Elizabeth Newlin – Arizona Real Estate Agent

My husband and I watch the show Tosh.0 every week. It’s a Comedy Central show that runs viral internet clips and discusses them. The ‘Tosh’ is Daniel Tosh, a comedian. The man isn’t politically correct by any stretch of the imagination, but he makes me pee my pants even while he’s offending my gender, political affiliation, hair color, height, religion or race.

Awhile ago Tosh did a segment about the ‘I hate’ video phenomenon. I don’t know if the guy he showed is the first guy to do it or just the most hilarious, but Tosh also did one. Watch both here. (Keeping in mind that Daniel Tosh’s opinions in no way represent the opinions of the ElizabethNewlin website. And also making sure there are no children around when you watch it.)

I was so amused by the video I decided to do my own:

(Can I just say that I hate how my bangs got all weird and progressively more split in half while I did those videos? SIGH.)

Time Spent Fixing My Fax Machine: 4 hours

Discovery That Violence Really IS The Answer: Priceless

I need to start this post with my ultimate complaint: THE FAX MACHINE IS STUPID AND SHOULD BE BANNED FROM PRODUCTION. I used all-caps there just now to infer a passionate stance about this statement. If I was technologically adept enough to make it flash on the screen the color of blood accompanied by a siren noise, I would. If I was elected President of the United States, my first act from the oval office would be to make it a punishable by waterboarding offense to send a fax. If I met the inventor of the fax machine in a dark alley late at night only one of us would make it out. Are you getting how I feel about it yet? Are you picking up what I’m putting down here?

I’m sure when it was first invented, 3 million or so years ago, the fax machine was a cutting edge piece of technology that cut way down on the time it took to deliver documents to people. Now, however, we all have scanners and Adobe Acrobat and email and the like. Faxes are buggy, difficult to confirm, cross phone lines, print out all scraggly and faded, etc. There’s just no reason at all to use them, and yet, there are those who refuse to join us all here in the 21st century, so we ALL have to keep one around. If they were all just outlawed we would all be in much better shape. Maybe if we renamed them ‘Idiot Machines’ the stigma would be so great people would be too embarrassed to use them and they would die out. “I’m going to idiot that to you right now… or maybe I’ll just email it. That might be better.”

Last Tuesday morning, the idiot machine in my home office started flashing ‘Memory Full’. This didn’t make huge amounts of sense to me because it shouldn’t have anything in memory. I have my idiot machine set to scan all of my faxes and email them directly to me. See, in theory, my idiot machine is of the smarter variety. It’s like an idiot translator. It speaks both idiot and email fluently and can make the two work together. But that, of course, assumes that it isn’t being bizarre and buggy, as it was last week. And regardless of how smart it is usually, as of Tuesday, it was doing absolutely nothing; not receiving faxes and not sending them.

For two days I ignored this issue. I don’t get faxes often, and when I had one coming in Wednesday, I gave the sender my work office fax number, and the admin ladies at the office dropped the incoming fax on the scanner and emailed it directly over to me. On Thursday, however, I had to send a 47 page packet of short sale documents to a lender. There was no getting around it; I was going to have to fix the issue.

Attempt 1: Reading the manual.

Result: A headache from manual speak that never actually addresses the ‘Memory Full’ issue.

Attempt 2: Call customer service.

Result: 35 minutes lost in telephone transfer-land only to get a representative who tells me the only way to fix it is to replace the empty ink cartridge (empty because I never print from the fax machine, I only send to email) and print everything in memory. AKA: spend $30 to buy a new ink cartridge I have no use for, waste $5 in paper and kill 1 medium sized tree (and probably one rare fax-ink-producing squid). Refuse out of love of trees and squid (and money).

Attempt 3: Consider throwing away the fax machine and driving the 37 miles to my work office just to fax the packet.

Result: Realization this will take 2 hours round trip and I will just have to do it again in two days.

Attempt 4: Google ‘Erase full memory of UX-B800SE’ in an attempt to figure out how to do it myself without printing.

Result: Discovery of a help forum that says I should remove the screws in the housing that covers the battery for the memory and remove the battery allowing the machine to reset.

Attempt 4.5: Find a screw driver that fits the screws (HUGE accomplishment in as far as my handyman skilz go). Remove 14 screws that are visible to me on the idiot machine.

Result: Housing stays firmly together. Nothing that looks like a battery appears. Shaking it a little bit doesn’t help. After plugging idiot machine back it, it’s becomes apparent that the screws I removed didn’t actually serve a function. Idiot machine continues to work in the same flawed fashion. Abandon idiot machine surgery.

Attempt 5: Consider going to Kinko’s around the block to fax documents.

Result: Realization it will cost $1 per page to fax. Do the math. $1 X 47 pages = $47 = roughly the cost of a really good new pair of shoes at Nordstrom’s Rack = not worth faxing.

Attempt 6: Call lender on the short sale to beg and plead for an email address to send the documents to (without holding out much hope, lenders are notoriously old school).

