Closing Time Podcast

That's our plan for 2020! Thank you for subscribing and for watching our live stream, November was our best month to date for downloads! We've got some great things planned starting in January, including more interviews with experts on the latest news and trends in real estate. Please feel free to share on your socials or with others in the business! 

Bright MLS debuts new pocket listing rule

The policy requires agents to put any listing they're advertising into the MLS and comes at a time of growing concern over off-market listings

The new policy gives members of Bright MLS, which has about 95,000 members in the Mid-Atlantic region, a day to post their listings “following consumer marketing of any kind,” according to a statement from the trade group. Marketing is defined as everything from flyers to yard signs to digital marketing on public websites to emails and more.

The new policy goes into effect today, though Bright MLS won’t start fining agents for violations until Dec. 1. After that time, the penalty for breaking the rule is a steep $5,000.

The new policy comes amid growing concern in the real estate industry over listings that remain off-market for either part or all of their lifespan. Such properties are sometimes referred to as “pocket listings” and in many cases eventually go public after an initial period of exclusivity. But they have nevertheless sparked an ongoing debate about competition and transparency within the industry.

MLS Clear Cooperation Policy

Recommendation: To adopt the following policy as new MLS Statement 8.0, NAR Handbook on Multiple Listing Policy:

Within one (1) business day of marketing a property to the public, the listing broker must submit the listing to the MLS for cooperation with other MLS participants. Public marketing includes, but is not limited to, flyers displayed in windows, yard signs, digital marketing on public facing websites, brokerage website displays (including IDX and VOW), digital communications marketing (email blasts), multi-brokerage listing sharing networks, and applications available to the general public.

[updated 11/11/19]

Rationale: Distribution of listing information and cooperation among MLS participants is pro-competitive and pro-consumer. By joining an MLS, participants agree to cooperate with other MLS participants except when such cooperation is not in their client's interests. This policy is intended to bolster cooperation and advance the positive, procompetitive impacts that cooperation fosters for consumers. The public marketing of a listing indicates that the MLS Participant has concluded that cooperation with other MLS participants is in their client’s interests.

Tiny Houses, Tiny Crowd ...  Big Solution?

Katherine McComic has a “tiny” solution for New Haven’s affordable housing crisis: 100-square-foot-plus abodes built atop city-owned vacant lots that the municipal zoning code currently deems too small for construction.

McComic, a Quinnipiac University law student, former intern with the city’s Economic Development Administration, and former pop-up cafe entrepreneur, is working with city Deputy Director of Zoning Jenna Montesano to figure out how best to amend the city’s zoning code to allow for the development of such “tiny houses” in New Haven.

The goal: To diversify the city’s housing stock and increase the supply of low-cost, low-rent lodgings citywide.

Connecticut Is Considering Adopting Appendix Q

The State Building Inspector, State Fire Marshal and the Codes and Standards Committee announce intent to adopt the 2020 State Building and Fire Safety Codes based on the 2018 editions of the International Code Council (ICC) documents.  Technical review of these codes will be conducted by the Committee’s Codes Amendment Subcommittee (CAS) along with DAS staff.  This review will begin April 2019 and is planned to be completed August 2019.

Appendix Q: Tiny Homes On A Foundation

Appendix Q-Adopted into the 2018 International Residential Code ( IRC ) building code to provide regulations and standards for tiny homes on a foundation that is 400 square feet or less

Appendix Q relaxes various requirements in the body of the code as they apply to tiny houses that are 400 square feet or less.

Attention is specifically paid to features such as compact stairs, including hand rails and headroom, ladders, reduced ceiling heights in lofts and guard and emergency escape and rescue opening requirements of lofts.

The International Residential Code is a comprehensive, stand alone residential code that creates minimum regulations for one-and two family dwellings of three stories or less.

Owners pull sex dungeon home off market, pivot to BDSM rental

The owners of a notorious Pennsylvania home that went viral earlier this year after pictures of its basement sex dungeon were posted on Redfin and Zillow have pulled the property off the market and turned it into a erotic retreat.

In February, Coldwell Banker agent Melissa Leonard listed the Colonial-style home in the Philadelphia suburb of Maple Glen for $750,000. She put up photos of the house as well as its most interesting feature — a basement decked out with whips, chains and all things worthy of a “50 Shades of Gray” film set. While gaining a lot of attention, the photos of the dungeon were soon flagged as “inappropriate content” and pulled from Zillow and Redfin.

The owner told realtor.com that weekends in the property are fully booked through the retreat rental company Maison XS for the next six months.

NAR warns members about conference email scam
https://www.inman.com/2019/10/23/nar-warns-members-about-conference-email-scam/  
The National Association of Realtors (NAR) issued a warning about an ongoing scam that fraudulently asks recipients to register for an upcoming conference. 

The scam involves an email that includes a subject line inviting people to “Register for the 2019 REALTORS Conference.” However, the email is in fact a fake from a Comcast address, though it “displays as if it was from NAR,” according to a statement from NAR. 

