Category: Seller Tips

You may have heard that weirdness prevails in the real estate market these days, and nowhere is that more true than with lenders.  In short, lenders are struggling right now... big time.  In this episode, we discuss some of the major lender fumbles we've seen recently and how you can avoid the nightmare scenarios that have become all too commonplace in real estate transactions because of them.

hello friends this is diana randall bro your local friendly husband and wife realtor team located in prescott arizona she’s depressed pickle lady that’s right i am her sidekick in arms that’s right sidekick have arms i’m not sure i’ll get some water i’ll get some more or at least some tools sidekick but yeah you probably do but tough topic too yeah a tough topic it’s something that um i try and try again some people listen and some people how shall i say i think they know better than mama and that is using an out of state lender so we’ve been having a lot of trouble with lenders um and that’s just i mean the lending process the lending process you know we’re going the whole covet thing and logistic problems and i i don’t know what but we’re finding it very hard to match our buyers with lenders who can close in a timely manner well yeah and this is my biggest pet peeve lately particularly if you use an out of state london oh i have a relationship with them i’ve been with wells fargo for 25 years it doesn’t mean a thing okay you are assuming that when you hand off this loan to somebody to start processing it that you’re going to have your particular banker every step of the way sadly my first month that’s not what happens they’ll have a separate team for that they have a separate team for that so the first person who sells you that loan they’re out of the picture they get their commission and they go off and go sell another loan yeah and then your loan is sold you know it’s passed on to another team and it goes into underwriting well every underwriter they pass on to another person to another person so when you run into a glitch and you call your original person they’re like oh that’s not me anymore now it’s joe and kathy and susie so then you may be hunting down these people who they’ve passed it on to somebody else you never get the same person so consequently um when we have a closing date which by the way is a contractual obligation you’re obligated to close on that date and lenders don’t seem to understand that it’s a contractual obligation and so this is what i tell some of these lenders hello it wasn’t a suggested closing date it’s like underground it’s like under contract this is a legal thing yeah if we’re supposed to close march first you’re supposed to have it all done march first so we’ll get a call from the we’ll get a call from the lender oh good news we got the appraisal scheduled for the fifth like okay we gotta close on the first we’re closing on the first that doesn’t help me yeah so a lot of times you know that’s very frustrating so from the get-go i call these out of state lenders and i say order your appraisal today don’t order it two weeks from now because we’re never going to close on time because a lot this is another thing you should you should know out-of-state lenders have to contact an appraisal uh company of their own in-house and then they that in-house appraisal company says let me get you an appraiser i don’t know who i don’t know anybody in that area but i’ll get one from phoenix what a nightmare because the phoenix appraiser comes up here he looks at it he doesn’t know the press get back i don’t know the market they don’t understand i understand the market to do a decent appraisal that’s correct and i’m sure the same is true you can’t get prescott appraisers and go down right really i mean you gotta know you need to have somebody familiar with it yeah you need to have somebody local who really understands the market understands that that side street is really not a major highway which we’ve gotten that’s not a major highway um so you don’t have to you know detract you know at deduct a hundred thousand dollars that’s not a major yeah we’ve had one it was uh oh well the the comp was uh it’s a good comp but the comp has a view of the golf course and the subject property doesn’t okay the subject property overlooks granite mountain it’s a much better view so you know we try to advise of course we can’t tell you i mean that’s absolutely one hundred percent yeah he should pick the land and you’re right that’s your right to do that but when we gently try to guide you try to find a local lender there’s a reason for that we want you to close on time we don’t want you to arrive in prescott and your house has enclosed and your stuff is in transit in a truck and you have no place to move in yeah and it has happened it has it has happened and then suddenly you’re in a hotel for two weeks while you’re waiting for it to get out of underwriting because they didn’t go into underwriting until five days before your closing date yeah nobody’s going to get you out of underwriting in five days and get the appraisal done in five days it’s just not happening you’ve got sellers that are selling in the seller’s market that may or may not be that’s right uh they may not appreciate your situation yeah they want to close because they’re moving on to their next chapter so when we gently suggest please try a local lender preferably a mortgage banker not a bank like wells fargo or you know one of those uh yeah don’t go with a mortgage broker go with a mortgage lender a mortgage banker they will hold your hand all the way to the end because they don’t get their commission until you close so they are invested they are committed because they would like to get their commission and so keep that in mind it’s not to mind your business or tell you what to do and you know i appreciate you know every person i know who thought they had a great relationship finds out maybe not so much yeah and just to be clear most of