Result: Success!! Obtain email address. Result 2.0: Failure. One of the documents I have to fax I ONLY have a paper copy of. And since the idiot machine is also my scanner, back to square one.

Attempt 7: Call back customer service and say, “I know you are holding out on me. I know there is a way to erase the memory without printing everything. My uncle lives in Jersey and he’s connected, you better tell me now or he’ll come find you.”

Result: Success!!!!! No for real this time! There really is a way to reset the memory and they just weren’t telling me. Sometimes thinly veiled threats of violence are the only way to get anything done, it’s true.

Now I just have to figure out who to threaten to have idiot machines banned from the universe. (Also? I never put the 14 screws back in. Damn thing works just fine.)

Ponies That Were Actually Harmed in the Writing of This Post: 0

Insane Bank Reps That Were Harmed in the Writing of This Post: 3 (just kidding, none of those either, not that I didn’t want to)

Continued from Part 1.

After I had sufficiently exhausted my tolerance for conversations that make no sense (and mind you, I have a two year old, so my resources for dealing with nonsensical conversations are considerable) and given up all hope that anyone who worked for the lenders even knew what HAFA stands for I went back to my clients with my tail between my legs and explained that as of now, HAFA wasn’t going to help us. In retrospect, I probably should have made those calls in the opposite order. As it was, it went a little like this: Hey, Little Girl, would you like a pony for your birthday? I think I can get you a pony for your birthday! There’s just this very perfect one I know of, let me go get it for you… Oh wait, that pony died in a horrible, gruesome accident with a wood chipper. Sorry, you can’t have a pony.

This all went down over three months ago, and since then, I have continued to get the flashy glitter emails from title reps and the like about what a great, sparkly, cancer-curing program HAFA is, but have yet to hear from another agent that it has been successfully navigated. In fact, lately, whenever anyone brings it up in a room full of agents (because you know we like to gather in large groups together in a room like a herd of Realtors) it’s an excuse to see who can guffaw the loudest. I never checked back in with the agent I overheard demanding a lender follow through on her client’s right to be enrolled in HAFA, but I have this feeling the yelling didn’t get her any farther than the rest of us did.

Recently, though, my faith in the government’s ability to produce programs that actually help was renewed. A few weeks ago I called to check in on one of my short sales and was told, “This borrower has been identified for prequalification in the HAFA program, so this file has been transferred out of our division and into the HAFA division. I can give you that number if you like.”

To which I replied, “Purple chickens arrive in the moonlight of the first February in the pumpkin?” because I thought we were playing a role reversal game. We were talking about HAFA and the bank rep was making sense and moving forward, so I thought it was my turn to act insane. Or maybe it went more like this:

Me: So wait a second here… I called three months ago and asked if my client was eligible for this program and was told no, and that, in fact, your company doesn’t even work with HAFA. But now you’re telling me that not only is my client qualified for HAFA, but you have a whole HAFA division? What?!?

Bank rep: Oh no, ma’am, I didn’t say your client is qualified. I said they have been identified for potential prequalification. This is the step before prequalification, which is the step before we determine actual eligibility. But regardless, you’ve been transferred out of my division, so all that I can do is give you the new number to call.

And at that point I realized that no, we weren’t playing role reversal. It was just crazy-pants business as usual. I called the new HAFA division and was told to have my client call to activate the system. I had learned my lesson and not called to get my sellers all excited about this new development, but of course I was thwarted again. I had to call them to even move forward. Luckily, these people are not a slow study either, and had learned from the past not to get excited yet. The husband called and pulled the trigger to start the HAFA pre-pre-pre-before you actually get to know anything-prequalification process. The new rep told him they would be sending a packet of info for him to fill out and send back and that he should receive this packet in 7 to 10 days.

In about a week I called to check in with my clients and they told me that they had, indeed received something from the bank that day. It was a thin envelope with a note asking them to call back into the system. Of course, my clients had tried to call the number immediately. The number had gone only to a voicemail box that was full. After two hours of attempts to get through to someone, they finally reached a rep who informed them that because they had vacated the property in question, they were not eligible for the program and would need to be transferred back to the original short sale division. Just to sum up the situation, we’d lost two weeks and gained nothing but more raised hopes and shattered expectations.

Oh, honey, I think your pony had a sister that I actually can get for you for your birthday! She’s so pretty and nice, you’ll just love her! Oh, wait… sorry, she was eaten by a rabid mountain lion, I forgot. So sorry. No ponies for you.

“I have HAFA mind to punch you in the face,” I like to think the little girl eventually responds.

Percentage of my Short Sales that Qualified for HAFA: 0

What the Government Must Be Paying Their HAFA Marketing Rep: A Lot of Money

If you work in real estate, you’ve heard about the HAFA program. You probably got an email from a mortgage or title rep a month ago that said, ‘Introducing the most wonderful, solve-everything including but not limited to: the economy, foreclosure, all money problems for everyone, glaucoma, cancer and athlete’s foot… HAFA!!!! Come take a class on how to make it work for you!’ written in flashing glitter dust.

