Real estate expressions, those little quips, quotes and tips that are well worn but treasured wisdom.
Some expressions more popular than others and a few universal in any language. Like the one about the most important 
thing to remember in real estate. Right you are. You instantly hit the buzzer and gave the correct three location, location.
Here is one more for good measure.
Location.
Heard a new real estate expression, a tip the other day about 1, 2, 3 applied to life. It involves a property sale tip, some wisdom advice.
This real estate agent from the Charleston South Carolina area considering a move to Northern Maine.
As the couple and I walk in an unplowed long driveway with a boisterous young K-9 pup to a log home with a lot of acreage.
Here it comes, the real estate expression quote tip…
She said a mentor real estate broker always said you could do no better than being 1st born, the 2nd wife, the 3rd real estate agent. The last one might not be so easy as the three “L’s” answer to figure out quickly. Get why being last, the tail end “3rd real estate agent” can be your best position?
You could wonder why would you want to be anything but the first real estate agent to list, market, sell right?
Simple. Overpriced listings don’t sell. Period.
It can take a couple different brands of real estate listing agents for the owner to figure out it is not the sign on the lawn colors that cause a successful closing to happen.
But who wants to waste all those six month, year long listing contract time periods with the price stuck too high for a real estate sale to happen? Be polite, realize you can not help them when the price is wrong Bob. Too high and stuck there means you the real estate agent are going to list it, lose it. Spending a lot of marketing time and money. Then getting much flak as musical brokers happens. You can not help that seller who really does not want to sell or has unpossible property price expectations.
Along with the pricing quote, another real estate expression tip applies. (Drum roll please)
“The higher the real estate price, the thinner the buyers”. More people can afford the properties in a lower price bracket. But beware. Getting financing with the low or no down payment home buying mortgage loan programs means problems ahead.
Better not apply for that financing method to a Mr Fix It, Handyman Special or DIY wreck of a home if you hope to buy it to bring back to life.
Uh uh. Not going to happen. Those basket case places with heaving, ou can see lots of daylight foundations, stinky mold, long leaking roofs that have been that way way for too long. Secondary mortgage market bank lenders that package it up to sell the paper simply apply the ten foot pole market rejection stamp.
All those loose ends repairs the mortgage underwriting team wants addressed before closing so the bank lender can wrap it up and prepare the loan for resale to investors on the secondary market. Well, they make the dirty but nice animal house but priced seemingly dirt cheap home not so wolf whistle pretty in the final anaylsis.
Still another well known real estate quote expression truism involves putting on your ruby red slippers.
Judy Garland kept it simple and said it best. There is “no place like home”. It took being far away and missing it to drive that point home from someone who knew first hand what the loss does to a person. Those unlucky folks sucked up in the twister with the farm animals and machinery swirling in circles. Then ending anywhere but on the farm in back in Kansas. Nice stockings on whoever the house you were riding in landed on.
Ben Franklin, the master of Poor Richard’s witty thrift print publication worked overtime cranking out frugal expressions for everything. The penny saved is a penny earned wisdom is short and sweet. That will get you mug printed on the $100 bill and leave your mark in economic history. Thanks for the real estate quote tip Ben. Not sure if it was you that warned about watching your pennies but not your dollars though. Fooling yourself about economy and frugality when penny pinching and avoiding expenditures that would make or save more money in the long run.
But back to Maine real estate expressions, tips from unknowns like this quote gem.
Sitting at a Maine real estate closing long conference room table yesterday, watching the home buyer initial here, sign this last line blank space in all the paperwork.
As she worked her way down through the paper stack, whens the end of the mortgage lending put you mark on all the forms to be recorded is done. The fine print that would take until next Tuesday to read read read. It all boils down to something pretty basic.
The legal clauses and boilerplate applied to every standard mortgage loan about the rules of home lending regulations can be summed up easy peasy.
“You pay you stay, you don’t you won’t.” Cut and dry simple.
Getting the “you gotta go because you did not pay” though can take a little time. Usually eats up billable hours and involves deputy sheriffs. Those wearing badges and sidearms serving and perfecting the eviction notice to leave the premises for the lack of payment.
Maine house foreclosures are not as easy as car repossessions where a tow or ramp truck can reel it in and head on down the highway back to the dealership. Real estate is fixed position and possession is nine tenths of the law… for a while at least.
Many of the real estate slogans, slugs or tip quote expressions come out of myths.
Real estate myths like the one about “property does not sell in Maine winter months”. Wrong. Life does not stop with the arrival of snow flakes. If the property is not listed for sale and stops showing up in living color round the clock coast to coast marketing. Then it gets passed over. It is left in the dark when the marketing plug is yanked out of the wall. When the property for sale suddenly is not not showing up on real estate radar for the pick me pick me. For a home buyer who is ready, willing and able and is not going to wait until spring flowers push up out of the unfrozen ground.
More tasty real estate quotes to chew on and think about from our blog buffet expression selection?
There are many real estate markets, all behave not quite the same. But some quote expressions are solid tips everyone can agree on.
“Your first offer is your best one”.
From experience, when a property first hits the real estate listing market, lots of wooing and cooing happens.
When an offer to buy comes in, it is awfully easy to think here we go. One of many that will coming your way when often that first offer should be taken very seriously. Looked at long and hard.
