I just finished my second real estate exam. The slacker approach to this class seems to be paying off just as well as my over zealous approach to the previous class.
I waited until the very last minute to read the chapters in the course and do the practice exams. In fact, I did not read the last three chapters before I did the practice tests! And I got a 79% on this test; just three points lower than the one I really studied for!
The irony is that I think I understand the material better this time better than the last exam. I just need to retain the information until I take the CA licensing exam.
Technically, I can get out of taking of the third real estate course as I took several Finance courses for my MBA. But the hassle of getting transcripts from classes so long ago makes me lazy. Plus the fact that I am probably very rusty on "Net Present Value" "Future Value" and all the other financial terms means that a refresher course is not a bad idea.
I can start the finance course this afternoon. I hope I still know how to use my HP 12C calculator as I have no idea where the instruction manual is!
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Just how much pig lipstick and what shade does it take to sell a house?
One of worst things about buying a house before you sell your old one is that you are under extreme pressure to sell in order not to carry a bunch of mortgages. I had my primary SUBPRIME Mortgage on my Palo Alto house, a Second Mortgage to finance the down payment of the Mountain View house and the first mortgage on the Mountain View house. ...Let's just say it was a great deal of money every month.
My Palo Alto house falls very much into the description of the "Charming Cottage" it was about 1000 sq ft two bedroom/two bath home. On the good side; it had all hardwood floors and an updated kitchen and baths. Plus an oversized garage. On the bad side; it was 1000 sq ft and on a busy corner!
One of the first things I did was move out of the house. It was stuffed with too many things, plus three cats. Staging is critical to getting a property sold quickly and for top dollar in just about any situation. You may love Fluffy or Fido but evidence of pets can turn off buyers very quickly.
I painted all the inside rooms to give it a fresh paint smell. I worked with a stager my Real Estate Agent suggested and we got the house on the market.
Something was off... We got a couple of offers the first week but they were below the asking price and I specifically put the house on the market on a lower price point to generate more offers and to bid up the house not bid it down. There was something going on that was sending the bottom feeders...
Turned out that my house was being featured on the RedFin website ( it is now illegal to do what they did to my house!) in a very negative way about this is the kind of dump you can get in Palo Alto for around a million dollars. Plus they kindly highlighted the atrocious mess that my next door neighbor's house and yard were. I need to sell this house! Crap! Now what to do???
I took it off the market. Even though I needed to sell I knew I could do better than the offers I was getting. I used the feedback from the offers I got and I made changes to the house.
Many buyers are not aware that they can unlist their house any time they want. You may have signed a 6 month agreement to allow an agent to list your house but you can take a house off the MLS and tweak the house to better fit the market conditions.
I addressed some of the issues that were found in the inspection report that were scaring first time buyers away or making them think they should low ball my price. The only buyers interested in my house were first time buyers and they are the most critical and most in need of a turn key option. I needed to make sure my house was turn key or take a low ball offer. So I painted the outside, put on a new roof, tackled some foundation repairs that were minor but were terrifying first time buyers. Funny, I spent the least amount of money on the foundation repairs but the foundation was the scariest thing for a first time buyer to think about fixing. I added some additional landscaping touches and brought in a different stager that was more familiar with Palo Alto than the previous one.
All in all I spent about $20,000.00 to make the changes; including the repairs ( most were tax deductible) , paint and restaging. Was it worth it? I think so; I got about $65,000.00 more for the house than the last offers and it sold the first week it was relisted.
The most important thing I learned from this experience is to know who your most likely customer is and to make sure you are using their shade of pig lipstick not just applying pig lipstick!
My Palo Alto house falls very much into the description of the "Charming Cottage" it was about 1000 sq ft two bedroom/two bath home. On the good side; it had all hardwood floors and an updated kitchen and baths. Plus an oversized garage. On the bad side; it was 1000 sq ft and on a busy corner!
One of the first things I did was move out of the house. It was stuffed with too many things, plus three cats. Staging is critical to getting a property sold quickly and for top dollar in just about any situation. You may love Fluffy or Fido but evidence of pets can turn off buyers very quickly.