Any real estate professionals who have received the email should take a screenshot of it and report it the FBI. NAR has also already alerted the FBI about the message. 

Following tech peers, Facebook pledges $1B to affordable housing
https://www.inman.com/2019/10/23/following-tech-peers-facebook-pledges-1b-to-affordable-housing/  
Facebook has become the latest tech behemoth to pledge a boatload of cash to affordable housing, matching Google’s commitment of $1 billion — which itself had one-upped Microsoft’s trailblazing pledge of $500 million.
Facebook estimates its funding will generate up to 20,000 units, much of it catering to housing middle-class workers near the firm’s headquarters in Menlo Park, California.
$250 million of the funds are earmarked for a special partnership with the California governor’s administration, in which the state will essentially donate publicly-owned land to developers.
These donations have coincided with new promises from business leaders in other industries to give more consideration to communities, workers and suppliers — rather than principally to shareholders. 
 

Growing number of homeowners feel 'house rich and cash poor'
https://www.inman.com/2019/10/23/growing-number-of-homeowners-feel-house-rich-and-cash-poor/  
Home Ownership is the American Dream and the way to establish wealth, but a new study published by HomeTap on  revealed that the majority of homeowners feel “house rich and cash poor,” which added stress about their ability to maintain a household and build generational wealth.

The study showed more than 70 percent of homeowners feel “house rich and cash poor” some of the time, due to stagnant wage growth that fails to keep up with the rising cost of living. 

Despite the fact  more than 60 percent of homeowners have low mortgage rates and $10,000 to $50,000 in home equity (28 percent), the majority feel they have no good options to turn equity into cash. American's aren't smart about money and investing. 

Sixty-one percent of homeowners said they could apply for a loan or sell their home to access equity, but preferred not to.

26 percent of homeowners said they’d be willing to apply for a HELOC (home equity line of credit) or sell their current home. There are people who want to sell their home and are just waiting for someone to ask. 

Johnson & Johnson issues recall for baby powder after asbestos detected
https://www.wfsb.com/news/johnson-johnson-issues-recall-for-baby-powder-after-asbestos-detected/article_733aa85c-f1b6-11e9-b632-6732d44b7dd9.html?fbclid=IwAR2Oi475kjc_V_OB_UBmujX-cM8umMZ4pwl6yUFpNjcm1MYot4zwQzGYhaU  
Johnson & Johnson Consumer Inc. is issuing a voluntary recall for some of its baby powder after traces of asbestos were detected.

The company said the recall is for a single lot of its Johnson's Baby Powder in response to a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) test indicating the presence of sub-trace levels of chryso-tile asbestos contamination (no greater than 0.00002%) in samples from a single bottle purchased from an online retailer.

Despite the low levels, the company is still issuing the voluntary recall for Lot #22318RB of Johnson's Baby Powder, from which the tested sample was taken.

If you come across a bottle of Johnson's Baby Powder Lot #22318RB, you are advised to discontinue use of the product, for obvious reasons. For refund information, contact the Johnson & Johnson Consumer Care Center at www.johnsonsbaby.com or by calling (866) 565-2229.

47 Skills You Need to Survive Homeownership
https://www.thisoldhouse.com/ideas/47-skills-you-need-to-survive-homeownership?fbclid=IwAR3tAgyp0vjkJ8KppUsxR0ujAqEeYQeu2SnhKmqv0bu0fkftx_HdTsq8WQo  
Don't get caught with your toolbelt down—learn these techniques and tackle any household emergency with ease.. from this Old House.. Here are the ones I've needed. 
1. Fix a Leaky Faucet
3. Dig a Hole
4. Locate a Stud
7. Unclog a Sink
11. Remove a Stripped Screw
12. Avoid Stripping a Screw
14. Drill Through Tile Without Cracking It
15. Hardwire a Light Fixture
16. Pick an Interior Lock
20. Know Which Breaker to Turn Off
24. Hang Heavy Objects on Drywall
34. Secure a Loose Screw
38. Stop an Overflowing Toilet
39. Pick Up a Big Paint Spill on Carpet

Pulse: 5 ways to respond to 'You haven't sold any houses in our area'
https://www.inman.com/2019/10/22/pulse-15-ways-to-respond-to-you-havent-sold-any-houses-in-our-area/  
My system still works
I really, really know what I’m doing
I know this area from buyer clients
I have the data
I have expertise to draw on — from others

Realogy launches ambitious agent benefits program

Realogy announced that it has launched a new benefits program that will give agents access to things like health insurance at rates that the company manages to negotiate down due to its massive size.

The program is called Spark and, according to a company statement, will give agents access to “individual healthcare, disability insurance, life insurance, auto and home insurance, identity theft protection, human resources solutions, workers’ compensation insurance and commercial property or building insurance.”

iBuyers would suffer under Bernie Sanders' housing plan 

The senator's proposed anti-home-flipping and vacant-home taxes could strain the likes of Opendoor, Offerpad and Zillow Offers.

