Yesterday we featured a humongous three and a half million dollar spread on half an acre in San Jose. It was a block from the actual Rose Garden that gives the Rosegarden district its name, but still, San Jose. For three and a half million. Yeah, we don’t think it computes either, unless we want to talk Bay Area Bubble 4.0 some more.

Now, today’s property and its pricing won’t make your eyes pop out because it’s in the Real Bay Area! Let’s find out why it won’t sell!  Thanks very much to Burbed reader nomadic for sending in this Real Realty Reject.

11860 FRANCEMONT Ave
Los Altos Hills, CA 94022
$3,999,000

6 Beds
6 Baths
5,250 Sq. Ft.
$762 / Sq. Ft.
Built: 2006
Lot Size: 1 Acre
On Redfin: 387 days
Property Type: Detached Single Family
Stories: 3
Community: Los Altos Hills
MLS#: 81214828
Style: Mediterranean
View: Neighborhood
County: Santa Clara

Property available at full price. Fabulous nearly new 5250 square foot home in a quiet cul-de-sac location on 1 acre with easy access and outstanding quality. Excellent floorplan with a huge kitchen/breakfast/family "Great Room" opening to a beautiful backyard. Luxurious master suite. Guest suite on main floor. Excellent Los Altos schools. 6 bedrooms, 6 baths.

Upcoming Open Houses

Saturday, May 18: 2:00-4:30 pm

First let’s check in with nomadic.

I sent this to a friend a few minutes ago before taking a good look at the listing copy and history.  This should go on burbed.  “Available at full price.”  It’s been on the market since November 2010 and went pending twice, failing to close both times.  The price has been raised at least twice in the past year – now up $700k from last April.

The icing?  It’s an REO.

Well, it doesn’t say it’s an REO in the listing, but the history admits to a foreclosure back in June. June, 2010.  But still, compare this property to yesterday’s! It’s on a full acre instead of a half, it’s got an extra bed and bath, and it’s in the RBA! All this for just “not a lot of money” more! Yet it’s been a languishing listing for at least a year, and that doesn’t even cover all that time before it went pending twice.

Why didn’t this place sell? There are definitely homes in this price range on this street.  Maybe this comment on short sales from a local Realtor might explain things:

The only active short sale in Los Altos Hills, located on Francemont, has been on and off the market since 2006. While it’s a nice house, it has had many offers and still seems to be having trouble closing. It’s unusual for any home to remain on the market so long. In my opinion this is an issue with the bank and not the home.

And the owner of the home is… BAC Home Loans Servicing, through ReconTrust! Thanks a lot, B of A! We all know it really stands for Bunch of A-holes.

Bunus: Virtual tour guaranteed to give you motion sickness.

Here’s a press release from the “Lending Tree of Real Estate Agents.”

LessThan6Percent Revolutionizes How Home Sellers and Real Estate Agents Connect

Press Release: LessThan6Percent – Mon, Apr 29, 2013 6:39 PM EDT

SAN FRANCISCO, April 29, 2013 /PRNewswire/ — LessThan6Percent (http://www.lessthan6percent.com), the online marketplace where home sellers can compare commissions and marketing plans from local real estate agents, is exiting its beta launch in the San Francisco Bay Area and expanding into Southern California. Founded in late 2012 by serial entrepreneur Simon Ru, LessThan6Percent provides home sellers a convenient platform to streamline the process of finding the best agents to represent their home.

"The problem home sellers face is that there are thousands of agents in any given market," says Ru. "It is difficult for home sellers to compare agents to find the best match. They don’t know what questions to ask, what to look for in a marketing proposal, or how to start the awkward conversation of negotiating services & commissions." This is where LessThan6Percent steps in.

LessThan6Percent differs from traditional agent-matching service such as Trulia (http://www.trulia.com/) and Zillow (http://www.zillow.com) by matching sellers to proposals submitted by agents rather than agents’ profiles. Instead of directing sellers to call agents’ numbers on a directory, LessThan6Percent transforms the matching process by having agents compete for sellers’ business. With a click of a button, home sellers would know exactly what services they are going to receive and how much they would cost. This level of transparency is unparalleled in the real estate industry.  

You may have noticed that LessThan6Percent is one of our newest advertisers, featuring that oversized entry form on the right. We’re certainly in accord with their business model. Some home sales are pretty routine, and there’s no reason why the six percent commission rate has been enshrined as unchanging. Personally, we’d like to see home sales done as flat fees, because that would mean the buyers’ agent wouldn’t have a financial incentive to advise you to bid more than a home is worth.

Then again, we are in Bay Area Bubble 4.0, every house is worth more than it’s listed for, and you couldn’t possibly pay too much for a place in the Real Bay Area. That means your agent was right to tell you to overbid by 85%.

