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Selling Your Home: The Real Estate Agent

If you are not able or willing to sell your home yourself, you’ll need to find a real estate agent. A realtor is someone who deals with all of the hassles involved in selling your home in exchange for a fee of up to 7% of the selling price.

The hassles include marketing, an objective price analysis, advertising on the internet and in newspapers, providing a yard sign, negotiating the sale price, reviewing and filling out the contracts, and navigating the entire process for you. The aren’t meaningless duties, so make sure you are getting what you pay for. You need to find the right realtor for you.

The key to to ask questions, particularly the right questions. You can ask the wrong ones if you’d like, but they tend not to help much.

Helpful questions include:

“Can I call your previous clients?” If the answer is no, run away! If the answer is yes, get the list and call them.
“Have you sold any homes near here recently?” Get the names and numbers of the customers and call them. Find out how it went and what they wish would have happened differently. If the realtor hasn’t sold nearby homes recently, keep looking.
“Will you put your sales strategy in writing?” If it’s not in writing, you may be left paying the full commission, without getting the full promised service.
“What will you tell a potential buyer that wants to negotiate?” Make sure you and your realtor are on the same page.

Now for some secrets that realtors will not volunteer.

The selling fee is negotiable. If you live in a popular development, or if nearby homes have sold quickly, you should be able to get your fee reduced a couple of points.
You don’t have to sign an exclusive listing agreement. With an exclusive agreement, you will pay the realtor a fee if the house sells. Period. With a non-exclusive agreement, you can list with several agents and only pay the one who actually sells your house. If you find the buyer, you won’t pay a selling commission at all.

Selling your house can be intimidating and realtors are there to make the task easier for you. Have you had any problems with real estate agents?

Selling Your Home: For Sale by Owner

Finance

: Image by Casey Serin via Flickr

When you’re preparing to sell your home, your first instinct is often to rush straight to a realtor. There are benefits to using a trained real estate agent, but it isn’t always necessary.

The biggest motivation to skip the realtor is avoiding the fees, which can run as high as 7% or more in some places. What does that 7% get you?

First, it gets you experience. Realtors know which hoops you have to jump through, from both a legal and a marketing perspective. Do you need an inspection? How much of your stuff should you move to storage? Are you comfortable with high-dollar negotiations?

Time is another critical item in the fee. Do you have a minimum of an hour to dedicate to advertising and screening potential buyers? Every day? Do you have a flexible schedule to show your house at times convenient for the buyers?

The third element is access to the Multiple Listing Service(MLS), which lets other realtors see your home listing. There are alternative listing services you can use, but none are as widely know as MLS.

There are some good reasons to use a realtor, but none of that means you can’t sell your home yourself. FSBOs are done every day.

If you are nervous, your local community education program may have a course on selling your home yourself. These courses are usually very affordable.

Some tips:

Be objective about pricing. Look at the selling price of similar homes in the area, NOT what your dream price is or how much you have spent on improvements.
Always keep your home ready to show. Keep the dishes done, everything put away, and the floors mopped. The “lived-in” look will not help your house sell.
Keep track of the potential buyers. Put the name, address, phone number, and any identifying notes in a spreadsheet so you can follow up later if your house doesn’t sell.
A bid is not binding. Don’t stop advertising until you close on the sale.
Make a fact sheet and blank purchase agreement that potential buyers can take home.
Hire professionals where necessary: lawyers, inspectors, and closing agents.

Selling your home yourself can be intimidating, but it is a job you can tackle yourself for a significant savings. Would you try it?

BUYING LIFE INSURANCE ONLINE: THE PROS & CONS

Finance, Life

This is a guest post.

English: $10,000 life insurance policy for Pre... — English: $10,000 life insurance policy for President James A. Garfield, the twentieth President of the United States. Discovered in a family scrap album dating from the late 1800’s. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In today’s day and age, nearly everything that we do in our day-to-day lives can be done online and we’ve come to not only expect that, but somewhat rely on that convenience. Insurance, however, is kind of a grey area when it comes to online purchases – no matter what kind of insurance you’re purchasing. After all, an insurance policy is no small purchase; it’s major and can have a profound financial effect on your life, and the lives of your loved ones.

Think about it like this – how wary are you of even just making a small eBay purchase? Most of us look at the seller’s rating, read their feedback, and try to accurately gauge what the risk is compared to the reward. This same mentality should apply to making a life insurance policy online and is far more deserving of it. You can follow this link to learn more from Suncorp today.

