Articles

I had a quick tip that I saw at the Utah Division of Real Estate Caravan, a tip on land sale fraud, which is becoming more prevalent. If you don't know what's happening, these fraudsters are looking up land that's either vacant or the owners live out of state or out of country, and then they pretend to be that person, they hire a real estate agent, they sell the property, and they collect the money on the sale then run off with it because they're not the real owner. They pull this off because they are very sophisticated [...]

Hey real estate professionals, have you sold an HOA home lately? Well, I was listening to the HOA Ombudsman just recently at the Utah Division of Real Estate Caravan, and there were a couple of interesting tidbits there. One of them was just the basic disclosures that are required. Apparently state law requires that you disclose the CC&Rs, the conditions covenants and restrictions, to new buyers. In addition to that, you need to disclose the website of the HOA Ombudsman's office which is hoa.utah.gov. That's a requirement by law that sellers need to disclose to potential buyers. And so, [...]

Have you ever been showing a house and you bring the buyer up to the door, the buyer starts talking about the property and they're saying something bad about the property or talking about their negotiation strategy or how much they can afford, then you look down and right there on the doorbell there's a camera? I have run into this situation many times. You can hardly show a house nowadays without expecting to be on camera, and that could be a real issue for the buyer if they disclose information that they shouldn't disclose. So, when I take [...]

As a listing agent, can you ask the buyer's lender if they're approved, and how much they're approved for? Great question. That is really relevant information that a listing agent would want to know. Are They Approved? If I'm listing a home, say it's for $500,000 and I get one offer for $490,000, which is low. I get an offer for $500,000, which is what we asked for. And then I get another offer for $510,000, which is above asking price. Wouldn't it be important for me to know if these buyers can actually afford these offers that they're [...]

A lot of agents get all in a bunch when they hear the mispronunciation of the word Realtor. Now, what is the word Realtor? Realtor is a brand name for an organization called the National Association of Realtors. They came up with this name because they wanted to bring together a group of people who are in the same industry of helping people buy and sell homes, and that can be a very competitive space. Everybody is individually representing people, so all the agents become a thousand individual businesses all working against each other if they don't find a [...]

“Raise the dues!” “Raise the education hours to boost professionalism!” This is something I hear from other realtors all the time. It's interesting because there's this idea of professionalism out there, and the fact is, if you ask two different realtors what professionalism is, they don't even agree on what it means. Usually when somebody says we need to be more professional, what they mean is that somebody else did something that made it harder for them to do their business, and therefore they're not being professional. Professionalism on the Phone Sometimes these are legitimate concerns. Like they're not [...]

When we work in an industry, a service industry, and we work on commission, that potentially puts us in a directly adversarial role with our client. So if you sell a product and you have a product built they can see the product and know what its value is, and so whatever price you charge, they can decide to pay it or not. That’s easy to calculate. I’m providing a product, they decide to pay for the product for a certain amount of money, easy. There’s no ethical question there really at all, unless you start getting into the [...]

I saw an advertisement for a company. It was a house listed for sale and it was new construction, and so it was being listed by the company that built it. And one thing in their advertising that they said, and this was public advertising, they said if the buyer comes without having an agent then they will discount the pricing. And the question is, is that legal? Is that ethical to advertise that you will charge less if they come without an agent? Real Estate Commission Splits Now, one of the reasons this is even a thing is [...]