Sanders’ “house flipping” tax would throw sand into the gears of the iBuyer business model. It imposes a 25 percent tax “on speculators who sell a non-owner occupied property if sold for more than it was purchased for within five years of the purchase.”

Since iBuyers resell most of their homes within weeks or months they would presumably have to pay this tax on their resales.

The plan’s 2 percent “empty homes” tax could also have a negative impact on iBuyers. But that would depend on how long a home would have to be vacant to be subject to it.

His plan would cap annual rent increases at 3 percent or 1.5 percent above the inflation rate.

NAR believes the plan “will harm — not help — our nation’s affordable housing crisis, primarily by deterring landlords from maintaining existing housing stock.”

Sanders’ plan does call for building affordable homes — close to 10 million — but presumably not through NAR’s preferred means.

Other features of Sanders’ plan include:

• $410 billion in rental assistance
• $50 billion for local governments to set up community land trusts to allow 1 million people to buy “shared equity” homes at below-market rates in perpetuity.
• $32 billion to eliminate homelessness
• Boosted enforcement of bans on predatory and discriminatory lending
• A stop to the sale of mortgages to “vulture funds”
• And stepped-up scrutiny and regulation of corporate landlords.

5 telltale signs a property is a tough sell

1. Look for price drops and a high number of days on market: Unsellable properties usually hide among the listings that have been posted a while ago and the ones that have had a significant and dramatic price drop.
2. Pay attention to homes with too many digitally staged photos: You don’t want to know what the owners are hiding. It could be anything from the lack of storage space to serious plumbing issues.
3. Avoid listings with mentions of third parties: You don’t know if it’s a short sale or how long it will take to close the deal with many parties involved. And you don’t have the time to find out.
4. Watch for too many trees around the property: This can turn out to be a buyer’s nightmare not only because getting rid of them can be pricy, but also if they can’t because of TPO (tree prevention order).
5. Steer clear of prefab homes: Prefabricated or prefab homes, as well as steel-, timber- and concrete-framed houses, can turn into financial black holes.

6 things a technology ecosystem should do for real estate professionals

Ecosystems are comprised of countless different parts that exist independently of one another, and yet interact with each other symbiotically to keep the entire environment healthy, productive, alive.

Shouldn’t real estate be like that, as well?

1. Simple transactions for agents and consumers
2. Easy collaboration between agents and the office
3. Actionable insight into revenue-generating activities
4. Unheralded functionality and flexibility
5. Seamless interaction with different technologies
6. A complete real estate experience for home buyers and sellers

Searching for a mentor? Look for these 11 qualities

1. Shares skills, knowledge and expertise

Good mentors are not selfish. They will share what they’ve learned to be best practices with technology, time management, marketing and customer relations.

2. Excels in time management

Good mentors will set aside time to work one on one with their proteges. No one should expect a mentor to drop everything when asked, but scheduled “office hours” should be set to answer questions and go over processes if needed.

3. Thinks outside the box

Good mentors realize what worked yesterday might not work today. They continue to experiment with new ideas to improve their business processes.

If a mentor is relying too heavily on FSBOs (for-sale-by-owners), door-knocking and expired listings, it might be a sign they are not up with the times.

4. Welcomes collaboration

Mentors should never have an attitude of my way is the best (or only) way. Great mentors collaborate and allow their mentees and others to bounce ideas off one another. They encourage creativity and challenging the process with innovation.

5. Shows patience

Make sure he or she does not have a reputation for being hot-headed or difficult. A good mentor will remember what it was like to be new in the business and will take the time needed to teach. Even if that means teaching the same lesson more than once.

6. Provides feedback and sets goals, both personally and for others

A good mentor will set goals and lead by example. He or she is genuinely happy for others who achieve goals and celebrates their milestones.

7. Understands that mentees must take responsibility for their success

He or she will teach and encourage their protege to succeed but will not do the work for them. Your mentor should teach you to search for answers first and ask questions second.

8. Is involved in community

You have to be seen to be known. Mentors who are involved can introduce you to the inner circles that will help you most.

9. Has a proven track record

Choose an experienced mentor who works full-time in the industry and has excellent client ratings.

10. Is respected within the Realtor community

Do other Realtors enjoy working with the person you are considering as your mentor? That’s a good sign that you are choosing someone who can teach you the foundation your business will stand on.

11. Is team-minded

Although not a necessity, having a mentor who’s on a team has benefits. If your mentor is part of a team, chances are other teammates have also been mentored by him or her.

See you in court! 10 ways agents typically get slapped with lawsuits

1. Failing to disclose a pro...

IBM sues Zillow over multiple charges of patent infringement
International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) is suing real estate tech giant Zillow over seven charges of patent infringement related to a host of computer processes that Zillow uses to run its website.
The lawsuit alleges that Zillow essentially built its business on the back of IBM’s inventions. IBM, in the suit, says it first contacted Zillow to negotiate over the use of patent technology in 2016. Over the course of the next three years, it reached out to Zillow multiple times, each time informing the company of different patent technology it was using on its website and mobile app.
A spokesperson for Zillow told Inman the company believes the claims are without merit.

