5 Real Estate Pet Peeves

The Savvy Synopsis

After years of working in real estate, Angie has developed a few pet peeves with the industry. These five pet peeves can add stress to the buying and selling process, so make sure you're not committing these egregious actions.  

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Featured Foundations:

5 Real Estate Pet Peeves

1:07 Terrible Property Photos

  • Paying for a professional photographer is not that expensive in the long run.
  • Potential buyers are first skimming pictures and then looking at the written info.
  • Angie shares a story of bad pictures that were taken on a phone and used as property photos.
  • Good photos make an impact toward getting more showings and selling your home faster.

4:25 Missing Details In MLS Listings

  • There are required fields to make an active listing, but more details should be included.
  • Clients might request specific features, so the listing needs more complete details.
  • Angie’s team puts in as much detail as possible.

7:13 All Caps in Descriptions

  • Screaming a description in all caps does not sell a home any faster.
  • Use proper grammar, punctuation, and lowercase letters when typing out descriptions. 

9:45 Lying About Home Value

  • Some agents will agree with whatever selling price the homeowner wants.
  • It’s better when an agent is willing to give a professional and honest feedback.
  • Angie shares a story about finding the right lender.

12:36 Lack of Feedback

  • Feedback from showing agents helps the listing agent sell the home. 

The Mailbag.

17:30 Mailbag: City Limits

  • Stan is looking at a home outside the city limits. Are there any advantages or disadvantages to this?
  • Angie says you will save money on taxes as you will only be required to pay county taxes.
  • Another advantage is fewer HOA restrictions, but that could also be a disadvantage depending on your neighbors.

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The Host:

Angie Cole - Contact - Call: 919-538-6477

Show Transcription:

PODCAST 043 - PET PEEVES - ANGIE COLE.mp3 | Convert audio-to-text with Sonix

It's time for The Savvy Realtor Podcast. I'm Walter Storholt alongside Angie Cole the owner and broker in charge of A Cole Realty serving you throughout the Triangle teaching you about the ins and outs when it comes to buying or selling a home. You can find the team online by going to A Cole Realty dot com that's A C-O-L-E Realty dot com or by calling 9 1 9 5 7 8 3 1 2 8 that's 9 1 9 5 7 8 3 1 2 8. And now it's time for one of the top realtors in the Triangle. Angie Cole and The Savvy Realtor Podcast with all of your experience.

Angie here in the Triangle I'm looking forward to today's conversation and discussion because after years in this business you've certainly developed some pet peeves about the real estate industry and the way it tends to operate and so I was wonder if you might just be interested in riffing a little today on some of the things that that might bother you about the industry and what you do as a business owner to try and you know not do these commit these sins if you will and how you tried to structure things a little bit differently.

Sure. I think my probably number one pet peeve would be terrible property photos. You know in the grand scheme of thing getting a professional photographer out there to a listing to take photos it's not that expensive. But it goes such a long way. Because we need to remember when buyers are searching online for homes you know which of course a number one search engines typically Zillow realtor dot com they are just swiping through the pictures they're not reading all the verbiage information on the home they're just looking at pictures and if the pictures catch their eye then they look for more info. We actually just recently posted on social media. This one photo that we found actually two photos but one of them was it was a picture of almost like just of the Christmas tree didn't even look like it was showing off deliverymen in any. It was someone taking the picture with their iPhone clearly or smartphone. And there's also a reef. So the quality of the picture is not great but you can see the person standing in front of their back door which was glass and the reflection of the person. So this picture that's supposed to be displaying the home showing the positives of the home are really just showing a Christmas tree and a reflection of a guy in the door like what are we doing here.

Peters The Christmas come with the home and I'm like I would hope so because that's all the picture was was of their Christmas tree.

So you know yeah. Terrible property photos you know just don't do it like make sure that you have a real estate agent that actually puts the time and the marketing dollars into you hiring a professional to take their photos. I mean I have a nice camera but I'm still not going to my my listings and taking the pictures on my own because they're not professional like it makes a huge huge difference. And the better the pictures are the quicker we'll get showings the quicker we'll get an offer and a higher price point we'll get. So yeah pet peeve number one is terrible property photos.

Your palm is really that real estate is like dating in the 21st century now which is sad.

You just said that. But you're right. You swipe it right and you you decide if you want more. That's what date sites have you been on there is isn't that how. I don't know how it's done. You're right. Isn't that after. What is that tinder tenure. Yeah. You've got you've got a high schooler shadowing you today as we hide out just like you know it's in the background she's not or ahead yes and giggled. So yes it's called Tender.

