The first year of business for Level 10 Realty went surprisingly well. Honestly, I thought there would be more of a “breaking in” period of getting our name out there and becoming a household name. We’re not quite there yet, but we’re making better progress than I could have expected this soon.

We’ll be adding some more features to the site over the next week or so (look for a “new listings” page and a few other things), as well as making some updates. I’ll try to do a “year in review” post in the next few days, as well as a “resolutions” post about what I plan to accomplish with Level 10 in 2009.

Merry Chirstmas and Happy Holidays!

I have a listing in Harvest. Within two weeks of putting the home on the market, we have an accepted offer with a VA loan, and close by December 1st, 2008. Simple enough, right?

During the course of the contract, we make a few changes, but one thing stays constant;  VA loan, and deed to be delivered on or before December 1st, 2008. The buyer (hereafter may be referred to as buyer #1.) chooses to close the Monday prior to Thanksgiving. Monday comes and goes with no closing. “Oh, we have one more thing to take care of, we’ll close Tuesday”, says the mortgage company. Tuesday comes and goes with no closing. The same thing was said for Wednesday, no closing.

Later in the day Wednesday, I find out that the buyer has an issue that is going to keep him from getting approved for his VA loan. As a last ditch attempt, the buyer moves their mortgage to another mortgage company. While we wait, December 1st passes us by. The sellers tell me to give a December 7th, 2008 deadline to the purchasers to close, or we put the home back on the market. I relay this to the mortgage officer.

The Friday before December 7th, the mortgage officer tells me that she cannot approve the purchaser for a VA loan. Our contracts are written to stipulate one main issue. If, for any reason at all, you are unable to get approved for a mortgage on a home, the contract is dead and you are not legally bound to purchase that home. The purchaser was unable to get approved for the type of mortgage written in the contract, and the expiration date on the contract had passed. DEAD CONTRACT.

December 7th, home goes back on the market. Four days later, we have another offer. After going back and forth a few times, we come to a verbal agreement that Friday night (We’ll refer to these guys as buyer #2.). Sellers are out of town and unable to sign the contract until Sunday.

SUNDAY

Sunday rolls around and I decide to give a call to buyer #1’s agent to get his buyer their earnest money back. Voicemail. After a bit, buyer #1’s agent calls back, “Why are you returning the earnest money? We’re closing tomorrow (Monday). The buyer is approved with an FHA loan now.” I’ve heard this before, a few times. Why should I believe it this time? So, I inform the sellers.

After informing my sellers,  they want to wait to sign buyer #2’s contract because of the possibility buyer #1 could close much sooner. You must be saying, “But, I thought buyer #2 had a verbal agreement with the sellers?” You would be right. Verbal agreements CAN be legally enforced.

The sellers have no responsibility to buyer #1. There is NO CONTRACT. It is DEAD. The sellers do have a legal responsibility to buyer #2. We decide to wait until Monday to see what happens.

MONDAY

First thing in the morning, I get a call from the mortgage officer. “I think we can close buyer #1 on Friday.” With the amount of trouble that we’ve had trying to close buyer #1, this quote does not sound too promising. Buyer #1 is waiting on a document that could go either way. If it comes back different than what they expect, DENIED. If it comes back like they expect, we still have to close, and ANYTHING can happen prior to closing.

THE QUANDRY

First, I’ll say this. I’ve never met or spoken with either buyer, only their agents. Both agents seem like great guys and want to do what’s best for their buyers. From speaking with the buyer’s agents, here are their situations:

Buyer #1: Local, has no contract with the sellers. Buyer can find another home with no trouble, and appears that there are no time constraints, but if things work out, could close very quickly.

Buyer #2: From out of state, has a verbal agreement with the sellers. Buyer #2 has a pre-approval letter and all financing inline. Buyer is not available to come back to town prior to closing, hence the massive need for a home quickly. If seller chooses buyer #1, buyer #2’s wife and two small children have absolutely nowhere to live when they return to town. Closing is set for the middle of January.

If seller chooses buyer #1, and buyer #1 does not close, seller has lost BOTH buyers, as has opened themselves up to a possible lawsuit from buyer #2.

If seller chooses buyer #2, buyer #1 doesn’t really have any recourse, and buyer #1 just finds another home. It seems like an easy answer, but it’s a lot tougher when you’re in the seller’s shoes.

THE ANSWER

After an ALL DAY, ALL WEEKEND event, the sellers chose to stay with their verbal agreement to buyer #2.

Somehow, though, I feel like this is TO BE CONTINUED…

Not all of them, just some. The expression “one bad apple ruins the bunch” should set roots in real estate. There are GREAT agents out there, but I’ll give you a rundown about the ones that piss me off (sorry for the language).

Real estate is my business. If I don’t sell homes, My wife and my child don’t eat. I don’t like it when people try to mess with my business. Certain Realtors are trying to mess with my business because they are too lazy to do the amount of work it takes to be successful without corrupting the integrity of a site designed to give you guys as much information as I can legally give you.

Realtors are on my site CONSTANTLY. Trust me, I know. That doesn’t bother me. I AM, though, becoming annoyed with the ones that stay on my site to look for ways to send a complaint to the board ( or now, as I’m hearing, to the state).

