House Hunting strategy??? (Las Vegas: short sales, real estate, broker)

butterflybird · 08-07-2010, 10:23 AM

For all the realtors on the board, here's the latest advice I've gotten for finding a home in Las Vegas....I've been told to look at the exteriors of 10-15 homes, make offers on those homes and THEN if the offers are accepted or feeling out the seller to determine their position, go back and look at the interiors. I think this sounds wack, but hey, this is a wack market. These are mostly short sales, lots of offers flowing in. I understand partially the logic behind this technique....rather than a realtor doing a tour of each house, meanwhile other homes are lost to earlier offers. By going ahead and making offers before looking at the inside, and then backtracking and seeing the house for real, it buys time and holds more homes down instead of losing them.

Having tried to see both sides of this equation, I still think it's a waste for me to look only at outside/neighborhoods, etc. because I can usually be in a house 5 minutes and know it's not right for me and go on to the next one. I search online, have some idea of the interior, just need to see it in "real life". I don't randomly waste my time or broker's time on unknowns. So, for me to be told, hey, let's not look inside before making an offer is just more time wasted for me and the agent I think. Hope this makes sense .....it just seems silly to make offers on homes that I can find out in two minutes are not for me in a quick look around. Just more indicator of how different and weird this market is from anywhere "normal" a buyer may be looking in the country today....

bledsoe3 · 08-07-2010, 11:03 AM

Get a new realtor. Yours doesn't seem to have the time to show you what you want to see.

butterflybird · 08-07-2010, 01:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bledsoe3

Get a new realtor. Yours doesn't seem to have the time to show you what you want to see.

Interesting....it's one of the biggest companies in LV and they don't have time? hmmm. In fact, their "pitch" to me to get me to sign on with them is that they have a team, so as soon as I signed on with them, thinking there'd always be someone available to show me properties, turned into a spiel from not one but two of their agents saying pretty much the same thing, particularly regarding short sales. Maybe there's some logic to it, but not from where I sit. I want and need to see inside the homes!!! I have never run into anything like this.

I don't really have time to realtor shop (already switched from one that I felt didn't have the time/resources), and now this. By the time I finish "interviewing" all the realtors in town, the properties will be gone. Great.
And so will I....as in, hasta la vista baby ...I'm ready to do business and can't see stuff I pulled from mls, being told nonsense like, "we'll just drive by, make offers, and no tours until the offers are scoped out".....

I agree, it seems a way to avoid showing houses and just put me in a cookie cutter and let it go at that. Not happy........not pleased. Hoping this will straighten out pronto.

butterflybird · 08-07-2010, 01:20 PM

plus, this one dude sez to me, well, there's two schools of thought out here on selling real estate. I waited eagerly to hear his commentary on the two schools of thought and found out, to put it in succint terms: 1) show homes like a normal agent would to a buyer who wants to actually see homes (DUH) or

2) drive by homes and make offers without going inside
LMAO......gotta laugh

logline · 08-07-2010, 01:23 PM

DO NOT sign with that realty company! BIG mistake to make offers of properties you haven't seen the inside of. There can be significant damage in some of these homes and I know this from personal experience. If you back out, you could lose your earnest money which is usually included with the original offer.

And please tell us who this large company is who is telling you this HORRIBLE advice. I'm sure they would just love for this sleazy technique to be outed in public.

Trash Can · 08-07-2010, 01:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bledsoe3

Get a new realtor. Yours doesn't seem to have the time to show you what you want to see.

Agree 100% and then some. I would never negotiate the price of a car before taking it for a test drive. Why would anyone consider this strategy when buying a home is beyond me. Your realtor is doing you a huge disservice IMO.

Natali :) · 08-07-2010, 01:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by butterflybird

I want and need to see inside the homes!!! I

I agree, it seems a way to avoid showing houses and just put me in a cookie cutter and let it go at that. Not happy........not pleased. Hoping this will straighten out pronto.

Sure you need to see it inside !

As for me its it seems a way to collect several earnest money deposits from you
and put you to some hard opt out contract .

butterflybird · 08-07-2010, 01:43 PM

Well, I'm not gonna post the name of the company yet, but the jist of this technique was that no money would actually be put down or at risk...although that made no sense because an offer by its very nature is some form of emd, right? Again, maybe there's some grain of "logic" within their strategy, but it eludes me at the moment....

