Connecticut
Where I Go For Breakfast in Bristol Connecticut
March 13th, 2008 Bristol, Connecticut No Comments »
I don’t go out for breakfast more than about once a week, but when I do, I always go to Friendly’s at the corner of Route 6 and 229.
Service is good, coffee is always good, food has a high percentage chance of being great.
What’s not to love?
I recently spiced things up by changing my order from the Bacon Super Sizzling Sunrise, to the the Sausage Super Sizzling Sunrise.
I’m wild and crazy like that. Anything could happen.
Real Estate Buyer Broker Agreements in Connecticut
March 11th, 2008 Connecticut, Deeper Thoughts No Comments »
“Hi I am new to Connecticut and I am looking to buy in the New Haven area. I saw you blog and I was wondering if you could give me some quick perspective. My wife and I have been in contact with two agents in the area and we have been shown a few properties by each. They are now looking for us to sign on with them such that they would be our exclusive buying agent. My understanding was that as a buyer I did not have to sign on with an agent, however they are each suggesting that that is standard practice. Can you give me some help in letting me know if this is normal?”
The short answer is … yes it is, it’s Connecticut Law.
The longer answer…
In Connecticut real estate agency law is quite defined when it comes to showing properties. Any agent can acting on behalf of the seller show any listing their brokerage has to a potential home buying customer. The fact that the agent is working for the seller is required to be disclosed to the customer.
So pretending for a minute you were buying in Bristol… 
I am a Prudential agent and can therefore show you any Prudential listing in Connecticut. But when I do show you property, I would get you to sign a disclosure form that I am in fact working for the seller. Basically I would owe you nothing beyond basic honesty and fairness, though I would be likely to be quietly milking you for information that would benefit the seller should you actually make an offer. I’d likely be drawing better attention to the good points of the home, and while not lying about the bad points… not exactly bringing them up.
What I could not do however is show you a RE/MAX, Coldwell Banker, Century 21 listing. Seriously.. it’s illegal.
In order to show you another brokerages listing, I would be required by Connecticut Law to have you sign for a Buyer Broker Agreement. The Buyer Broker Agreement is usually pretty straight forward. The buyer and the agent agree to work together for a certain time frame and sometimes in a certain geographic area. The buyer agrees to look for a home actively, and the agent agrees to work for the buyer.
So if we had a signed Buyer Broker Agreement together, even when I am showing you Prudential listings, I’m working for you and not the seller. Rather than trying to “sell” any one particular home, I’m just doing my darnedest to get you all the information that you could want (good and bad points) and trying to position you to be able to make the best offer you could on the home you do decide to write an offer on.
The Buyer Broker Agreement also covers the agents ass in terms of getting paid. I can go into all the ways agents can get screwed out of getting paid, but loosely summarized… showing homes without a Buyer Broker Agreement, or playing Wii Tennis… it pays the same.
The good news is that the Buyer Broker Agreement is not a high stress legal document to sign. It’s just the nuts and bolts real estate paperwork in Connecticut for when you go shopping for a home.
Loosely summarized the BBA says…
“Do you wanna have my help finding a home?”
“We agree to work together for _________ time.”
“We agree that I’ll be working for you and not the sellers, and I’ll tell you everything”
“We agree that if you guys buy a home using me, I can get paid”
The other good news is that in Connecticut, 99+% of the time the way the buyer agents are paid is through the co-broke, so we’re not even talking about an out of pocket expense for using a buyer agent.
Hope that helps!
HUGE Pro-Consumer Connecticut MLS News!
March 6th, 2008 Connecticut, Deeper Thoughts, Geekage and Blogging, Photography No Comments »
I’m doing back flips here! Direct from my email…
“Dear CTMLS Participants & Subscribers,
I am pleased to report that CTMLS has doubled the total number of photos allowed on MLXchange to twenty!