Manor deemed 'haunted' by a court of law returns to market
New York’s most notorious haunted house has hit the market for $1.9 million.
The home, a 15-room Victorian manor on the Hudson River, first made global headlines in the 1980s after Wall Street bond trader Jefrrey Stambovsky bought the Nyack, New York, house and sued its former owner, Helen Ackley, for not disclosing that it was full of ghosts and poltergeists.
Based in part on the fact that past owners played up the home’s haunted history for paranormal walking tours, the New York Supreme Court ruled that the house was indeed haunted in 1991.

5 things every agent must do to reach the next level
1. Learn to proactively generate leads
Build a sphere of influence around the people you already know and can ask for referrals and hosting open houses that draw attention and yield new clients.
2. Use social media to build and expand your footprint
Facebook. Twitter. Instagram. LinkedIn. Reddit? In a landscape where social media platforms are consistently being created, updated or shuttering (Vine), it can be hard for real estate agents to decide where to build their digital footprint. Try them all and use the ones that work best!
3. Defeat your fears about content creation
New agents must focus on social media and free blogging platforms as hubs for their content because they likely don’t have the budget for a customized website yet.
4. Understand your personality and use it to your benefit
Many agents study the top producer in their office and try to replicate their actions. But adopting a cookie-cutter approach to lead generation and business simply doesn’t work.
Instead, agents should take the time to study their personality and tailor their business tactics and interactions to what naturally fits.
5. Optimize your schedule by identifying what’s ‘truly important’
It’s not about getting everything done — it’s about focusing on the priorities that get you closer to your daily, weekly, monthly, yearly and lifetime goals.

6 Steps To Price New listing
How do you set a proper list price that will both satisfy your seller and attract qualified buyers? You find that magic number in the six steps to pricing a new listing:
1. Push the envelope, but have a plan ‘B’ in place
When it comes to listing a house, you must be aware of the fine line between “priced to sell” and “priced to keep.”
2. Think ‘multiple’
Every listing agent’s goal is to wake-up in the morning and find multiple offers in their inbox. They might all very well be below the list price, but with every offer, you are now able to send out multiple counteroffers that will certainly assist in bringing out every buyer’s bottom line.
3. Don’t use ‘fake’ or false data
Someone once said that there are three types of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.
Many agents pull or rely on comps or data from sales that have no relevance.
4. Avoid monkey see, monkey do
When it comes to finding the best price listing for you client, don’t fall into the “monkey see, monkey do” syndrome. It’s very important that you price your listing based on what you believe is the best price, not what other active properties are listing.
5. Be proactive not reactive
Our market is in a constant flux. Interest rates rise, demand falls. Demand falls, prices become stagnant. When stagnation hits, creative and innovate marketing, as well as proactiveness, must happen before the other properties in the area make the same adjustments.
6. Be prepared to walk away from a listing
There will be times when you and the seller will be too far apart in agreeing on a list price to anticipate a positive outcome, and your best course of action will be to simply walk away.
In the end, there will be two disappointed and frustrated people. You, for spending all your time and resources on a listing that did not sell, and the seller, for wasting valuable market time with zero results.
Know when the best option might be to walk away.

Are open houses worth it? How to ensure they’re not time-wasters

1. Successful open houses begin with thoughtful preparation
Knowing which day to hold the open house is important.
Don’t schedule it on a day when a local event such as a football game, golf tournament, or street festival is held. Don’t schedule it on a holiday, when people are likely to be away on vacation.
2. Plan your advertising and promotion for the open house
You need to know how to get actual prospective buyers and their agents to the open house.
The list should include the following:
• Online marketing — Advertise on all of your social media sites including your business Facebook page, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn, as well as your own web site.
• Broadcast emails — You should send an email to your client and prospect database as well as to your agent network including those in your firm, local Realtor association, and Multiple Listing Service.
• Postcards — Send postcards to the neighbors and other select contacts in your database informing them of the open house.
• MLS open house announcement — Most MLS systems provide an opportunity for you to announce your open house. This is probably the best way to reach agents who might have buyers looking for a home in the area where your listing is located.
• Signage — Place an “Open House” sign in your listing’s front yard next to your “For Sale” sign. Balloons or colorful pennant flags work great in bringing attention to the sign. Make sure you have pointer signs at various locations including at the front of the neighborhood and nearby road intersections. Remember to follow all local and homeowner association sign ordinances when installing your signage.
3. Managing your open house
Remind your client that their property needs to be clean and “ready to go” for this event.
House completely clean and no unpleasant smells in the house.
You might want to utilize an electronic open house registration program that you download to your smartphone or laptop.
Provide refreshments.
Don’t just “stand around” or sit on the family room couch during the open house. Walk around and ask questions about what the buyers are looking for in a home and what their time frame for purchasing a property is.
Listen for feedback — positive or negative. An open house can provide an opportunity to “hear” what people think of the home and share what they like and don’t like about it.
The attendees can also tell you their opinion of why the house has not sold. Is it priced too high? Is there something wrong with its appearance or features? Is the backyard not large enough? Ask, and they will tell.
4. Be prepared for the ‘looky-loos’!
Not everyone who comes to an open house is a potential buyer.
Don’t do an open hous...

