The Successful Landlord Blog

Ok, so I don’t mean to seem like I’m once again following Clifford’s lead over at ChangingMyDirection.com but I swear I had this written before I read his post about toilets. Anyway…

Consider this senario: You’re a real estate agent showing a rental house and you are told that the water supply is turned off. If you or your client absolutely MUST use the toilet, wouldn’t you at least TRY to remedy the situation by finding some water to manually flush the toilet? Maybe from a neighbor? Or at least apologize for the situation?

Then, when I called for feedback on the showing, the situation was not even mentioned. Really nice!

Recently I wrote a small bit of code for some Realtor clients to add to their web sites. It’s designed to be a “drop-in” module for any web page they might want to put it on. Basically it uses the Zillow.com API to give the web site user an estimate of what their home is worth according to Zillow.

It seems that a few real estate companies are using this tool now for their web sites to give their potential customers the information they’re looking for. What’s interesting to me is that the various local Realtor boards feel the need to keep a strangle hold on the data that their members generate in the normal course of business every day.

For instance, the board will instruct their member Realtors that they can print, as in a newspaper, a Multiple Listing Service (MLS) number but they can not print the address of the property at the same time. Likewise, it seems that displaying a list of MLS numbers on a Realtor’s web site is OK but printing the property address right next to it is not OK.

Seems to me that the local Realtor boards are fighting a losing battle.

So, recently I was asked to write a “drop in” piece of code for some Realtor clients to add to their web sites. It’s designed so that they can insert it into any web page they might want to allow their web site users to find out what their home is worth. Basically it uses the Zillow.com API to give the web site user this information according to Zillow.

It seems that a few real estate companies are using this tool now for their web sites to give their potential customers the information they’re looking for. What’s interesting to me is that the various local Realtor boards feel the need to keep a tight grip on the data that their member Realtors generate in the daily course of business.

For instance, the board will instruct their member Realtors that they are allowed to print, as in a newspaper, an MLS number but they are not allowed to display the address of the property at the same time. Likewise, it seems that displaying a list of MLS numbers on a Realtor’s web site is OK but printing the property address right next to it is not OK.

Seems to me that the local Realtor boards are fighting a losing battle.

I recently read an article by a BankRate.com columnist about how flipping houses is not always a bad thing. The author goes into the fraud aspect of flipping and how it can hurt the first-time home buyer.

As an investor, I know that when we were looking for properties to invest in we could spot a “flipped” house down the street. Upon closer inspection, without fail, we would have had to do repair work on the house so that it would stand up to the abuse that most tenants inflict on a rental property.

Needless to say, we never bought one of these houses and I’m glad we didn’t. Thankfully most of our rentals were built in a time when “remodelling” was just not that common I guess.

Houses in Florida that were built in the 60s and 70s were built pretty solidly. There’s no drywall as we know it. Back then they used real “sheet rock.” The kind of wall board that has actual concrete in it. If you wanted to “kick” a hole in the wall, you’d need tools or at least a good pair of steel toe boots.