Of course the group started as a networking group back when social networking meant coffee klastches. But soon, through friendship and support, the Elite Twenty, started by founding member Joy Nees, began a tradition of touring each others listings and actually hand-writing critical reports. Reports which were then read, discussed, distributed, collected and put under lock and key. In other words, they critiqued each others listings. No holds barred,  this group was tough.

“We are all competent, competitive agents,” says Virginia Cook agent Jo Pressly. “When a seller adopts the recommendations in the written report, the likelihood of a sale increases dramatically. It’s like he’s got a panel of experts rather than a solo agent. In real estate, 80% of the sales are made by 5% of the agents and our high sales volume in the group is proof of how honest criticism works.”

The Twenty represent six different brokerage firms, and members have worked deals against each other across the table. They act as a 24/7 resource group for each other. There is also the Elite Twenty “hotline”, a voice message system that can be instantly forwarded to all members, like a private Twitter account. Each month, eight members’ listings are toured, scrutinized, all but navel-cleansed by the Elite Twenty. Pinky promise: no hurt feelings.

I’d like to be a fly on the wall: I think it would be great  fun to grab a video camera during their next tour: let’s see what the pros say to each other, not just to us the customer or behind people’s backs!

Texas agents in the first quarter were not nearly as pessimistic about home values as were their colleagues in other states. Quarter 2, Texas Realtors still called our market stable and improving. But come quarter 3, some sort of gloomy reality must have set in. Texas Realtors have reduced their valuation expectations and the effect is rubbing off on homeowners. 73% of Texas homeowners now believe their home is worth what their agent says it is, give or take ten percent higher or lower.

Don’t think agents are not taking that into pricing consideration.

But here’s the cheery note: 43% of Texas Realtors think home values or prices in Texas will increase over the next few months. That’s almost double the 24% who thought prices would increase last quarter. Hang on, we just may be skidding into the finish line here, I hope.

BTW: This survey is from HomeGain.

“If it seems there are more banks than churches or gas stations in Dallas, it’s partly because 78 percent of DFW residents now live within 10 minutes of a Wachovia office—all thanks to Wellborn. “As far as we know,” she says, “no other bank has come in with a ‘build it from the ground up strategy,’ as we did.”

This is not new: the tradition at Romanian weddings was to pin money on the bride (a tradition I’d like to revive), that money going to help the couple buy their first home. There are also many ways parents can help their children buy a home without giving them a chunk of cash. For example, we let my daughter and her fiance live with us while they saved up for a down payment. You can also cover the cost of property improvements on the new home once they move in.

Call me Debbie Divorce Downer, but I am a member of the 50% divorce rate generation: what do you do if the marriage doesn’t last? Let’s say you “gift” Johnny and Susie $20,000 for a down payment on a cute M Streets cottage. They split after two years. Texas is a community property state, home is to be sold and equity split. My take: you have just gifted your son-in-law $10,000. Am I correct?

How to calculate home square foot real estate?
What Gotchas should I be aware of?  A little advice would go a long way right now.

Big  “Gotcha”:  LAWSUIT. Disputes over square footage are one of the biggest reasons for trips to the courthouse in real estate. Justifiably so.  Say you buy your house for $300,000, you are told it’s 2200 square feet. Two years pass, you sell, get a buyer, that buyer hires an appraiser surprise surprise turns out your home is only 2100 square feet. Depending on the statute of limitations, you could sue both the seller you bought from and also perhaps your realtor. That’s why smart agents (and homeowners) only measure rooms for furniture, not legal square footage.

“Realtors have to document the source of their square footage,” says veteran appraiser Brad Edgar.

The documentation usually comes from the tax rolls, house plans or a certified appraiser who bears the responsibility.  CYA.

Dallas is a serious square footage town.  In some parts of the country, folks are more concerned with number of bedrooms or other attributes. But in Dallas, house size counts. That’s how we pay and no one likes to get shortchanged. (Don’t get me started on my soapbox of how real estate is a local story: call this reason number 999 why you cannot have an agent in Timbuktu sell you a home in Dallas.)

My advice: Find $150, the cost of an average home appraisal, and hire a certified appraiser who will take the legal heat in the rare event an error is made in calculating the square footage of your largest investment, your home. And keep a copy of that in your security deposit box at the bank.

