David's Blog

I was reminded of this quotation by Mohandas Gandi after discovering by accident that a Buyer's Agent who had submitted an offer for one of our REO Listings had wasted no time to trash our business practices on her Facebook blog!!  Her exact quote was " Writing an offer on REO property on sellers...

We recently had our most difficult REO escrow with a broker who brought a weak cash buyer and wanted us to cooperate with him to help secure the property for his clients.  So, we signed up a CA Broker Referral Fee agreement to document his plans to share his sell side commission with us. I should...

Perhaps we've been spoiled by listing vacant REO properties with complete autonomy, but last week a referral came for a Short Sale opportunity and I visited the property on Saturday. Since the property was occupied by Tenants, we made an appointment with the owner to meet us there. After meeting ...

We are starting to enjoying the Water Boarding treatment we get from our HOA managers who despite cashing our check for documents, refuse to even acknowledge that they have received our order!! Some of them don't accept online payments or credit cards which creates a lot of delays.  I guess setti...

I recently learned a valuable lesson when dealing with a buyer on one our own REO listings.  I learned the hard way that unless you can win the trust of your buyer, the transaction will not close. Here's some details:   One of my agents brought an offer for one of our office REO listings.  We man...

Some of our Asset Management companies that offer us REOs for sale, don't compensate us for evictions!! Their rational when we hinted on getting compensated was that "you are getting paid for the listing and the eviction is part of this". Evictions take a huge emotional toll on my team and it was...

Just in case you were wondering how hot the real estate market is in San Jose, we just received a Cash offer for $320,000 on a Bank-Owned (REO) property we listed 3 hours ago for $275,500!!  I know Goldman Sachs made tons of money, but is the recession over!? Why would someone write a cash offer ...

I am desperately looking for suggestion to better communicate our Asset Manager’s requirements for a true Pre-Approval vs the canned Pre-Quals we are still getting! Despite the fact that we state in the Private section if the MLS listing that the Pre-Approval should include a “Loan Number, Rate, ...

Our Monterey County listing in South Salinas was posted on MLS yesterday and it's already generated 3 offers. Part of the reason is that we aggressively marketed the property even while we were waiting for the Listing Agreement and price. We hosted an Open House and posted the property on Craig's...

Our recent REO listing in San Jose generated more than 27 offers and we had to stop accepting offers in 3 days when the Asset Manager wanted to focus on top 4 offers. That was when one agent called and insisted that he will be making a strong CASH offer.  His offer came from an email address that...