I've never had and I've done some dating Web a way way long time ago but Tinder came out after I was already out with my husband so having had the pleasure of us swiping right and left. But you're right though we're looking at homes and properties. I mean you're just swiping through those pictures and you know they they need to be halfway attractive right. You need to say oh they have a cute face.

Let me now read the rest about their you know about them. I think I just discovered probably a new real estate app. We totally get out free. That's really smart.

Go back to our in a you know what type of a new innovation is gonna be coming up. Forget about the the Uber the self-driving goobers like we now have a new app for real estate is it's gonna be like you and Walter are going to create an app where you swipe left and right on homes.

Yeah I love it. There you go. A cool idea. Nice. All right what else what else bothers you in the real estate world.

Yeah. You know whenever there's the listing the MLS listing the multiple listing services database and we are missing just details and information. You know there is a requirement when we put in a listing as far as requirements of fields that we must fill in in order to make the home active. OK. But you know let's try a little bit harder. Endless completely fill out our MLS sheet. So you know let's put in dimensions let's mention the bedroom location you know give as much detail and information as possible. That is really drives me crazy especially if we're representing a buyer and there's a listing where you know yes the square footage is in there because it's a requirement but there's no details on the other like rooms. So it's not broken down and you know oftentimes we have a client who said I must have you know a bedroom on the first floor you know and we have no way of knowing from looking at the listing where the bedrooms are even located in enough detail so we end up showing our client only to walk in the door and immediately turn back around and walk out because it didn't have the features in the specifics that our client needed. And so it's also doing a disservice to your seller as well because we now have showings on a home and that buyer never would have even asked to view your home if they would have known all of the specifics in the details. Like I just mentioned so let's completely fill out our MLS listings.

Yeah it's a good point. I know there were a lot of homes that we looked at in our last search that you know the size of the lot was really important to us and it seemed like that would just be a pretty standard thing to be on every listing but a lot of the times it was it was not. So that was frustrating. You know you think you found a good home that you can't tell exactly how big of a lot it was on. And so then that kind of just made it a frustrating part of the process rather than to me you want to get people excited about the home. In you to do that after they get that initial excitement from the pictures is to give them all sorts of details because that's at least how I was I was loved looking at all the angles and certain envision how you'd walk through the home and oh it's right here on this cul de sac and it looks like this and has these angles and you know it's just it's kind of funny that you wouldn't you know give all the detail you possibly can give on a home.

I know. I mean that's our one shot to really get your home sold right. I mean because we don't have the pleasure of speaking with every potential buyer that is inquiring about your home. Oftentimes we speak with none of the buyers because there's the kind of fine line barrier of speaking with their agent. So the MLS sheet is a time for us to really up sell your home give as much information as possible and so in our MLS listings we actually do a lot of abbreviations just so we can fit in more details to the main remarks because we are limited on our characters that we can put into there. So just more info is better. Kind of adding on to that and the thing that is a pet peeve and drives me crazy is all caps and it's like do you think that screaming at people with all caps is going to get the homes sold quicker. I don't know. But just like you know let's be a little bit better when it comes to grammar and let's not use all caps. Let's use some periods. It's like spelled correctly all caps is it actually to me as like it's just annoying. It's busy too don't know how you feel.

To to funny all caps stories. They're not really related to real estate. But I have an email chain with a friend who started as him e-mailing me with the subject line of Hello. In all caps with an exclamation point and to this day no matter how many new emails I've created whenever he e-mails me he just responds to that original email. So I may e-mail him something and he responds to that question from the original e-mail with that hello subject line without fail. I don't know if he's doing it to destroy me or if he just has a warped sense of how to use e-mail but it's very clear.

Instead of replying back to the e-mail that you sent he gives your back to the original very original e-mail.

So we have like a thousand e-mails that are all just him replying to Hello. OK.

You know I don't know if his g mail which one but a lot of our emails kind of collapse right. Yeah. You could have a thread of like 30 emails and claps and maybe he's not quite understanding like maybe do it on his phone or whatever but how to respond to the very last email. So he keeps responding to the first e-mail. Could be I think it's user error. I don't think he's doing it on purpose.

Yeah you're picking on a guy he just doesn't know how to operate. Oh I'm not hating. I think it's funny.

It's a good spirited hating the other weird fun fact. My dad writes in all caps his handwriting is all caps. Now he will make the rest of the words smaller. So like if he were talking about you know he'd put the W big and then the rest of the words would be small but they are in all caps format in that Basel I.

Well you know I've seen that in the past and when I was younger actually I try because I kind of look kind of cool. I tried doing it and it didn't last was too much thought put into it. But yeah I I've seen that before. I think it's kind of neat. Is it the correct way to do things. Probably not. It's different. Yeah.