Meanwhile, LessThan6Percent says you can specify what you want in an agent and look over the proposals you get in response.

And if their algorithm predicts you may be likely to sell, watch for their ads appearing wherever you surf.  This reminds us of that creepy datamining prediction that Target became infamous for: figuring out you were expecting before the rest of your family knew.

But LessThan6Percent also expects to reel in many leads through an algorithm that the company has created to identify people who are likely to sell. Ru said the algorithm scours a wide array of information sources, including social media, and then turns up likely sellers, like people who it’s discovered are having children soon.

The company then uses printed materials, cookies and keyword advertising to invite those people to use the site, Ru said.

- See more at: http://www.inman.com/2013/04/08/new-website-lets-sellers-see-proposals-from-listing-agents

According to Ru, the comments on this article were “getting heated” once a NAR official showed up. It appears Inman removed them by moving the article to a new location and conveniently neglecting to bring any comments along… or even allow them to be made.

LessThan6Percent envisions having agents slug it out for the right to sell your house. Why not have a good fight in comments on what you think of this idea? 

It’s been a while since we had a realtards thread.  But today’s Not So Professional Agent isn’t being given the Burbed Loving Hug of Attention for his brilliant listing copy.  Thanks very much to Burbed reader J from Alameda for alerting us to this story.

Sonoma Co. real estate agent held in fatal hit-run

Henry K. Lee, San Francisco Chronicle | Updated 7:52 am, Saturday, March 2, 2013

Photo from KTVU, no credit specified

(03-02) 07:49 PST SANTA ROSA — A Santa Rosa man turned himself in Friday in connection with a fatal hit-and-run crash that killed a pedestrian, police said.

Steven Harry Heath, 60, was arrested on suspicion of vehicular manslaughter and felony hit-and-run in the crash Wednesday that killed 64-year-old George Michael Black of Pacifica, Santa Rosa police said.

Black was walking on the 4600 block of Montgomery Drive shortly after 1 p.m. Wednesday when he was hit by a car that fled the scene, police said. Black died at the scene.

On Friday, a Santa Rosa law firm contacted police on behalf of Heath, who works as a real estate agent. Heath’s attorney told officers that the vehicle from the crash would be found at Heath’s home, authorities said.

Let’s review.  Real estate “professional” in a Mercedes S550 hits a pedestrian in broad daylight, and flees the scene. Unlucky stroller who had traveled to Santa Rosa to attend a healing program is pronounced dead seven minutes later.  #1 Agent in Sonoma the last 3 years running then requests his lawyer contact police two entire days later to say they’ll find what they’re looking for at the hit-and-run driver’s house. Why two whole days? We’re going to make an educated guess that it was long enough for all possible alcohol in someone’s bloodstream to dissipate.

Perhaps you think we’re being cynical.  Well, the readership of sfgate.com is far more so, as several commenters hypothesized that Heath had his attorney transfer his assets to the law firm. We think that’s nonsensical speculation, and that he asked the law firm to transfer his wealth to some deserving relative outside the United States.  Heath, we note, is British and probably has relatives in non-US locales.

Here is just one of those assets: his house on 5562 Pepperwood Road. None of the real estate portals have any specific information on the house other than the lot size (11,246 sf) because they aren’t in the public recorder’s office search results either (yes, we checked).

We are now opening the floor to discuss whatever you’d like about those wonderful real estate professionals in your life, or about anyone who would leave the scene and lawyer up when the right thing to do was fucking call 911 because you just ran your fucking 6,000 pound vehicle into some innocent party’s 175 pound body.  We usually don’t pick on realtards by name, but we’re going to make a giant-ass exception in this case because.

Oh yeah, and this is an Open Thread. It’s March! Time for some Spring Bounce! Let us know how many Mercedes S-class vehicles you see parked at Open Houses!

Today we’re going to have a look at a realtard’s piece over on Trulia’s blog.  Thanks very much to Burbed reader Real Estater for letting us know about this essay.

Tough Year Ahead: Top 10 Issues Facing Bay Area Buyers

East Bay Real Estate Focus — Providing Definitive Information for the East Bay Area
By Carl Medford | Agent in Fremont, CA
Posted under: Market Conditions in Alameda County, Home Buying in Alameda County, Home Ownership in Alameda County  |  January 26, 2013 8:22 AM  |  257 views  |  1 comment

“TWO recent national surveys of real estate agents suggest that first-time buyers are on the decline, their access to the housing market blocked by tight credit and eager investors,” states Lisa Prevost, of The New York Times (12/20/212).

Old news. In fact, I’ve been saying the same thing since August, 2012.

