Verbal offers serve one purpose; to "save time" for "professionals" who get paid well to not cut corners.

There's only one way to avoid misunderstanding when negotiating to buy or sell a home. That is to have the complete details in front of you.

Transcript

Over 27 years in the business, I've literally been involved in hundreds of negotiations and they often unfold the same way.

The buyer's agent writes an offer and brings it to the seller's agent who presents it to the seller, who writes a counter-offer and returns that to the buyer's agent.

And the buyer wants to try another number, and rather than write a new offer, their agent suggests that "well, I'll just call the seller's agent, and I'll discuss it with them."

And usually, they're looking for a concession in the range of a couple of thousand dollars to bring the deal together. But they haven't taken the time to actually write another offer, and my response to them is always the same. I'd be happy to present that to my seller if you would bring me another offer.

And oftentimes that buyer's agent calls back after a half an hour or an hour and says "it's okay, my buyer decided to accept the counter-offer." And my perception of what's happened here is that somebody just doesn't want to take the time to write another offer, and they convince the buyer to close on that counter.

If you're involved in a negotiation, do not fall for the verbal "let's discuss this" position. Insist that your proposal be put on paper, or on an electronic document as the case may be today.

As the old saying goes, a verbal offer is not worth the paper that it's written on. And that's why the Real Estate Act, one of the definitions of an offer is that it is made in writing.

So insist that your agent put that offer in writing so that you know that it's being presented and considered by the seller.

Good luck.

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I'm upping my Facebook and Instagram game. Follow me to receive updates on the Saskatoon real estate market and insights I've gained managing thousands of real estate transactions.

TeamFisher.com hosted nearly a quarter of a million user sessions and displayed more than 1.2 million pages to our visitors in 2019. If you have a Saskatoon area home you'd like to sell, we know how to get people looking at your home. Reach out to me directly to engage our team and learn about our processes.

I’m always happy to answer your Saskatoon real estate questions.  Reach out by voice or text at 306-241-6676 or email me at norm at teamfisher.com

Norm Fisher

Royal LePage Vidorra

The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) announced mortgage default insurance rule changes this week that will impact home buyers using their service in three significant ways.

This two-minute video provides an overview of how the new rules, effective July 1, 2020, apply. 

Transcript

When you purchase a primary residence in Canada with a down payment of less than 20%, you're required to purchase mortgage default insurance through one of three Canadian providers that offer service in Canada, CMHC being the most prominent of those.

This week, CMHC announced some changes that are coming July 1 to their program, and I had an opportunity to talk with Tyler Hildebrand at oneSt. Mortgage yesterday, and he's brought me up to speed on those changes.

The most significant of the three is the change to the debt-service ratio. That is the percentage of your income that the lender will allow you to spend on mortgage service, property taxes, and heating. Prior to July 1, CMHC's limit is 39% of your gross income. That's gonna drop to 32%. That's gonna affect your buying power by roughly 10%. So a $400,000 house pre-July 1, 360 afterward.

The second change that's also fairly significant is at least one buyer on the application, the mortgage application has to have a credit score of 680 or higher. A credit score is a number that a credit bureau puts together based on your past performance in repaying your debt, and perhaps the amount of debt that you're carrying now. You're definitely gonna wanna revisit your mortgage broker and find out if your preapproval is still good because this is gonna affect a lot of people.

Finally, they're eliminating the ability to borrow any portion of your down payment. You previously could put some portion of your down payment on a secondary line of credit, and you can no longer do that with a CMHC-approved loan after July 1.

There are still two other mortgage insurance providers in Canada; no details on whether or not they'll follow suit. But as for CMHC, effective July 1, those are the new rules.

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I'm upping my Facebook and Instagram game. Follow me to receive updates on the Saskatoon real estate market and insights I've gained managing thousands of real estate transactions.

TeamFisher.com hosted nearly a quarter of a million user sessions and displayed more than 1.2 million pages to our visitors in 2019. If you have a Saskatoon area home you'd like to sell, we know how to get people looking at your home. Reach out to me directly to engage our team and learn about our processes.