He has really cool handwriting. It is sort of like it almost his signature trademark. But I've tried it as well but it takes me forever to write in all caps handwritten right.

Yeah. No like I said I tried and I failed. So. Yeah. Moving on let's talk about my other pet peeves. Because I feel like I could go on for days. So when people are not people I would say real estate agents when they lie about the value of a home and what I mean here is you know some agents will go on a listing presentation and they will just tell the seller whatever they want to hear. And so they naturally will agree with the price that the seller wants for the home and the reason why they do that is that's an opportunity for them to get another sign in the yard. You know that something when I go on a listing presentation I almost overcome that objection immediately. And I tell my potential sellers that I say you know what my it's my job to educate you and to give you true factual information based on comparables we're gonna go through all these numbers. But if an agent comes in here and they tell you otherwise and they give you a much higher price point they're lying to you and they're telling you this only to get your listing. But what's going to happen is you hire them as their as your agent and you know in the meantime you know maybe a couple weeks later months later they don't sell your home. They're then going to come to you and ask for a price reduction. You know but so it's important to make sure that you're really following the advice of someone who's been real with you and honest as far as pricing goes. Because just because an agent shares with you the highest price point that doesn't mean that's the best fit for you because they're probably just hoping to get more business.

That's a really good point. That's something that I would imagine the average seller just wouldn't even think about that naive to it so naive they you know it's like well who can get it like win.

Flip it around. Another great example when a buyer is shopping rates actually had a conversation where the first time home buyer on the phone yesterday about this and the first thing he says to me is I need to get you know my financing order. What are the rates. And I said well I need to connect you with my lender because there's a lot of factors that will you know give you a certain rate. He said Well you know what. He said I just want the best rate. And I said you know what. I understand that but you need to remember that a lender could offer you the best rate to give you the business but they're getting you somewhere else maybe your closing costs are more expensive. So same idea with you know an agent who just tells you a price that you want to hear in order to get a sign in the yard. But all they're doing is they're just getting your business. Same thing like a lender just getting your business because they're offering the lowest rate. You know I bet there's more behind the total picture if that makes sense.

Yeah that does make a lot of sense Angie and that's just why it's so important that people work with reliable real estate agents and realtors who just you know kind of take that badge of ethics to that next level and try and give you the straight skinny on your situation and not just sort of the happiest picture for you.

Yep yep. Exactly. Oh say be on that list peppy lack of feedback. So what that means is whenever an agent we have a buying agent who's showing a home to the potential buyer we then send out what's called like automated feedback requests. So for example our team we always enough for automated requests to give feedback. And so we want to get some feedback from this showing agent. And it should be feedback of their opinion. Also their buyer opinion. But the whole point is really to help the seller to help get their home sold. So we love to hear the pros we love to hear the cons you know because any con that is given we should take it as you know feedback that is given to only help us in the future. And so it's really a pet peeve of mine when agents they just don't get the feedback at all like they're too busy in a day. You know my thoughts are if you're too busy out shown homes that you can't get feedback then you're just too busy in general so had the courtesy of given feedback because it really really really helps you know helps us as a listing agent because otherwise our clients are coming to us saying well why isn't our home selling well if we don't get more than one opinion. It's tough to give some feedback to our sellers. So it's there to help us is there to help our sellers to get their homes sold so please agents give some feedback. It takes not even seriously 10 seconds to do it. So these of course I feel like this conversation's kind of gone negative has it at home with my pet peeves.

I suppose you're always more of a person.

Yeah I was going to this conversation was supposed to be more of just a fun kind of you know light conversation more of you know supposed to be funny too as far as pet peeves go. You just read it all even says that's all. There you go. Sorry guys you sat to here all of that I promise you I'm a really positive person. But you know the whole point of this is we do things differently. As far as you know a real estate team and firm you know when it comes to like I mentioned one of my pet peeves is photography. We take professional photos you know when I mention lack and feedback. My agents are wonderful about giving feedback on showings when I mention you know the MLS data where you know oftentimes there's just no information in the MLS listing. You know our company we make sure that we completely fill out our MLS sheets and we're really up sell a home because you know that's our job. You know we are offering a service to our sellers and it needs to be top notch. And you know when we come out for a listing notation at that time you know we will go through our whole marketing plan. We share with you the comparables in a net proceeds sheet which will go back to an agent just telling you a dollar amount that you want to hear. You know we have the data and the information to share with you to show you why we should list your home where we suggest and what you can expect from the listing. Also we shared the net proceeds sheet so you truly see the bottom number the bottom line you know and so a lot of these pet peeves are you know reasons why we do things the way we do because it drives me crazy to not all agents act the way that we do.