Police arrest couple found squatting in Opendoor home with kids

An Arizona couple accused of squatting in an Opendoor house with two children have been arrested by the police.

Gary Lynn, 29, and Adriana Gamboa, 26, were spotted in a Chandler, Arizona, Opendoor-listed house with Gamboa’s two children when a prospective buyer came in to view the house.. he was charging his phone and she was bathing one of their kids. The other kid was running around the house wet. 

With Opendoors app, you get a code for access to the house for an hour. 

Redfin to publicly display buyer's agent commissions on its listings

Redfin believes that real estate consumers don’t really understand the way commissions work, and so they are doing something about it:

From Now on, all Redfin-listed homes will publicly display the commission that sellers are offering to buyers’ agents.

The new commission information will be included on Redfin’s website, and according to a company statement, it should “help consumers better understand the costs and incentives in the real estate transaction.”

The company conducted a survey of nearly 1,000 people in June, for example, and found that “more than half of recent homebuyers don’t fully understand how their agent was paid.”

Redfin argues in its statement that adding transparency regarding commissions should “stimulate conversations between consumers and their agents about what is fair and ultimately lead to more competition and lower fees for consumers

Five Guys Whose Brooklyn Real Estate Scheme Was Featured On “Million Dollar Listing New York” Just Got Arrested

Five real estate investors whose business was the subject of a major BuzzFeed News investigation were arrested this week for allegedly defrauding lenders and taxpayers out of millions of dollars in a scheme that targeted New Yorkers at risk of foreclosure.

The US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York charged the men with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bank fraud.

Two years ago, BuzzFeed News revealed how this group of investors turned properties on the brink of foreclosure into million-dollar listings sold on the reality TV show Million Dollar Listing New York.

Amazon dives into home sales with new $105K property

With 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms, the new home dwarfs the tiny homes Amazon began selling earlier this year.

Months after a $7,000, do-it-yourself tiny home sold out within hours, Amazon is now hawking a 774-square-foot home on its website with a $105,000 price tag.

The latest offering is a three-bedroom, two-bathroom home. Titled “The Cliff” and manufactured by Estonian wooden structure distributor Q-haus, the property, which boasts an open kitchen, dining room and sauna, dwarfs the guest houses and backyard pool cabanas that previously sold on Amazon.

The home weighs 44,000 pounds and arrives in two modules that can be assembled by “two skilled workers,” according to the listing.

Furniture and appliances are also included.

Beverly Hills real estate agent suspected of burglarizing the homes of Usher, Adam Lambert

Keller Williams Beverly Hills agent Jason Yaselli is accused of conspiring with the thief who posed as an agent. 

Yaselli, and Benjamin Ackerman were charged with using open houses to burglarize the homes of stars, including musicians Usher, Jason Derulo and Adam Lambert, former football player Shaun Phillips, and Real Housewives of Beverly Hills‘ Dorit Kemsley. Although Ackerman was arrested on suspicion of theft in 2018, investigators now believe Yaselli, who is listed on realtor.com as an agent for Keller Williams Beverly Hills, served as Ackerman’s accomplice in the crime spree between 2016 to 2018. More than 2000 stolen items have been recovered. 

Lead-gen game changer: How to get 10,000 new followers in 60 days

Increased posting frequency

Post at these times: 7 a.m., 11 a.m., 3 p.m., 7 p.m  

author and sales expert Grant Cardone once said: “People give in to the person they see the most.”  

Solicited shoutouts

Ask bigger pages to send you a shoutout.. but  follow these rules:

Do some due diligence on the page before you pay them for a shoutout. You want to make sure it has real followers (not a bunch of bots), and that it has good engagement. I look for two things:

1. I check its followers to make sure they don’t have a lot of fake accounts following them. Look through about 20 of its followers to get a good sample of what they have. I don’t want to find a lot of profiles with only a few posts, profiles with a lot of followers for no apparent reason and profiles that don’t have recent activity. If you’re seeing a lot of these things, don’t buy a shoutout from them.
2. I want to make sure the page’s posts are getting good engagement. If the page has 100,000 followers but it’s only getting 150 likes per post, it’s probably a page with fake followers.

Focus more on stories

Instagram Stories are one of the most engaged segments of social media today

 Paid attention to insights

No rocket science here. I simply started paying attention to my post insights to learn what people liked and didn’t like. Based off these insights, I’m trying to put out content I have seen work well before. 

Who would have thought? Give them more of what they want, and they’ll do the promoting for you. 

