Who is eXp Realty?  eXp Realty is one of the most exciting new technology driven brokerages today, and it is growing rapidly across the county.  Chuck Marunde is the broker of eXp Realty in Sequim and Port Angeles.  There are good reasons buyers and sellers are choosing eXp Realty over other traditional bricks-and-mortar brokerages.  In addition, brokers are converting their offices to an eXp Realty branch office.

eXp Realty Does More for Buyers

Traditional real estate agents used to run lots of newspaper and magazine print ads, man the front desk in the office waiting for the phone to ring, and hope people would just walk into the office to hire an agent.  The vast majority of buyers are simply not looking in newspapers and magazines for their next home, and they are not calling agents or walking into offices randomly choosing any agent with a heartbeat.  Consumers have gotten much smarter, and they now have very powerful tools on the Internet to help them search for their next home, and they can do their due diligence in finding the most qualified buyer’s agent.  Consumers are the real winners here, and they love it.  eXp Realty and Chuck Marunde provide more free online resources for buyers than any other broker, period.  This simple blog alone has over 900 articles written specifically for buyers on Sequim real estate and Port Angeles real estate issues.  Then there are numerous online resources that are cutting edge and powerful resources for buyers on nearly every aspect of buying homes and land.  I provide links to some of these resources in the margins of this blog, but there are many more.

eXp Realty Does More for Sellers

eXp Realty built a business model that reaches out to buyers right where they are 24/7, and that is primarily on the Internet.  So the most powerful marketing for home sellers today is effective Internet marketing, and eXp Realty is way out in front of the traditional bricks-and-mortar brokerages in this area.  Putting a listing in the MLS and having a corporate template website and a simple personal blog are not examples of powerful Internet marketing.  eXp Realty has bridged the gap from the traditional to the new world of marketing, and this is what clients want.

eXp Realty Does More for Agents

Agents all over the country are struggling, and of course the real estate recession is a major reason, but there is more.  Many traditional big brokerages are still charging agents $600 (plus or minus) a month for office space and agents have many other monthly expenses, yet the big brokerages are not generating enough leads for the agents, the phones aren’t ringing anymore, and people aren’t walking into the buildings anymore.  One Seattle agent in a large franchise told me her broker expects her and the other agents to pay for his building, and she just isn’t willing to do that anymore.  Agents all over the country are looking for a new business model that lowers overhead, increases net commissions, and helps them use powerful technology and Internet resources to connect with buyers.  If an agent is connecting with qualified buyers, sellers want to list with him, too.  eXp Realty also has the best revenue sharing plan for agents, which is another way of diversifying income in these challenging times.   Chuck Marunde helps independent brokerages convert their brokerage to a powerful virtual brokerage with a revenue sharing component.  There’s no question this is the future of real estate.

Buyers, sellers, and agents can online here to learn more about eXp Realty.

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A client asked me about Sequim real estate auctions and do we even have them?  First, let’s be clear on what we are talking about when we use the word “auction” in real estate sales.  I read an article written by another real estate professional, and the author intended to write about auctions, but it went on to describe the foreclosure process.  Oops!  Unfortunately that author got it wrong and mixed up two entirely different real estate topics.  A foreclosure ends in a Trustee’s Sale where people can bid on the property at the Clallam County Courthouse on Friday’s at 10:00 a.m.  An auction is a horse of a different color.  An auction in real estate sales today refers to a process where an owner puts a property up for public auction to the highest bidder, but it is not a foreclosure sale.

Sequim Real Estate Auctions

Sequim Real Estate Auctions v. Foreclosures

You can read more about foreclosures in the many articles I’ve published on this site by searching foreclosures.  I have detailed descriptions of the entire process, including the foreclosure checklist and timeline I used when I practiced law and did foreclosures myself.  Here are some of the many articles on Sequim foreclosures:  Sequim Foreclosures.

Auctions are different.  Because the real estate recession has hit many home sellers so hard and because buyers are few and far between, private real estate auctions have become the latest fad.  The truth is, as with so many gimmicks, they make more money for the people promoting the auctions than they do for home sellers.  But in some areas, and I mean only a few around the country, private auctions have sold homes that simply could not get sold otherwise.  As you might guess, this means those homes were typically sold at garage sale prices.  But what about Sequim real estate auctions?

Sequim Real Estate Auctions Not So Much

Several people have tried to do private auctions in Sequim and failed.  One was a past client of mine who went through the whole process of signing up for and paying one of the prominent national auction companies.  After a lot of hope and high expectations that this would finally sell the home they had not been able to sell for about two years and was not threatened by a possible foreclosure, this couple tried a private auction.  It did not work.  They never got the bids high enough.  Not even close.