Remember our princess on Princess? Seems her prince has  swept her off her feet — signed on the dotted. The current owners of 3757 Princess must clear out and tell me they plan a huge “gay-rage” sale tomorrow (that’s July 11) from 7:30 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.

And if anybody mentions the word “Dallas Dirt”, a margarita may magically appear in their hot July hands.

Indeed!

Was that the home where a snake greeted me one morning?

Ilyce Glink has a great overall take on this, but here’s what I suggest you look out for in Texas:

1. Wade through the information to find and contact the listing agent. This can be tricky, and even I have been fooled: the point of the website is to reel you into one of their agents — the point of the Dallas Morning News’ new deal with Sawbuck –so the listing agent’s name is often buried way low or in some cases. MIA. The listing agent should have direct knowledge that the listing is active and could also have lowered the sales price that very day, but not yet posted the new price.

2. Always check the tax appraisal on the home at www.dcad.org. This will take longer, but you can call to see if the taxes are paid. In Texas, the state can foreclose on your home for failure to pay property taxes.

3. Do a Google search of the addressto see if the home was once the headquarters of the Branch Davidians, or something. You can also check the history of ownership at DCAD. In Texas, sellers must reveal if a violent death has occured in a home. Death by natural causes does not need to be reported.

4. Of course you will use Google maps to get a satellite view of the street and surrounding area, but remember those maps may not be up to date even for rural properties. An owner once told me that he checked on his property down near Ennis using Google, and everything seemed to be dandy. Then he went down there to find squatters using his property to dump garbage — huge heaps that were visible from the air.

3. Always check to see if the property is subject to a Home Owner’s Associationand what dues are required, if any. If dues are required, the association will have more control over your property and hence, life.

4. Obvi you drive by the home, not just once but several times a day. The minute a rainstorm hits, you go check out that home for water leaks and drainage. Do the ground water “sniff test” of the interior. Foundation and drainage problems can be repaired, but you do want to know what you are getting into before signing on the dotted.

Anything else I did not cover?

Just to warn you the quality of the audio ain’t great. Due to some extenuating circumstances I was participating via my iPhone on speaker phone setting so my recorder could pick up the conversation. If it sounds like I’m shouting in your ears I sincerely apologize.

If you want the quick summary of the A.H. Belo/Sawbuck deal here it is:

- A.H. Belo has invested $2 million in Sawbuck Realty.

- Sawbuck’s site will become the new face of the “Home Center” portion of The Dallas Morning News Web site.

- Clients who contact Sawbuck Realty to enquire about a home for sale will eventually be put in touch with a local “partner” agent who will show them the home and represent them as the buyer’s agent.

- If a home is sold via a lead from Sawbuck, Sawbuck will take 30 percent off the top of the 3 percent buyer’s agent  commission.

- A.H. Belo will not directly receive proceeeds from these commissions, but they do have a stake in the company.

- Partner agents will be determined based on experience and other criteria set by Sawbuck. (I’ve heard five years experience and and at least 50 sales over the last five years.)

- A.H. Belo will continue to pursue traditional forms of ad revenue from real estate agents and brokerages. Good luck with that.

Click here to play the conference call

A.H. Belo Corporation, publisher of The Dallas Morning News, is investing in Sawbuck Realty, an online real estate broker that will bring its services this year into A.H. Belo’s territories in Southern California, Rhode Island and North Texas.

Sawbuck is expected to announce today that A.H. Belo has joined Sawbuck’s two co-founders, Guy Wolcott and Steve Barnes, in a $2 million round of investment in the young company. The individual contributions were not disclosed.

I’m in a conference call with A.H. Belo and Sawbuck Realty right now. As soon as it’s done we’ll get you audio from that call. Until then, jump for the interesting part of the DMN story:

As a real estate broker, Sawbuck will be able to list all Multiple Listing Service properties, [Chewy] Redding said. At present, visitors who go to dallasnews.com may see only 70 to 80 percent of the listings, he said.

He described the reaction from Dallas-Fort Worth area brokers briefed on the new arrangements as mixed.