Used more hashtags

I’m not shy with my hashtags. Instagram allows 30 hashtags per post, and I use them all. I look at it as 30 different entry points onto my page that I get for free. On every post.

I started using an app called Hashtag Expert to help me discover ...

Closingtimepodcast.com for the latest news from the real estate world, helpful tips for buyers, sellers and other agents, and all of our previous podcast episodes. Keep up with us on Facebook and Instagram. We also offer home video tours, Realtor branding videos, ariel shots, live streams and more.. closingtimepodcast.com and click on the CMG Real Estate Link..

These 5 cities are at risk for housing crashes this year

A new GoBankingRates study published on Tuesday looked at the number of underwater mortgages, home vacancies as well as delinquency and foreclosure rates to identify the cities most at risk of a housing crisis in the coming years. A crash is generally defined as a market in which large numbers of properties are in negative equity, or worth less than the owners’ mortgage.

Here are the top 5 markets that are most at risk of a pending crash:

Newark, New Jersey

The housing market in Newark, New Jersey showed the biggest signs of trouble. Nearly 30 percent of mortgages have negative equity while vacancy rates for houses and rental units sit at 5.2 percent and 9.5 percent compared to the nationwide average of 1.7 percent and 6.1 percent, respectively. Approximately 6.5 percent of mortgage payments are in some sort of delinquency, which is more than six times the national average.

Detroit, Michigan

Post-crash, Detroit’s real estate challenges and opportunities have long been a nationwide topic of conversation. But in this study, Detroit came in second place for crash risk due to its floundering home values — $161,300 compared to the national median of $226,300. At 34.4 percent, the number of homes with negative equity is also the highest in the country while vacancy and delinquency rates are also higher than average.

Bridgeport, Connecticut

The largest city in Connecticut, Bridgeport has seen real estate values drop due to a high crime rate and low economic prospects. The median house in the city is worth $176,200 while 26.9 percent of mortgages are underwater.

“The city’s high delinquency and foreclosure rates are not inviting to people looking for the best place to buy their first home,” reads the report.

Baltimore, Maryland

Baltimore has been taking a hit from all sides lately — President Trump recently called parts of the city a “rat and rodent-infested mess” in attacks on local House Representative Elijah Cummings. But while the city’s low median home values ($119,200) and high negative equity rates (26.5 percent) put it fourth on the at-risk list, Baltimore in fact does see constant development and provides plenty of opportunities for investors.

Hartford, Connecticut

While only 22.4 percent of Hartford homes have negative equity, the capital of Connecticut has a high homeowner vacancy rate. At 4.3 percent, the rate is more than 2.5 times the national average. The number is even worse for rental units, which has a vacancy rate of 9.2 percent. A median home in Hartford is worth $130,900.

Critics slam presidential hopeful's plan to 'tax the hell out of' the rich

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio came out last Wednesday night for his second presidential debate with his gloves off.

“When I’m president, we will even up the score and we will tax the hell out of the wealthy to make this a fairer country and to make sure it’s a country that puts working people first,” de Blasio declared during his opening remarks.

De Blasio repeated the comment at the end of the debate, while also plugging his new fundraising website TaxTheHell.com, and dropped the line again at the conclusion of the night during an interview with MSNBC.

The line is a catchy one with a certain Trumpian ring — you can imagine people chanting “tax the hell” at a rally — but now, critics are arguing that the actual policies behind de Blasio’s comments would in fact lead to financial problems, particularly in the real estate industry.

de Blasio’s proposal could negatively impact people who have their wealth locked up in property, which is valuable but not very liquid, wants to “repeal the estate tax… and replace it with a more aggressive inheritance tax.

In any case, it’s highly unlikely at this point that de Blasio will get anywhere near the White House. Polling and news site FiveThirtyEight currently has the mayor in a multi-way tie for last place among nearly two dozen candidates.

Beauty queen accused of interior design fraud by hotel mogul

A couple who hired a former Miss Sweden to decorate their opulent property in The Bahamas is now accusing the one-time beauty queen of interior design fraud. Hotel magnate Henry Silverman and his wife Karen Silverman have filed a suit against interior designer Sofia Joelsson in Florida federal court. With a registered net worth of $300 million, Henry Silverman has at one point controlled hotel brands Howard Johnson’s Ramada, Super 8 and Travelodge.

According to the complaint, Joelsson defrauded them out of millions of dollars by overcharging clients through a network of shell companies and inside vendors.

The lawsuit calls Joelsson a “penthouse queen” of South Beach and claims that she misled them to believe that her company was a licensed interior design firm when it wasn’t.

The Silvermans are asking for at least $7 million in damages based on alleged violations of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act and Florida Deceptive and Unfair Practices Act. They further claim that Joelsson would arrange for contractors to give overinflated invoices and then launder the funds through various real estate purchases while keeping several sets of records for each transaction to defraud tax authorities.

NYC competitor sues Compass over allegedly poaching manager

The well-funded New York City-based brokerage Compass has been hit with yet another lawsuit.