HAFA stands for Home Affordable Foreclosure Alternatives and it is a government program that went into effect April 5, 2010. It’s been billed as the solution to the short sale problem. The point of HAFA isn’t to keep people in their homes (HAMP is the sister program designed to help the people who want to stay in their homes), it’s for the multitudes who are leaving their homes whether you like it or not. These are the people who bought at the peak and were transferred out of state, or who bought a smallish super expensive house five years ago when they only had one child and now they have three kids and could rent a house twice the size of what they are in for 1/3 of their current mortgage payment, or the people who bought a condo at the peak and then met their soul mate who already owns a nice-sized house and they can’t rent out the condo for even close to the mortgage. Life has continued to evolve even though the economy has continued to devolve.

So the point of HAFA was apparently to put some structure to the short sale problem and give people in these types of situations some help and some options. Specifically, sellers who qualify for HAFA would be given an acceptable short sale price BEFORE the house is put on the market (because usually with short sales we just list it at what the market dictates is a ‘fair’ price, AKA: a close your eyes and point to a list of numbers technique to determining what the bank will accept… very scientific), a timeframe would be establish early on so that the buyer and seller will actually know when the short sale approval will be received, sellers will receive $3000 to help with moving expenses, and, most importantly, sellers will be released from all future liability for the first mortgage debt. So, you know, it’s basically the mythical pot of gold at the end of the rainbow for people in this situation. Yes, they will still have almost total credit destruction, but otherwise, not a bad deal.

I very first heard of the HAFA program on April 5, 2010, the day it came into effect. I remember this, because I was at one of my company’s offices that I don’t normally work out of, in the back computer room printing flyers. Another agent (one of the top company agents) was madly pacing around the office employing the ‘screamy bossy shout shout’ technique to get what she wanted from a lender on the phone. It was impossible not to eavesdrop and I was immediately fascinated. She was insisting that her client was eligible for the HAFA program and that it took effect today and that the bank needed to give her an amount to list the house at. So of course, I immediately googled HAFA and came up with this website. And then I fainted dead away at the possibility of the awesomeness.

When I woke up, I immediately called all of my short sale clients and told them all about how super fabulous it was going to be. And then I spent the next two full days on the phone with lenders having the following conversation over and over again:

Me: I need to have my client enrolled in the HAFA program.

Bank rep: Oh we don’t do the HAFA program.

Me: Well I looked on the government website about it and your bank was included on the list of participating lenders.

Bank rep: Well, I’m not for-sure (swear to Allah at least two of them said ‘for-sure’) about it, but I know your client doesn’t qualify, even if we do it.

Me: Wait, so you’re saying you don’t know if you have the program, but if you do, we can’t use it? But I haven’t even given you my client’s name and loan number yet.

Bank rep: Yeah, but only 0.0006% of the loans we service can be used in that program. And also your client makes too much money. Plus she’s too old, blonde and Jewish and she used to suck her thumb when she was little. Her mom told us. Not to mention the fact that we haven’t had the training on this program yet. It’s next week.

Me: But I thought you said you don’t even have the program.

Bank rep: We don’t.

Bank rep: But I can transfer you to someone else, if you want.

I’m still on vacation here in sunny California. It’s lovely and we haven’t sold the children to the gypsy surfers yet (though this was seriously discussed on day 4). Since we head home tomorrow, I thought I’d end this trip with a little comparison of buying a house that is listed as a short sale and the walk from our gorgeous, fabulous beach house to the actual beach.

Step One of The Walk To The Beach: Whew! We’re here!! We just drove 6.5 hours from Phoenix and stopped 11 times to let children take potty breaks and buy nuts and beef jerky at various roadside stands for the driver but now we’re here! We thought the car might tip over from the load we spent the last 3 days packing into it or that we might go crazy from the running loop of Go, Deigo, Go on the car DVD player, but nothing horrible happened and we made it. And look at that gorgeous view! We are so close to the water. Just a stone’s throw, really. Let’s take a quick walk down to feel the sand between our toes.

Step One of Buying a Short Sale: We found it!!! We’ve been searching for months and we’ve seen 76 hideous and awful houses with scorpion nests under the stairs, mold damage in the ceiling above the garage and swampy, abandoned former koi ponds in the back yards, but it’s all been worth it because THIS is the house. The Very Perfect House.

Step Two of The Walk To The Beach: OK, so we’re only one street off the beach, so we should just be able to walk down here and find some stairs right ahead to go down, right? Oh wait, these are ‘private’ beach access? But if we ask they’ll let us use them, right? I mean it’s just stairs… You go knock and ask. They slammed the door in your face? OK, where’s the public beach access then?

Step Two of Buying a Short Sale: So now we need to just write an offer for the house, right? Can we write it a little under asking price? I mean it is a short sale, what do they care? And it’s supposed to be a whole hassle and whatnot, so most people won’t want to go through all of that and we should get it for a total steal. Isn’t that how it works? Oh, wait, this house has 3 offers on it? And they’re deciding which offer to accept tonight, so if we don’t write an offer that’s $10K over asking price right this very second then they won’t even submit our offer???

