Habitat for Hermanity: Your Real Estate Infotainment...Where Housing Hilarity Ensues! San Francisco Bay Area Realtor Herman Chan

Why Selling your house in winter may get you better buyers!

9/27/2011

I saw an ad for Pumpkin Spice Latte, so you know it's official. Autumn is here!

As we dive into Q4, one of the most commonly asked questions I get is "Should I list my house in the winter, or wait til spring?" Some agents think it is suicide to list in the winter because many buyers have checked out. Vacation, holidays, and money gets diverted to gift shopping instead of house shopping. For the most part, the market does slow down a bit this time of year, but sometimes that can work to a seller's advantage. In fact, some of my most productive quarters have been Q4. Watch why in this vintage clip!

I think I need a slice of pumpkin pie to go along with my pumpkin spice latte. Yum!

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Hermanity Scores Another Cover for SOLD Magazine!

9/17/2011

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SOLD Magazine features Hermanity in an article by Samantha McLean called Video Marketing: Herman Chan Makes it Simple. If you happen to be in Australia, pick up a copy for me. (And while you're at it, pick me up an Aussie man too!)

Australia has churned out many break out real estate videos. Who can forget the salacious video vixens used to hock property? Or Chris Gilmour's glossy high production videos that help him sell/list a property every 26 hours? Our friends down under certainly have a flair for the visual!

It certainly helps that these women are centerfolds incarnate and that Chris Gilmour is a walking Ken Doll! Eye candy never hurts. I'm not as pretty as these folks. Honestly, if I did video down there, I would be totally hit by the ugly stick.

Nevertheless, I can't wait to go back there again. Someone send me an invite!

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Holy Herman! It's Batman's Budoir

9/16/2011

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If you're anything like me, you have had the recurring fantasy where Batman rescues you & whisks you away (kinda NSFW) to his BatCave Budoir. Thanks to a hotel in Taiwan, you can live out this fantasy! Check out the unbelievable bat decor in these pix.

Take note, this is a themed hotel room, so they are exonerated. But for normal home sales, always keep re-sale value in mind when remodeling. Anything over indulgent will hurt its marketability.

In other words, save your vanity projects for your plastic surgery!

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Will Zillow's Zestimates improve post-IPO?

9/12/2011

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Zillow is one of the few IPO success stories this year. They went public mid-July and finally hit profitability for the first time in Q2. How this will improve Zestimates remains to be seen. In real estate circles, Zestimates are known to be fairly accurate or totally off the wall. On a small link on their site, you can find their median error %. Some areas are respectably within 4-5%, but other areas are off up to 38%!

Zillow can be a great tool to get a ballpark guesstimate of a property's value, but take it with a grain of salt. It works best in tract homes or cookie-cutter communities. It's dubious in areas that have a lot of property diversity & older homes, like is most urban cities.

A fancy algorithm just can not take into account intangible factors that affect value like view, curb appeal, layout, schools, and so forth. I'm just sayin'!

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How to Buy a Condo: Make Sure your Condo is not a Condon't!

8/30/2011

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