Many of you have asked for more than ten photos over the past year, so CTMLS purchased the extra space to allow twenty - which should meet just about everyone’s photo needs! With the launch of CTReal.com, the official search engine of both CTMLS and the Connecticut Association of REALTORS®, Inc. later this month, all twenty photos will be available to the public. Make the most of it - it’s FREE!
It’s one more benefit of the Statewide MLS… keep your eyes peeled for more news coming soon!”
BOOM! Twenty photos per listing. That is a massive change from just ten photos. This will completely alter the way photography will have to be done for listings. In one sense my workload just doubled, but on the other hand my work just got twice as important.
Agents simply cannot hope to squeak by on 5–6 photos any longer. Buyers will simply think you are hiding something from them. For smaller homes 20 photos is going to mean multiple photos from different angles on some rooms. You’re going to have to show everything.
And I mean everything.
The public website CTReal.com – unfortunately nothing to show but the “in development” placeholder as yet – could become the ultimate Connecticut real estate public search platform.
This is a serious kick in the face to Realtor.com et al. Why pay for enhanced listings etc if the public can go straight to the firehose and get it all direct from the MLS public site. If the public MLS site can gain traction with the public, it will ultimately deep six all the third party vendors depending on listing feeds etc.
Of course I’ve said all this before… check out Just Make The MLS Open To The Public And Be Done With It Please. written back in June 2007.
…The solution is painfully simple. The MLS systems simply need to be made fully public on a public “read only” level and an agent “read/write” basis.
Charge the public $20 for a years public membership and the MLS’s will make a ton of cash. It will kill off all the third party listing companies. It will destroy claims of hiding information. It will destroy all the lead selling pirates. Even the Department of Justice thinks that the MLS serves the public as a cost saving measure. It’s a rare benign monopoly, that’s why the DOJ sues NAR etc to get discount brokers fully enfranchised as MLS members…
It may not be exactly as I wrote (LOL I said charge $20 for it!), but the general thrust is the same. Let agents have read/write privileges and let the public have read only access. How much the public gets to see I don’t know as yet, but 99% of what they want to see is the price and the photos anyway.
Unquestionably this is good both for consumers and Connecticut Realtors. This goes a long way to creating an efficient 21st Century marketplace to buy and sell real estate.
Prudential Tech Champion: Town Profiles
February 11th, 2008 Connecticut, Prudential Tech Champion No Comments »
An occasional series where I pretend to earn my way out of the tech fees for the year by taking on the duties of being a Prudential Connecticut Realty Tech Champion… by helping the agents that do pay tech fees out a little.
Once you have a listing most agents leave a folder of the MLS printouts in the home for showings and open houses.
Personally I like a copy of the new 10–Photo MLS printout to help buyers remember the house better. The new version of the Client Details Sheet called RES Client Copy #2 has all the critical details and has a great page layout. It’s a great left brain + right brain combo punch.
Some agents like to add in the Seller Property Disclosures, some don’t. It’s a good idea to have at least some available in the folder for showings though. Lets remove any road blocks to people writing an offer on the spot.
However a potentially helpful addition to these packets is a profile of the town. Not everyone is going to be from the area and know it well – specially if they are relocation buyers.
“What’s the town like?” can be a crippling concern.
Saving the day – the well written town profiles on the Prudential agent website. Easy to find, easy to print, but a curious lost easter egg of goodness. It’s a nice compliment to the photos and house details MLS print outs.
Step 1: Log into My Virtual Office (This is only accessible to Connecticut Prudential Realty agents)
Step 2: On the Left Sidebar scroll down to “Community Profiles” in the Client Services section.
Step 3: In the pop up window, select the town you need. Then click on the “View Community Profile” button.
Step 4: By now you should be seeing the town profile for the town you want. To print click on “Print This Page” at the top of the left sidebar.
Step 5: What you should see now is just the town profile stripped of all the extra webpage information and links. If all you need is a single copy, just click on the “Send To Printer” link on the top right of the page.