I’m always happy to answer your Saskatoon real estate questions.  Reach out by voice or text at 306-241-6676 or email me at norm at teamfisher.com

Norm Fisher

Royal LePage Vidorra

The top challenge for Saskatoon home sellers...

...is getting buyers through the front door.

Pre-internet times, buyers often inspected dozens of homes before choosing one.

By 2019, that number had fallen to 10 (on average).

Post-COVID?

Far fewer.

There's no solid statistical data available yet but everyone in this business can see it.

Buyers are doing their homework to shorten the viewing list.

And they're ruthless.

Sellers.

1) Prepare your home well. Fix what's broken. Freshen what's looking a bit tired or ugly.

2) Up your presentation game. Your home must show well online or it won't make the view list. Great photos and 3D video tours are a must.

3) Promote that home to get it in front of buyers many times. It pays to be persistent and obvious.

4) Price the home well. You don't have to be cheap but this isn't a good time to be trying to set new records. If you're priced ten percent above recent sales you won't be getting many visits.

Transcript

I've been very interested in following how those who are buying Saskatoon homes are responding to the whole COVID-19 crisis.

So at the end of last month, there were 213 homes that had traded hands, and I reached out to every seller's agent that was involved in those 213 transactions. I heard back from 155 of them, and my question was, "Had they done a transaction during the month of April in which a buyer had written an offer and removed conditions without ever seeing the house?"

And in 155 of 155 responses, the answer was no.

In every instance the buyers that bought did a physical inspection of the house at some point prior to removal of conditions. Which totally makes sense to me, right? These are massive financial commitments that can have implications for a long period of time. You stay in a house for seven, eight, nine, 10 years, you wanna make sure that you're making the right decision.

So it seems obvious to me that buyers would want to get in and look before they make that kind of commitment.

But the other thing that was very clear to me is that buyers are looking at far fewer homes than they used to.

Before the internet was a thing, people would look at 25 to 30 homes, and when the internet became a thing that kind of fell under 10. And it looks to me now that it's more like under five.

So that means that buyers are doing a lot more qualifying of properties online, and they're eliminating properties online, choosing not to see them before they actually go and do that physical viewing.

So my advice today is for home sellers, you need to be keenly aware of how buyers are shopping, and your presentation piece needs to be very well done.

So good staging, good photos, nice 3D tours or videos that give buyers some real insight into what your home has to offer before they come out to see it.

Those are the kind of things that are gonna encourage a buyer ultimately to come and see your home, and hopefully make an offer on it.

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I'm upping my Facebook and Instagram game. Follow me to receive updates on the Saskatoon real estate market and insights I've gained managing thousands of real estate transactions.

TeamFisher.com hosted nearly a quarter of a million user sessions and displayed more than 1.2 million pages to our visitors in 2019. If you have a Saskatoon area home you'd like to sell, we know how to get people looking at your home. Reach out to me directly to engage our team and learn about our processes.

I’m always happy to answer your Saskatoon real estate questions.  Reach out by voice or text at 306-241-6676 or email me at norm at teamfisher.com

Norm Fisher

Royal LePage Vidorra

Transcript

________________________________

I'm upping my Facebook and Instagram game. Follow me to receive updates on the Saskatoon real estate market and insights I've gained managing thousands of real estate transactions.

TeamFisher.com hosted nearly a quarter of a million user sessions and displayed more than 1.2 million pages to our visitors in 2019. If you have a Saskatoon area home you'd like to sell, we know how to get people looking at your home. Reach out to me directly to engage our team and learn about our processes.

I’m always happy to answer your Saskatoon real estate questions.  Reach out by voice or text at 306-241-6676 or email me at norm at teamfisher.com

Norm Fisher

Royal LePage Vidorra

We're all focused on reducing our exposure to Coronavirus. Businesses are busy figuring out ways to help customers through this challenge.

I've received statements from Royal LePage, my business landlord, my bank and others. All have suggested methods to interact with them to get our work done with less risk. I appreciate that.

