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After dealing with a property for a period of time, it is always interesting to go back and review your reaction upon seeing it for the first time.  I'm sure we have all reacted to homes in various fashion with initial responses ranging from "a perfect home" to "how could a piece of property that ugly be that expensive?"  This is true whether we are seeing a property as a potential homeowner, investor, appraiser or Realtor©.  Once we are down the road with a piece of property that initial response may have been confirmed or may have actually changed in some respects.  Ultimately, you may get lucky with what you end up with regardless of how horrified you may have been at first light.

 

Years ago I had a client who inherited a 30 x 100 piece of property in the city of Detroit.  When we first went to look at it, we found it was covered in well-worn asphalt amongst a sea of other 30 x 100 pieces of property.  Looking around, the property was within hailing distance of an old bar, an old theater and an old church.  My client considered whether to ignore the inheritance, not pay the taxes and let the property be someone else's problem.

 

Some time went by and the property came up in conversation on occasion.  Needless to say few good things were said about the little piece of property that was once the foundation for a home amongst neighbors, lovingly cared for by its' residents.

 

Time, however, marches on and it was no different in respect to the increasingly pock marked square footage.  But along came a visionary who thought perhaps a little piece property, combined with the surrounding little pieces of property, might actually be able to be turned into something special.  Indeed, in a masterpiece of engineering innovation, the theater was moved, the church was protected and the little bar held its ground.  Today, those 3000 square feet of asphalt finds itself in a new home in the confines of right-field of Comerica Park.  Its' neighboring little pieces of property fared equally as well.  After all of the litigation creativity, bluster and fanfare, my client ended up with a tidy sum.  The Gem Theater and the Elwood Bar have done okay too.

 

This experience taught me first impressions can be wrong, visionaries make the world go around, and every now and then we find a diamond in the rough.

 

Or perhaps, as in this case, a bit of rough in the diamond.

 

Be well.

 

Jeff Fanto

 

PS we apologize for the delay in our monthly newsletter, however, we determined that May was too long anyway and it would be a lot more fun if we could just get closer to summer.  So here we are.

This morning as I so often do, I was heading to Dunkin Donuts for my morning coffee. I don’t go there every morning but do definitely visit a couple three times a week during the winter. I prefer their coffee over all of the foo foo and overpowering flavors that the other guys serve at twice the price. Dunkin’s coffee is just a nice smooth cup of coffee at a reasonable price. What happened this morning was so simple but went a long way to make me feel pretty good. When I walked through the door, the usual crew was there working hard. I barely made it through the door and one of them shouted out above the crowd “extra large coffee here sir”. She had to notice that I pulled up, walked in the door, remembered how I have taken my coffee in the past and went ahead and made it. I proceeded to the front of the line gave them my two bucks, said thank you very much and was out of there in probably 30 seconds flat. I felt like a VIP. You may think this is kind of silly but this day in age there’s not too much of that going on….if it does, it’s rare. It certainly put a smile on my face and here I am about 12 hours later blogging about it.

How does this relate to real estate? On a slightly larger scale than filling a coffee cup we are providers of a service….customer service and satisfaction is our goal just the same as that girl going the extra mile to have my coffee ready for me. It seems so often to me that many agents are just about getting the deal done. It’s just a job to many. To that buyer or seller it is one of the biggest decisions in their life and they have entrusted us as the experts in our field to help them. “What a privilege”, I say!

It takes such little effort on our part to get to know someone a little bit and gain the ability to anticipate some of their needs. Think about it a little. This girl that probably makes minimum wage pouring coffee all day long and provided the best example of customer service that I’ve seen in a long time…..anywhere. How many hours to you typically spend with a client? 15?....20?.....30? We’ll go with 40 as an example. With the average home sale these days in the $250,000 range at 3% that’s $7500/40hrs….that’s $187.50/hour. For that kind of money we should be treating our clients like royalty for the short time that we are with them. The Dunkin Donuts girl certainly obtained greatness at a mere $7.00 an hour. What’s your excuse?

After reading this so called "great news" from MAR (Mich Assoc. REALTORS) yesterday it seems like another half ***** attempt at helping things out. This is my perspective on what I read yesterday.

One issue with it is the NOT being leased or avaliable for lease. A lot of sellers are turning to leasing as an option because their home won't sell. This does not change anything for them. They will still loose the homestead if they lease their home out. A large portion of the for sale listings are also for lease, they will loose the homestead too.

It also does not address bank owned properties which is what a major portion of the listings are these days. The homestead gets removed once it becomes an REO (because a corp now owns it), depending on what time of year it is, it could be awhile before a new owner can get a homestead back on the property. This is the issue that really needs to be addressed.

So it really only helps people out that have moved and can afford to keep their previous home until it sells. Which in my perspective is not many people....this is why there are so many foreclosures....duh. So many of the homes on the market you can look through the listing history, see that the owner tried to sell for a year or more, the house did not sell and it became a foreclosure. The owners were long gone by that time enjoying their new life somewhere else in the country.

Perhaps another move towards feeding the rich and eliminating a class of of people we like to refer to as "middle"? How do you see it?

Hats off to MAR and Granholm.....I think not.

Here's the email content that applies to the above;

"Yesterday, Governor Granholm signed 3 significant pieces of REALTOR® supported legislation. First, legislation enabling home sellers to retain 2 principal resident exemptions for property still on the market after the seller has moved elsewhere in the state. The signing of this legislation is a huge step in aiding struggling sellers who have had homes on the market for over a year and have lost their principal residence status on that property.
House Bill 4215, now Public Act 96 of 2008 sponsored by Representative Ed Gaffney (R-Grosse Pointe Farms) enacts that the seller can retain an additional exemption for up to three years on property previously exempt as the owner’s principal residence if the following circumstances are met:
the property is not occupied,
the property is for sale
the property is not leased or available for lease
the property is not used for any business or commercial purpose