Truth is, no one knows exactly how many have decided to sit things out a bit until the market calms down. Although we’ve seen a decline in the number of buyers “actively in the hunt,” in reality, there are not “fewer” first-time buyers – if anything, there are more. LOTS more. The problem is that less of them are actually managing to buy a home, and, unfortunately, that’s the primary statistic that is being measured. No one is sitting outside open houses counting the bodies as they hit the front door and then compiling the numbers to a national database. If they did, a much different story would be on the evening news.

Buyers trying to purchase a home in the existing market conditions are facing into the teeth of a perfect storm, real-estate style, and it doesn’t appear that it will be ending anytime soon.

Here are the Top 10 issues facing Bay Area buyers:

Actually, as realtard happyprop goes, this is a little bit better informed than most.  It does say something other than “NOW IS THE TIME TO BUY,” and best of all, the disturbing faceless and sexless icons include the ever-popular, we swear we are not making this up, Dude With A Suitcase Full of Cash.  We know you won’t believe without seeing, so here he is.  (And from the minimal clothing, it’s either a Dude or it’s Annie Hall.)

Here’s that Top Ten list. If you’ve been a regular reader of Burbed, none of these should surprise you.

1. Sorry, you missed the bottom.  Sucks to be you.  Medford says February 2012 was the official bottom.  Maybe it was… in the East Bay.
2. Inventory? What inventory?  Raw meat, here’s the sharks.
3. Prices are going up.  Some areas are up 40% from last year.  Actually, if Mr. Real Estate Person had read the actual data instead of just looking at a piece in the Chron, he’d have seen that some areas are up a lot more than 40%.
4. Lots of cash buyers out there.  Yeah, and not just in the hellhole that’s the East Bay.  RBA too, only these aren’t investors.  On this item the realtard confuses the difference between “Central County” (probably Alameda County given the link) and the entire Bay Area in claiming 30% of all offers are cash.
5. Crowds lead to multiple offers.  Take low inventory and desperate sellers, what do you expect, other than the author citing hard numbers with his opinion columns from a different site.
6. FHA or VA buyer? Don’t even bother in this market; even conventional buyers are losing out to Mr. Suitcase.  And Mr. Suitcase doesn’t care about appraisals.
7. New homes are in demand again – according to CNN, that is. That doesn’t apply to the RBA because they still aren’t making any more land.  Why the realtard didn’t quote this local story in his own backyard is left as an exercise to the reader.
8. Appraisers haven’t a clue prices are up, which is preventing prices from going up even faster.  Includes helpful link to another of his columns mostly about packed open houses with one throw-away graf about appraisers.  What stayed with us was the tsetse flies.  But there was something useful mentioned: appraisers were blamed for the last bubble, and they’re not ready for this one.  Yet.
9. Banks are mucking up your loan even more than usual, although the link provided explaining the loan approval process doesn’t look to us like anything has changed much.  We suppose if you’re a realtard remembering the glory days of If You Can Fog This Mirror You Can Buy This House, you’d have a different opinion.
10. Bank underwriters especially are being poopy-heads, and Medford’s happy to give some examples. Most of them look like underwriters working through a pile of documents, marking off inconsistencies, and resolving them later, where later is some period greater than the five minutes realtards think is appropriate.

While we are perfectly capable of posting house after house in the five mile radius of The Googleplex, we would never confuse the RBA with the entire Bay Area.  Just because an agent can write a column even longer than one of ours doesn’t mean he won’t commit the Fallacy of Composition.  The East Bay isn’t the entire Bay Area any more than the South Peninsula is.  Market conditions vary, so may your mileage, and definitely will housing prices. 

But we can guarantee there will always be some real estate professionals out there who take a few shortcuts.  Let’s give this one a golf clap for giving the appearance of a housing market review, even if he found ten different ways to say You Are Now Priced Out Forever.

Got your attention already, haven’t we?  And if you like the little taste of hot bikini bondage babe above, just wait until you see the bodacious blonde on blonde action (which we swear we are not making up).

For this and more blatant uses of barely-clothed women to sell real estate, have a look at this video.  Then check out the page for the house.

It’s already been sold at auction, but it’s a mighty long commute to Google (even more removed than last weekend’s house).  According to Google Maps, it’s 480 hours away, but that’s because they wanted a stop in Japan first.

Enjoy the video.  And enjoy today’s weekend open thread!

Ah, Christmas time.  The toys, the food, the eggnog, the family visits, the decorations, the lights, and of course, the tree.  We wanted to find a simple ornament with a house for sale representation to wish you all a Happy Holiday, but instead, we found the ornament at right.

Amazing, isn’t it?

