Posts Tagged Minnesota MLS
Home Buying And Selling Online
Many people go into home buying, and home selling, as an investment option. They look at the housing market and the opportunities it represents. There are tons of houses on the open market that has been either foreclosed or facing foreclosure. These houses are sold for less than the market prices in some cases. Individuals, who participate in the home selling business, usually have some indication of how much money they are willing put up. The need to get into this business has been down since the housing industry took a serious hit several years ago.
During that time of depression hundreds or perhaps millions of people lost their homes. This was a bad time for homeowners, lenders, and banks. Everyone seemed to have lost during that time. Home buying was down a great deal, and there was a great need for home selling, especially for the real estate industry. Today that is not the case individuals are looking to purchase new homes, or replace the one they lost. Banks are back to lending money, and first time home buyer programs are stronger than ever. Now is an excellent time to be in the housing business has a buyer or as a seller.
Home buying can be done online from home via the Minnesota MLS. Many banks are now allowing individuals to bid on houses from the auction website. Houses that have been foreclosed by the banks or houses that have been awarded to the court in cases of abandonment are the ones that can be brought for dirt cheap. The nice thing is that you can see this from the comfort of your own home, even when it is snowing like crazy in February! Just open the MN MLS and search away with many of the same tools that real estate agents have.
A large number of private home owners sit at home selling property every day. They sell homes to public auctions and other individuals who are looking for a nice house to move into. The thought that some companies are into home buying is great, especially for people who are looking for their own home to purchase. Real estate agents put their houses and lands online for easier viewing. They find that more and more people are turning to the internet for all of their housing needs. Whether people are looking to rent, buy or sell, the internet is the best source for information.
NorthstarMLS Login Will Change to NRSD ID
Starting in the beginning of March, the Minnesota MLS will be changing from using their existing 7 digit log on number to using their 9 digit NRDS ID, which is assigned for life from the National Association of Realtors. This will help as your NRDS number never changes regardless of what brokerage you are with or even if you let your real estate license expire for a time and then reactivate it. This will also cut down on the numbers that we all have to remember.
Additionally, by using this number, any changes at the State, Local, or National level will instantly be reflected because there is one database that drives all these systems, versus paperwork floating around and eventually getting updated to the various levels.
Minnesota MLS Now Has Statewide Data
As announced last month, most of the REALTOR® Associations/MLS’s in Minnesota are sharing their MLS listings including Actives and 3 years of off-market listings. Those listings are now all available on NorthstarMLS Matrix. This is the result of a long-term cooperative effort among most of the REALTOR® Associations in Minnesota. We are very excited to make this program available to you. Continue on for details.
Are the data share outstate listings available for all property types?
Currently, they are available for Single Family Residential only. The other property types will be added over the next couple months. We will make announcements here as they become available.
How do I find these listings?
Search just as you would for any other listings. For example, if you want to find listings in Duluth, search by Municipality for Duluth, search the Duluth ZIP Codes, or use Map Search to draw the exact area you want to search. Listings from the data share will be in your results. (Note: If you want to see data share listings, do not search by County or MLS Area as we currently do not receive data for those fields through the data share.)
How do I know a listing is from the state-wide data sharing?
Listings imported from the outstate Associations can be identified by a three to four letter code at the start of their MLS numbers. For example, MLS# DAAR153802 is from the Duluth MLS. MLS# ALX10-1835 is from the Alexandria MLS. Listings entered into NorthstarMLS through Home Base will continue to have the current MLS numbering scheme without a letter code.
BMJ = Bemidji Area
DAAR = Duluth Area
ALX = Greater Alexandria Area
GLAR = Greater Lakes (Brainerd Area)
ICBR = Itasca County
LKSR = Lakes Region (Fergus Falls Area)
MAM = Minnesota Arrowhead
RASM = Southern Minnesota (Mankato Area)
SEMN = Southeast Minnesota (Rochester, Owatonna, Albert Lea, Winona)
WCMN = West Central (Willmar Area)
Will the data share listings be included in my Auto-Emails to Clients?
If your search criteria covers areas where the outstate Associations have listings, then yes, they will be included.
Why are there duplicate listings?