Sawbuck refers any sales leads to agents or brokers locally in exchange for a 30 percent share of the commission. The Dallas Morning News will not share directly in that commission, although it would benefit indirectly from its investment in Sawbuck, Redding said.

The News will continue to sell advertising to local brokers and agents who want to enhance their listings with logos and contact information. In those cases, customers would contact that agent or broker directly, and Sawbuck would be bypassed.

“Our advertisers won’t see a lot of change when Sawbuck is on our site,” Redding said.

David R. Ellett, A.H. Belo senior vice president and president and general manager of Belo Interactive Media, said A.H. Belo’s investment is not huge, “but I think it is a strong signal that we believe that this is an enhancement to the real estate solution we bring to the market.”

In addition to search and referral, Sawbuck also touts lower mortgage rates and closing fees as part of its package of services.

Sawbuck’s business model serves consumers at the beginning of a transaction by offering an online, map-based search system for local listings — I mean all local listings, everything in the MLS — hence this new affiliation with The Dallas Morning News is, I suppose, going to take the MLS to the DMN website. Then Sawbuck refers the buyers to an agent in the company’s referral network, in our case, a Dallas agent. They take a referral fee of about 30% from every closed transaction. I guess, in this case, the DMN will take the fee. Looks like they are sending the agent a white hot lead: the company claims that 50% of leads become closings. And get this for drawing in consumers: Sawbuck is said to offer buyers a no-fee mortgage and settlement package, as well as all the property information online at the beginning of a search.  Sawbuck’s co-founder, Guy Woolcott, has said his company does a lot of work to qualify the buyers prior to sending that referral. Last year, here’s what he told Inman News:

“We’re actually contributing something to the deal,” Wolcott said. “We’re not just flipping (agents) a lead; we’re giving them a real buyer.”

The company offers live chat on its site so that consumers can ask questions without being connected to an agent and then choose to be connected when they are ready.

The agents that Sawbuck refers buyers to are hand-picked, and the company prefers to partner with experienced, top-producing agents who often are a part of a team, he said.”

My sources tell me they first heard about this Thursday when their giddy DMN ad reps paid them a visit, and they were shown a spiral notebook they had to return and keep very mum about the contents. The company launches Dallas August 1.

My head is swimming. This could be a brilliant partner$hip move on the part of the DMN – what is Belo’s stock symbol again? (Dialing broker now.)  They know that 95% of all real estate searches begin on line and online is where real estate is headed. Traditional brokerage models are antiquated — the cost of doing business never goes anywhere but up.

But gosh, how would you like to be a broker who has paid bazillions to advertise in the DMN all these years and now come to find them a competitor colleague?

I’ll bet there are going to be some meetings this week. Also, real estate laws vary from state to state. In Texas, brokers own the listings. I cannot see brokers paying the DMN 30% of their split. Many of the tip-top producers are pulling in close to 90% of that 3 per cent commission. And Sawbuck deals with first-time home buyers (the most high maintenance, to be honest) who are buying average-priced homes, say $150,000. The typical commision split is 6% — 3% to buyer’s agent, 3% to seller’s agent. Of that 3%, the newer agents are lucky to take home 1.5% — $4500 on a $150,000 home sale. Are you telling me that the DMN will get $1350 of that agent’s commission split?

On his company’s blog,  Sawbuck co-founder Guy Woolcott said that “79 out of every 100 adults in the USA is a real estate agent.”  Yet we know that a small percentage of those agents are making the really big bucks. (Most are making nothing at all.) He thinks one reason is the agents are paying more to outside sources for leads, presumably advertising. But at a recent social networking realtor seminar, agents were urged to dump direct-mail and newspaper advertising for the virtually free social networking. I also glean from my reading that Woolcott wants to attract the kind of high-producing agents who muscle the 90% split. Problem is, those agents are not selling to first-time, entry-level homebuyers.

Sharing MLS information usually goes over about as well as shaking someone’s hand and telling them oops, I have a staph infection. There are murmurs of uniting every state MLS into one giant entity. And as far as saving buyers money on title policies, title fees in Texas are set by Texas Department of Insurance. The free mortgage sounds neat — um, I’d like a definition of free — but I was with twenty North Dallas agents Friday for two hours and I heard horror story after horror story about the new pickiness of underwriters – requests for second appraisals at the last minute —  it’s all driving buyers crazy and killing many a deal.