Even my gym has adopted protocols to reduce the risk for those who chose to get fit there. It starts with the heavy use of hand sanitizers when entering the gym. A rigorous equipment clean up routine at the end of each workout follows. I'm impressed. If I'm going to be around other people it's nice to know that health and cleanliness are a priority.

I'm upping my Facebook and Instagram game. Follow me to receive updates on the Saskatoon real estate market and insights I've gained managing thousands of real estate transactions.

TeamFisher.com hosted nearly a quarter of a million user sessions and displayed more than 1.2 million pages to our visitors in 2019. If you have a Saskatoon area home you'd like to sell, we know how to get people looking at your home. Reach out to me directly to engage our team and learn about our processes.

I’m always happy to answer your Saskatoon real estate questions.  Reach out by voice or text at 306-241-6676 or email me at norm at teamfisher.com

Norm Fisher

Royal LePage Vidorra

Sometimes when you're marketing a home for sale, you'll encounter aggressive buyers who time pressure you to make a quick decision by putting a very short fuse on their offer.

While every offer should be taken seriously, due consideration should be given to the details. For most sellers, 90 minutes isn't ample time to feel comfortable moving forward.

This video offers a few ideas that you may find helpful as the market heats up and buyers try to put the pressure on you.

Transcript

Someone on our team had an interesting experience the other day.

They had booked a showing for a property for 6 p.m., and when they made that appointment, they were told that there were a couple of other showings that were going to occur there between 4 and 5 p.m., and by the time they arrived for their 6 p.m. showing, they'd received a text message saying that the property had been conditionally sold.

And, as it was, you know, one of the buyers that came through earlier wrote an offer very quickly, left it open for 90 minutes for the seller's acceptance, and the seller jumped on it and accepted it without taking the time to see what else may have transpired from the other showings that were occurring subsequently. And that's their decision to do so, that's fair, but as you begin to think about marketing your home and as the market continues to heat up, supply is falling, demand is increasing, you may want to give some thought as to how you can protect yourself from that type of bully tactic, 'cause that's what it is, right?

This buyer is pushing ahead, they know you have a hot commodity and they wanna wrap it up before anyone else does, and that's totally fair, but it's also fair for you as the seller to want to explore as many opportunities as you can. And I said the other day in a recent video that you should take every offer seriously, particularly your first offer and those that come early on, but it's reasonable for you to expect a reasonable amount of time to view and consider offers as well.

So, three things that you might consider doing as you roll into this season.

Number one, if you have a very hot property that you feel has been priced well and prepared well and it's in a price range and an area where demand is high and you know that there's going to be multiple buyers for that property, you may consider setting a date and time for the presentation of offers. So under that scenario, you would enter into a written agreement with your agent to hold offers until a certain date and time with the hope of having more than one to consider at one time and creating a competitive bidding situation.

Another tactic that's a little less aggressive is you could simply state in your listing that you won't consider offers that are open for less than 24 hours so that you and whoever else may be on the title of that property have an opportunity to sit down and discuss your options when an offer's placed in front of you.

And finally, thirdly, another tactic that we often use for properties that we feel are going to draw significant attention is we may market them exclusively for a period of time, and generally what we do there is we enter into an exclusive listing agreement with a seller that allows us the opportunity to begin to pre-promote that property before the actual MLS listing takes effect days or a week later.

During that period of time, we typically wouldn't allow any showings, but it would give us some time to spread the word that your property's coming, and in an ideal situation with an ideal type of property, we might have a number of showings scheduled throughout that first day of showings, and with a, you know, offers must be left unopened for 24-hour direction, an opportunity for you to really explore the full extent of the market and the opportunities that exist for you there.

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I'm upping my Facebook and Instagram game. Follow me to receive updates on the Saskatoon real estate market and insights I've gained managing thousands of real estate transactions.

TeamFisher.com hosted nearly a quarter of a million user sessions and displayed more than 1.2 million pages to our visitors in 2019. If you have a Saskatoon area home you'd like to sell, we know how to get people looking at your home. Reach out to me directly to engage our team and learn about our processes.