Now, we will be the first to admit that there are indeed excellent and knowledgeable real estate agents out there.  This blog acknowledges that there would be fewer people buying and selling homes if all of them were completely incompetent.  But this blog more importantly notes that it’s the bottom percentiles of the “profession” that help keep us in top material.

Now, if you have a Special Agent who you think would appreciate these thoughts on their tree, we swear we did not make this up.  You can actually buy this round ceramic ornament at CafePress.  And it will cost you $12.50.  Plus shipping!  And you can also get it in red ink (perfect for the foreclosure specialist).

Being the inquisitive, fun-loving bunch that we are, we decided to see if this ornament could be, well, improved.  Took us a while, and since none of us went to design school, it didn’t have the panache or the braggadocio of the simple ornament above.  But ours has something better.  A logo.

A completely derivative yet 100% protected-from-trademark-infringement-lawsuits-by-the-fact-that-it’s-obviously-satirical-and-would-not-induce-confusion-in-anyone-other-than-a-Realtard logo.

We wish you and yours a very Wonderful Winter Whatever.

Here's a little something to keep you going into the holidays.

Inman News has a fairly long piece about a new National Association of Realtards survey.  There’s plenty of self-serving results to this 120 item questionnaire that was sent to 93,000 homebuyers and gave them a whopping 8% response rate.

One eyebrow raiser is the net gain on sale of a home held 11 to 15 years.  Now, if you live in the Real Bay Area, you already know the answer to that because your money would have doubled in ten years.  But the survey says the typical seller gains 31 percent, or $54,000.  So the gains aren’t anywhere near enough, and this says the typical house is worth $174K. Since you can’t even buy a playhouse for $174K in the RBA, we know this survey was sent to the wrong kind of people.

And that explains some of the other curious results.

54% of buyers who used the internet used their local MLS site.  Can you even name your local MLS site?

More popular than “other” websites (such as Redfin, Zillow, Trulia, etc.) are local real estate agent sites and then realtor.com.  Followed by broker company sites. Uh-huhhhh.  And that doesn’t include mobile apps.

Nine out of ten buyers who used the internet to find their new home used a realtard in the transaction, compared to seven out of ten of those who live in 1950 and used the newspaper.  The discrepancy is explained by the fuddy-duddies either buying from a builder direct or buying a house from someone they already knew.  Not mentioned was the non-internet users also not familiar with another realtard tool: the telephone.

Most important factor in choosing a neighborhood was its quality, followed by commute time, affordability, and closeness to family and friends.  Not mentioned at all was the #1 driver of home sales in the RBA: school quality.  Who gives a crap about the neighborhood if the kids get into a school with APIs over 900?

Buyers chose a realtard based first and foremost on their reputation, which is like saying people decide who to vote for in an election based on a politician’s honesty.  Whoops, that’s the second most important thing buyers look for.

And what did buyers expect the realtard to do for them?  The most popular answer was “Help me find the right home.”

You can see some highlights from the NAR report on their website.  Want the full report?  It will run you $150.

Burbed began in February 2006, when the market was running bubbly, the RBA ran clear to Seattle, and an East Palo Alto crapshack would run you $850,000. It's early days but we're seeing definite signs of re-carbonation. Burbed reader dollarbin sends in some further proof.

Of course this is Palo Alto. When ads like this run in East Palo Alto, we will have arrived. Again.

Did you check out last week's Palo Alto Weekly? There were at least two different full page ads from Realtards with groups of buyers looking for houses they can close by the end of the year. High end stuff too, 1.5 to 4 million. I can't find links online, but I can take photos of the ads from the physical paper, it might make an interesting weekend post.

Interesting is the word for them. Voyla!

This is also your Weekend Open Thread, so go wild. Buyers 1 through 6 are counting on you!

Yes, this is an actual ad, even though it ran in The Onion.  This is definitely one of the more interesting approaches to pounding the pavement for new clients (he’s certainly pounding something), and we first found it at The Fiscal Times, in a slideshow featuring more listing fail.  Guess we managed to miss it when it hit the big time on Boing-Boing.

This is in a completely different class of self-promotion than, say, writing cute little jingles about yourself.  Then again, as long as the jingles aren’t NSFW, the jinglemeister won’t have Wanket’s results:

Calls and emails to Mr. Wanket were not returned and an Edina Realty spokesperson said the ad didn’t adhere to their guidelines and he’s no longer with the company.

In case you’re wondering just exactly why this ad does not adhere to Edina Realty’s guidelines, we have their answer:

“Well, first of all, it didn’t have the required Fair Housing notification on it,” [Vice President of Marketing Lynn] Clare said.

Let us know about how other real estate agents grab your attention, either in a good way, or if they unintentionally end up beating you off.  P.S. Wanket is no longer in the real estate industry.  Can’t imagine why.