21 May FAQ’s With Adam Kruse – Pt. 1

Adam Kruse of The Hermann London Real Estate Group will answer some of the most frequently asked questions he gets as a realtor.

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1:11-What is C.D.O.M. and D.O.M?

2:08-When buying a multi-family unit with tenants in it, should I kick them out and get my own or keep them?

3:40-Do I need an agent to represent me as a buyer if the seller already has an agent?

TRANSCRIPT

–First off, we have a question from Molly C. She says, “I saw an MLS listing that said C.D.O.M. and D.O.M. What does this mean?”

I guess she is searching online for homes and she must be looking on wizah or something and seeing different fields. She is wondering what this is. CDOM is cumulative days on market and DOM is just straight days on market, but basically they are both standing for how long the property has been listed so you can get an idea of how long it has been on the market. The average days on market used to be 99 or so. The average days on market now is 58 depending on the area it is in. That is always changing. We use every piece of information we can get. Every statistic we can get to evaluate a seller’s situation and the property condition for negotiating purposes. That’s a long answer for CDOM and DOM. It is basically how long the property has been on the market.

–Next up we’ve got a question from Erica Z and she says, “I’m buying a multi-family building with tenants in it. Should I kick them out and get my own or should I keep them in there?”

Well, that’s an interesting question. I’ll have to answer that question with questions. If you were one of my agents sitting here, they are used to it. I like to answer questions with a lot of other questions before I give my official answer. Erica, I am wondering, when you put the contract on the property, did you include a form called the rental property verification rider? That commits the seller to giving you information about their expenses, leases, how much rent there is, what improvement they’ve done on the property, and those types of things. Do you have copies of the leases? Do you have the applications from when the people who are living there now applied to move into the property. From the information you’ve received from the seller, are you happy with the lease amount that the current tenants are paying? It matters to me if there are some vacant units. Do you need to do some work on them? Maybe you want to work on getting some of those units updated and occupied while you still have rental income coming in from the existing tenants. There are a lot of things to consider and a lot of questions I’ve got before I would really answer that question. It sort of all depends. Thanks for the question, Erica. If you want to ask further questions or talk more about this, you can send in another question at PODCAST@HermannLondon.com.

–Moving on, we’ve got one from Tom M. Tom asks, “Do I need an agent to represent me as a buyer if the seller already has an agent?”

It’s a good question. I think it is a fair question and since you specifically said, “Do I NEED and agent to represent me?”, I want to answer honestly. I’m sure you are not expecting me to say this, but no, I don’t think that you NEED an agent to represent you. Technically you can represent yourself. Maybe you are an attorney and you have experience with that type of thing. But should you have an agent to represent you as a buyer? I would say absolutely yes. There are a few reasons. One of them being that I think a lot of people think that if they call the listing agent they will some how save commission, and they won’t. The seller is committed to paying a certain amount of commissions. If there is no buying agent then the selling agent will keep the full commission, essentially to not represent you. Other than the commission details of the situation here, the main reason to have a buyer’s agent is so that you have someone in the corner with you. You want someone to help you with pricing statistics. You don’t want to pay too much for the property. You don’t want to make a low-ball offer and insult the sellers. You want to know the market to know if it is really popular. If you need use some extra negotiating strategies or if you might be the only buyer. You need some help with negotiating inspections. What inspector should I use? What inspection should I get? What is it fair to ask for? When do I have to ask it? What form should I ask it on? Your buyer’s agent will help you with that type of thing. One of the things that I enjoy about working with the buyer is helping them fill out the contract. Our contract is not a document that we write every item. We have a set of standard documents that all realtors use and we are basically filling in the blanks. I think it is really interesting to look at a buyer’s situation and figure out what they want, need, and how they want the art of the deal to be set up, and that’s how we can help you fill out the contract to get your need’s best protected.

That’s all my questions for this week, so if you have questions, we’d love to hear from you. We will either answer them on our podcast or answer them here on our questions show. Just email in at PODCAST@HermannLondon.com or you can call me direct at 3142105115. That’s it for this week. Take care and have a great day.