I’m always happy to answer your Saskatoon real estate questions.  Reach out by voice or text at 306-241-6676 or email me at norm at teamfisher.com

Norm Fisher

Royal LePage Vidorra

Some basic staging and professional photos go a long way in successfully marketing a home.

Buyers have a multitude of choices today and they qualify each one online. They're busy and eager to eliminate viewing homes that appear to be a waste of time. Nobody crosses the threshold of your front door before they've viewed you home online.

Consider that the first showing and plan to impress long before the buyer ever arrives at your home.

Transcript

The real estate business has changed a lot since I started in 1993.

At that time, a home buyer would come into the office, tell me what it was they were looking for, and I'd pick 10 or 12 homes from the multiple listing service and take them out on a tour. Today, they come to the office and tell us what they'd like to see.

And look, the average person is short on time. You know that. I mean, have you ever argued that there's too much time in the day?

So when a buyer is looking through hundreds of listings online, their primary objective is to eliminate. And they do that ruthlessly.

So if you're gonna get a showing on your home, your home needs to stand out from the hundreds of others that are there.

Look, if McDonald's can hire a burger designer and a professional photographer to create an ad for a Big Mac, a $3 burger, surely, we can do the same thing to market your home for sale.

If you don't have that Better Homes and Gardens sense, you need a professional decorator to help you put that together so that it looks well. And professional photos are an absolute must. I mean, don't get me started. If I see another beautiful home photographed with an iPhone, I might flip my lid.

I mean, you need these services and that's why our seller process includes them.

If you're talking to a real estate agent and they don't offer it and they're too tight to pay for it, you should look for someone else for sure.

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I'm upping my Facebook and Instagram game. Follow me to receive updates on the Saskatoon real estate market and insights I've gained managing thousands of real estate transactions.

TeamFisher.com hosted nearly a quarter of a million user sessions and displayed more than 1.2 million pages to our visitors in 2019. If you have a Saskatoon area home you'd like to sell, we know how to get people looking at your home. Reach out to me directly to engage our team and learn about our processes.

I’m always happy to answer your Saskatoon real estate questions.  Reach out by voice or text at 306-241-6676 or email me at norm at teamfisher.com

Norm Fisher

Royal LePage Vidorra

In a recent video, I talked about "preparation" as a foundational cornerstone to begin your home selling effort.

But, where do you start?

Here are the first four things that should be tackled before you list your home for sale.

Transcript

In a recent video, I talked to you about four things that you have control over as a home seller.

Those items were the amount of preparation that you put into getting the home ready for sale, how that home is presented to the public, how it's promoted, and, finally, how it's priced.

I want to dig a little bit deeper into the first item on that list because it really is kind of a foundational point and quite important.

When a home buyer comes to look at your property, we want to make it as easy for them as possible to see themselves in that home, and they do tend to see themselves living there as it's presented now. So if the place is a chaotic mess, it sends bad energy to them that makes them wanna run out of there, and I've seen it happen a hundred times.

So four things that you should focus on in your preparation effort.

Number one, declutter. Put some shit away. Most sellers have way too much stuff in their home. You want to be thinking show home, minimalist. The less clutter, the better. The opposite of chaos is order, and if you can create an orderly environment, people will want to be there.

Secondly, depersonalize. Take the kid's awards off the walls and the family photos. Pack them up. Put them into a box. Get them ready for your move. Those things can be very distracting. It's funny, you see people reading college degrees on the walls and looking at family photos. Put that stuff away so that the focus can be entirely on your house.

Number three, deep clean. This is the time to get that property as spiffy as you possibly can because, frankly, people are disgusted by other people's dirt.

And finally, fix stuff. There are a hundred little things in most houses that need to be repaired, and now's the time to do it. Think about this. If you don't want to do it, what makes you think that a buyer wants to buy those problems? Fix 'em up.

Look, I get it, we're all busy, and some people have got just too much on the go to get this stuff done.