Step Three of The Walk To The Beach: Huh, so it’s down there at the end of the street. Well I guess that’s not that far. It’s only like 12 houses, right? Not a big deal. We do have the towels, chairs, sand toys, boogie boards, umbrellas and coolers to carry, but it’s really not that far.

Step Three of Buying a Short Sale: Whew! We got our offer done and in to the sellers on time! That other buyer snuck in at the last second and went $2K higher than us, but we upped our offer again and we have stronger financing, so it’s going to be OK. The sellers have accepted our offer and agreed to submit it to their lender.

Step Four of The Walk To The Beach: Finally we made it! Whew, that was quite a walk and my arms are totally tired from carrying all that stuff, but it was worth it. We are here!

Step Four of Buying a Short Sale: OK so now we just have to wait a little while until our offer is accepted by the bank, right? How long does that usually take, because I was thinking that if we can close escrow before school starts and get moved in then the kids can totally start the year at their new school…

Step Five of The Walk To The Beach: Oh crap, look at those stairs!!!

Step Five of Buying a Short Sale: The short sale wait time is between 6 weeks and 9 MONTHS?!?!

Steps Six through Eleven of The Walk To The Beach: Stairs, stairs, almost die of exhaustion, threaten to throw all of the gear over the side of the stairs into the ocean, think about how long it would take to just turn around and go home, and decide to just finish the MFing stairs.

Steps Six through Eleven of Buying a Short Sale: Wait, wait, decide this is BS and you’re walking, see 89 new properties before pulling out, decide that no, the house is really worth the wait, wait, wait again, hear you might get an answer soon, wait for awhile longer, FINALLY GET THE APPROVAL TO CLOSE.

But don’t worry, because it’s eventually all worth this:

Miles Driven: 73

Hysterical Crying Fits Thrown: 0.5 (and that was only to show the builder’s agent that I meant business and he should really throw in the free washing machine)

I’m on vacation! (I considered ending the post there, because hello, BEACH, but it seemed a touch anticlimactic.) My entire family is gathered at a house just off the beach in Encinitas for a week. We’re three days in and out of beer and patience with my youngest (who has been taking turns escaping to the front yard and shutting himself into a tiny cupboard to hide from us; we’ve been seriously discussing sealing him in there).

Do you think duct tape would do it?

Anyway, about a week ago, the Realtor Vacation Clause kicked in. The RVC is the universe’s hilarious joke on real estate agents everywhere (like if the universe could say, ‘Pull my finger’).

Basically, when any real estate agent decides to go on vacation, no matter how dead and stagnant their business is before the trip is planned, about two days before the agent is set to leave town, when he or she is knee deep in packing, planning of exciting leisure time activities and calculating how many ounces of alcohol per person, per day will be necessary to ensure the general merriment of all (or is that one just my family?), 11 clients will call with urgent needs and brand new money making opportunities. This will never happen two weeks before vacation when I am sitting around, twiddling my thumbs, obsessing about how little business I have at the moment and how I’m probably going to go broke waiting for clients to appear and how I’d even just really like to be showing property in the 115 degree heat right now, just to have a potential paycheck coming in the relatively near future. No, it always happens when I have 489 other things to do. Because the universe has the sense of humor of a teenage boy who thinks it’s most hilarious when people fall down or get hit in the balls.

So last Wednesday night I got an email from one of my clients that she was ‘Ready to pull the trigger.’ I believe it went kind of like this, “OK, so I had the baby 13 days ago, by C-section, so I can drive officially on Saturday. We’d really like to be in a house in 45 days. So is it cool if we start Monday?” Curse you, Universe!!! I will be sunning myself on the beach drinking Johnny Hangovers on Monday!!! Is what I screamed at the sky when reading this email.

I called my client (also a good friend from Junior High School) and got the details of what she wanted to do. I also explained the vacation situation. I told her I had Thursday and Friday available, but I knew that she was still recovering from the C-section she’d gone through less than two weeks before. Clearly, though, this woman is a trooper. She immediately switched gears and explained that if I could pick her and the baby up and drive, we could do it Friday.

Let me just stop here and reiterate that I’ve given birth three times and that none of my births have been anywhere close to as invasive as a C-section. All three were super traditional, easy, baby just sort of makes his way out sort of events. But even with how comparatively easy the actual giving birth part was, the idea of leaving the house for an extended amount of time with a less than two week old baby would have knocked me over with fear and exhaustion. Just the idea. I clearly remember when my first was born, my father wanted me to bring him to Barro’s (our regular Friday night pizza hangout) to show him off when he was less than two weeks old. I hung up the phone with him and promptly burst into tears at the thought. I hadn’t showered in days and the amount of gear involved in this enterprise just seemed staggering.