the clients that we deal with um they are of retirement age yes and uh they’ve region reached a certain level of success most of them do have personal bankers yes so we’re not oh you know i have a personal banker your other clients probably didn’t know they all have a personal thing and it’s not the personal banker’s fault yeah they’re it’s just their process when you’re with the national bank they set you up they do the initial paperwork and then their process is to pass it on to the other parties and it’s not that they’re bad people yeah or you know well they’re dealing with their process it’s a very it’s a very tough situation at this at this particular moment uh some areas like the california banks are really struggling the northeast banks are really struggling uh we had a we had a broker in the midwest so we figured oh that’s okay she sourced it to a bank in california that was a disaster it’s it’s uh it’s a bad situation right now we try to ride shotgun with the lenders for our transactions for our buyers we don’t know all the ins and outs we’re not lenders we’re not right now we don’t do that for a living i mean we try uh the local people we use here they know how to run rough shot they know how to do it they know how to get it done and it’s best to absolutely let them do that you know your bank may or may not respond to a stupid realtor from prescott arizona yeah i can call my local lender and say hey we gotta is there hold up can you tell me what’s going on what can we help to facilitate so we can close on time and i can get that person right away we can communicate clearly effectively and get the job done whereas if it’s an out of state lender they don’t know me from a hole in the ground and they’re like oh i don’t do that anymore it’s passed on to this person and they can’t really we don’t have that kind of relationship so keep that in mind it’s not to mind your business it’s not to tell you what to do it’s just if you have a particular date in mind that you want to close you want to close and uh local lenders are the way to do it they really try hard and they try to make it happen they know the right and they know the ropes and they also know local appraisers that they can get in and get it done so i’d all share this recently we just had one and we were supposed to close on a friday and they called the day before and said can’t close on friday because that is actually lincoln’s birthday not president’s day the 21st lincoln’s real birthday was february 18th so in california we celebrate uh lincoln’s birthday so we can’t send out any wires yes evidently they only figured this out the the day before the day before on the 17th uh i don’t know if that was really the story or not that declared the holidays so it’s weird things like that weird things out of state lenders will have weird rules i don’t know california’s rule about lincoln’s birthday but apparently on february 18th they don’t send out wires in the state of california and they’re allowed to do that so yeah every day i learned something new and another good example is uh ordering out the appraisals it is a matter of course that uh lenders will order out the appraisal kind of when it’s clear that the home’s gonna inspect yep you know that it’s gonna get get past the inspection period that’s when they’ll do it too late you can’t do that now you can you got to order it right away and if you if that means the lender is going to have to eat the appraisal fee yeah that’s just the cost of it but here’s the thing they don’t eat the appraisal fee they passed on to you they said oh we can’t get the appraiser out so i hope you don’t mind instead of paying six or seven hundred dollars for your appraisal you now have to pay the expedited fee yeah twelve hundred dollars fifteen [Music] they can get it done overnight yeah but you’re gonna pay extra for that so try to go local we have everything local in-house we can get it done it’s nice and smooth and you know typically we close on time about 98 of the time uh out of state um it’s been i can’t promise you it’s been rough lately it’s been rough that’s all we can do is just tell you our experiences with this in the end the your lender choice that you that’s your choice 100 it’s your choice whoever you choose we will do our best to make sure that you close on time uh but we just wanted to share some of our experiences with you some other considerations you may want to yeah just be aware you may not necessarily close on time if you’re going out of state we can do as much as we can try may not happen for you we sure will try i love to nag it’s my favorite thing to do i call every day hey it’s the pickle lady again heard anything yeah heard anything heard anything remember the closing date is not a suggested date yeah we want to close on this day we’ve been struggling with this for the last several months so yeah so we want to share and you should know too because you know we don’t always buy houses every other year sometimes it’s been 20 years and you kind of forget so this is our knowledge we want to share with you absolutely take take away from it whatever you wish but we hope you listen to us [Laughter] more information you can check us out at pickle411.com that is our information site whether you are buy or seller somewhere in between information about lenders and all that kind of stuff about real estate i also got best restaurants to go to and press get things done i’ll love it i’ll live all of it’s there all of it we love to talk about a whole bunch of stuff yeah not all of it’s complaining about linda no that’s right very strong very small just a small percentage all right my friends you guys have a great evening and thanks for listening hope we taught you something new take care bye

Charming, loving family homes are very personalized - and often very hard to sell.  In our continuing series on home staging, we explain why that is and what you should do about it to capture top value for your home.  Check it out!

