The High Road: Best and final offer is illusory

There is normally no magic involved in choosing a best and final offer. (Flickr photo by Emz.watson)

We are told early in the week that the listing broker already has two offers in hand.  All other offers are due by Friday at 5 p.m., she says.

Fair enough, but then she adds that best and final offers have a deadline of the following Monday at 5 p.m.

A double-deadline in advance is strange, indeed.  What usually happens is that a listing agent has several offers in hand, doesn’t see a clear winner and only then, in concert with the seller, asks for best and final offers.

That’s the typical procedure.

The High Road: I broke every smart broker’s rule

(Flickr photo by litherland)

I have no one to blame but myself after I took on a new buyer.

Cindy is an acquaintance who e-mailed me one Friday saying that she was toying with the idea of moving out of her nearly $4,000-a-month rental to purchase an apartment on the Upper West Side.  Could we chat sometime? she asked.

I spent a couple of hours with her the next day explaining the process to someone who had lived overseas for decades and, like any first-time buyer in Manhattan, knew little about co-ops and condos, let alone what she needed to do to buy one.

It was a good conversation, in the course of which I went on at some length about steps that Cindy hsf to take to obtain a mortgage, retain an attorney and make an offer before going to contract.

She indicated as we talked that there was some urgency to get moving because

The High Road: Unfunny comedy of errors

We arrive at the Upper East Side building around 3:30 p.m., 10 or 15 minutes early for our showing appointment, and the concierge calls up to the agent.

He descends soon thereafter, and the first words out of his mouth are that we were expected 15 minutes earlier.  The buyers I am representing and I introduce ourselves. The broker — call him “Sam” — does not.

I note that we changed the appointment from 3:15 to 3:45 in a series of e-mails trying to fix a mutually convenient time and apologize for any misunderstanding.

“Violet never told me,” he replies.

“Violet?” I wonder,

The High Road: Brokers should blame themselves

When brokers act like the two I recently encountered and no one complains, we who sell real estate should expect our collective reputation to persist at a low level.

So do I occasionally write about certain unnamed brokers under the “High Road” heading (as well other questionable behavior).

Blogging about the incidents always has been enough at least to stem my anger and mitigate my contempt of bad brokers, even though I undoubtedly delude myself into thinking that my writing could lead to improvement.

Consequently, I don’t report bad behavior to the ethics committee of the Real Estate Board of New York (REBNY) , the Department of State (which regulates licensees) or executives of the firms that supervise sales personnel.  As I draft this post, however, I have yet to make a decision whether writing about a recent situation is sufficient.

It begins with an e-mail from my client,

The High Road: ‘We have received several offers’

Take my offer, please! (Flickr photo by Kaptain Kobold)

Listing brokers and their clients like nothing more than receiving at least one offer.

Getting an acceptable offer can mean the end to open houses and diminishing anxieties about price, time on the market and that tired old kitchen.

Many brokers love to gin up the motivation of other prospective buyers by intoning the magic words, “We already have an offer.”  The hope, of course, is that providing the information will create buzz and generate even more offers, often better offers at or above the asking price with improved terms.

But

The High Road: Broker gets my goat

(Flickr photo by HeyThereSpaceman)

The apartment I went to check out took me 13 blocks from the previous open house on the Upper West Side and 14 from the next one on my itinerary a week ago Sunday.

When I arrived at the building, there was a note on its entrance to call the broker to see the place.  Common and fair enough.

Somebody already was on the phone, and I overheard him complaining to the individual on the other end

The High Road: Beware of pinball effect

One way to try and hoodwink buyers is for their broker representatives to provide a false reality check.

I hadn’t heard the phrase “pinballing” before reading in account of the tactic by Kenneth R. Harney in the Washington Post.  He defines it this way:

The High Road: Welcome mat is not for everyone

“Hey, Sophie, it’s Sunday.  Let’s check out some open houses.”

A proposal to warm a listing broker’s heart, but that’s not where the dialog ends among members of a family:

“But what shall we do with Kimberly, Jessica and Adam?  Mom and Dad have matinée tickets to see Newsies today.”

“Well, we’ll bring them along.  And, wait, doesn’t puppy need her meds at 1 again.  It would be bad to miss a dose, I think.”

“I’ll get her leash, and we’ll take care of that on the run.”

The High Road: Condo applications make no sense

Master bedroom of Tribeca condo with adjoining terrace.

One reason that buyers searching for an apartment in New York prefer condos to co-ops is that condos cannot reject applications.

While most co-ops put prospective buyers through hell to merit approval as financially sound and otherwise desirable enough to become shareholders, condo boards just don’t have that option.

All that condo boards of managers can, and hardly ever, do is exercise the right of first refusal.  They’d have to purchase the apartment themselves.

How then to explain the practice of

The High Road: Multiple listings by same broker

Studio apartment listed by a broker.

Scanning open house listings a couple of Sundays ago, I noticed that one broker had exclusively listed several co-ops in the same Upper West Side building simultaneously.

There were a 400-sf studio listed for $279,000 in December, a 250-sf studio listed for $299,000 in April, a 310-sf studio listed for $315,000 in March, another studio listed for $325,000 in May of 2011, a 385-sf studio listed in August at a price now reduced to $340,000, and a one-bedroom unit listed at $850,000 in April.

Another studio, same broker.

Each of two other brokers