My client, however, is apparently of sturdier stock. When I said, “Really? Are you sure this is a good idea?” She replied with a resolute and chipper, “Yes, we will be fine. We need a new place to live.”

And they were fine. I picked them up and put them both into my GOV (Giant Orange Van). We stopped and got mommy-nourishment and ohmygoodness actually stopped at five builder communities. We saw six houses and three of them were good potentials. The sweet baby barely made a peep and the mommy who had just gone through major surgery and was shuffling around in 112 degree heat remained cheerful and conscious even. Apparently it just goes to show you that with enough will almost anything is possible.

See there, Universe? We made it work. You have been thwarted.

When I grow up I want to be this badass.

Number of Failed Marketing Campaigns This Year: 5

Material I Must Be Currently Made of if What Doesn’t Kill Me Really Does Make Me Stronger: Titanium

In real estate we have a saying, ‘Listers last.’ Basically, it makes more sense to be an agent who primarily represents sellers because in theory it can be less time consuming for the same amount of money. If you have to show a buyer 50 houses to find ‘the one’; it can take two months of driving around burning gas, but if your listing has to be seen by 50 buyers to get a contract (first of all it’s way overpriced, but regardless), that can be done while you, as the agent, sit by the pool sipping a Mojito. There’s obviously more to it than that, and I haven’t met many agents who would look a gift buyer in the mouth, but the general idea is that listings are a better offensive game, vs. the defensive game of buyers.

To be a successful agent and actually make money, you can’t just sit around waiting for the opportunities to sell to come rolling in. You need to have a plan of action for how to drive in new business. This doesn’t mean you can always (or ever) control how much you have going on, but doing nothing generally gets you nothing.

So at the beginning of this year, a colleague I collaborate with and I sat down and tried to figure out where the smart business is for 2010. Clearly, a huge portion of the properties on the market are short sales or bank owned. In this day and age, equity is not a super common thing, and those who do have it tend to be more conservative, and thus, not willing to part with their deflated equity at the moment. Since my colleague and I don’t have the bank connections to be a foreclosure agent, we brainstormed ideas for how to be that go-to agent for people who want to short sell their home.

We started with a whole elaborate mailer campaign. We designed 5 mailers to be sent a week apart, with 12 new potential home-sellers added per week. The theory behind it was that we were mailing FIVE times to each person, not just once. They would remember us. They would trust us. They would know we really cared. They would know we really had their best interests at heart and that we were smart, hardworking ladies who would fight for them and would hire us immediately. So basically we ended up with a cycle that involved sending 60 mailers per week. We did this for four months, spending $422.40 in postage and countless hours contemplating, designing, assembling, labeling and mailing this project. Each. So how many calls did we get, you ask? How many listings? How many paychecks? Zero, zero and zero. Each.

In light of that shocking lack of success, we went back to the brainstorming table to figure out why it had failed. Was it the quality of the mailer (I am not a graphic designer, and my fancy pants artist husband didn’t help me on this project)? Was it the frequency of mailing (is five weekly postcards too much? Not enough?)? Was it the information on the postcard? Size of the postcard? Are we just not cool enough? Do they only like us as friends and not in that special Realtor/client way?

After having a ‘No you’re prettier’ fight to make each other feel better about the client-rejection we decided that we needed a face-to-face approach to really see results. We also concluded that we needed to get to homeowners as soon as possible. We get a list of houses in foreclosure from a title company every day. We came up with the plan to pick three houses daily from this list and stop by and bring short sale information to the home owner in distress as soon as possible.

In our minds, this should be an easy stop by. We weren’t trying to talk anyone into anything, just offering help. We could keep them out of foreclosure and help get a handle on the situation. We see people in foreclosure and general financial distress all the time, and I think at some point we became a little desensitized to the emotional stress and embarrassment of it all. So many people we know and love are going through this, and we don’t think any less of them. It just is what it is. The economy is lousy and people are struggling. So heading out to do the initial door knocks, we were re-energized by our new plan and hopeful; cheerful even.

My first clue this wasn’t going to be as easy and successful as it seemed was a text from my colleague as I was headed out the door. She had a jump on me and had already done her three houses for the day. “I just got called a vulture and had the door slammed in my face.” Was all her text said. And that’s pretty much how it went for me. After the first couple of, ‘NOT INTERESTED’s followed by a dirty look, head shake (indicating utter disgust at my lecherousness) and door slam, I was sufficiently terrorized. The last house I winced at every knock and was actually relieved to find no one home.

I know there are some hardcore agents out there who would shake this off and barrel through. These Teflon-hearted folks would continue to knock, because at some point someone might want help and some might changed their minds. I, however, am not cut out for it. Before we started all of this, my colleague and I had a conversation about how we just need to generate business. Things were getting thin and it was no longer an option. We both needed houses to sell or buyers to sell them to or whatever. We were determined to do what it would take to generate business and have income to feed our families, no matter the difficulty or drama involved. After that day of door knocking, I realized that statement is just not true. This was my line: harassing people who are about to lose their homes for business. They didn’t see me as help, as the knight on a white steed rushing in to save the day. No, as far as they were concerned, I was just another scavenger of their ruins. They didn’t care about avoiding foreclosure, they cared that they weren’t going to have their house anymore, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.