I painted all the inside rooms to give it a fresh paint smell. I worked with a stager my Real Estate Agent suggested and we got the house on the market.
Something was off... We got a couple of offers the first week but they were below the asking price and I specifically put the house on the market on a lower price point to generate more offers and to bid up the house not bid it down. There was something going on that was sending the bottom feeders...
Turned out that my house was being featured on the RedFin website ( it is now illegal to do what they did to my house!) in a very negative way about this is the kind of dump you can get in Palo Alto for around a million dollars. Plus they kindly highlighted the atrocious mess that my next door neighbor's house and yard were. I need to sell this house! Crap! Now what to do???
I took it off the market. Even though I needed to sell I knew I could do better than the offers I was getting. I used the feedback from the offers I got and I made changes to the house.
Many buyers are not aware that they can unlist their house any time they want. You may have signed a 6 month agreement to allow an agent to list your house but you can take a house off the MLS and tweak the house to better fit the market conditions.
I addressed some of the issues that were found in the inspection report that were scaring first time buyers away or making them think they should low ball my price. The only buyers interested in my house were first time buyers and they are the most critical and most in need of a turn key option. I needed to make sure my house was turn key or take a low ball offer. So I painted the outside, put on a new roof, tackled some foundation repairs that were minor but were terrifying first time buyers. Funny, I spent the least amount of money on the foundation repairs but the foundation was the scariest thing for a first time buyer to think about fixing. I added some additional landscaping touches and brought in a different stager that was more familiar with Palo Alto than the previous one.
All in all I spent about $20,000.00 to make the changes; including the repairs ( most were tax deductible) , paint and restaging. Was it worth it? I think so; I got about $65,000.00 more for the house than the last offers and it sold the first week it was relisted.
The most important thing I learned from this experience is to know who your most likely customer is and to make sure you are using their shade of pig lipstick not just applying pig lipstick!
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Stiff competition still exists for good property
I just realized that many of you might think how is my story of buying real estate in Mountain View in 2007 relevant in the post market melt down and foreclosure madness of today? Well, the best properties at the best price still attract multiple buyers! You need to have a strategy to out maneuver the competition.
It is true that there is a large supply of homes on the market and that there are bargain prices attached to these properties. It is also true that the ugliest and most broken down properties out number anything you would want to buy and live in by about 10 to 1. So anyone that is looking for something worth living in at a decent price is competing fiercely for those properties with like minded folks. I am talking about finding short sales, foreclosures, and bank owned properties that are not in distressed areas. I am talking about looking for pockets of opportunity in strong areas such as Sunnyvale, Mountain View, Menlo Park, and Willow Glenn; to name a few. I am not talking about entire neighborhoods of foreclosed new homes in areas like Stockton and Modesto that are sitting vacant.
I have been helping a friend look for property for the past few months. (Actually to be fair, I have been on her case to buy property for about 16 years!) The melt down of this market has made her realize that the time is right now, if you have some cash and a stable job. So we go out looking for a livable bargain. She has fallen in love with a couple of cute places that have been snatched away by a higher or quicker bidder.
She is waiting to see if she is going to get a "Short Sale" home that she put an offer in on. I am still a little fuzzy on all the details associated with a short sale as they are not as black and white as a bank owned purchase.
In a short sale an owner works with the bank to come up with a price range that the bank "might" accept and then they find a buyer and then the bank "decides" if they will take the lower price instead of foreclosing the home. She is working with my super real agent who helped me buy in Mountain View and trying to figure out the entire process as it seems to change with each bank you work with.
His advice on dealing with short sales is to bid on several and not fall in love with any of them as you never know what the bank will do. It can take several months for the banks to make their decision on a short sale.
I have my fingers crossed as the house is very close to exactly what she wanted in a price that she was comfortable with. She jumped on this opportunity quickly and put in an offer before anyone else. And if everything goes well she should know if she has the house in about four months!!!
