Incline Village Real Estate Blog

With property values dropping and many owners desperate to sell, buyers may think that this is a good time to make lowball offers.  While some may find a seller anxious enough to consider or accept a lowball offer, many sellers find these offers to be a waste of their time, and simply too unreasonable for them to entertain them.  A lot of properties are already listed a below market value prices as they are, and bringing an offer that is extremely low my upset the seller, not to mention waste the agents’ and principals’ time.

 Here are 5 common lowball offer mistakes buyers and their agents routinely make:

Not Calling the Listing Agent

The listing agent can provide invaluable information that will help you to write the offer in such a way that the seller is likely to accept it. If your agent doesn't call the listing agent first, for all you know, that home might already be sold. Always call to find out how many offers the agent has received, and to help determine a fair price for both buyer and seller.

Submitting a Lowball Offer With a Low Deposit

Earnest money deposits typically vary anywhere from $1,000 to 3% of the sales price. If a buyer submits an offer way below list price and sends along a low earnest money deposit, it makes the buyer appear as though the buyer is living paycheck to paycheck or is not willing, ready and able to complete the purchase.

A strong deposit shows the seller that you are serious about the purchase, and have the means to complete the transaction.

Submitting a Lowball Offer With A Plea For Acceptance

Sellers don't want to read a hardship letter from a buyer and don't particularly care if a buyer has fallen in love with a home the buyer cannot afford. Banks are even less forgiving, especially if the home is listed as a short sale or a foreclosure.

The seller may be going thru his/her own difficult situation and may not care about the buyer just having to have their house.  If a buyer wants the home bad enough, they will pay a fair price for it.  Plus, telling a seller that a buyer doesn't qualify to pay list price sends a signal that the buyer should be writing offers on other homes that fit that buyer's price range and not this one. It makes the buyer appear weak and uninformed.

Submitting a Lowball Offer With Fake Comparable Sales

Unless the home is ridiculously overpriced, the listing agent has already pulled comparable sales to support the sales price before putting the home on the market. Sending the listing agent a list of sales from another area insults the agent's intelligence and suggests that the agent is incompetent.

It also shows that the buyer's agent does not know the neighborhood nor its surrounding properties. Ideally, a buyer's agent wants to win the listing agent's cooperation, not alienate the listing agent.

Submitting a Lowball Offer With Concession Requests or Unreasonable Contingencies

If it's not bad enough to irritate the seller with a lowball offer, some buyer's agents toss in concessions on top of an already low price. Some ask for a closing cost credit, totaling 3% to 6% of the sales price. Or they ask the seller to carry the financing on a land contract. 

Others submit offers with contingencies such as having to sell their current property or asking for a long escrow period.  Some contingencies are expected, such as getting final loan approval and the buyers’ approving inspections, but a seller who receives a lowball offer will not be too keen on having to jump through more hoops to get their home sold.

Some sellers are willing to give a cash credit to buyers, but generally refuse to do so on a lowball offer.

With tax time fast approaching, here is a great article from Realtor magazine on how to avoid being audited by the IRS.

 

Following a few simple rules can reduce your risk of an audit by the IRS, and protect yourself in the event that you are audited.

As a self-employed person, you are three times more likely than an employee who receives a W-2 form to be audited by the Internal Revenue Service, according to 2005 data from the IRS. 

Combine that with the fact that the number of audits of small corporations has been on the rise in the last few years, and you have the potential for a real hassle. 

But don’t despair; there are several things you can do to reduce your chances of being audited and to protect yourself in the event that you are.

 File on time. Make sure you file both your income tax return and quarterly estimates before the deadlines. Nothing throws up a red flag and says “audit me” more than consistently filing your returns and quarterlies late. If you can’t file on time, be sure to file an extension. Remember, though, that extensions don’t eliminate interest charges.

Keep good records. One particularly vexing issue for salespeople who use their cars for business is substantiating business mileage with a properly documented mileage log. Few mileage logs are up to IRS standards. The IRS will accept either paper or computer-generated logs, but the IRS tends to view computer logs as less credible. (You can find my version of a paper mileage log, called The Audit Angel, for $19.99 at my Web site, www.bergersontax.com.)

Double-check meal and entertainment deductions. Meal and entertainment costs are deductible up to 50 percent if they are ordinary (commonly done) and necessary to your business and are either directly related to the active conduct of your business or directly preceding or following a substantial business discussion on a subject associated with your business. Ordinary and necessary costs are those considered helpful and common practice in your industry. You can entertain business associates in nonbusiness settings such as restaurants, theaters, sporting events, and nightclubs, provided the entertainment directly precedes or follows a business discussion. Business associates would include clients, prospective clients, suppliers, employees, partners, or advisers. You should document where the meeting was held, with whom, and the purpose of the meeting. Keep this information with the receipt.

Classify your workers properly. A top audit trigger is a business—such as a real estate brokerage—that treat workers as independent contractors. Questions are more likely to arise about the employment status of office personnel or assistants working for salespeople. If the IRS rules that these workers are employees, you could owe employment taxes, penalties, and interest. While federal tax law provides a safe harbor that classifies real estate salespeople as independent contractors, unlicensed assistants do not have such protection. One important factor in determining independent contractor status is behavioral control, or to what degree workers control how, where, and when they work. If a worker receives extensive instructions on how work is to be done, it suggests employee status. If a worker receives benefits such as paid leave, health insurance, or a retirement package, this might also indicate employee status. For further details on the distinctions between independent contractors and employees, go to www.irs.gov/business and read Publication 1779.

