Being a Mentor, Day 10

My mentee got her official license as of 2 days ago! Yay! That means she is listed on the Colorado Division of Real Estate. All Colorado real estate licensees can be found by searching here: http://eservices.psiexams.com/crec/search.jsp 

She is getting her photo taken for her business cards, website, Bray’s list of agents, etc., This photo will be seen in a lot of places, so it’s good to have a photo she likes. My mentee also shadowed me on a listing appointment. The sellers are out of town so I went to the property and took measurements and photos. My mentee helped me with that and then spent the afternoon gathering more information from the tax assessor’s site and neighborhood. We got some information from Navica.

In the past couple days, she has had lunch or coffee with several title companies. Depending on who the seller or buyer chooses for their title work, it is easier if she has already met them before the closing day. She missed some stuff because she had a family appointment. I know that everyone juggles all the facets of their life & sometimes family comes first. For me it is usually family and clients first and I always have difficulty when I feel that I am not giving either side enough time. So I have been talking with my mentee about having balance among all the tasks. She is working on a pretend listing of her own house. That gives her an opportunity to fill out all the forms. I remember, though, that I still was very careful when doing my first listing!

Being a Mentor, Days 2 & 3

Last week my mentee and I kept busy with a variety of set-up, orientation, and mentoring activities. Here's a brief description of what our days looked like.

Day 2 of Mentoring
My mentee got a tour of the office. She also got her phone extension and did more paperwork for the office. We looked at a Comparative Market Analysis that I am working on for a listing. While we were doing that in Navica, we also looked at property information. I've talked about Navica here before, and how to understand Navica MLS listings. At the end of the day, she attended a Bray Productivity Meeting about Money Management and Profitability. The productivity meetings are run by a Bray agent & offered to Bray agents on most Wednesday afternoons.

Day 3 of Mentoring
At the beginning of the day, she attended a Bray Contracts Class about Listing Contracts. The contracts class is run by a Bray agent & offered to Bray agents on most Thursday mornings. I like to attend those classes when I can, but I attended a GJARA board MLS committee meeting. I am currently a non-voting member, & I hope to be a voting member on that committee soon. You may remember that GJARA is the Grand Junction Area Realtors Association.

Later in the morning, my mentee spent time at the front desk, learning to use the phone there & seeing what it was like at the front. Agents call to set showing appointments on Bray property. People walk in to meet with Bray agents or if they have questions. If they are not working with any agent yet, they are helped by the floor person. It can get busy at the front desk! Mentee had lunch with one of the lenders. In the afternoon, she & I went to get office supplies together.

Inside Real Estate: Decoding information in Navica MLS listings: Purchasing Information

When I send my buyers a list of properties from the Navica MLS system, they see lots of information about the property. If it is about a house, here is some of the information that will be shown:

TERMS: How the property can be purchased, such as with cash, a conventional loan, or an FHA or VA loan. Some properties that have been foreclosed are in such bad shape that they can only be purchased with cash. Also sometimes an owner will provide the financing to make it easier to buy the house, so it will say “owner carry.”

EM DEP and EM HOLDER: How much is required by the seller to show that a buyer is serious about purchasing the property. It is usually around 1 percent. The earnest money holder is the person who holds the deposit between making the office to buy and the closing. At the closing, the buyer’s earnest money counts towards the amount the buyer brings to the closing table.

TITLE CO: The title company is the one who is going to issue the title insurance on the property when it is transferred to the new owner. The seller pays for the insurance so that a “good title” can be given to the new buyer.

Inside Real Estate: Decoding information in Navica MLS listings: Details

When I send my buyers a list of properties from the Navica MLS system, they see lots of information about the property. If it is about a house, here is some of the information that will be shown:

FRONTS: The front side of the house faces this direction. It can north, south, east, or west, or diagonal. Some people have preferences for houses to face south so the snow will melt off the driveway. Some people want the house to face west so they have a shady backyard in the evenings.PARCEL #: The parcel number mentioned at the Mesa County Assessor’s Office.

SELLER NAME: This must be the seller’s actual last name, not just the owner, so the person/s who legally own/s the property. Sometimes it just says "Owner" so the seller has some privacy.

SELLER LICENSED: If the seller is a real estate broker, he or she may have an unfair advantage when selling the property, so they must disclose to the potential buyer that they have a license to work in real estate.

Inside Real Estate: Decoding information in Navica MLS listings: History and Neighborhood

When I send my buyers a list of properties from the Navica MLS system, they see lots of information about the property. If it is about a house, here is some of the information that will be shown:

YEAR BUILT and/or YEAR REMODELED: “Year Built” should be the date of the original building permit. If the house was remodeled, there should be appropriate building permits for that. A house can be updated without being remodeled if minor changes are made, such as new paint, appliances, flooring, etc.