I’ve seen several others try private auctions, but to my knowledge, all have failed to get a reasonable price in the Sequim and Port Angeles areas.  There are not enough qualified buyers in our small market to make auctions work.  At least up to this point.

Whatever you decide to do to sell your home, make sure you understand your options and how each of your options actually work, including marketing your own home as a FSBO, listing it with a Realtor (yours truly), or trying to do private Sequim real estate auctions.

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How hard is it to get a Sequim home loan and what are the loan contingencies in this real estate market?  This question comes up periodically, and this is a good time to address home loans and the kinds of relevant contingencies in the current market.

Sequim Home Loan Still Viable

A qualified buyer will be able to get their Sequim home loan approved at extremely reasonable and all-time low interest rates.  My clients who have great credit scores and reasonably large down payments have not had any problem getting a loan approved.  A bank loves a 20% down payment.  In one case my clients put about 60% down, and the lender actually waived the appraisal.

Sequim Home Loan Contingencies

Assuming a qualified buyer, the biggest contingency these days is a satisfactory appraisal for a Sequim home loan.  I always keep my fingers crossed that the appraisal will come in at or above the selling price.  That never used to be an issue, but these days it could be.  The reason this is particularly challenging is because new laws governing how appraisers are hired have actually created a bigger problem than the one politicians sought to resolve.  Lenders are now hiring appraisers from outside Sequim in many cases.  This means the appraiser may know absolutely nothing about our local market, and he or she is almost certainly not a member of our local MLS, so they have no database of past sales to look at.  This is why I cross my fingers, hoping that the appraiser is intelligent and professional enough to get it right.

Sequim Home Loan and Underwriters

One of the lender challenges involves the underwriter for a Sequim home loan.  Underwriters sit somewhere in a desk  far from Sequim in an office that is inaccessible to the Realtor and everyone else, except the loan officer.  None of us ever know who the underwriter is, where they are, or what their email or phone number is.  The underwriters can require ridiculous information, far beyond what would be required under normal circumstances.  For example, if you move to Sequim and apply for a Sequim home loan, and you’ve already provided the lender and underwriter with every bit of financial information for the past decade, the underwriter may tell you at the 11th hour that you need a certification from the IRS that you are who you say you are, despite the fact that you’ve provided past tax filings.  In one case that was because the new Sequim address was different than the California address shown on last year’s tax return.  Ridiculous!

If you are qualified with a good credit score and income, and you have sufficient income, you will not have a problem getting your Sequim home loan.

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Discovery Bay homes for sale are not very common, at least not beautiful homes with gorgeous water views.  Discovery Bay is one of the Olympic Peninsula’s best kept secrets, like Sequim Bay, although more retirees are learning about our Bays in magazine articles discussing the best places to retire.  Sequim has been on the “10 Best Places to Retire” list many times.

Discovery Bay

I wrote about this home in an earlier blog article, but our multiple listing services are data sheets with still photos, and I thought you might enjoy a video of this Discovery Bay Home as well as the two additional lots that are available and on which I stood when I took some of the video.

Discovery Bay

Discovery Bay

This Discovery Bay home is 5,900 square feet on almost 3 acres with an additional 5.46 acres available above and behind the home.  This lot has a stunning view of Discovery Bay and would be a great building site.   The house can be purchased without the additional 5.46 acres, or the home and the lots can be purchased together, which would make a beautiful little estate of about 8 acres.

You can see the full MLS sheet and more photos at Discovery Bay Home for Sale.

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The Sequim Home Show was held recently at the Sequim High School gym, and lots of vendors had their booths and tables set up to show their wares.  There were home builders, cabinet makers, roofing companies, window installers, and all kinds of home construction and remodeling companies represented.

Sequim Home Show

Sequim Home Show

I attended the Sequim Home Show, but mostly because I am fascinated with how businesses in the real estate industry market to their customers.  I am a marketer as a Realtor, and I love marketing.  I have been a student of marketing in the real estate industry for almost 30 years.  My passion compels me to study marketing, and I am constantly learning what works and what does not work.  In this economy, this is no subject of little importance.  It is my livelihood, and for the businesses at the Sequim Home Show, it is their livelihood, too.  So how we market and where we put our money and time is incredibly important.

Sequim Home Show

As part of my personal continuing education and as a fun endeavor, I informally surveyed a few vendors, friends in the business.  Did any of the vendors expect to actually get any customers at the Sequim Home Show?  No.  Did any of them expect to get any commitments at the Sequim Home Show?  No.

So what did these vendors expect?  They all seemed to be resigned to the fact that these shows have not produced customers in the past and will not likely produce customers now.  The term “branding” was thrown about by a couple of vendors.  One home builder told me that his business was strictly work of mouth.  Here’s what I took away from these conversations.  Most of these vendors are technicians in their specialty, but I think it is fair to say that they are not and never have been marketing experts.

Imagine a good auto mechanic who wants to reach out to more customers.  Most mechanics don’t have formal educations in sales and marketing, so they typically listen to their newspaper salesman, who talks them into running ads periodically.  The mechanic has no idea if this works, but the newspaper salesman tells him it does.  The mechanic has no way of tracking the effectiveness, or lack thereof, of any of his past print ads.  But today the vendors at the Sequim Home Show openly shared that print advertising is no longer very effective, and it is far too expensive.  So, they do what they can.  They set up a booth at a home show.  They hope it brings customers, but they have a feeling it will not.  They hope it will help with branding, but they can’t really describe how branding works, if it does, for their business.

I enjoyed going to the Sequim Home Show to see some of my friends in the business and chit chat with others.  But the cold hard reality may be that home shows are a blast from the past, from traditional marketing techniques that no longer are effective.  Who makes money from home shows?  Think about it.  The media companies that put on the home shows charge fees for the booth spaces, but even more than that, they charge some substantial print advertising and radio rates to promote the vendors at the home show.

I love marketing.  I love watching what other businesses do, and what they don’t do.  I think I learn more from my mistakes and the mistakes of others than from the success stories.  Realtors are struggling with effective marketing, too.  But I’m having a blast with my technology and Internet marketing tools.  They work.  I do zero print ads and zero radio ads.  They don’t work anymore in the real estate business.  Clients know how to find me, and I love my clients.

The Sequim Home Show is another interesting study in marketing, but I don’t think the Sequim Home Show was much help to buyers or sellers of real estate.

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Sequim real estate is selling, even in the slowest and coldest month of the year in January of 2011.  I showed houses yesterday to a wonderful couple from out of town, and we discussed the state of the Sequim real estate market, what homes are selling and what homes are not selling, and we discussed what has been happening to prices.

Sequim Real Estate

In this graphic above I’ve included the total number of homes sold in Sequim in January of 2011.  Forty seven properties sold in January in Sequim.  That’s an amazing number of homes sold in this small market in the slowest month of the year.  Twenty two 3 bedroom homes sold in January.  That’s amazing.  Sometimes we wonder what is going on in the Sequim real estate market, and we tend to think it is a slow market and that nothing is selling.  Au contraire.  The Sequim real estate market is alive and well, and that is certainly apparent when we look at the numbers.

Sequim Real Estate Market

The segment that is selling are the best homes in the best areas at the best prices.  Now that may be very obvious once I say it, but many don’t realize the implications of this simple conclusion.  It means that the best homes are being taken off the market–gone–not available for sale again for many years.  What does that mean?  It means that the home you may consider the perfect retirement home will not be on the market at any price.  These are the homes that are selling, and once they are off the market, the inventory of the best homes in the best areas at the best prices decreases.

In this graphic above, only 6 homes sold in Sequim in January above the price of $300,000.  [DOM = Days on Market]  The home that sold for $320,000 was sold by yours truly.  These are the homes that most retirees want, normally newer homes in nice areas and preferably with a water view or a mountain view.  I’m sometimes surprised at how most retirees who move here have very similar tastes and preferences in homes, which accounts for why they tend to look at the same small number of homes.  You can imagine that with a number of retirees focusing in on the same short list of two dozen or three dozen homes listed for sale, it is a little more competitive than most people realize.  It’s almost a contradiction in this real estate recession that retirees don’t have all the time in the world or a huge inventory to choose from, but this is the reality of the Sequim real estate market.

Sequim Real Estate Sold and Gone Forever

Granted . . . more homes will come on the market, and some of those will be great homes, but the vast majority of retirees are focusing on the same small number of nice homes, and it is this small inventory that is being depleted.  The rest of the inventory is still very large, and there are plenty of homes in the $200,000 to $250,000 price range that the majority of retirees do not want.  Foreclosures are coming on the market in larger numbers, adding to this inventory.  But retirees are not interested in foreclosures, at least not in this market.  The foreclosures here are not typically in nice areas and are not typically the nicer homes with good floor plans and nice kitchens.

Sequim real estate is still a strong magnet for retirees from around the country and they are buying every single month.

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