This time, New York City-based competitor Elegran is suing Compass and one of its former managers over what it calls a “brazen scheme to unfairly compete with Elegran by stealing Elegran’s confidential information and trade secrets and using them to target Elegran’s other real estate brokers, clients, and potential clients.”

At the center of the complaint is Zino Angelides, a former manager who defected to Compass from Elegran. Compass allegedly recruited Angelides and three other brokers while they were still at Elegran. On June 24, 2019, Angelides and the three other brokers abruptly resigned from Elegran with no prior notice, according to the complaint, and immediately began working for Compass. They also took what could potentially be $10 million in leads, assuming they all close.

A Compass spokesperson, in a statement, told Inman that it is focused on providing the best experience for its employees, agents and their clients.

Compass has been the target of a number of lawsuits from Competitors, including, most recently, a la...

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How to Get a $5,000 Amazon Credit: Buy a House Through Realogy

Over the past year, the decidedly analog business of buying and selling real estate has been upended by a flurry of new money and start-ups trying to usher in a world where homes are bought and sold online. Now, Amazon is creating a partnership that goes in the opposite direction by using its gigantic retail platform to facilitate phone calls with human real estate agents.

On Tuesday, Amazon said that it was working with Realogy, the nation’s largest residential real estate brokerage company and owner of Century 21, Coldwell Banker and other brands, to create TurnKey, a service that will help prospective home buyers find real estate agents. To entice customers, Amazon will give buyers up to $5,000 in home services and smart-home gear when they close.

Amazon is now as much a search engine as it is a store, and the deal fits into the company’s effort to capitalize on its status as an online destination by making money on advertising and other services. It’s also a way to encourage people to adopt products like Alexa speakers and Ring doorbells and to promote its list of handymen, furniture assemblers and other home services.

For Realogy, who will pay for those benefits, the partnership is a way of using Amazon to find home buyers and help its brokers separate the closers from the lookie-loos by rebating a portion of its commission, in the form of free Amazon stuff, to anyone who actually buys a house.

Keller Williams and Compass leaders spar (politely) over tech

Keller Williams Realty President Josh Team said Thursday during an Inman Connect panel that his brokerage is investing $1 billion into technology before directing a jab at Compass CEO Robert Reffkin: “Not buying marketshare.”

During a discussion entitled “The Inman Interview: Can Your Technology Compete?” Reffkin touted purportedly unrivaled engineering talent and Compass’ vision of building a first-of-its-kind property search platform. Teamcountered that Keller Williams is already delivering top-shelf technology to its agents.

The two executives never directly disparaged each other’s firms. But they traded some thinly-veiled barbs.

“This isn’t hyperbole or vision,” Team said about Keller Williams’ tech platform, implying that Compass’ is just that. “This is real.”

Keller Williams’ suite of tools combined with its integration of an in-house lender is helping agents guide customers from the time their contact information arrives in a database to the moment they order an appraisal, he said.

NRT CEO compares Compass' agent recruitment to 'shoplifting'

NRT CEO Ryan Gorman compared Compass’ recruitment of agents and efforts to gain market share in competing marketplaces to “shoplifting,” at Inman Connect Las Vegas Thursday morning

NRT’s parent company Realogy is suing Compass over “unfair business practices and illegal schemes to gain market share at all costs.”

“We don’t sue for show,” Gorman told interviewer Clelia Peters, the president of Warburg Realty. “This is the real deal… the industry should take it seriously.”

Gorman encouraged everyone in the audience to read beyond the headlines and take a full look at the lawsuit. He said after reading it, people won’t wonder why Realogy is suing Compass, but rather why it took them so long to do so.

Next recession will come in 2020 — but it won't be due to housing

Half of the real estate economists and experts surveyed by Zillow this week believe that the next recession is coming in 2020, according to the second quarter Zillow Home Price Expectations Survey.

Of the 100 real estate experts surveyed, half said a recession was likely to come in 2020 with 19 percent specifically pinpointing the third quarter of 2020 — which lines up directly with the months leading up to the presidential election. Thirty-five percent of those surveyed said they believe a recession is likely in 2021, meaning 85 of 100 experts believe a recession is coming in the next two years.

Although experts say housing won’t cause of the recession, the potential slowdown will have an impact. More than half of those surveyed said they expect home buying demand in 2020 to be significantly lower than in 2019, while about a third of those surveyed said they expected it to be about the same.

The combination of slowing demand and an impending recession could be good news for potential buyers in the short-term and cause further slowdowns in overall U.S. home value appreciation going forward.

Home values are currently growing at a 6.1 percent annual p...

Closingtimepodcast.com for the latest news from the real estate world, helpful tips for buyers, sellers and other agents, and all of our previous podcast episodes. Keep up with us on Facebook and Instagram. We also offer home video tours, Realtor branding videos, ariel shots, live streams, and more.. closingtimepodcast.com and click on the CMG Real Estate Link.