This isn’t to say that making an online life insurance purchase can’t be beneficial; depending on your situation, it can be very beneficial, indeed. However, it is going to take substantially more research on your part to get to where an insurance agent might be able to get you, sometimes in half the time.

Pros of Buying Online

One of the most alluring reason for life insurance seekers to buy online are the prices, the comparing conveniences, and sometimes the lack of medical exam. There’s plenty of aggregator sites out there that can take a sampling from across the internet and return you a quote within a matter of seconds – how’s that for convenience?

Probably the most favored feature, though, is the comparison shopping. Once an aggregator provides you with a slew of options, with a wide variety of price points, you’re able to compare all of the details among them, quickly and easily. Something that would easily take your hours if you were having to do all of that research yourself, one by one.

At the minimalist level, though, you’ll often find that some individuals just truly feel more comfortable making insurance purchases from the comfort of their own home, without any agents or appointments. Either because these situations make them nervous, or because they simply don’t have the time to sit down with an agent.

Cons of Buying Online

One of the big ones revolves around the last “pro” that I mentioned – if you don’t have the time to sit down with an agent for a limited amount of time, and let them do all of the work from there, you certainly don’t have the time to handle all of the research that comes along with going through this process on your own.

Also, you shouldn’t always assume that shopping around yourself is going to save you money with it comes to life insurance – after all, life insurance agents have personal connections, favors to call in, and think-on-their-feet knowledge that might drum up an innovative solution; something that online aggregators can’t do.

Furthermore, building that one-on-one relationship with your life insurance agent can be incredibly beneficial. For one thing, you can have every last little thing that you don’t understand about the fine print thoroughly explained to you – this is a big one. Another thing is having such a relationship with you agent, that you can call them at any time, when anything comes up, or when you need sound financial advice. Try calling an aggregator and see if you get much beyond the auto-answering system – I assure you, it’ll be a challenge.

If You Do Decide to Buy Online…

Don’t Give Out all of your Personal Information – No matter what the insurer tells you, you don’t need to provide any crucial personal data just to obtain a quote.
Enlist the Service of an Aggregator that Can Give You a Wide Variety of Options – Comparing an insurer there and an insurer there, means very little actually. You need a plethora of results in order to make a decision that will best be tailored to your situation.
Don’t Get Swindled – Make sure that you’re getting the right information, from a reputable company, that doesn’t deal in the ole’ “Bait-and-Switch”; which refers to when crooked life insurance agents inflate your worth and buy you either a higher policy than requested, or even a different policy entirely – all for their commission!
Thoroughly Research all Potential Candidates – Obtain the financial rating of any establishment, online or otherwise, to find out more about the reputability of both.

Prepping for an Estate Sale

Finance

At the end of the month, we’re having a massive garage/estate sale. When my mother-in-law died, she left us a lot of stuff.

A lot.

Really, when I say “lot”, I mean it. When most people say they have a lot of stuff, they mean they’ve got a closet to clean out. That’s similar to looking at a “scale of the universe” app and comparing a grain of salt to the Oort cloud. We’ve donated several truckloads of blankets, jackets, and toiletries to a homeless shelter and more than 80 rubbermaid containers full of clothes to the Salvation Army. That’s on top of two dumpsters(big enough to park a truck in) full of garbage of things we didn’t think were worth salvaging. That has still left us with several rooms packed full of stuff.

When I say ” a lot”, I mean it in a visceral, oh-my-god-can-this-be-over-or-should-we-consider-arson kind of way.

Now, it’s time to get rid of the stuff that’s left.

The things that have sentimental value have already come home with us.

The things that look unique, rare, or collectible–like the 1970s Pepsi glasses–have been set aside for more research. They may end up in the sale, or on eBay, depending on what we find out.

From here, I think I can just follow my garage sale guide.

We’re going to run the sale on Friday, Saturday, and Monday of Labor Day weekend, to maximize traffic.

We’ll advertise in the paper and put up some signs. The house is on the busiest street nearby, so passing traffic should be high.

The nice thing about having an emptied house is that setup can be completely done ahead of time. We’re setting up tables and starting to price it all this weekend.

On the days of the sale, we’ll have at least 2 people working the entire time. One will be inside, while the other will be outside for the tools and furniture that are getting sold. Both will have money and be able to make change.