But I’m intrigued. I’ve been waiting for this to happen in Dallas now for two years. There’s Redfin, Trulia, Zillow, ActiveRain, HomeGain (which I think is owned by a newspaper consortium that includes either Belo or A.H. Belo). The mission is to make listings and sales transactions as transparent as possible on line. Brokers here choose to share their information with the MLS — what if they decided not to share anymore? Where would Sawbuck get it’s listings? I’m sure the local brokers want to play nice, but will their agents like one more entity’s paws on their commissions? Fasten your seatbelts, folks, this is going to be a very interesting ride.

Update: Sawbuck would have testified at the Justice Dept vs. NAR/MLS lawsuit had it gone to trial.

Last night’s fete was to pump up top agents to bring in the buyers. Hillwood brought in father-son team David and Britt Fair of Hexter-Fair Title Company — David L. Fair closed the Alliance deal for Ross Jr. — for a little state of the LOCAL real estate economy report.  June is when the fat lady sings in the real estate calendar. MLS dollar volume in June, 2007, the greatest year in history for Dallas real estate sales, topped $1.9 billion. June, 2008 topped $1.5 billion. Debbie Downer: April 2009 was about $950,000,000. There is no doubt buyers are seeking the very best purchase prices out there, and the biggest anchors keeping us from taking flight are consumer fears of job loss or loss of home value, and in-migrants who want to buy in North Texas but haven’t sold elsewhere.

And, of course, the banks. 

Mr. Perot stepped up to tell us that 14% of the folks moving out of California are moving to Texas. In the Lone Star State, we just don’t understand how bad it is elsewhere — companies love our low taxes, business-friendly ‘tudes, and lower costs of living. Texas is the 11th largest economy in the world. Perot spoke with Governor Rick Perry recently who told him 18 major companies want to relocate to Texas. North texas is where it’s happening. Overheard: one major company is currently circling us, the CEO hunting for a mega million dollar pad –at least $40m.

But what about lending? We all know rich people have the funds to jet in and buy castles, and the Obama Stim Plan has helped first-time home buyers jump into the market, those being the two major areas of activity currently. What about the bread and butter buyers from $500,000 to $2 million? The folks who have handsome equity but need a mortgage? What about the non-recourse loans coming down the pike that threaten to do in the commercial market? Here’s what Mr. Perot said: “If I had a long-time, good customer who paid his loans on time, I’d take him to lunch, slap him on the back and say see ya’ next year.” That’s not currently happening in the banking world, he says. Banks are wasting huge amounts of time, burning manpower, trying to get re-margins. What that shows me, he said, is that the regulators are calling the shots. Bankers have told him the FDIC is understaffed and loaded with young, inexperienced regulators who are making them jump through ridiculous hoops which are actually costing taxpayers billions of dollars, almost a re-play of the 1980’s when hyper-aggressive, over-regulating banking regulators wiped out Texas banks.

There will be some pain, he said, especially in commercial, until the regulators loosen up so sensible lending can grease the wheels. Meantime buyers will have to pony up more equity. Residential looks a lot brighter than commercial, which means these are the days when folks in business have to really work with their customers and take care of their clients.

“From an office in the Washington suburbs, it played an integral, if unsung, role in the proliferation of mortgage-backed securities that fueled the housing boom. But with the collapse of the housing market, the name of MERS has been popping up on foreclosure notices and on court dockets across the country, raising many questions about the way this controversial but legal process obscures the tortuous paths of mortgage ownership.”

Here are the dirty details on qualifying:

• Must have originated mortgage before Jan. 1, 2009.
• Be an owner-occupant.
• Have an unpaid balance that is equal to or less than $729,750 (for a single-family home).
• Have trouble paying your mortgage due to financial hardship.
• Your monthly mortgage payment must also be more than 31% of your gross (pre-tax) monthly income. Duh.There’s a three-month trial period before you lock in the lower rate for five years and if your home is in danger of foreclosure the process will be halted while you apply for the program.

Is it just me being paranoid, but are we seeing a lot of folks returning to the mothership(s)?