Review IRS audit guides. Audit technique guides were developed by the IRS to assist its agents in performing examinations. These guides contain examination techniques, industry issues, business practices, industry terminology, and other information to assist examiners in performing audits for particular industries. These guides are available to the public at the IRS Web site so you can obtain them and learn in advance what issues the IRS will examine during an audit.

Get good advice. If you’re not aware of new twists in the country’s constantly changing tax laws, you might cost yourself money. If you have a question regarding possible deductions or how to report income, ask a tax professional or call the IRS directly. The money that you spend for good advice up front can pay you back many times over into the future.

Follow these easy steps, and you’ll reduce your chances of an IRS audit. At the very least, you’ll have appropriate backup for your deductions to satisfy even the toughest auditor. 

As part of our summer traditions the market begins to kick into gear with more listings for Incline village homes, condo's and town-homes.  Sellers who live in the higher elevations know it is prime time to list when the garden is in full bloom and you can appreciate a grassy lawn.

As of today we have 216 incline village homes for sale.

They range in prices from a low of $460,000 median of $1,750,000  high of $47,000,000

You'll find the largest inventory of homes with 27 listings on the Eastern Slope which is located on the parallel on the eastern side of Country Club drive, which runs from Hwy 431 to Lakeshore Blvd.  Pricing in this area : low of $779,000  Median of $2,195,000 High of $8,500,000

Sales are off compared to last year which means that instead of 20% of the brokers doing the business now it's 10%!  There have been 32 closed home sales ranging in price from:

$560,000 Low   $1,028,750 Median       $3,900,000 High

Lakeshore has done well in slower times and we are leading in the number of transactions closed this year.

On a positive note there are 14 homes with contracts pending and summer just a few days away.

Seller's ,this is not a time to price your home with the attitude of "I don't need to sell". Your broker has a commitment to sell and the only way it will happen is pricing it competitively.

Listen and take advise from an agent who has been in this real estate market for years you will need to draw on their experience and a track record to sell. This is not the time to be working with a new agent. 

Our office has professional and experienced agents who will give you the service you are looking for and deserve!

Red, White and Tahoe Blue:  Google it and you will find an outstanding venue of events for your 4th of July in 2008.  Of all the events we have in our community, this has got to be the E ticket ride.

For those of you born after the baby boom years, in the olden days when you went to Disney Land you purchased coupon books with A-E rides.  The E tickets represented the best attractions and would always get used up first.

At any rate, simple put RW&TB has something for everyone.   Long after our kids depart for collage, they will remember  the  4th of July in Tahoe. 

By the way, we should be launching our improved personal web site sometime after May 20th, 2008.  Please check out www.inclinebrokers.com as the blogs are always different from the www.Lakeshorerealty.com blogs.

Once upon a time, there was a crystal clear mountain lake over a mile high with shimmering shorelines and towering pines.  Beauty ran in abundance and the as the old saying goes, built it an they will come.

An so, the Crystal Bay Development Company was born in the 1960's.  Over they years, an entity, called the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency came along to control growth among other things.  That is a whole other story.

People needed loans, because not many had cash....

And along came lenders, who were willing to lend, but wait, not so fast.... Got 20% or 30% down?  If you didn't, you were out of luck.

Well a funny thing happened, no speculative buyers came to town because it required real cash on the part of the buyer.  So, guess what, most buyers had a built in equity position the day they closed escrow of at least 20%.

So, that's why we have very little trouble with our market values.

 

 

Once in a great while something comes on the market that simply can't be discribed with just words alone.  We are speaking of the lastest Lakefront Estate to hit the market.  The property is amost 9 acres consisting of four parcels of land.  Once owned by the King Family (as in Kings Beach).

Currenty, the property has three homes all built in the early to mid 1990's with a forth building site should you need it.  Of couse it has an incredible dock with two 12,000 pound boat hoists and outdoor swimming pool and hot tub overlooking Lake Tahoe.

The most amazing thing about the place is the landscaping which is compared to none.  As you walk the property, you feel like you are in another world.

Where else can you find majistic pine trees, exotic plants, hand wood carvings, bouldered water features and thousands of bulbs with meandering streams.  Now you wouldn't necessarily think they would all fit, but they do.  By the way did I mention the 850 pound antique bankers pot bellied safe.  It seems, when the took down the origional home, no one could move the safe, so there it sits, right out in the open.

Paradise has a price, and in this case it is 47 million dollars.  Contact us for more details.

Chris & Patti Plastiras

Broker/Owners Lakeshore Realty,   Lakrea@aol.com  775-831-7000

As a past Fire Board Member of the North Lake Tahoe Fire Protection District, we lived by a simple but worthy thought.  "Do the right thing for the right reason".  The theory behind that is very simple but does not always make for the best of conclusions.  

Case in point, was the announcement from the district that propane and charcoal grills and most other outdoor cooking devices have been banned from the decks of multi-family dwellings.  In reality, that barbecue rule has been around since 1991.  The Fire Marshall, was just trying to his job.  O.K. so this won't go down as the most popular of ordinances to bring forth, but all kidding aside, we do live in an extreme fire danger zone.   

The problem is barbecueing in Tahoe is right up there with the right to vote and the right to bear arms.  You can't dictate common sense with ordinances.  Perhaps a better approach might be an education process by providing some suggestions when using your barbecue.  

The Fire Department doesn't have the time or money to enforce this ordinance.  I would suggest each condominium association decide how to enforce this ordinance if so inclined.