It is true that there is a large supply of homes on the market and that there are bargain prices attached to these properties. It is also true that the ugliest and most broken down properties out number anything you would want to buy and live in by about 10 to 1. So anyone that is looking for something worth living in at a decent price is competing fiercely for those properties with like minded folks. I am talking about finding short sales, foreclosures, and bank owned properties that are not in distressed areas. I am talking about looking for pockets of opportunity in strong areas such as Sunnyvale, Mountain View, Menlo Park, and Willow Glenn; to name a few. I am not talking about entire neighborhoods of foreclosed new homes in areas like Stockton and Modesto that are sitting vacant.
I have been helping a friend look for property for the past few months. (Actually to be fair, I have been on her case to buy property for about 16 years!) The melt down of this market has made her realize that the time is right now, if you have some cash and a stable job. So we go out looking for a livable bargain. She has fallen in love with a couple of cute places that have been snatched away by a higher or quicker bidder.
She is waiting to see if she is going to get a "Short Sale" home that she put an offer in on. I am still a little fuzzy on all the details associated with a short sale as they are not as black and white as a bank owned purchase.
In a short sale an owner works with the bank to come up with a price range that the bank "might" accept and then they find a buyer and then the bank "decides" if they will take the lower price instead of foreclosing the home. She is working with my super real agent who helped me buy in Mountain View and trying to figure out the entire process as it seems to change with each bank you work with.
His advice on dealing with short sales is to bid on several and not fall in love with any of them as you never know what the bank will do. It can take several months for the banks to make their decision on a short sale.
I have my fingers crossed as the house is very close to exactly what she wanted in a price that she was comfortable with. She jumped on this opportunity quickly and put in an offer before anyone else. And if everything goes well she should know if she has the house in about four months!!!
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
How to buy a house and out smart the competition
In my search for property in Mountain View I found an amazing Real Estate Agent who helped me find the perfect house . He would tell you I was the double edged client because I knew exactly what I wanted and where I wanted the house. Good that I knew what I wanted; bad because I was so specific!
What was I looking for that was so specific? I wanted to be in a neighborhood in Mountain View that is known as Shoreline West. I fell in love with the old school neighborhood feel and the eclectic house stock. You have old bungalows, new houses, apartment buildings. The thing that interested me most were all the homes that had income property behind the main house. They either had a granny unit, another house or in many cases a duplex or a tri-plex. I really liked the idea of having income property in a residential neighborhood. I decided I wanted a house with another house behind it or a duplex/tri plex. Shoreline West is a very small neighborhood. You have Shoreline and Escuela as the north and south boundaries. El Camino and Villa as the east and west boundaries. Not a big area to begin with and I was making it even smaller with my with specific needs.
I had originally wanted to be in the Old Mountain View area a block or two away from Castro Street. What I quickly found out was that was in my price range I might as well stay in my "Charming Cottage" in Palo Alto as I would not be getting much more house in Mountain View. Plus we decided that you can be too close to Castro Street. I did not want the nightmare of people parking in front of my house or the occasional peeing in my yard after a long night of drinking at the bars! Shoreline West was still within a 15 minute walk and felt like a completely different world.
It was nice to know exactly what you want; but it is hell trying to find it when you only have such a limited geographical area. I had originally started out my search looking for a 4 bedroom/ 2 bath house that I thought would allow my son and I to have both an office and a bedroom. I then liked the idea that we both could have private space and yet still be very close with both houses on the same lot. Plus with two houses there is the option of renting part of it or all of the property. You get more rental income from two smaller houses than one bigger house. (In this economy I am so happy I made this decision!)
I was now on the hunt for the right property. I missed out on a cute little house with a tri-plex behind it on Mountain Ave; it sold before I knew what I wanted:-) I got in a crazy bidding war on a house on Chiquita Ave that my son was not crazy about as the granny unit was more of a prison cell than a warm living area. I bid anyway and lost the bidding war. I was in tears. How could I have lost with a bid over a $130,000.00 above asking price???? This was 2007 not 1999!!!!
I was driving by the property a couple of weeks later to see if maybe something had happened to the deal and the house was back on the market. I then noticed that across the street someone had put up a Real Estate sign with the words "Coming Soon." I called my agent and said get me in there now!!!! Being the super agent he is he did.
The owners were living in the back house and the front house was rented to a nice couple with two small girls. The owners could not show the front house without a 24 hour notice but they were willing to show me the back house that afternoon. I looked at the back house and made an appointment to see the front house the next day.
So far I liked what I saw. Two very private houses with gorgeous old growth trees on a quarter acre! Plus two storage sheds and a massive driveway area. Oh, did I mention the front house had a white picket fence!!!!
My agent then came up with a brilliant strategy that evening. I should treat the property like a investment property even though I planned on living in it. When you buy a duplex or an apartment building you bid on the property BEFORE you see it. The offer on a investment property always reads contingent upon inspection.
I put in an offer that evening without even seeing the front house. (The front house was a classic 2 bedroom/ one bath bungalow; how different could it be from all the others built in the 1950's I have seen in my lifetime?) I could still back out of the offer if I did not like what I saw once I got into the front house.
However, if it did meet my needs I just saved myself the agony of getting in yet another bidding war over this house. There were about 5 other interested parties in the house across the street that would have bid on this house if they got the chance. I knew what my competition was; I had just wrestled with them a few weeks ago.
My agent's brilliant strategy got me the property I wanted and saved me at least a $150,000!
The only thing left to do was to sell a house in Palo Alto? How hard could that be....
What was I looking for that was so specific? I wanted to be in a neighborhood in Mountain View that is known as Shoreline West. I fell in love with the old school neighborhood feel and the eclectic house stock. You have old bungalows, new houses, apartment buildings. The thing that interested me most were all the homes that had income property behind the main house. They either had a granny unit, another house or in many cases a duplex or a tri-plex. I really liked the idea of having income property in a residential neighborhood. I decided I wanted a house with another house behind it or a duplex/tri plex. Shoreline West is a very small neighborhood. You have Shoreline and Escuela as the north and south boundaries. El Camino and Villa as the east and west boundaries. Not a big area to begin with and I was making it even smaller with my with specific needs.
I had originally wanted to be in the Old Mountain View area a block or two away from Castro Street. What I quickly found out was that was in my price range I might as well stay in my "Charming Cottage" in Palo Alto as I would not be getting much more house in Mountain View. Plus we decided that you can be too close to Castro Street. I did not want the nightmare of people parking in front of my house or the occasional peeing in my yard after a long night of drinking at the bars! Shoreline West was still within a 15 minute walk and felt like a completely different world.
It was nice to know exactly what you want; but it is hell trying to find it when you only have such a limited geographical area. I had originally started out my search looking for a 4 bedroom/ 2 bath house that I thought would allow my son and I to have both an office and a bedroom. I then liked the idea that we both could have private space and yet still be very close with both houses on the same lot. Plus with two houses there is the option of renting part of it or all of the property. You get more rental income from two smaller houses than one bigger house. (In this economy I am so happy I made this decision!)
I was now on the hunt for the right property. I missed out on a cute little house with a tri-plex behind it on Mountain Ave; it sold before I knew what I wanted:-) I got in a crazy bidding war on a house on Chiquita Ave that my son was not crazy about as the granny unit was more of a prison cell than a warm living area. I bid anyway and lost the bidding war. I was in tears. How could I have lost with a bid over a $130,000.00 above asking price???? This was 2007 not 1999!!!!
I was driving by the property a couple of weeks later to see if maybe something had happened to the deal and the house was back on the market. I then noticed that across the street someone had put up a Real Estate sign with the words "Coming Soon." I called my agent and said get me in there now!!!! Being the super agent he is he did.
The owners were living in the back house and the front house was rented to a nice couple with two small girls. The owners could not show the front house without a 24 hour notice but they were willing to show me the back house that afternoon. I looked at the back house and made an appointment to see the front house the next day.
So far I liked what I saw. Two very private houses with gorgeous old growth trees on a quarter acre! Plus two storage sheds and a massive driveway area. Oh, did I mention the front house had a white picket fence!!!!
My agent then came up with a brilliant strategy that evening. I should treat the property like a investment property even though I planned on living in it. When you buy a duplex or an apartment building you bid on the property BEFORE you see it. The offer on a investment property always reads contingent upon inspection.
I put in an offer that evening without even seeing the front house. (The front house was a classic 2 bedroom/ one bath bungalow; how different could it be from all the others built in the 1950's I have seen in my lifetime?) I could still back out of the offer if I did not like what I saw once I got into the front house.
However, if it did meet my needs I just saved myself the agony of getting in yet another bidding war over this house. There were about 5 other interested parties in the house across the street that would have bid on this house if they got the chance. I knew what my competition was; I had just wrestled with them a few weeks ago.
My agent's brilliant strategy got me the property I wanted and saved me at least a $150,000!
The only thing left to do was to sell a house in Palo Alto? How hard could that be....
Monday, March 23, 2009
I took out a Subprime Mortgage and lived to tell about it
I know that most of you wonder what kind of idiot takes out a subprime loan????
Well.... I was one of those idiots and I will tell you why.
In the spring of 2004 I laid myself off from Sun. It was a tough decision, as I had the most super awesome team in the world working for me and I was working for one of the greatest bosses in the world. However, Sun management was doing some things I felt were very dumb and that they were going to lead the company further down the path of irrelevance. In addition, one of my super awesome employee's came to me a few weeks earlier and said; "We are just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic around here. I want off before there are no more life boats." That got me thinking that she were probably right and I wanted off in a life boat as well!
I got a fairly generous severance package but I wanted to plan for the worst, just in case I did not find a job for a year or more. This is how the notorious subprime loan came into play.
Using my very rusty financial skills acquired in getting an MBA, I calculated that if I reduced my current mortgage payment using an interest only option with a nice teaser interest rate, I could make my severance from Sun and unemployment last about TWO YEARS. So I looked around for the best loan option before I would not be able to have a loan company call Sun to verify my employment. (There is this very interesting time period in a layoff where you are still technically employed but not actually working for the company.) I found a loan and signed the papers the day before I was no longer officially at Sun. I now had a SUBPRIME MORTGAGE!
Luckily, I found a job in less than six months at Cisco and I then spent the majority of my severance package on a new BMW. I had made a deal with my greatest boss at Sun that I would buy a new car if he laid me off, he found my collection of elderly BMW's to be annoying...
So what horrible things happened to me because of the subprime loan? Actually....nothing. After about two years the interest rate did increase back to the original rate of the loan I had bought the house at. This reduced the number of shoes I could purchase at Neiman's every month; but I could still make the monthly payments on the house. HOWEVER, current loans were at a better interest rate so I looked into refinancing.
Guess What??? I had not read the loan documents as carefully as I should have. I had to pay a $20,000.00 penalty if I wanted to refinance before the end of three years. This meant I had a lousy loan at a higher interest rate for the next year. The only other way out of the loan was to sell the house.
LESSON LEARNED: read all the sections before signing any loan; I don't know how I missed the pre-penalty clause!
I had already started to think that I wanted to leave Palo Alto and move to the downtown Mountain View area. Palo Alto property had started to lose it's appeal once I no longer had a kid attending public school there. Getting out of this subprime loan was great motivator for starting to look for another house.
Guess What? I found a great property in Mountain View and I sold my house in Palo Alto.
I did have to call my mortgage company and tell them to read the contract... I did not owe them a pre-penalty payment if I sold the house!
The saga of the house exchange is something I will share in another posting.... It is full of drama and lessons learned.
Well.... I was one of those idiots and I will tell you why.
In the spring of 2004 I laid myself off from Sun. It was a tough decision, as I had the most super awesome team in the world working for me and I was working for one of the greatest bosses in the world. However, Sun management was doing some things I felt were very dumb and that they were going to lead the company further down the path of irrelevance. In addition, one of my super awesome employee's came to me a few weeks earlier and said; "We are just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic around here. I want off before there are no more life boats." That got me thinking that she were probably right and I wanted off in a life boat as well!
I got a fairly generous severance package but I wanted to plan for the worst, just in case I did not find a job for a year or more. This is how the notorious subprime loan came into play.
Using my very rusty financial skills acquired in getting an MBA, I calculated that if I reduced my current mortgage payment using an interest only option with a nice teaser interest rate, I could make my severance from Sun and unemployment last about TWO YEARS. So I looked around for the best loan option before I would not be able to have a loan company call Sun to verify my employment. (There is this very interesting time period in a layoff where you are still technically employed but not actually working for the company.) I found a loan and signed the papers the day before I was no longer officially at Sun. I now had a SUBPRIME MORTGAGE!
Luckily, I found a job in less than six months at Cisco and I then spent the majority of my severance package on a new BMW. I had made a deal with my greatest boss at Sun that I would buy a new car if he laid me off, he found my collection of elderly BMW's to be annoying...
So what horrible things happened to me because of the subprime loan? Actually....nothing. After about two years the interest rate did increase back to the original rate of the loan I had bought the house at. This reduced the number of shoes I could purchase at Neiman's every month; but I could still make the monthly payments on the house. HOWEVER, current loans were at a better interest rate so I looked into refinancing.
Guess What??? I had not read the loan documents as carefully as I should have. I had to pay a $20,000.00 penalty if I wanted to refinance before the end of three years. This meant I had a lousy loan at a higher interest rate for the next year. The only other way out of the loan was to sell the house.
LESSON LEARNED: read all the sections before signing any loan; I don't know how I missed the pre-penalty clause!
I had already started to think that I wanted to leave Palo Alto and move to the downtown Mountain View area. Palo Alto property had started to lose it's appeal once I no longer had a kid attending public school there. Getting out of this subprime loan was great motivator for starting to look for another house.
Guess What? I found a great property in Mountain View and I sold my house in Palo Alto.
I did have to call my mortgage company and tell them to read the contract... I did not owe them a pre-penalty payment if I sold the house!
The saga of the house exchange is something I will share in another posting.... It is full of drama and lessons learned.
Sunday, March 22, 2009
The Second Real Estate Course
I am taking a different approach to the second course than the first real estate course. With the first one; I summoned up all that I had learned from all the courses I have taken over a lifetime.... I just buckled down and got started. Which lead to me finishing the material in less than four days and having to wait two weeks to take the test.
This time I am going old school... I am basically waiting until four days before I can take the test to finish the course.
The first course was the "Principles of Real Estate" the second is the "Practices of Real Estate." I actually learned some interesting facts about real estate law in CA from the first course. Real estate trivia; CA is a community property state as a hold out from Spanish laws. Another interesting fact; sexual orientation is not protected in the anti-discrimination laws in CA, but sex, age, religion, race and handicap status are.
I have finished the first three chapters of the Practices of Real Estate and it emphasizes how to be a real estate agent, where as Principles of Real Estate was very factual about laws and terminology. The second course has made me realize how much of what I have been doing for past 20 years in marketing, sales and business development is the core of what makes a real estate agent successful....
You need to know your product, promote your product, highlight the benefits of your product and most importantly find the right product for your customer.
Wow! this is going to be so much fun to work with a product you can actually see and compare to the competition! I can replace the line; "we will have that feature in the next release" with something like "Just replace the carpet and you will have hardwood floors" Or lines like; "I know the competition has more market share but we are gaining on them" With things like; " Yes, you can have a bigger house in Gilroy than Mountain View but you will have to drive to an hour longer to work." So factual and straight forward, yet with still such great opportunities to spin product benefits. I can use classic real estate phrases such as; "Charming Cottage" which really means; a house so small that only you and a small cat will be comfortable living there. And one of my all time favorites....