Step 6: If you need multiple copies – right click anywhere on the page, from the menu that opens select “Print” and you can select the printer to use and the number of copies before clicking on “Print”.
Boom! You’re done. Told ya it was easy.
Real Estate Market Report For Connecticut September 2007
September 16th, 2007 Connecticut, Deeper Thoughts 2 Comments »
Lots and lots of crappy houses for sale, not many good ones.
Watch for stuff coming onto the market, see it quickly, make an offer asap if it’s decent.
Good Vibes - Eating Pizza And Suddenly Getting Connecticut
August 10th, 2007 Connecticut, Family Life, Good Vibes 2 Comments »
If you want to get pizza in Bristol, the best place to get it is in Forestville at The Oasis.
The Clams Casino…
That’s right people, I’m shooting with one hand. Yeah I thought broccoli was the dumbest pizza topping in the world until…
OMG I shouldn’t be eating this.
OMG I can’t stop eating it.
Anyway rewind a bit. I’m picking up the pizzas and the medium clams casino and the small cheese (with half pineapple because one kids wants pineapple and the other one doesn’t) comes to $19.82.
“1982. That’s when I moved to Connecticut from New York”, says the owner as he rings it up.
We get to chit chatting for a second about living in Connecticut and how we both have ended up here. I’m asked all the time about New Zealand and coming to America that I’m just using my prepped lines I’ve developed from a thousand conversations before this one.
“Connecticut is a hard State to leave” he says.
Dang I’ve never been tossed that one before. I got no script, so I wing it.
“Well it has a lot of the good of America and not so much of the bad”.
I’m walking to the car and what I said just hits me like a snow plow.
Well that’s it exactly isn’t it.
Not What We Really Mean By Price Reduction As A Strategy
August 1st, 2007 Connecticut, Deeper Thoughts, Humor 1 Comment »
I spotted a listing at $689,000 today. Pulling up the Property History Archive I discovered…
<—Start
<—New Agent
So it’s been on the market 16.5 months ~ 500 days, and reduced $10,000 over that time.
$20 a day reduction while the market has fallen faster than that = 
Adoption From Vietnam
August 1st, 2007 Connecticut, Family Life 4 Comments »
I stumbled onto another Bristol Connecticut blog via my Google Alerts.
Tim and Meredith seem like pretty normal peeps, except for the whole effort to adopt a baby from Vietnam and blogging about it. From their website they appear to be pulling out at least half the stops to have a pretty decent fundraiser on August 25th at Nuchies in the center of Forestville.
Also its an impressive amount of work with Vietnam and adoption linkage and following the timeline of all the hoops they have to jump though.
I wish them the warmest luck… and I dare say I’ll show up to the partay.
There’s How Many Horses In Connecticut?
July 28th, 2007 Connecticut No Comments »
Apparently 43,000 horses in Connecticut. And just 3,500,000 people in Connecticut.
3,500,000 divided by 43,000 = about 81 people per 1 horse.
You’re kidding me.
Where are they all hidden?!?
Hang on. Do these horses have a realtor?
Hmmmm….
A Moment of Silence
July 27th, 2007 Connecticut, Deeper Thoughts, Family Life 12 Comments »
As places go to live, Connecticut is pretty nice.
…
1 Woman and her daughters aged 11 and 17.
Raped and killed in their own home.
The 11 year old had been tied to her bed.
The hope is she was dead before the arson.
If you want to read the backstory, this is a decent summary.
I think the whole State is in a little bit of shock.
I’m not much of a one for vengeance, I’m not even angry as I write this, more disappointed than anything I think. However in this case I’m not sure these guys are salvageable enough to risk them ever being out in public again.
The death penalty is a blunt instrument. Problematic at best. I know there have been many cases of Death Row inmates being proved innocent.
I just don’t think talk is an effective means of communication with these guys.
And as places go to live, Connecticut is pretty nice.