REALTORS, LISTEN: If you know nothing about the NALMLS or IDX rules for displaying data on a broker website, please, keep your mouth shut and quit making yourself look stupid. Try reading before complaining. Try common courtesy over back-stabbing.

Realtor jealousy is at an all time high in this area. This is a message to those Realtors that are probably reading this now.

YOU SUCK. Oh, you don’t think so? Let me count 5 ways you suck:

1. If you are unwilling to do what it takes to rank better in the search engines, don’t blame me, you are the one that sucks.

2. If you are unwilling to hire someone to help you rank better in search engines, don’t blame me, you are the one that sucks.

3. If you are unwilling to spend the time developing GOOD information for display to the public, don’t blame me, you are the one that sucks.

4. If you are unwilling to hire someone to design a decent website for you instead of the crap you have now, don’t blame me, you are the one that sucks.

5. If you refuse to hire someone, and are unwilling to learn the technology to do these things yourself, don’t blame me, you are the one that sucks.

I could go on all day about how some of you Realtors suck. The ones that do, I hope you read this. Hell, I hope you take it to the board and report me for telling you that you suck. Maybe, we’ll even get to have a hearing about how you suck so that I can tell you that “You Suck” to your face. Maybe you’ll even get famous by the whole fiasco and people will start wanting to do business with “The Realtor that Sucks.”

I can see it now. Develop the business plan! It’s a great idea! Who could forget “The Realtor that Sucks?” You could develop little name tags that say “It’s Great to Suck” or “HELLO My Name is: The Realtor that Sucks.”

You could make millions. You could write books! How about titles such as Sucking the Hard Way, Sucking for Dummies, How to Suck in the Current Real Estate Climate for Maximum Profit, Sucking at Foreclosures, and finally, just plain old Sucking at Real Estate, A guide to burning bridges, back stabbing, and pissing people off on the way to making millions.

There’s probably even a “Made for TV” movie in there somewhere, and just think, you were able to have all of this success, simply by sucking. You can thank me later. In the meantime, I’ll keep doing things the right way.

The story goes, apparently another Realtor was checking out my site, liked the idea, and called to see if it was within our regulations to do this. The board then checked my site and verified that this would not be legal under our current rules. As a natural consequence, I had to remove them.

I will continue the fight!

Here’s the story:

Last Wednesday, I wake up to no emails and worst of all, no website. My account had been suspended. Why? Supposedly, my website was using entirely too many resources. If this was the case, I could understand. It’s a shared hosting company, they can’t sacrifice the performance of everyone else on the server for the sake of me. I get that. What is strange, though, is that I’ve been running the same services for about 9 months now, with no issue. Now, all of a sudden, I’m causing trouble? Weird.

So, Bluehost support and I agree on a tactic that may help to increase performance. I implement the improvements and all is well in Level 10 Land, so it seemed. Saturday morning, I wake up again to a DISABLED account. I’m not even suspended any more. I’m a freaking two time offender, I’m disabled. My account was disabled at 3:24 AM Saturday because of the same issues.

Phone call to Bluehost support again, but this time it’s worse. The abuse department has deemed it necessary to make a note to NOT activate my account until approval from them. Too bad they don’t work the weekends. 9-5 Monday through Friday. Ummmm, so they can cut me off at 3:24 AM, but won’t even talk with me until 9 AM on Monday? This has got to be a joke.

After a couple of hours on the phone with different departments of Bluehost and being treated like a hacker or criminal, I’m finally able to get with an “on call” abuse technician. That’s when something totally unexpected happened. For the first time in my life, I was told to take my business elsewhere! Here is the email:

You will need to find a new hosting company.  Your account is scheduled to be deleted December 15, 2008.

It has come to our attention that your site is using an extreme amount of resources on our servers and network. Per conditions stated in the TOS we will no longer be hosting your account.

I couldn’t help but laugh. I sent my thoughts back to the abuse department, though.

The Result:

As you can probably imagine, I’ve been working on finding a new hosting company, and I think I’ve found a good one in Hostgator.com - They seem much more willing to help and be involved in problem solving.

Do you want to know what the best part is?

It appears that I was never the problem on the Bluehost server to begin with! Their server status had actually gotten WORSE since I deleted my files. It seems they went after the wrong person. Maybe we shouldn’t always be so quick to judge.

IT DOESN’T MATTER. CHOOSE THE REALTOR, NOT THE BROKERAGE.

There are good and bad agents at the “big time” places, as well as the small brokerages. A NAME does not make a brokerage. The REALTOR does. Granted, the large brokerages do offer better access to training and tools that the smaller brokerage may not have, but it goes back to the agent. They have to WANT to take advantage of those things.

The main beef I have with some of the smaller brokerages is their marketing and web presences, but their marketing materials and websites does not necessarily dictate the service that you will get.

EXPERIENCE AND KNOWLEDGE ARE THE KEYS.

Experience is the tricky part, though. It’s kind of like credit. If you don’t have it, no one wants to give it to you. Knowledge CAN make up for lack of experience…to an extent. Don’t overlook a new agent strictly because they’re new. With the right head on their shoulders, they can make a great asset. All of us were new at one time or another. I still remember my first sale about 7 years ago. I was scared to death, but I made it through.

I could probably go into more detail, but it would get boring….quick.

If I had no sense of humor, I would long ago have committed suicide.

- Gandhi