yeah we gotta make sure we’re recording these sometimes that happens folks yeah we just we do uh some of our best episodes one of our best episodes we’re not recorded and then he comes upstairs oh my god by the way uh we weren’t recording yeah hello hello you’re seeing a little behind the scenes behind the scenes stuff she’s the pickle lady that’s right i am her partner in crime and uh we are here in prescott arizona real estate agents uh extraordinaire correct yeah i am diane this is randall grove we are happy to uh help you guys out when you come visit if you’re looking for a home happy to help you list if you’re ready to do that yeah so we’re doing we’re we’re doing seller tips we have a series of seller tips and we wanted to focus on staging yeah uh and staging tips when you’re trying to sell your home as i’ve said before uh professional staging is not that big a deal here in prescott there’s not a lot of that going on there’s some yeah not a lot of that for the most part the sellers themselves or their agents are responsible for staging the home but just because no one’s paying money to have it professionally done does not mean it is not important it is vitally so it is and it’s necessary absolutely so this little staging tip is all about depersonalization depersonalization yes when people come in they don’t want to see i have pictures i know uh pictures of your family your children your daughters your wedding you and your wedding dress this that and the other i am so guilty of this yes i consider my daughters my own works of art yes so i’ve got beautiful portraits of them when they were four beautiful portraits of them when they were 18 it goes on and on and on i am the biggest one guilty of this but when i go to sell it’s all coming down when we go over to someone’s house uh just you know socially and their house isn’t personalized it’s kind of creepy yeah i don’t like you go in you don’t see any pictures of them or i think that’s with their children it’s like this person must be in witness protection yeah something i’m a little suspicious a little suspicious so we like homes that are warm and personalized and that the personal touch with all the pictures there’s nothing to say there’s anything wrong with decorating decorating your home in a personalized way it’s just when it comes time to sell that can get involved some of that needs to come down not all of it you keep a cute little picture tucked here and there yeah that still gives the warmth of hey this is a nice family home yeah we’ve had a good time here we’ve got good memories it gives good juju yeah but if it’s too too much of it yeah then people can’t see past my family moving in here this is where i could hang my portraits yes this is where i could hang my grandchildren’s pictures yes so if you’re covered with all of your stuff and it’s too much of it they can’t see past it and they can’t see themselves we want them to get an emotional connection to your home i’ve got to live here my family would be so happy here so a couple of points there first of all uh the reason why you do this is that uh the reason why stage in general is that people do not make rational decisions in buying a home they make emotional decisions they do and buying a home and you may say oh they can look past all my stuff where they could you know they could go home and photoshop it all out you know or they could you know do it in their own minds but what we’re telling you is they don’t in practice they don’t that’s not how they make decisions uh most people unlike investors most people most buyers will make an emotional gut decision in connecting with a home and if your personalized stuff doesn’t connect with them it’s going to get in the way of that process and they’re not going to connect with your home and they’re not going to want to move forward that’s true the other thing to kind of de-personalize is besides you know family photos or you know is anything that of religious nature that’s if you are overtly you know if you’ve got a lot of religious or even i hate to say it patriotic yes um which i don’t agree with but um yeah i mean we have religious stuff in our home we have oh you know that’s how we personalize our home right some people it could be that they are not religious correct it could be that they have a religion that is different than yours right and it’s not like they say oh you know i would say i’m jewish and all these crosses are around or vice versa and they say well you know i don’t i don’t like all these crosses i don’t like this house they won’t even be able to articulate it correct they just won’t connect with the house they won’t even be able to explain why there was something about the house that just didn’t feel right right you know and that’s what we’re trying to avoid absolutely i mean i have all of that i love it all i have buddhas i have catholic things i have dude jewish thing yeah i like to cover my bases i have it all i i want to make sure i got i have crystals you name it yeah i have a very eclectic home yeah i will say it’s very clever but that may not connect with a lot of people and it won’t they may be like what does she have some weird stuff weird stuff that was a weird house and i’ll be the first one to open it it is so i agree you know so when i do go to sell i will remove some of those items just because again we want it to be a clean slate yeah that people can see you know their special things coming in their special photos right uh portraits and things like that a quick rule of thumb when it comes to family pictures so if you go to a place like say michael’s and you buy picture frames most of the picture frames will have pictures in them yep you know showing you you know this is where you would put your family but they’re kind of sort of generic looking family photos if you don’t have a lot of family photos and it just looks like a family there’s nothing particularly different like it it could be the picture that they put in the frames at michael’s and sell the to sell the frame if that’s the case then it’s probably not so personalized that you need to get rid of it but if it’s you know like uh halloween costumes or something just kind of strange that you wouldn’t see at michael’s then you probably need to yeah yeah that is just keep it light keep it simple keep it not too crazy like my house and you’ll do just fine but the most important thing out of all of this is when your agent is nicely suggesting hey you know you might want to remove this you might don’t not argue but don’t get defensive don’t be insulted it’s not meant in that way at all it’s just having done this thousands of times and helping people find their place and the feedback we get back we know what your house will be tagged about it’ll be like oh gosh did you see that that was terrible and so just listen to us ahead of time and save yourself a lot of heartache yeah and it may not be fun to hear and it may be i’m not really comfortable i understand i mean i get tagged myself so it’s a it’s a pain but we’re telling you it will put money in your pocket it will put money in your pocket and it will save you uh you know have the house sold pretty quickly so it’s all in your best interest too personal absolutely in your best interest so depersonalize depersonalize depersonalize and when someone suggested like we suggested to you just take it with a good heart and say okay thanks all right good points here if you look for more good points you might want to go to pickle411.com yep that is our information center everything there is free highly entertaining and insightful yep it’s one awards no it hasn’t won awards not yet we’re waiting for an award i feel like it’s coming yeah the pickle i just have a pickle or something it’s coming yeah we feel it i think it’s coming i feel it yeah all right and if you’re watching this we want to wish you a happy new year happy new year to you because uh 2022 i think it’s just going to be amazing for everybody we’re going to turn this around turn this ship around and everybody’s going to be the ship chip oh i thought you said something else no okay no you could turn that other thing around too well yeah i’m done with that yeah it has been pretty good yeah so i would agree but we’re going to turn that ship around 2022 is going to be amazing yep i just feel it it’s going to be a good start for all of us so here’s to a happy healthy and prosperous 2022 and give us a call to sell your home and we’ll give you some more tips in person that’s right all right take care bye