"Up and coming neighborhood" which just means; we had a slight reduction in the crime and murder rate in this area last year!!!!
This time I am going old school... I am basically waiting until four days before I can take the test to finish the course.
The first course was the "Principles of Real Estate" the second is the "Practices of Real Estate." I actually learned some interesting facts about real estate law in CA from the first course. Real estate trivia; CA is a community property state as a hold out from Spanish laws. Another interesting fact; sexual orientation is not protected in the anti-discrimination laws in CA, but sex, age, religion, race and handicap status are.
I have finished the first three chapters of the Practices of Real Estate and it emphasizes how to be a real estate agent, where as Principles of Real Estate was very factual about laws and terminology. The second course has made me realize how much of what I have been doing for past 20 years in marketing, sales and business development is the core of what makes a real estate agent successful....
You need to know your product, promote your product, highlight the benefits of your product and most importantly find the right product for your customer.
Wow! this is going to be so much fun to work with a product you can actually see and compare to the competition! I can replace the line; "we will have that feature in the next release" with something like "Just replace the carpet and you will have hardwood floors" Or lines like; "I know the competition has more market share but we are gaining on them" With things like; " Yes, you can have a bigger house in Gilroy than Mountain View but you will have to drive to an hour longer to work." So factual and straight forward, yet with still such great opportunities to spin product benefits. I can use classic real estate phrases such as; "Charming Cottage" which really means; a house so small that only you and a small cat will be comfortable living there. And one of my all time favorites....
"Up and coming neighborhood" which just means; we had a slight reduction in the crime and murder rate in this area last year!!!!
Sunday, March 8, 2009
I passed my First Real Estate Course!
I have been stressed out about taking the tests to pass the three required courses for my real estate license. There is a great deal of terminology to remember and I want to do the coursework as quickly as I can. For whatever reason, you are not allowed to do the three required real estate courses in less than 2 1/2 weeks per course. It only took me about four days to get through the material in the first course, but I had to wait almost two more weeks to take the exam. I have been busy redoing the practice tests and trying to memorize more terms to get ready for the exam.
After redoing the tests a couple of times, I then read the instructions for the exam. It is an open book test and I only need to get 60% right to pass the course! I am happy to say that I was able to answer the 100 questions in about 2 hours ( you are allowed 3 hours) and I got 82 questions right. You would think that with an open book test you should get a 100% right but there were a few questions I really had no idea how to answer.
I have bought and sold several houses in my life and I wish that I had taken the opportunity to learn more about the real estate transaction process before I bought and sold my properties. I also wish that I had better understood the legal and moral obligations to me of my real estate agent before I was in the middle of the buying or selling process. I have been extremely lucky in that I have had very good experiences with the real estate agents I have worked with. But I have had friends that have not been so lucky.
My first real estate tip is to get acquainted with the process of buying or selling before going through the actual transaction. Buying or selling real estate is extremely emotional; better to learn about how to buy or sell real estate before signing any contracts.
Got to run, I need to get to studying for the Second Real Estate course.
After redoing the tests a couple of times, I then read the instructions for the exam. It is an open book test and I only need to get 60% right to pass the course! I am happy to say that I was able to answer the 100 questions in about 2 hours ( you are allowed 3 hours) and I got 82 questions right. You would think that with an open book test you should get a 100% right but there were a few questions I really had no idea how to answer.
I have bought and sold several houses in my life and I wish that I had taken the opportunity to learn more about the real estate transaction process before I bought and sold my properties. I also wish that I had better understood the legal and moral obligations to me of my real estate agent before I was in the middle of the buying or selling process. I have been extremely lucky in that I have had very good experiences with the real estate agents I have worked with. But I have had friends that have not been so lucky.
My first real estate tip is to get acquainted with the process of buying or selling before going through the actual transaction. Buying or selling real estate is extremely emotional; better to learn about how to buy or sell real estate before signing any contracts.
Got to run, I need to get to studying for the Second Real Estate course.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)