And I know that we have an amazing and a positive experience that we know offer to all of our clients whether be buyers or sellers so anyways if you are thinking about selling in our market and you want to get the process started you know you don't know where to start. Maybe you don't understand the process how things work in North Carolina. You know we will love to meet with you for a listing presentation and at the time a listing presentation like I mentioned we would do a walkthrough we would tell you about ourselves about our team set up go through our whole marketing plan and share with you comparables and a net proceeds sheet. But a lot of sellers they want to get started and they just want to understand what is their home worth. Right. And so we will love to share a feature that we have and we can share with you. And so if you're thinking about selling your home a great way to get started is by knowing what your home is worth in today's market. So you can do that from your smartphone. So just text the word listing to the phone number 5 5 5 8 8 8. And from there we are going to send you a link. Make sure that you click the link you input your address and from there we can give you an idea of what your home is worth in today's market. So once again just on your smartphone you can text the word listing to the phone number 5 5 5 8 8 8 to get an idea of what your home is worth in 2019.

That's all you have to do. Text the word listing to 5 5 5 8 8 8 again.

Text the word listing to the number 5 5 5 8 8 8 will text right back with the link that you click on and put in your info. Only takes about 20 seconds or so to do all this and you can find out that potential home value great starting point.

If you're looking to sell a home here in the triangle just pick up the phone and text the word listing to the number 5 5 5.

We're coming up on today's show here on the savvy real talk with Angie Cole. Stay tuned

It's time for the mailbag. We want to hear from you

Stan says I'm currently looking at a home that's just over the city limits. Are there any advantages or disadvantages to be aware of when living outside the city limits.

Yeah Stan so I would say your advantages would be. I would guess the most important thing would be less taxes that you'd pay. So remember when you're living outside of the city limits you only are required to pay county taxes. So typically might be around like you know point six you know. But when it comes to city taxes it could be doubled. So you're going to save money there on a yearly basis. Also I would say the advantages would be you more than likely would have a less HLA restrictions. So oftentimes when we start going deeper into the country outside of the city I find that the restrictions are lessened. So you know if you are one of those owners or you know potential owner that maybe you want to have an RV that would stay on your property maybe you want to have chickens you know you more than likely will probably need to go and stay more in the county versus being in the city so that you are allowed to do those type of things. On the flip side you know when you're living in the county versus a city you then have to worry about maybe your neighbors who potentially don't keep their home and their lawn up like you would prefer for them to do because at the age away is not as strict in your neighborhood. You know there's not going to be those rules and regulations that are keeping your next door neighbor from maybe doing things that you would prefer for them not to do. So it's kind of a given take you know but I tend to find that many people they like to go just a little bit further out and get outside of the city limits so that they do have a little bit more freedom. And they're also paying less in their taxes.

Yeah lots of benefits that come along with that and you know a few things that then you'll be if you're a county person you're going to be you know relying on your own to do a couple of things. You know maybe like sewer and water and those kinds of things you might have to line up yourself a chore. I know some that caught us by surprise A.J. when we moved to to Raleigh from Durham and we're in the county now and not in the city was all of a sudden they are our trash cans disappeared.

Right. You're like What do I do where I put my dry. Yeah right way where you took our kids. We thought they were stolen at first. And did you really.

Yeah we did. And then we've figured out I mean we didn't really think they were stolen because like who steals a trash can. But sure.

But you are stolen just kind of at a loss like okay where do I you know I need to put my trash somewhere where my Benz let me go you know find these. But yeah you need to get either what a private service or take it to the dumpster.

Exactly. Luckily the good old Google was able to help remedy that situation. Could you Google fixes everything. Yeah. Finally we had to get a line up your own trash pickup and pay that bill rather than it just being in your taxes. So there's some little nuances there to get used to but overall it seems like a lot of the depending on what you're looking for the benefits could be great of living in the county or they may just sort of even out County versus city. So sure. Depends on your situation Stan.

Like you said you're looking to park in an RV or a boat in the front yard. Well you may have no problem doing that. That's great. You've been listening to the savvy real tour podcast. I'm Walter store Holt alongside Angie Cole. She's the owner and broker in charge of eco realty here in the Triangle and if you have questions for Angie we invite you to go online to a call realty dot com. Listen to past podcast episodes on the Web site read the blog and all the great information including the option to find a home right there on the website. That's a call realty dot com and you can also call ante with your questions. 9 1 9 5 7 8 31 28.

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