March 23, 2008
Young homebuyers savvy
Today’s young adults aren’t about to let lingering student loans, uncertain career tracks and stratospheric housing prices stop them from finding their first home sweet home. This investment-savvy generation of 20- and 30-somethings knows a hot market when they see one, and many have developed creative strategies to reach home ownership at a younger age, often without the benefit of a spouse’s salary.
Some buy their first home jointly with a friend or sibling. Others become small-scale landlords, renting out basements or extra bedrooms to tenants whose rents offset the mortgage.
It’s something that a lot of people have to turn to because housing prices are just sky-high, particularly in a lot of the larger cities,” says Brenda Bouw, author of Home Girl: The Single Woman’s Guide to Buying Real Estate in Canada. “I think a lot of people have been influenced by their parents, whose best investment has been their house. They’re feeling pressure to get into the market any way they can.”
About one-quarter of Canadians aged 18 to 34 are homeowners, according to a recent survey by the Canadian Association of Accredited Mortgage Professionals.
See story in the Windsor Star »
January 13, 2008
Who’s your friend in real estate?
By the mere nature of the real estate buying and selling process an atmosphere of potential intimacy is commonplace. In order for an agent to be of service to a seller or a buyer they must know many personal and confidential facts about their client’s lives. Relationships are created and sometimes even lasting friendships.
But it can also go terribly wrong, especially when a buyer shares personal details with a real estate agent and then finds out the agent has not been representing them or their best interests. Be sure you know whose side the agent you are choosing to work with is on before you start telling them your life story.
Here is an article from the New York Times that speaks to this common dilemma:
They may come together for what seems like a straightforward business transaction – the sale or purchase of a home – but the relationship between broker and client can be an emotional minefield, ripe for love or hate, admiration or scorn, friendship or hostility.
If nothing else, it is a highly personal connection. A broker, after all, probably knows as much about the client as any therapist, lawyer, accountant or even spouse.
Brokers know what their clients earn and what they’re worth – they have to, in order to figure out which co-ops make sense for them. They may know if they’re planning to leave their jobs, or their spouses. “People who are planning to get divorced may not yet have told their friends or their children but need an appraisal before dividing the assets,” said Daniela Kunen, a managing director of Douglas Elliman. “You hear very personal information.”
Whatever it is, the connection is rarely tepid. Frederick W. Peters, president of Warburg Realty Partnership, said that he tells novice agents that they are in a business that fosters short-term intimacy. “You are immediately plunged into a close relationship with a buyer or seller and then when the transaction is consummated, it is over, unless you choose otherwise.” he said.
Many people do choose otherwise, having planted the seeds of enduring friendship in the collaboration to buy or sell a residence, or, if they live in the same community and run into one another in the supermarket, an ongoing acquaintanceship.
“You may be the first person in town they know,” said Roberta Baldwin, an associate broker with Re/Max Village Square in Upper Montclair, New Jersey. “You become the person they rely on when they need the name of a contractor or doctor.”
But brokers offer more than practical tips. “For every person or couple who buys for the first time and moves through the process without a care in the world, there are 10 who bring preconceived notions about what they should be buying, what their parents and relatives think, fears they have about their children and safety, money issues and worry about the economy,” Ms. Baldwin said.
Strong bonds in individual cases notwithstanding, as a group brokers and clients do not hold one another in particularly high esteem.
Preliminary findings of an online survey of attitudes of brokers and buyers who have bought properties in Manhattan in the last three years show that 78 percent of the 51 brokers who responded and 69 percent of 152 buyers and sellers “strongly or somewhat strongly” agreed with the premise, “Most people don’t trust real estate brokers or expect much from them.” The survey was commissioned by Braddock & Purcell, a real estate consultant that brings brokers and clients together, and carried out by Penn Schoen & Berland Associates, the market research firm.
“You can develop a close relationship with your broker, but it is in the context of an industry for which people do not have a high opinion,” said Paul F. Purcell, a partner in the firm.
John Podesta, national sales manager for Osh Kosh B’Gosh, has enough broker horror stories to keep him talking through many a dinner party.
This article continues: