Today's Real Estate Tip: Communicating with your agent

Today's Real Estate Tip is about communicating with your agent.  Before your first appointment, drive or walk around town and photograph homes in the same style and size that you want.  Then on your first visit with your Realtor, take those photographs along with you to communicate clearly what you are looking for.

This should avoid communication mis-steps in your search.

This will help the agent narrow down the searches to homes that are of interest to you and weed out those that are not.

Watch my video below.

Be sure to visit my website for more information

Have a great day.  I am always available to talk to you, just give me a call.

Bay Area Easy Home Sales

I just created a youtube channel to place all my videos for my blog and facebook business page.  This channel will be my depository for all my videos.  The channel is ofcourse, Bay Area Easy Home Sales.  I will be posting helpful hints and tips for the Real Estate market.  I'll also drop in some local lifestyle videos about certain areas.  I will interview loan agents, home inspectors, home warranty and other real estate related trades.

I am also going to try to change my blog title here from "My Adventures" to "Bay Area Easy Home Sales"

Bay Area home styles.

I am going to be stepping up on my blogging.  I've got to get optimized into the search engines.  The way to do that is to get content out there.

I want to address home styles here in the San Francisco Bay Area.  I think that it is important for the Realtor and the client to be on the same page.  I have studied homes in the San Francisco Bay area since 2002.

Storybook Style. These homes were designed by architects who served in Europe during the first World War.  These young architects brought back images of the Old World and incorporated it into their designs.  Architects Carr Jones, William Raymond Yelland, Hugh Comstock, Harry Oliver and Walter W. Dixon were masters of this design style.  The style originated out of Hollywood and spread out across the United States.  The San Francisco Bay Area has some of the finest examples.

These homes were intended to look centuries old when built new. Pigment was added to the stucco and the homes were never intended to be painted.  A storybook home is small in actual scale but designed with forced perspective at times to make them appear to be much larger. The term Storybook Style was coined by author Arrol Gellner in his book of that same name.  Read more about it  Click here to be taken to Amazon.com to purchase Storybook Style:America's Whimsical Homes of the Twenties by Arrol Gellner

Mission Revival Style These homes originated out of San Diego and the 1915 Panama-California Exposition in Balboa Park. Mission revival pays honor to the restoration efforts at the time of the California Missions but during colonial Spanish California. These homes often have red clay tiled roofs and Spanish tile accents.

Inside the living rooms often had cathedral ceilings with large timber beams. These beams are often adorned with stenciled embellishments.

These home have been labeled by uninformed Realtors as Lovely Mediterraneans. This mislabeling of the homes has given license for people to paint these homes in Mediterranean colors. These homes are intended to mimic California Missions made of whitewashed adobe walls. The only real proper colors are white and tan in shades of what adobe would have been found in.

For more information about Mission revival I suggest the following book.   Click here to be taken to Amazon.com to purchase Red Tile Style: Americas Spanish Revival Architecture by Arrol Gellner.

Art Deco Style These homes are all about the optimistic world of the future from the 1939 New York Worlds Fair. Streamline Moderne, a subset of Art Deco features buildings that looked like ships and trains in motion.  South Beach in Miami is all about a tropical flavor of Art Deco.

Frank Lloyd Wright was one of the best designers with the famous "Fallingwater" house and the Marin County Civic Center

Most Art Deco has common features such as porthole windows and step backs. I would recommend reading the following book. Click here to be taken to Amazon.com to purchase The Art Deco House by Adrian Tinniswood

Craftsman Style The Craftsman style of homes it's all about the craftsman ship of the home.  Fireplaces made of rounded river rocks or clinker bricks. Stained glass windows let in color filtered light artfully into the rooms.

California brothers Henry Mather Greene & Charles Sumner Greene were the masters of this design style.  They are most famous for the Gamble House in Pasadena.  Locally near the UC Berkeley campus is another of their amazing designs the Thorsen House.

Click here to be taken to Amazon.com to purchase Bungalow: The Ultimate Arts & Crafts Home by Jane Powell

Ranch Style Soldiers returning from World War II wanting to stay in California created a building boom. Cities such as San Lorenzo were built at an amazing number and a lightning pace. These home pioneered modern tract home building as we know it today. Builder developers offered only three to four floor plans for a community and would flip flop mirror image plans to create a little variety to the street scape. Homes were built  by the thousands and the economy of scale allowed the homes to be affordable to the returning soldiers and their new families.

For the first time the automobile garage moved in great numbers from being detached sheds in the backyard to being up front as a main part of the homes architecture.

If you would like to read more about Ranch style homes, I suggest Click Here to be taken to Amazon.com to purchase Ranch House Style by Katherine Samon

Mid-Century Modern In the years leading into World War II the government wanting to conserve building materials put a challenge to architects to design homes using minimum materials. The architects would make case study homes showcasing design techniques that used these principles.

These homes most often had a roof that was also the interior ceiling with no attic, thus saving materials.  Mid-Century homes by default often had vaulted ceilings in all the rooms.

Joseph Eichler, a builder developer built some of the most famous neighborhoods of this style.  With Eichler the homes were all about indoor and outdoor California living.  Eichler chose building locations on ridgetops with views that made this California lifestyle so appealing.

Joseph Eichler used well-known architects:
Robert Anshen
Claude Oakland & Associates
Jones & Emmons
A. Quincy Jones
Raphael Soriano

Click here to be taken to Amazon.com to purchase Eichler: Modernism Rebuilds the American Dream by Paul Adamson

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20120122 Don't call that agent

House hunters,

You're driving down the street and you see a house that is of interest to you. What do you do?   Most people will get out of the car and get a flyer for the house and then call the agent listed for that house.

The agent on the house flyer for that house is the listing agent.  That agent is under contract to the seller to find them a buyer and get the highest price for the seller.

Do you want that agent representing you also?.....This is what is called double ending in the Real Estate industry.

You want to call an agent that will represent you as the buyer.  That agent's role is to get you the home at the best price possible and to guide you through all the inspections, contingencies, contracts and escrow issues.  You want someone on your side.

Do you really want someone who knows the seller's low number AND your high number when it comes to negotiation?

Remember that agent has already a relationship with the seller, whom he or she is selling the house for.

Get yourself a great buyer's agent that will be on your side from day one.

REAL ESTATE KRYPTONITE

Here's a helpful hint ask your agent for a stack of business cards.  When visiting an open house hand the listing agent your agent's card.  It says to the listing agent that you are represented by a buyers agent.   They will in the most part leave you alone and not hassle you.

20120102 A new year and a new start

Hello blog readers.

Today is Monday January 2nd and I just finished watching the Tournament of Roses Parade from Pasadena.  It is weird not to watch it a day after New Year's Day.  I do understand that it is a long standing tradition never to have the parade on a Sunday.

Right now I am watching the HGTV Dream House 2012.  It is a real nice property this year and tastefully decorated.   I so would like to win this one for sure.  But you can win it by entering at HGTV.com and Frontdoor.com.  Be sure to enter once a day at both sites!

2012 is going to be a great year.  I have invested in a The Solution marketing program and coahing seminars.  I have learned a lot and am very motivated to be the best Realtor I can be!

I will be rolling out a new and improved Facebook business page for my Real Estate business core.  I am also going to be having some new websites that will be to focus on different market niches

www.ClassicBayAreaBungalows.com This site will be for the homes that I really have an extra passion for the bungalows of the 1920s and 1930s.  This will cover the Storybook Style, Mission Revival and Craftsman.   I am hoping to have some great listings and buyers with passion for quality older homes.

www.LGBTBayAreaHomes.com This site will be to work with clients who happen to be LGBT.  This segment has been under represented at my office and I intend to step up and work with these clients. I can imagine that house searches will be fun times.  I am looking forward to meeting some wonderful people.

www.BayAreaEASYHomeSales.com This site will be the main site that will be used to sell homes on the internet and will have great service features to connect with clients