But that’s ok. I have short sale clients who I’m helping who do want the short sale. Plus we have a few other, less invasive marketing tricks up our sleeves. We are nothing if not innovative and willing to try again (at, you know, something else that doesn’t destroy our wills to exist). And I have a family who is celebrating their one year home anniversary today, who loves their home and is happy. So for today I’ll focus on the positive. No, you’re prettier. No, really, you are. No, you.

Times My Phone Rang This Weekend and It Wasn’t My Mom: 2

Crafting Projects I’ve Taken Up To Distract Myself From Impending Doom: 37

So… Hi. I’m not dead. I know you were wondering. It’s been close to two months since I’ve posted. Let’s get the flogging over with. I know, I suck, you hate me, you never liked me much anyway. Are we done now? Or right, you also don’t think I’m nice or pretty or smart.

Basically, when things get ugly here in The Dominion of Real Estate, I get a little, ‘duck and cover till it’s over’. Your mom always says, if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all. And there just has been really nothing nice to say about the state of Real Estate in the state of Arizona (I was trying to see how many ‘states’ I could fit in that sentence) lately. It’s dead and depressing and everyone is losing his house or not able to buy the house she wants or can’t even get into a decent rental.

Plus, there’s the whole Realtor unspoken code about how much business each agent actually does. The public has this idea that a successful real estate agent does hundreds of transactions a year, when in fact, the average number of transactions a year/per agent is closer to 2 or 3. Those of us who have to actually live on our income as a Realtor usually facilitate closer to between 10 and 30 escrows a year, but still, the number is miniscule in comparison to public perception. For some reason, we as agents think that the more people think we’re doing, the more faith they will have in us, and thus, the more business they will drive our way. There’s probably some truth in this. If you hear an agent had trouble closing 5 houses in the last year, you might think twice about hiring him. Showing weakness or failure is a detriment to future work and conversely, business builds on business. So if you don’t have any, certainly don’t advertise it.

Unfortunately, this blog is about the real life experiences and opinions of a Realtor. I’ve sort of made it my thing to not paint rainbow and unicorn pictures about real estate here. So for awhile there, I was really struggling with what to say. Do I risk scaring new clients away with horror stories about the market and how dead things are, or just stay quiet and try to wait it out? Clearly, I chose the second option.

And here I am, two months later, things are not getting more positive yet, and I’m tired of being silent. The economy is lousy. It’s not really super fun to be a Real Estate Agent at the moment. The opportunities to do things that I’ve always loved about Real Estate, like helping people find the very perfect home, are few and far between, and in general, the public feels very negatively about my livelihood. Lately, when I meet new people and they inquire about my line of work, when I tell them I’m a Realtor there’s a very distinct pause and they inevitably say, ‘Oh… so how’s that going for you right now?’ with a mixture of morbid curiosity and relief at not being in the same position. It’s sort of like a bear would say to another bear who’s caught in a trap in the middle of the forest. “Dude, that sucks. Well I gotta be going! Don’t want to get caught in the crossfire!”

But it is what it is. I know from the experiences I’ve had over the last two years in dealing with people and the intimate details of their personal finances that a lot of people are hurting. It’s a difficult and stressful time and it’s impossible to know when it will get better. Businesses have suffered and people have been laid off. Realtors (even the successful ones) are not immune. In fact, many of my real estate agent friends have lost properties to foreclosure and/or declared bankruptcy in the last few years. Pretending that it isn’t happening and that everything’s getting better and starting to look rosy again doesn’t make it go away.

That said, even though the bad is more numerous than the good at the moment, there is still good to be seen. I have helped several lovely families and people buy gorgeous, well-priced homes this year and even a few jettison properties in a positive way. Interest rates are rad right now and if you have money and are patient, you can get a steal and a half. The banks seem to be making strides to work with people in keeping their homes or short selling in non-ridiculously time-consuming manner.

So the point of all of this is, I’m back to blogging. I’m back to telling you the good, the bad, the frustrating, the ridiculous, the uplifting and the soul-killing things about my job as a Realtor here in Arizona. Thursday I’ve got a doozy of a story for you. If we can’t laugh about it, we can only cry, so I choose to laugh (with a large bottle of wine by my side).

Offers Received: 3
Deal Killing Obstacles Overcome: 4
Flexible Positions My Seller Contorted Herself Into to Make the Deal Happen: 7
How Sure I Was The Sale Would Not Go Through: 85%

Last week one of my listings closed escrow. Did you see that big beautiful rainbow that appeared over Phoenix and seemed to end right at the I-17 and Greenway? That was Heaven’s indication that it had granted a miracle on a townhouse there.