That's where you can turn to a real estate professional for some help. We've got teams that we can deploy to your house to get that work done.

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I'm upping my Facebook and Instagram game. Follow me to receive updates on the Saskatoon real estate market and insights I've gained managing thousands of real estate transactions.

TeamFisher.com hosted nearly a quarter of a million user sessions and displayed more than 1.2 million pages to our visitors in 2019. If you have a Saskatoon area home you'd like to sell, we know how to get people looking at your home. Reach out to me directly to engage our team and learn about our processes.

I’m always happy to answer your Saskatoon real estate questions.  Reach out by voice or text at 306-241-6676 or email me at norm at teamfisher.com

Norm Fisher

Royal LePage Vidorra

I made the move to a paperless life and business about six years ago.

At that time, what I liked most about it was that I no longer needed to think about, or buy so many other things.

Pens, paperclips, staplers, white-out, printers, ink, filing cabinets, desks to name few.

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I'm upping my Facebook and Instagram game. Follow me to receive updates on the Saskatoon real estate market and insights I've gained managing thousands of real estate transactions.

TeamFisher.com hosted nearly a quarter of a million user sessions and displayed more than 1.2 million pages to our visitors in 2019. If you have a Saskatoon area home you'd like to sell, we know how to get people looking at your home. Reach out to me directly to engage our team and learn about our processes.

I’m always happy to answer your Saskatoon real estate questions.  Reach out by voice or text at 306-241-6676 or email me at norm at teamfisher.com

Norm Fisher

Royal LePage Vidorra

Real estate agents often take the position that "price is everything" when marketing a home for sale.

Price is important, but it's not everything. It's not even the most important thing.

In this short video, I discuss three other key variables that a seller has direct or indirect control over when they're ready to sell their home.

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I'm upping my Facebook and Instagram game. Follow me to receive updates on the Saskatoon real estate market and insights I've gained managing thousands of real estate transactions.

TeamFisher.com hosted nearly a quarter of a million user sessions and displayed more than 1.2 million pages to our visitors in 2019. If you have a Saskatoon area home you'd like to sell, we know how to get people looking at your home. Reach out to me directly to engage our team and learn about our processes.

I’m always happy to answer your Saskatoon real estate questions.  Reach out by voice or text at 306-241-6676 or email me at norm at teamfisher.com

Norm Fisher

Royal LePage Vidorra

Little white lies

In a world in which lies are all too common, it's easy to overlook small white lies, puffery, and even deceitful marketing practices that are designed to draw you in but fall well short of delivering what's promised.

If you're buying or selling a home or engaging the services of any professional, you should expect the unvarnished truth.

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I'm upping my Facebook and Instagram game. Follow me to receive updates on the Saskatoon real estate market and insights I've gained managing thousands of real estate transactions.

TeamFisher.com hosted nearly a quarter of a million user sessions and displayed more than 1.2 million pages to our visitors in 2019. If you have a Saskatoon area home you'd like to sell, we know how to get people looking at your home. Reach out to me directly to engage our team and learn about our processes.

I’m always happy to answer your Saskatoon real estate questions.  Reach out by voice or text at 306-241-6676 or email me at norm at teamfisher.com

Norm Fisher

Royal LePage Vidorra

Becky and I recently stayed at a resort that I've since described as "one of the best experiences ever."

The food was fantastic. The staff was polite and helpful. Every time you turned around, someone was washing something down. The place was sparkling clean.

________________________________

I'm upping my Facebook and Instagram game. Follow me to receive updates on the Saskatoon real estate market and insights I've gained managing thousands of real estate transactions.

TeamFisher.com hosted nearly a quarter of a million user sessions and displayed more than 1.2 million pages to our visitors in 2019. If you have a Saskatoon area home you'd like to sell, we know how to get people looking at your home. Reach out to me directly to engage our team and learn about our processes.

I’m always happy to answer your Saskatoon real estate questions.  Reach out by voice or text at 306-241-6676 or email me at norm at teamfisher.com

Norm Fisher

Royal LePage Vidorra