Many brokers in the outstate areas subscribe to NorthstarMLS through a special Allied Participant Program and enter their listings into NorthstarMLS. Because of this new data sharing program, the Allied Participation program will end as of December 31. Until then, Allied Participant brokers’ listings may be in NorthstarMLS twice–one as entered in NorthstarMLS, and one as imported from their local outstate MLS. After their Allied Participation expires, their listings entered into NorthstarMLS will be removed, leaving just the listings imported from their local MLS.
How often are the data share listings updated?
We refresh the data share listings with updates from the vendor every four hours.
What if I want to exclude data share listings from my search?
On any of the Single Family Search screens, click the link “Click here to add or remove other search fields.” Add the field “MLS Source.” There are two selections for this field: RMLS and SASI. RMLS is for the regular NorthstarMLS listings entered through Home Base. SASI is for the data share listings imported from the outstate Associations. Click to select “RMLS.” This will ensure that the data share listings are not included in your search results.
How do I report problems with data share listings, such as missing data?
You may notice some fields missing data for the listings of some outstate Associations. This is usually an issue between that outstate Association and the data share vendor that only they can resolve. We expect any problems with missing data to improve over time as the vendor improves the import process. For any other questions or problems, contact the NorthstarMLS Help Desk at 651-251-5456 or help [at] northstarmls [dot] com.
How does this affect the MLS Co-op?
This data sharing replaces the MLS Co-op. The MLS Co-op will be discontinued effective December 31st.
How does this affect the NorthstarMLS Rules & Regulations?
All data sharing participants, including NorthstarMLS, have agreed to a common set of MLS rules. There will be several minor changes to our rules that will be outlined soon in a separate announcement. NorthstarMLS and each of the outstate Associations will continue to handle their own rules enforcement.
Housing Market Update
The market numbers recently came in and they look deceptively bad. If you remember, last year at this time, we were just finishing up the closings on the first round of the $8000 tax credit homes. As the President of the Minneapolis Area Association of Realtors puts it” We are comparing apples to oranges when looking at September 2009 versus September 2010. So with that disclaimer, how are the numbers?
Pending sales are down a whopping 37.8% over September 2009 and closed sales were down 33.5%. When compared year to date versus 2008, the Twin Cities market shows just a 1.4 decline in closed sales.
Inventory drew by almost 14%, which in my opinion is the leading edge of the wave 2 foreclosure inventory. We are also seeing buyers becoming much more choosy than in the past. Most are in no hurry to make a decision and will consider dozens of houses before making an offer. Then that offer is typically well below list price as the buyer is convinced that everyone, including retail sellers, can take huge price discounts.
The Minnesota MLS showed a listing decline of 10.7% for the entire metro area since September 2009. Most of that (11.2%) was made up of traditional sellers not putting their homes on the market. Banks put 5.8% fewer REOs on the market and 11.5% fewer short sales were added.
As of October 1, there are 8.6 months of inventory for the entire Twin Cities Market. We need to see this number closer to 4 months to be in a more stable market. We jumped up from 6.6% this time last year. Just like above, the increased inventory is pushing this number higher.
Like you would expect, we are not out of the wood yet. No great glimmer of hope has even begun to shine in this real estate market.
Real Estate Market Update
It has felt to me over the last 30-60 days that the market was slowing down. Most of my investors were quiet. Everyone seemed to be holding onto their money waiting for something (albeit, no one could say what) to happen. One of my more analytical customers has been watching one particular autoemail that I send him from the Home Search Minnesota. He has had the same search for houses under $100k in North and South Minneapolis running for about 2 years. During that time he has watched as the market heated up and the list fell to 40 properties and when it slowed down and went to 120 properties. He said that he has seen the number of properties added to the market triple in the month of August.
Now I am making a leap by saying that inventory alone is the indicator of the speed of the market, but I think it is an interesting gauge. Back in 2008, we were trying to consume all that we could get our hands on. If something hit the Minnesota MLS, we jumped on it. It seems like now the buyers in the home market that I am working with are much more reserved. Many of them still want great deals, in fact some are looking for deals that would have not been possible even in the bottom of the market, let alone today.
With the 2nd wave of foreclosures already hitting our shores and the MLS, plus more people choosing to get out of their homes using short sales and then most buyers not in a hurry to buy, it is going to be a rough next 6 months. Sellers are going to be frustrated at the lack of showings. Buyer are going to be frustrated that they can’t get the deals they think they should be able to.
