I’ve always heard that the single most important thing that we do as agents is to establish expectations. At the end of the day I think that’s about 90% of the job. Of course that means telling the truth. A lot. What’s also really important is knowing what the truth is! Weird idea, huh?

Nothing I hate worse that being exposed as being wrong, but that’s life. Given enough time and I’ll be wrong about something. Of that fact, I know I’m right. There’s two things I know right now to be true about real estate. 1) It’s kind of slow if you’re a seller. It would be unwise to bank on the idea of multiple offers. The odds don’t favor you actually. Right now at least. I had a really close friend of mine text me last week to ask me if her house is worth $2,500,000. That was her sincere expectation. I almost passed out when I read the text! Then she said…”but at least $2,250,000…right?” The comps are actually about $1,800,000 for her type place…and fat overbids aren’t happening. I know this is kind of a tough pill to swallow because sellers seem to feel like it’s a birthright or something to get $200,000 over asking for their places. If you’re thinking about listing your place between now and the first of the year you should be ready to a slower process. Maybe you’ll still get multiple offers, who knows, but I wouldn’t expect it.

The second thing that I know to be true is this…this is a pretty seriously healthy market and will continue to be. Right now today in this horrifying slow spell there’s only 7 single family houses on the market in Foster City and 14 condo/townhouses. That’s really no different than it was in May. Sorry, but there’s more than 21 set of people who want to live in Foster City. If it takes a bit longer that’s OK. These places will sell. Also, all those jobs haven’t disappeared. All that construction you see is real. That growth we always hear about isn’t a fantasy around here. Oh, yes…rents are still pretty freaking high.

Maybe I’m in denial, but I think this fall is an aberration. Maybe it doesn’t go up 25% in the first quarter again…but it’s going to be fine in 2016. Our investments in real estate around here are about as solid as they can be.

Probably as long as there has been a multiple offer environment there have been folks interested in finding a way around that kind of competition. Totally understandable really. Typically, the agent who is selling the home lists the place in the MLS and either right away or after the first weekend’s open houses sets a date to look at offers. Most of the time that date is published in the MLS itself and thus everyone knows what the game plan is for making an offer there. Sometimes a buyer and their agent wants to circumvent this process and make an offer immediately. The buyer’s agent calls the sellers agent and tells him/her that their client has an offer and wants to present it right away…not wait for the offer date. Sometimes the agent simply sends the offer via email directly to the sellers agent and asks that it be presented immediately. On almost every listing I’ve had in the last several years an agent (or 2…or 3) will call and ask if they can bring me a pre-emptive offer. The thinking with the buyer who has this type of offer is that they’ll write something FAT enough that it will motivate the seller to forget about waiting and just take their offer.

Honestly…I hate this pre-emptive thing. I think it’s way risky for everybody. You’re going to usually decide to write this type of offer after the house has been on the market only a couple of days, well before it’s scheduled offer date. From my standpoint, representing a buyer, there’s really no way to tell how much competition the house will get that soon in the process and you could easily overshoot on your offering price by acting early. From my standpoint representing the seller…you might take alot less than you could have gotten.

A month ago I had a listing in South San Francisco that was offered at $850,000. An agent told my seller directly that they wanted to bring them a $1,000,000 pre-emptive offer on the second day of the listing. They called and asked me what I thought and I told them I thought we should wait and let nature take it’s course. Risky you think? 8 days later we ended up with 10 offers and the house sold for $1,175,000.

I guess the other thing I hate about it is losing a potential home for my own buyers when somebody else gets it via their pre-emptive. In other words I hate losing!! This has happened to me alot lately too…my clients see a place, like it and ask for disclosures. On day 2, the listing agent replies that the home is sold. Huh? In one recent case the seller took a pre-emptive 2 days before the scheduled offer date…7 days into the listing! The place closed $75,000 UNDER the price we were going in at. In other words, the seller left money on the table over 2 days!

I guess that, ultimately, I believe in letting nature take it’s course. When that happens everybody has a fair chance.

Yes, folks…we’re indeed in the impervious market. See this adorable house above? It’s a very cute 2 bedroom house in San Bruno that I sold earlier this week. It’s an estate sale and it required some preparation prior to going on the market (like most all houses now!). Of course I have a fairly large team of folks that help prepare these listings and my absolutely fabulous assistant Jane has a great eye for color and design when it comes to paint colors. In the case of this house, she recommended a couple of Kelly Moore colors…”Old School” for the trim and “Mallard Lake” for the front door. She was very specific with the painters about which colors went where too. Of course, the guys who actually do the painting don’t speak English…and got it all backwards. Mallard Lake is the light blue paint and Old School is sort of a navy color….it’s on the door.

What do I know? Nothing!! When I saw it, I thought it was different but it seemed OK to me? I heard a few comments about the unusual color choice…but nobody complained. Until Jane saw the virtual tour photos! She wasn’t happy. To quote: “I’m not claiming this”. Also: “I’m so miffed, it would have looked so much better as it should have been. %$# needs to get his shit together.”

Sheesh! Oops. I really thought it was too late to change things. We were ready to launch. So….how did it go, you ask? Three weeks ago the identical floorplan was listed on the next block. Fully remodeled kitchen and bath. I mean REALLY nicely remodeled. Listed for $899,000, it got 16 offers and sold for well over a million. What did that mean to the baby blue (I mean Mallard Lake…excuse me!) gem up there? My listing had a much older kitchen and bath and needed work in other areas. We got 9 offers….and it sold for almost $40,000 OVER the house a block away!

Maybe it was the paint? It’s almost impossible to make a mistake right now if you’re a seller. Well….you CAN make them I guess. But the market sure seems impervious to being punished for them.