real estate.

Read the full article on the North Bay Business Journal website (it appears they don’t archive older articles so the article no longer exists on the site)and please take a moment to leave your thoughts and comments.

photo courtesy of Gastev

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Thoughts on how we deal with the question, “Is now a good time to buy?”

In some ways, it might seem like career suicide to dare suggest that we as Realtors® might sometimes be too “sunshine and roses” when it comes to talking about the market, but the fact is, I often wonder how to present good news to consumers without coming off as just painting a rosy picture to suit my needs as an agent. I could go on and on how I’m not that guy, but in reality sometimes that just seems to make it seem worse.

In a recent email from the National Association of Realtors®, this exact topic was brought up and I wanted to see what the readers of my site thought of this. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I think we need a balance…if we run around shouting “everything’s fine, it’s a great time to buy!,” eventually no one will believe us and think we’re just saying that to generate business. We all remember Chicken Little, don’t we? Well it works both ways. I think the key to the “balance” I seek, is honesty with a dose of sensitivity. Realtors® do need to get the word out that there are some great reasons to buy right now, but we also need to be sensitive to people’s reactions to the economy, the housing market’s problems, the job losses, and everything else that has been doom and gloom on the news lately. The media loves a sad story, no doubt, but there are reasons that not everything should be looked at with such a negative view.

Here’s the quote from the email that sparked my attention:

It is critical for NAR to be both realistic and optimistic concerning the current state of the real estate market. As you can imagine, that can be a difficult balance to strike, especially with market conditions changing on a day-to-day basis. Sometimes, NAR is viewed as a “cheerleader” for the real estate industry. That’s not inappropriate, considering we are “The Voice for Real Estate”. The vast majority of our membership feels strongly that we must do more to counter the overwhelming attention that the news media give to negative national housing market trends and help bring consumers back into the market. That is, in fact, what our ongoing messages and Public Awareness Campaign are designed to do.

So what do you think?

Do Realtors® and the National Association of Realtors® need to tone it down? Do we need to be less “cheerleader” and more support system? Or do we need to spread the message and shout it from the mountain tops in order to improve the housing market in the coming year? If you ran the National Association Of Realtors®, what would you be telling the public in order to show them that there is opportunity out there for buyers, but without making it sound like you’re just shouting “Real Estate, Real Estate, RAH-RAH-RAH!”

I’d appreciate your comments below or you can email them direct to me. I welcome both consumers and other agents thoughts.

photo courtesy of aznviolaguy

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