Don’t get me wrong, this property was actually a lovely, well kept home with a really great amount of space for a fabulous price. Unfortunately, it was also a townhouse purchased by my seller in 2003, attempting to be sold in a market rife with short sales and foreclosures looking to knock it from it’s price-perch and lenders who shudder at the thought of providing financing for a property whose HOA has a delinquency rate higher than 15%.

My client is one of the good guys who’s been stomped on and kicked in the gut by the economy and the housing bubble. She purchased a home well within her financial abilities and took amazing care of it. She did preventative termite treatments (who does that? Smart savvy gals, that’s who) and paid to have roof work done even though the roof maintenance is technically covered by the HOA. She wanted to protect her investment. She made payments above her minimum monthly mortgage. In a fair world she would get a nice medium-sized check at close of escrow when she sold it for her efforts.

Alas, real estate is not a fair world. Recently, my dear seller met her Prince Charming and got engaged. PC had also bought a home within his financial means, but he did it closer to the peak of the market. When I met with the two of them to discuss their options about consolidating their assets, I started in with a talk that’s become standard for me, “Hello, you owe more than you can demand for your property(ies). Rent? Short sale? Stay put?” and quickly learned these two were of a different stock. They explained to me that short sale and foreclosure were not an option for them. They would pay the banks the difference to eventually sell both of these properties and buy their big dream house in Chandler. No, they didn’t have buckets of cash in the bank with which to do this, but they had some and were willing to jettison the easier of the two first and then work on saving up to pay the considerable difference on the other one in time.

We started with pricing this property to get them out of it in the black, but barely. The comps didn’t support our price, but they also weren’t nearly as nicely kept, placed or move-in ready, so we started with our best case scenario and worked from there. We had slow and steady traffic but no offers for a couple of months. Finally we got a low-ball offer that would leave my client out of pocket several thousand dollars. Smart lady that she is, she did the math and realized that because they were carrying two properties, it would only take her a couple of months to make up the out of pocket cash by not having to make the mortgage payment. Rather than dwelling on the principle of the loss she was taking (which oh so many people get caught up in), she decided to bite the bullet and accept the offer.

This offer held firm for just a few days before the buyer’s financing fell through due to improper qualification. Because my seller had already resigned herself to being out of pocket and her wedding was quickly approaching, we dropped the price a minimal amount to wake up the buyers and show that we were willing to deal.

This was a successful tactic, our traffic picked up a bit and quickly we had the promise of another offer. Not an actual offer in hand, but a buyer who wanted to write one. The agent just had a few questions for the HOA about the default rate they were currently experiencing. Apparently this buyer had been bitten by this issue before, with a deal that got to the very end, and then was rejected in underwriting because the HOA default was more than 20%. I put the agent in touch with the HOA and it turned out the HOA for this property is in about the 18% delinquency range. It also turns out the magic number this particular buyer’s lender was looking for was <15%. And thus, offer #2 blinked out of existence.

Of course, at this point my client’s wedding was almost upon us. She called on Wednesday to say she was gearing up for the rehearsal dinner and the big event, and that her place was a touch more cluttered than usual, but if someone wanted to see it, that was still ok. ‘Selling the house is the big priority,’ she told me (dream client!). In real estate, big events, or trips out of town are signals for the governing gods to send in a well qualified, highly urgent buyer with an really great offer. So I got a call about an hour before her rehearsal dinner was scheduled to begin that I was getting a full price offer which would need a response within the next 12 hours.

So back under contract we went. It was a dream offer for my client, but I had my serious concerns. Number one was the appraisal (the spouses of listing agents know to expect night terrors ending in cold sweats and desperate screams of, “oh, no… oh no!! Not the APPRAISAL!!! OH THE HORROR!” in about the middle week of escrow). Number two was the nagging HOA delinquency issue. Both are potential problems that are difficult to head off before their time without raising alarms or waking sleeping beasts. You don’t want to give a buyer a reason to get cold feet, so generally speaking, a listing agent has to do a certain amount of wait and see.

So wait and see we did. Number two stayed sleeping monster (and I continued to stress about it until the actual call from the escrow officer that title had changed hands). Number one woke up and chomped right down on our windpipe. The appraisal came in $12K under value. I actually don’t at all blame the appraiser in this case. He did all that he could. It was an FHA loan and his hands were tied with the totally inflexible binds of FHA regulations.

Negotiation commenced, and my client ended up dropping $9K, the buyer brought $3K extra to the table and we made the contract ‘As-is’. It was ugly for my client’s pocketbook, but she was willing to take the loss to move on to married life in her husband’s home.

Loan documents were slow and we ended up closing a few days late (another frustration for my poor client as she had rushed to get out of the house on time), but amazingly, that little $90K sucker did actually close. And let me tell you, to me, it was as exciting and relief-inducing as any of my bigger closings. Real estate doesn’t pay based on effort and amount of maneuvering, but pride of the catch pays out on just that scale.