Five outdated seller believes agents should debunk

The success of HGTV and the plethora of online information has shifted the ground rules of real estate sales

Three fundamental changes

These three changes have altered the home buying and selling landscape forever.

Change 1: The advent of HGTV

Buyers spend countless hours watching HGTV and have developed extremely refined tastes. They know what they want and when they look at homes for sale. They are looking for properties that look similar to what they have seen and liked on TV.

Change 2: The advent of mobile devices and HD internet connectivity

Buyers used to have to visit a home to add or remove it from their shortlist. No longer the case, today’s sellers have between seven and 10 seconds to sell their home, and those seconds are on a mobile device anywhere on the planet — not in any home for sale.

Change 3: The advent of internet real estate sites

Realtor.com, Zillow, Trulia and a host of broker-owned sites have populated the internet with user-friendly websites that provide property data, historical facts, HD pictures, automated valuations, neighborhood and school info, and more.

They have completely removed the need for buyers to visit in person to determine if they like a home. Once a buyer has shortlisted available inventory, they only visit the select few they like.

Five seller myths

With this in mind, here are the top five seller beliefs that are no longer true:

1. I do not need to have the listing agent visit until my home is ready.

Wrong. In reality, the sooner the agent can get in, the better. Sellers, assuming the old rules still apply, might spend money on things that could harm a home’s potential and, conversely, fail to spend money where it matters.

Agents can not only help sellers maximize their potential, but they can also connect them with the trades and other professionals required to do it right.

2. I do not need to upgrade the property for sale.

Since increasing numbers of buyers are looking for move-in ready homes, the more a seller does to get the house to that level, the higher the returns. In an upmarket, sellers can reap a $2-$3 dollar return for every dollar spent.

In a declining market, they may not get 100 percent back, but they will get a sale. I frequently hear sellers ask, “Why should I upgrade? Won’t the new buyers come in and rip out all the stuff I just put in?”

That is not the right question. A better question is, “What can I do to make my online pictures sizzle to get the highest number of buyers through the front door regardless of what a buyer does once they own the home?”

If a seller can invest $1,000 on carpets and in the process, make $3,000, does it matter what the new owner does once they move in?

3. I need to open houses to sell my home.

The myth here is that buyers need to visit your home in person to decide whether they like it or not. In the new reality, buyers are visiting because they have already seen the house online and decided it was worth seeing in person.

Open houses make it easier for buyers who are already going to visit actually to get in. They also make it easy for the neighbors to come through — which is good because they frequently know someone looking to move into the area.

4. I need many open house signs at multiple vital intersections.

Wrong again. Savvy listing agents put out tons of signs because they are free advertising. Buyers who have seen the home online do not need directional signs to find the apartment. With open houses dates and times syndicating to all the major web portals, buyers use the GPS feature in their phones.

As for the neighbors, they will not come because you posted signs at far away intersections. To get them, you want signs close to the open house.

5. If buyers want my house, they will pay more than market value.

Buyers are not running charities. Due to online AVMs (automated valuation models — think Zestimate), buyers know when a property is overpriced and generally stay away, assuming the seller is unrealistic.

While pricing strategies vary from region to region, most agents know to recommend that sellers price listings close to market realities. As more listings come onto the market, buyers have more choices and migrate toward those they believe represent ethical values.

Sellers who insist they must net a specific amount, which in turn pushes the price too high, are only kidding themselves.

For sellers who have not sold a home in recent years, the new rules can be a shock. Ironically, since most sellers are also looking to buy a replacement home, all I usually have to do to change their thinking is to ask them how they are personally searching for homes in their new location.

They walk me through their process, and suddenly, in most cases, they get it.

11 Bad listing description cliches we're over

Hiding flaws behind flowery copy does nothing but waste the buyer's and their agent’s time

1. ‘This one won’t last!’

I get it. The listing agent is trying to convey that they’ve got a hot property that some fortunate buyer will surely snap up in a matter of days, if not hours.

The problem with “This one won’t last!” is agents tend never to revisit their listing descriptions. When your market has an average days-on-market of 30 days, seeing “This one won’t last!” on a listing entering its eighth month on the market will either make a buyer laugh out loud or think, “Hmmm, it did last, so there must be something wrong with it.” 

2 ‘Needs TLC’ or its partner in crime, ‘the handyman special.’

In other words, the home is disrepair, outdated, or has some other issue that needs to be fixed. By leaving those issues to the buyer’s imagination, you might very well be causing buyers to skip right over your listing and move on to the next one.

3. ‘Cozy’ or ‘quaint.’

This is fluffy marketing-speak. What you’re trying to do is cover up the fact that the home is small. Guess what? Any potential buyer who walks through the front door will swiftly figure out that the home is small. You can’t hide that fact behind cozy or quaint.

4. ‘Better than new’

No, it’s not better than new. Even if the home has been demolished and rebuilt from the foundation, it’s not better than new. It’s new. Well, it’s a new home on an old foundation. But you get the point. 

“Better than new!” is one of those phrases that makes buyers ask, “What d...