Southern California Housing Vibes

Everyone is familiar with the rubber dividers at the grocery store.   Shoppers use them to separate their groceries.   I believe consumers should look to rubber dividing habits in choosing a Realtor.     There are two types of rubber dividers and, depending on which you are, you may or may not ma...

Realtors have been claiming for ages to have an interested buyer for the sake of gaining an expired listing, and it irks me to no end, especially when the buyer is from the planet Upuranus! Plenty of unethical conduct can be attributed to a few bad apples, but not all of it.     A CASE OF PUBLIC ...

Most FSBOs will reach a point of critical mass and transition to full Realtor representation, but not before making a good run at it, first. A FSBO, or For Sale by Owner, may not need gads of gear and gadgets to conquer a mountain of documents, but they do need to master the various components of...

MISPLACED TRUST A real estate agent in Irvine, California fell down the ugly tree, hitting 1,600,000 branches on the way.  That has to hurt!    David R. Sparks, an Irvine real estate broker and owner of Sparks Realty & Investment, Inc., has found himself facing a default judgment for 1.6 million ...

Photo courtesy of Beckman High School The hills of Irvine are alive with the sound of music. Both the Irvine and Tustin Unified School Districts are renown in Orange County for their top-of-the-line academic programs, though they boast talent beyond the classroom.  Beckman High School has its ow...

The Boy Who Cried Motivated Seller! I had an interesting conversation this morning with a seller's agent.   His listing says the owner bought a new home and is very motivated to sell.   It sounds credible at first blush, but I would learn otherwise.   The comps show the home is priced above fair ...

Bill Burchard hit the trifecta of features with his trilogy on copyright protection, with good reason.   Bill has a knack for reducing a complex subject to easy to understand terms.  He's a crackerjack writer who deserves his growing popularity.  These are the other two blogs on the subject: How ...

[Part II, The Proper Care and Feeding of a Buyer; my personal approach.    Part I, Whittle ‘em Down,is  a restatement of another Rainmaker's approach.   For the sake of clarity and to eliminate bias, I've made two blog entries of them.   This entry is Part I and Part II, in tandem] Those who were...

(Part I, Whittle 'em Down) The buyer comes traipsing in with a scroll of paper hanging to the floor.  The list has enough homes to constitute a new city.   This could prove to be an agent's veritable nightmare of having to show an endless array properties.    We all know the syndrome that comes n...

Activerain Rainmaker Bill Burchard of Murrieta, California, wrote a must-read blog on earthquake preparedness.    http://actvra.in/6Ts     It includes ideas that can be applied to emergencies of all types.  In it,  you'll find a very clever idea:    The Emergency Supplies Trash Can.   It takes a...