No luck here and an early Memorial Day family tradition

I’m referring to how some business is conducted and who is working for whom?

On Monday a client asked to see a home near downtown San Leandro that had just come on the market that afternoon. We made an appointment for Tuesday afternoon.

Our client liked the home so much that we were going to bring her mother and sister to see the home on Wednesday prior to writing an offer.

While talking out front of the home a friend of mine from one of the Italian clubs I belong to pulled up and tapped his horn. At first I didn’t recognize him because I never thought I would run into someone I knew in San Leandro, as it turns out he lives around the corner. As we were talking he mentioned having seen people strolling in and out of the open house’s over the weekend and how he wanted to also stop by and see what the work over the last few months entailed.

I told him it was a hot property by the 17 business cards on the newly remodeled kitchen’s granite counter. The price, $330,000 for three bedrooms and one bath on a large lot. We had to act fast to be in the running for our client. I left two voicemails and Nancy left another before finally getting a real person on the fourth call.

All sounds pretty good up to this point, right? Wrong!

You see, the open house my friend wanted to visit last weekend was held before the home was put on the MLS which is a violation of our MLS’s rules The MLS is where it’s seen by Realtors who then tell their clients about the home.

The home was put on the MLS Monday afternoon, about 24 hours after the open house, that’s when we first saw it.

The call we made after showing the home and less than 24 hours after it was loaded on the MLS was even more disheartening. We were told that we had until 5:00 pm that evening to submit an offer and that they already had more than one offer; it was already 5:30 pm.

This story gets even a little more disheartening from this point. Who is the Realtor working for? There’s more, the seller is a Realtor himself, but not the listing agent who should know better. There is no rule against doing something like this, but it’s typically not in the best interest of a seller or in this case the Realtor/Owner. The listing agent in this case is probably double ending the listing creating dual agency situation to get all the commission rather than splitting it the usual four ways and intended to do so from the start, otherwise the home would have appeared on the MLS prior to the open houses over the weekend.

It’s frustrating for us when you run your business ethically as Nancy and I do and come across these types. The bright side of this story is that when the neighbors here of how this sale was carried out by this national real estate companies realtor, he probably won’t be receiving many phone calls from the neighbors or their friends anytime soon. In my opinion the neighborhood and its homeowners get the last laugh here. Would you want someone selling your home that’s in the business for himself? Not me.

If you want your home sold for the highest price the market will bear, handled fairly and given full exposure to the market call Nancy and me.

Now if you want to skip to what’s new on the market just skip the next two paragraphs and go straight to the bottom.

What comes next is a little bit of Memorial Day tradition in my family.

Off of real estate for a moment, Memorial Day is approaching. A tradition dating back to the days when my grandfather was alive was to visit the graves of past members of our family. I have to admit it wasn’t one of those days I looked forward too and to be honest I dodged many of the invites. This year however it was a different story. On Halloween of this past year I lost my father to congestive heart failure, and I told my mother a few weeks ago I wanted to visit the Chapel of the Chimes niches where our family is resting at. So in an effort to beat the crowds over the coming weekend we decided to visit today, Thursday. Mom bought the faux flowers for the vases and off we went to visit. I had something else in mind also while we were at the site. I also lost a neighbor of twenty-nine years a year and a week ago and had yet to visit her niche either. Adding to this, my late neighbor’s mother just passed away less than two months ago as well. I wanted to locate their niches as well. It turns out all of them are on the floor below my family and on the same end of the building, a hop skip and a jump away.

I know all of this sounds a little morbid but it was actually a very nice experience.

When all was done we set off for lunch at Italian Colors restaurant in Montclair, one of my parents favorite restaurants close to their home. They have a beautiful chop salad loaded with chunks, not slices of salami, which my mother and wife had. I talked myself into their half pound burger with mozzarella and caramelized onions and also managed to talk my wife out of a little of her chop salad. This lunch may have taken care of dinner too. All in all, a beautiful day!

Now you probably want to know what’s new in the real estate market in Alameda. One word sums it up “Brisk”. We’re awaiting a few signatures before having an accepted offer on a REO property in the Fernside area of town. It’s the same home I wrote about earlier in the week that we were told the bank wanted held open. I didn’t get a chance to verify whether or not it was open over the weekend and it wouldn’t have mattered. You see we sent our offer off almost two weeks ago. After the proposed open house this past weekend Monday’s news was there are four more offers on the home. Four were verbally responded too, I don’t know who else if anyone besides our clients responded.

All that matters is that we got the call that our clients offer prevailed after lunch today. With that bit of good news this past week’s market activity is as follows.

NEW LISTINGS

PRICE CHANGE

PENDING SALES

SOLDS

If you are interested in reviewing every home on the market just click here to see all 133.

If anyone wants to see what’s available in the residential income click here.

Ciao for now, Chuck