Outside, we’ll have the bigger pieces of furniture, tools, and some kid stuff to draw in passerby. Inside will be the appliances, jewelry, and the small and/or valuable items. We’ll only be setting up in the living room and dining room, with the back hallway and kitchen roped off, to control access and visibility.

We’ve got a bit of help available at different times over the weekend, so we should be able to handle the entire sale, including breaks, relatively smoothly.

Have you ever run an estate sale? Anything I’m missing?

Real Estate Customer Life Cycle

Finance, Misc

Recently, my wife and I have been searching for new tenants for our rental property. That’s an irritating customer cycle. We’ve had more no-shows at the showings than we’ve had prospects show up. Most people who call seem to think that the rent on a 2 bedroom, 1.5 bathroom house with a big yard and a 3 car garage 5 minutes from downtown Minneapolis is going to match their little subsidized Section 8 apartment.

Not going to happen.

So we keep looking. In the meantime, it’s interesting to look at how a real estate trainer breaks down the life cycle of a customer.

Enjoy!

NEC Online Degrees

Lamar Odom: The Cost of Addiction

Gossip

Rumours swirl around Lamar Odom and Khloe Kardashian that their marriage is in trouble due to the basketball star’s addiction to recreational drugs. The couple has not been spotted together since June, and Kardashian has been photographed recently not wearing her wedding ring. On Sunday, August 25, TMZ reported that Odom had been missing for 72 hours after a dispute with Kardashian that some say was a failed intervention.

Los Angeles Hotel

On Monday, August 26, ESPN reported that Odom’s agent, Jeff Schwartz, claimed that Odom was in a Los Angeles hotel and that friends were attempting to get him help for a drug problem that the agent declined to explain further. The agent also said that Kardashian knew Odom’s whereabouts. Kardashian herself tweeted that she was unhappy with the news reports about her family, but failed to elaborate on whether the reports were true or false. ( http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/9601746/agent-disputes-report-saying-lamar-odom-missing)

History of Drug Probems

In 2001, Odom violated NBA drug policies twice in eight months, apologizing at a press conference after the second offense. Odom claimed he did not have a drug problem and was only guilty of smoking marijuana. Odom often speaks of losing his mother to colon cancer at the age of 12 and his father’s heroin addiction, eventually moving in with his grandmother. In 2006, Odom’s son, Jayden, died of sudden infant death syndrome. In 2011, a cousin who Odom was close to died of gunshot wounds in New York, and just two days after the cousin’s funeral, Odom was involved in a car accident that resulted in the death of a teenager. Odom’s chauffer driven SUV collided with a motorcycle, causing the bike to go out of control and strike a 15-year old pedestrian who died of head injuries the next day. (http://articles.latimes.com/2011/aug/02/sports/la-sp-lamar-odom-accident-20110803). Odom took a 10-day leave of absence from the Dallas Mavericks, claiming his father was ill right after the incident.

Clash over Partying

Odom Shooting (Photo credit: compujeramey)

According to insiders, Odom and Kardashian have often clashed over his partying, but that she had kept his addictions secret from her family. According to many who have known Odom well, when things are difficult for him, he likes to get away and hide, which is what some say he did when he took leave from the Mavericks and just recently when he disappeared for a few days. (http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20728355,00.html) Insiders are reporting that Kardashian is contemplating divorce, which will be costly for Odom as there is a strong infidelity clause in the couple’s prenuptial agreement, and there are rumors that Odom has been unfaithful.

High Cost of Addiction

Most of the rumors surrounding the Kardashian Odom marriage are related to the fact that two women have come forward claiming affairs with Odom while he was married to Kardashian, and not due to his drug use. However, the fact that there is a strong fidelity clause in the prenuptial agreement indicates that Kardashian may be unwilling to ignore his dalliances. If it is proven that Odom committed adultry and the couple divorces, Kardashian retains the Tarzana mansion the couple share, $500,000 for every year they were married, two vehicles, shopping money and spousal support. However, many reports continue that infidelity is not the problem in the marriage, but Odom’s continued use of drugs. Odom checked into a San Diego rehab in 2012, but left after only three weeks, and insiders claim that Odom’s recent disappearance was related to an intervention, staged by Kardashian, to encourage him to return to rehab.

Regardless of whether the marriage ends due to infidelity or drug use, it appears that addiction may be a costly proposition for Odom due to the clause in his prenuptial agreement.

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