People Who Shushed Me and My Realtor Buddies During This Class: 4
Times After I Took This Class I Woke Up In a Cold Sweat: 7
Percent of The Population Who Should Take This Class: 98

I took a continuing education class a couple of weeks ago with two of my Realtor gal pals (one of whom used to be my manager; now she’s my bossy, loud-mouthed, knows-her-stuff buddy who I always call when I don’t know what to do). We started the class of wondering why we don’t take all of our Con Ed classes together, as it would be so much more fun, and ended thinking, ‘Oh, right, that’s why,’ after almost getting kicked out twice for giggling and whispering (totally class relevant stuff, I swear!).

This class was titled, “Options For a Troubled Homeowner” and is part of a series meant to educate agents about the pretty typical homeowner we deal with right now, which is to say, the one with a financial hardship. We were hoping to pick up some tips to pass along to our short sale clients about how to safely navigate the process and come out on the other side ready to rebuild. What I actually got out of it was nightmares and cold sweats about what could happen to my own finances, the general state of the economy and the legal ramifications of all short sales to date.

Basically, the class was taught by Patrick Ritchie, who is a credit expert, genius and total nutball (and I say this with all due respect, of course. Some of my favorite people are total nutballs). I had taken a class by him several years ago at the beginning of my real estate career, and remember him being very knowledgeable and interesting, but I think the disastrous state on a national (and potentially world) level of his area of expertise has whipped him into a frenzy. He speaks with a kind of frantic hilarity about his fear of ‘hyper inflation’ which causes him to stockpile hundreds of granola bars (among other things) when they go on sale. I get the feeling that he went into the business of becoming an expert in all things credit related because he’s a bit of a control freak and the idea of not being able to control his credit (a notoriously nebulous and uncontrollable thing) scared him, so he learned as much as he could about the details and scenarios related to credit. Then, when everything went to hell a few years back, the man must have practically had a psychotic break with the stress of it all.

I didn’t walk away from the class with a really clear idea of what I learned or what the general point or structure of it was meant to be, but I did pick up some key concepts that will potentially haunt me forever. So I thought I’d share them with you so they can stalk you and turn you into a shivering, hysterical conspiracy theorist too!

1. At one point during the class, Patrick Richie’s level of fervor peaked with the declaration, “If you learn ONE THING from this class, make it this: Never KEEP money at a bank you OWE money to.” Now, when I tweeted this statement, several of my followers were like, ‘Um, DUH.’ I also, however, had several reply, ‘Why? I do…’ And I do too. I have three mortgages (rental property, HELOC on the rental property, primary residence) and a checking and savings account all with Wells Fargo. It’s convenient and the banks make it attractive with certain incentives (free bill pay, etc.) if you do.

After he said this, though, I remembered my client/friends, who, after experiencing a job layoff and extended job search period, pursued a temporary loan modification on their mortgage. They were advised by the bank to miss a payment to begin the process, but when they did this, their checking and savings account, with the same bank (a credit union, which, according to Ritchie, are the most vicious when attempting to settle a claim) were immediately frozen, scaring the living crapola out of my friends. I guess this would be Ritchie’s point. You don’t know what is going to happen, so you need to be aware of, and plan for the worst. If something happened that forced you to halt payment on your loans, you don’t want your creditors to have access to your liquid funds. Talk about making a bad situation worse. “Oh, you don’t have the money to pay your mortgage? OK, well we’ll just take all of your money then. Is that better?”

So, you know, I’m currently stuck in “Suck it up and spend an entire month (or possibly the better portion of the rest of my life) switching over my accounts, auto-paid bills, debit cards, check and probably eight other things I’m not even thinking of, to another bank that isn’t linked to my mortgages” or “Be lazy and pretend like it’s not going to be an issue and I’ll never have a reason not to pay my mortgage or anything because I totally don’t work entirely on commission and my husband isn’t in a volatile industry that’s required him to change (and be without) jobs 3 times in the last year. And it’s a hassle. And I’m lazy. Did I mention I’m lazy?” hell. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and stare at the ceiling and pull my eyebrow hairs out. I’m just saying.

2. Ritchie managed to end the class on an even more depressing note by discussing a friend of his who committed suicide the day before last Christmas because he was in a financial black hole. He went on to mention his sister, who, even though he is one of the most knowledgeable credit experts around, has creditors stalking her through him and has for years and finally, a friend who was declaring bankruptcy now, even though he’d been telling him for 4 years it was the right thing to do. Yes, each of these things is icky and awkward and not at all where we want to see ourselves, but here’s what I gleaned from all of this (and what I think Ritchie’s ultimate point was): everyone, in some capacity, is currently dealing with, or will in the near future come into contact with financial hardship. It isn’t the end all, be all. It doesn’t help to bury your head in the sand or be devastated by the embarrassment and stigma of it all. It’s a temporary situation and you can’t let it run your life or ruin your happiness. You have to be aware of your rights and options and make the best choice you can moving forward. It is what it is. Don’t be a dummy and kill yourself over it.

So I’m totally going to stop pulling my eyebrow hairs out, I swear. Pretty soon.