When a property sells quickly, because it is priced right and marketed full throttle, the seller can think “I sold it for too little, could have should have gotten more”.
In a year or two when other properties listed at the same time are still for sale at a bloated, over priced search bracket price, ask the same seller who sold long ago if they miss have their home on the market.
Worrying about if the heat goes out, whether the house renter is going to check in or pay at all this month.That wringing your hands and wide awake full of worry at night tossing, turning, sweating. Not how you want to waste your time. A sale is a sale and do the best you can but get it sold. Move on with your life. Time is money in real estate waiting around and your life on hold.
Real estate tried and tested tips to quote. Ready for another? “Buy the dog in a neighborhood of palaces, up to snuff homes. Not the other way around.”
The castle neighborhood will bring anything you do to the dirty but nice handyman special home up in value. If you pour your heart, sweat, tears and lots of hardware store receipts piling up in your pick up glove box into the house rehab projects. There is a tipping point on the ROI. Especially in rural Maine where the return on investment of time and money tips the scales quickly in small towns where values continue to stay low to the ground. Tied to the local economy and pay scale that is what keeps the cost of living frugal and never flush with cash to burn on home improvements, on anything else.
“Treat house renters like they own the place 30 days at a time and give them at least a day’s notice to show the 
place”.
If you don’t then you get a home not picked up and prepared for the showing like most real estate sellers would do. If the real estate agent praises the renter for taking care of the place, the results of house keeping subsequent showings improves in most cases. Attah boy works. Use sugar not vinegar applies to how you treat tenants. They are not farm ainmals but people with lives to work around just like you and I.
There is always the renter who never wants the property listing shown, that won’t answer the home phone or respond to texts, emails and notes on the door to please call you ASAP.
I hear you knocking but you can not come in types. But those bad renters and the good ones needed to keep the house afloat, to take over lawn mowing, heating, plowing out the driveway and keeping the lights on, the plumbing running during a real estate sale should have been weeded out during the search for a month to month tenant. The kind that won’t interfere with a Maine home sale but still help subsidize the expenses the property owner has whether the house is rented or not.
In my small Maine town of Houlton, you can not make money renting out a single family residential home.
The numbers just don’t work. But anything helps on chipping away on the housing expense the seller is on the hook for while listing and selling a house with a renter on board. Insurance companies want the place attended, heated and will cancel coverage on an empty home. Renter’s insurance policies are a little higher monthly premium but sure beats the cancellation notice when they drop you and then the bank with the mortgage starts foreclosure proceedings.
A fire insurance policy does not cover all the perils and can be pricey on an empty house where no one is home.
No one likes to insure an empty home although lots of lake cottage and camp places are but that is a different coverage approach than the Maine home owner policy provides. The renter can pick up the cost of mowing lawns, plowing driveways and if a good house keeper, can be an improvement over a messy seller or empty home where the cobwebs and dust take over.
Real estate expressions, valuable tip quotes surround the property listings we take on to sell to a new home buyer.
With land sales, the more acreage, the lower the price per acre unit. Again, tying in to the real estate expression or quote about “the higher the price, the thinner the buyers”. And more importantly, the first acre house lot costs you more to get into the real estate game. Just like one can of corn is cheaper than buying a case of the yellow kernels. Bulk, wholesale and less real estate buyers looking for hundreds of acres not just one or two are up in that thinner real estate buyer atmosphere.
You snooze, you lose is true across the board.
You miss all the shots you don’t take and in real estate buying, selling. Well, it boils down to the timing is right or wrong. And that’s why they made banks for bridge loans to get from “A” to “B” or why sellers owner finance a sale to be highly creative. To make the real estate sale happen.
Some property sales go smoother than others. We all have been through the bloody ones that test your knowledge and courage when buyers and sellers who don’t do this daily get discouraged. And even worse, start lashing out.
The real estate buyer with the approach “if it is not a steal, it is not a deal” is showing one way to exercise spending impulse control.
Wait for it. Be patient. It is great to buy low, sell high. That tip sounds nip and tuck easy and you hear it quoted a lot in conversations involving real estate. But it is easier done during a scripted slick west coast real estate show that is not quite a real world application.
Like crops planted from seed and slowly watched over with care. It is great to wait for a real estate market to improve. I grew up on a Maine farm and know the meaning of paience. There is much you can control and even more that you can not like the weather, market prices, getting good labor and watching your bottom line.
But sometimes, more often than not, it is do the best with the real estate market you have.
Salvage something and get off the fence waiting on the sidelines. Keep moving on with your life.
When you remember how cheap a house like this one could be bought twenty years ago, that gotta steal it or not wanting the owner to make a profit of any size can be short sighted. Why rent and even high interest rates on your home mortgage is better than rent receipts. You can always refinance later and when interest rates are high, the prices on homes go the other way to entice home sales.
News bulletin, This just in. Source have told us … and we quote…
“Lake shore, water front properties in Maine are rarely steals or cheap to buy because there is never enough to go around.”
Water front is in limited supply and always a good investment that increases in value. Real estate is always a good investment if done with lots of study, the guidance of an experience agent or broker. The best hedge against inflation is real estate and most folks that invested heavily in it are among the most wealthy because of it.
Hope you read a view you know and use as tips for yourself, friends and loved ones. Thanks for dropping by and reading this blog post on real estate expressions, valuable quotes, the tried and tested tip axioms.