I ran a report today that showed how many showings many of our 250+ listings on the MN Real Estate Team had in August. I was shocked that in the $100-200k price range, many of them had 1 showing for the entire month of August. Others had 4-5, but not that many. Ouch. If you are selling your home, be prepared to price your house aggressively, and then wait.
Update on the MN MLS Adding Rental Properties
I reported a couple weeks ago that the NorthstarMLS had announced that they are targeting a September 1 launch of the ability for agents to put rental properties into the MN MLS. This could be a fantastic centralized location for all landlords to advertise and for tenants to see what is available. While I don’t think it will kill Craigslist and other paid rental sites, I do believe it will be great for more expensive rentals that are $1200+ rent per month. It should give them the exposure they need.
Well, since that last post, I have been doing some research and speaking to some experts in this area regarding their opinion of the change to the MLS in Minnesota. Here are some of their thoughts and concerns:
- Actually, despite this launch being headed up by the rule makers, they overlooked an important state statute. A property can only be represented by one licensed real estate agent at a time. I am sure it doesn’t take much imagination to think about the scenario where someone has their home listed with Realtor A, who has been working hard to sell their home for months. The seller decides that maybe they should try to rent their home, but Realtor A is not interested in that part of the business. Seller contacts Realtor B, who specializes in renting homes and puts their home up for rent at the same time. Unfortunately, this is against the law!
- The compensation model is not complicated, but most brokerages have not worked out the kinks yet. Let’s say that I list a house for rent at $1500 and I enter into an agreement for the owner to pay me 1 month’s rent when it is filled with a tenant. This is a very typical fee. I may put that property on the MLS in the rental section. I must specify how much co-op I am willing to pay the other agents. This is just like the buyer’s agent commission in a sale. Maybe I pay out $750 of the $1500. Most brokerages have not decided how much of that $750 (that either side gets) they are going to take to handle their administrative work. With many brokers charging the agents $100-$350 per transaction, you can see that I may only make $400 on listing a home for rent. Sadly, I can’t list enough of those on a monthly basis to feed my family after expenses.
- Related to this is if the brokers will charge their typical $300-500 broker commission fee that is now charged on most sale transactions. That could increase the costs to the home owner by 25-50% to have an agent rent their home.
It was a very interesting discussion that I had with these guys that had been involved in the rental properties on the Minnesota MLS, right from the beginning. Stay tuned!
Improving Your Odds of Getting Your Offer Accepted
I am going to let you in on a couple things that I do to improve my odds at getting my buyer’s offer accepted. I was about to write “tricks to getting it accepted”, but these are completely legit ways to do your research and put your best offer forward. You can do this also or you should find an agent that understands these techniques.
- Never use round numbers when making offers. Have you ever watched the Price is Right on TV (I may be dating myself). Have seen how some of the contestants bid $1 over the next highest price? While I don’t do it with $1, I will add $250-750 to an offer to make sure I could be over the next guy. I also do not offer a round number like $2500 or $5000 over or under list. I do $1750 or $6000. Something that is outside of the norm.
- Take a look at the details about the property on the MN MLS prior to making the offer. How long has it been on the market? Has the price dropped already? If so, how long since the last price drop. When are you and your competition submitting offers relative to price drops or when it came on the market. My offer price will be very different if the MLS says it has been on the market for 3 weeks and no one has made an offer than if it was on the market that same 3 weeks, it dropped in price yesterday, and now we have 4 offers on it.
- Call the listing agent to see if they can give you any suggestions about any hot buttons the sellers want to see. Some sellers really want full price, but are willing to chip in more seller paid closing costs or leave the hot tub. I had a investment property seller recently that would only take the offer if we assured him and wrote into our offer that the existing tenant could stay in the property. You may be surprised to learn that items that you are not interested in, are a hot button for the seller.
- Keep your offer as clean as possible with little or no contingencies or special requests. While you should always do an inspection, try to not ask for lots of little items to be fixed.
- Use the NorthstarMLS history to find out if the property had previously been listed for sale. If the home has been for sale in the last 6 months, the sellers may be more desperate or motivated to sell this time. Make an aggressive offer.