I've already signed on with them based on their spiel, but if it's not a good fit between them and me, that's gonna be over and soon. I objected to this "drive by, don't look inside" routine so i'm waiting to see if things don't straighten up fast. But if I end up moving on another company and it turns out that this "strategy" was presented to me or others as a supposedly smart way to survive in the short sale environment, I will definitely post who the company is in due time ..... I won't put up with me or others getting messed over just so they can make a quick $$ without doing the legwork or "driving all over the Valley" (uh duh, there's listings i want to see in various places, that's what house hunting is all about). And yes, it is one of the bigger companies with a nice flashy website....I don't know why people like this forget about a little thing called....the INTERNET and FORUMS....lmao again

olecapt · 08-07-2010, 01:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by butterflybird

Interesting....it's one of the biggest companies in LV and they don't have time? hmmm. In fact, their "pitch" to me to get me to sign on with them is that they have a team, so as soon as I signed on with them, thinking there'd always be someone available to show me properties, turned into a spiel from not one but two of their agents saying pretty much the same thing, particularly regarding short sales. Maybe there's some logic to it, but not from where I sit. I want and need to see inside the homes!!! I have never run into anything like this.

I don't really have time to realtor shop (already switched from one that I felt didn't have the time/resources), and now this. By the time I finish "interviewing" all the realtors in town, the properties will be gone. Great.
And so will I....as in, hasta la vista baby ...I'm ready to do business and can't see stuff I pulled from mls, being told nonsense like, "we'll just drive by, make offers, and no tours until the offers are scoped out".....

I agree, it seems a way to avoid showing houses and just put me in a cookie cutter and let it go at that. Not happy........not pleased. Hoping this will straighten out pronto.

Well sorry but you simply don't have it going in the right direction.

This is not normally a buyers broker agreement town. There are others elsewhere but not in Vegas. If they got you to sign a document committing to them you have kind of been had.

I have no particular problems with multiple offers as I do that reasonably regularly. But in general you can show a dozen houses in Vegas in a half a day...so you show the houses. If there is a huge list I may request that the client drive by to eliminate homes...but not to approve. Then we go look at the remainder. Particularly with a new client I may well show houses I know are not going to work...because sometimes the client just needs to develop confidence in the agents advice.

butterflybird · 08-07-2010, 02:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by olecapt

Well sorry but you simply don't have it going in the right direction.

This is not normally a buyers broker agreement town. There are others elsewhere but not in Vegas. If they got you to sign a document committing to them you have kind of been had.

I have no particular problems with multiple offers as I do that reasonably regularly. But in general you can show a dozen houses in Vegas in a half a day...so you show the houses. If there is a huge list I may request that the client drive by to eliminate homes...but not to approve. Then we go look at the remainder. Particularly with a new client I may well show houses I know are not going to work...because sometimes the client just needs to develop confidence in the agents advice.

Re: me committing to a specific agent, in my case, it's the most feasible way to work it because I'm from out of town, for various practical purposes and reasons it's really the most efficient way to do it. So every case is different as to why people do what they do from that standpoint. If I'm asking a particular agent/group/team to put in the hours for me, then they have the right to request an exclusive agreement from me and in my case, that's what I needed and was expecting/asking for.

About submitting multiple offers, I realize and have been prepared from the get go to do that with shorts when I narrowed it down to my top 3 or whatever. That's not the issue- it was the "drive by, no need to look inside" that blew my mind. I could have looked at every single top 5 on my list by NOW but nooooooo. So, that's what surprised me.

And you're absolutely right, it's also about building confidence, and for an out of towner, I have to SEE the neighborhoods and get some minimal feel and grasp for what I'm looking at. This particular agent acted like, well, Vegas is so different, there's such a different way we have to do things to make things happen yadda yadda. Granted, it's different, but not so different that you drive by and don't have the client look inside and tour the property. And as a realtor, I'm sure you know that most of us buyers can be in and out of a house in 2 minutes if we don't like it, so it's not as if we're taking three hours per house to dawdle around. It may take time to coordinate schedules, etc. to see the listings of other agents (which most of the properties I want to see are right now because I culled them over time from an mls feed), but that's what being a realtor is all about, right?

It's pretty frustrating to have a list of addresses and not have someone from their office NOW showing me these homes...