Archive for February, 2010

This Just In!

In an effort to make your life easier Omega Real Estate Associates, Inc. In Williston Vermont is now hand aggregating relevant Burlington VT area business and real estate articles and putting them on their website!  Omega Real Estate Associates aims to be your one stop shop for all of your Real Estate needs and now you can read up on the latest business news before you pull the trigger on the new Williston office space.

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Are you familiar with the Real Estate adage that goes; ‘the true value of a property is what a ready, willing and able buyer is willing to pay’? Well, the following rambling discourse has something to do with that subject.

On 2/18/2010, I went to an education update on the appraisal process for existing single family homes in Vermont, and here’s what I found.

Appraiser’s are having a difficult time with their valuations of Vermont real estate these days due to the lower than normal volume of sales to use as comparables (land is even more difficult). Lower sales volume means fewer recently sold properties that are going to be available as good comps. All of the different features in a home comparison aren’t going to match up as closely, so you’re going to end up with a wider range of value due to approximate (rather subjective) adjustments that must be made to get homes equalized for a fair comparison. It’s one of those things that is part art and part science. Nowadays the art part is more dominant vs. the science, meaning one is less likely to get a precise value based on a really good comparable. As a Buyer’s agent, what this means for me is that I can be an even greater value  to my clients.  For sure, I need to be using correct assumptions about the value of different adjustments for each feature, but a buyer needs to have help in obtaining information about what price range makes sense for a particular property. Getting help in determining a realistic price range helps everyone reach common ground faster in regards to an offer that a seller will accept (assuming it’s not a short sale or foreclosure, or a fixer upper).

Even though I’m not an appraiser, I can at least do the math in a simple comparable market analysis to give my buyer a general idea about value in any given Chittenden County, Vermont  property.

So, it all comes down to the supposed valuation of a property vs. what a ready, willing and able buyer offers to pay. Let the games begin!

If you haven’t already heard, Google announced another new product the other day called Buzz. It’s basically another social networking tool . Really Google? As if we aren’t already overwhelmed enough? Between Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter and email (yes, some of us still email), who has time for another one? I guess Buzz is supposed to make your life easier by linking these all together and clogging up your inbox. Perfect! Now I can find out what Peter had for breakfast and get updates on the traffic jam Allison is stuck in right in my inbox. Do stupid waste of time tweets and facebook updates go into a special Buzz SPAM folder? Now that’s a feature that would sell me on Buzz. Here’s the thing, the only buzz on Buzz is that it nobody likes it. I did a quick Twitter search to see what people are saying about it and 80% of the tweets were negative.  Is Google losing it’s edge?

What’s really puzzling about all of this is that the Real Estate community hasn’t jumped all over this thing like they did with Twitter and Facebook.   Realtors are notorious for finding a way to plug listings through any and all platforms; to get the buzz going so to speak.  I guess time will tell. Maybe people are still trying to figure out whether Twitter is helping their business or killing productivity.

Here is a screen shot of a listing on Buzz

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