Archive for the ‘Little Bit’ tag
Ignore Annual Housing Data — It’s The MONTHLY Data That Matters To Home Buyers
For the third straight month, at least 15 of the nation’s 20 largest real estate markets showed relative monthly improvement in May 2008, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Index.
I use "relative monthly improvement" as another way of saying that markets are "less worse than they were" and that’s good for the housing market (although you wouldn’t know it by looking at the headlines).
Instead of pulling the positives out from the data, newspapers are highlighting the year-over-year, cliff-diving-like decline in prices.
Now, it’s not wrong to look at annual trends in home prices, it’s just a little bit misleading. Remember: Active home buyers are probably seeing something completely different from what the papers are saying they should be seeoing.
See, year-over-year comparisons are fine for identifying long-term trends, but as it relates to an active home buyer, annual data don’t mean diddly. It’s the short-term trend that matters.
The obvious example: If you’ve been shopping for a home over the last 3 months, you’ve probably noticed the market slowly slipping away from you, and moving into the sellers’ favor.
When you see "all the good homes" go under contract, or sellers regaining their negotiation power, it’s your sign that the market is shifting.
In other words, if you’re buying a home now, the real estate market of 12 months ago is irrevelant. What you’re going to pay for a home is based on market activity today, not activity from 2007.
(Images courtesy: Standard & Poor’s, The Wall Street Journal)
Eye On The Ball, Folks…Hug Your CPA Today… [BloodhoundBlog]
We’ll keep this first post short, sweet, and incredibly practical. We all want that magic bullet. That thing that gets us four more work free “deals” this quarter, right? Well, it doesn’t exist. So instead of whining about marketing, let’s look to the calendar for a drop dead simple, 1.0 way to get a little bit of scratch this month.
We all know what happened last Tuesday, right? It was tax day.
Lots of people thought about their finances, lots of people talked to their local CPAs. Loads of CPAs saw lots of financial statements, heard why people were freeing up cash, maybe a few even heard the sugar-sweet phrase ‘1031,’ just days ago.
And you know what? Betcha a Starbucks they don’t all have trustworthy referral partners to work with.
Betcha that if you grabbed a list of CPAs–now that the CPAs aren’t in tax season–and reached out via ANY authentic method (post cards, friendly calls, offering lunch, whatever you’re comfortable with that gets measurable results), and authentically offered yourself as a trustworthy person to help navigate these turbulent waters…
You’d get solid referrals in days and weeks-not months.
There are dozens of “scripts” you can use, but why not do it in a sentence:
The more direct and more honest, the better. I’ve called CPAs (and financial planners) and uttered a run on sentence: “Hi, I’m Chris Johnson, with ____________. I wanted to reach out and let you know that if you had clients buying a property, I would be honored to help them, and help you make sure it was congruent with their long term goals. Do you have anyone in that category?”
Now, I’ve never once had someone jump through the phone to send me a client. But, I’ve made (too) few of these calls to CPAs. And every time I do, within a couple of hours, I meet someone I connect with, I want to help, and that sends people to me because I reached out. I’m still closing loans from CPAs I met when I was a Realtor. The very fact that you’re willing to talk to a CPA differentiates yourself from your competition…
So eye on the ball, and reach out to your local CPAs today.
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