AREA and/or SUBDIVISION: A house has a mailing address and/or street address which may tell you something about its location. When I search for property for someone, I don’t search for a specific address because it would take too long to check if every property was listed for sale. However, I can search by area in the MLS system or I can be more specific and search within a certain subdivision. Usually there are boundaries to the specific areas and you can find them at the Grand Junction Area Realtors Association map.

ELEMENTARY, MIDDLE, or HIGH School: If a buyer has children in the District 51 school system, they may want their children to stay in the same school as their current one. I can search by a specific school. They may also request a search within several elementary schools that are near to each other or a specific school that they feel is a better match for their children. You can find out which school your child will attend by going to the School District 51 schoolboundary website. 

Decoding information in Navica MLS listings: House Basics

When I send my buyers a list of properties from the Navica MLS system, they see lots of information about the property. If it is about a house, here is some of the information that will be shown:

# BEDROOMS: How many bedrooms total are in the house. Bedrooms must have a closet, an escapable window, & a proper ingress & egress (a way in and a way out). Bedrooms must also be shown to be conforming or non-conforming in the “room size” area. Besides missing a closet or not meeting building codes for ingress/egress, non-conforming bedrooms are those in which someone could not escape from in case of a fire. They usually have no windows, windows that are too small, or windows that are too high up the wall for children to escape from.

# BATHROOMS: How many bathrooms total in the house. Each plumbing fixture counts as a ¼ in a bathroom. If it has a sink and toilet, it is a “half-bath.” If it has a sink, toilet, and shower, it is a “three-quarters bath.” If it has a sink, toilet, shower, & bathtub, it is a “full-bath.” If a bathroom is a full bathroom and has 2 sinks, it is actually called a “5-piece bathroom suite” instead of 1 ¼ bathroom.

GARAGE TYPE and GARAGE CAPACITY: A garage can be attached, detached, a basement garage, carport, parking spaces, or none. The capacity is based on how many vehicles can be parked in that garage. Sometimes people fill in garage dimensions if a garage is extra deep or extra tall for oversized vehicles. 

Multiple Listing Service numbers and letters

Hello everyone!! I know it has been a while since I’ve been here. Honestly I’ve been very busy & I have learned a tremendous amount. Today I would like to share with you about the Multiple Listing Service. When a property is being sold by a realtor, it is usually found on a MLS system. The initials stand for Multiple Listing Service. Real estate brokers who belong to the MLS agree to share property information and work together to connect buyers and sellers. They also agree to split a commission for selling the property in an agreed percentage.

Here in Grand Junction, as part of Grand Junction Area Realtors Association, known as GJARA & pronounced “gee-jar-a,” we realtors use the Navica Multi-Listing System. When it is posted on the MLS, each property has its own unique 6-digit number. There are also letters in front of each number and a letter at the end of the number. For example, a complete MLS# could look like this: RR123456A. If you see “RR” in front, it means that the property is a “single family residence.” The “A” after the number means that it is an “active” listing, available for sale. The letters in front of the number should also coordinate with the Mesa County tax assessor classification of how the property is primarily to be used.
 
Here are some other examples of letters in front of an MLS#:
RC—a single family condominium for sale
RT—a single famiy townhouse for sale
 
An “M” as the first letter means that it is multi-family property. There can be:
MD—a duplex, or a building that houses 2 separate families
MT—a triplex, or a building that houses 3 separate families
MF—a fourplex, or a building that houses 4 separate families
MA—an apartment that houses more than 4 separate families
MM—a manufactured home park that houses multiple families

An “L” as the first letter means that the property is just land or that the land is the most important part. There can be:
LC—Land zoned for commercial use rather than for families
LD—A lot zoned for a duplex or some kind of multiple-family building
LS—Property that is 0-9.99 acres & is zoned for housing just a single family
LR—Property that is recreational farm or ranch with over 10 acres

There are other letters that can be in front of the number, such as CB for commercial buildings, OA for agriculture, SR for single family rental, and EL for commercial lease.

Here is the list of what the letter at the end of the listing number means:
A—Active, as mentioned previously
M—Under contract-Contingent/Kickout—This means that the buyer may not be able to go through with the contract because of having to sell another property first or not being sure about getting financing
U—Under contract, planning on everything following through & closing on the property
S—Sold, which means there was a closing where the title to the property was transferred from the seller to the buyer
R—Rented or Leased, just as good as sold if this was the goal for the property
W—Withdrawn, usually by the seller, and if this occurs early, something came up to interrupt the selling process
X—Expired, happens when the property has been available for sale as long as the contract specified and it was not sold
D—Deleted, removed from the MLS system, which could have happened for any number of reasons

That's it for today. I plan to share more later. I hope you are doing fine.