- Don’t skimp on the earnest money. Offering $500 on a $400k property is an insult. If you are serious, put up at least $1000 and if you really want this home, put up $5000.
Not every MN home for sale is the same and so not every offer should be the same. Craft your offer to improve your odds of getting it accepted.
Minnesota MLS to Add Rental Property Listings
This is a very exciting announcement. Many other cities and states already have rental property listings available on their MLS. This allows both the consumer and the real estate agent the ability to search one place for rentals. With so many people not forced to rent because of a foreclosure or short sale in their history, this will be a welcome addition. Plus, as real estate agents, we will be able to better serve our customers by searching rental pricing in a particular area and working with renters in addition to buyers and sellers. This should also help owners trying to rent their properties get more market exposure.
Knowing how militant the current MLS police are about keeping the data accurate on the listing side, I would bet they will be equally vigilant about keeping the rental info accurate also. This should include availability (as the MN MLS has cracked down hard on this problem on the sales side in the last 12 months). Their FAQs say that a rental property must be marked as rented within 24 hours of the unit being rented or the leasing agent will face a fine. The MLS is also adding a new option under Contingency for “Application Received.” You will be required to indicate this when an application has been accepted but not yet approved, and you are still accepting showing appointments.
This change has required some major technical pieces to be put in place. While I don’t know the specifics, if I dust off my Information Technology hat for a second, I assume the NorthstarMLS software engineers had to make changes to the database to accommodate new fields. Their FAQ mentions the following new data fields: Monthly rent, availability date, minimum lease (# months), furnished (y/n), smoking permitted in unit (y/n), application fee, security deposit, pre-paid last month’s rent (y/n), other deposits/fees (up to 100 characters description), background check required (y/n), laundry location (in unit or on premises), and an indication for who pays (owner, tenant or n/a) for electric, gas, heat, water, cable, trash and association fee. For the Style field, you will have all the Single Family styles as well as apartment, duplex (up/down or sidexside), triplex and fourplex. That is a lot! They also had to build new screens, data feeds and reports.
As agents we will be able to book showings for apartments using our standard BookaShowing system that we now access through the MLS. I can show you the home, help you negotiate the lease, and get you the best deal. Just like when I work with buyers, since I see the entire property landscape, I can help you know if this is a good deal. Also with my years of experience as a landlord, I have seen just about everything!
Sellers: How to Maximize Your MLS Exposure
Selling your home is one of the largest financial decisions you will do. Even if you have sold a home in the past, with the market and technology changing so fast, what you may have learned back then, is irrelevant now. Since you don’t do it frequently, you are relying on your real estate agent to do the work for you.
A recent study done by the National Association of Realtors found that 85% of home buyers will look at the internet before they ever contact an agent. These buyers are looking at the large number of Realtor websites that have MN MLS information on them. If this is true, than that means that what appears on the MLS (and subsequently on the internet) is the first and maybe the only opportunity you will get to impress those prospective buyers into looking at and buying your home.
Here are some quick ways to put your best foot forward on your MLS listing:
- Everyone looks at the pictures! You may have the largest master bedroom listed anywhere, but buyers mostly look at the pictures before proceeding to the home details. I am constantly amazed at how some listing agents can have only 1 picture on their listing. What a disservice to their customer. Have your home pictures taken by a professional photographer. Do NOT let your agent take the pictures on his iPhone and upload those. If he won’t pay for nice pictures, pay for them yourself. It is usually under $100.
- Make sure every dimension and field is filled out on the MLS listing. Again, many agents are lazy and put down just the bare minimum. I was doing a showing once and the listing agent failed to mention the pool in the backyard! Also, insure that the information is accurate. It is very frustrating to show a house and find that something on the MLS listing is incorrect (like number of bedrooms, having a basement, or 1 vs 2 car garage).
- Spend more than 30 seconds creating your remarks. The Minnesota MLS has a section for both public and agent remarks. Most listings have the same thing in each. Your audience is different, customize the message to what they might want to know. Also, be sure to avoid abbreviations as much as possible. These can confuse the newer customers (and agents)!
Simply taking some time to polish your MLS listing could mean the difference between a buyer setting up a showing for your home or simply clicking the next button on the internet.