HomeGain Advisors Group – January 2010 Conference Call

The HomeGain Advisors met for their quarterly meeting last week on Thursday, January 21st. The Advisors represent top real estate agents across the country who provide insight into HomeGain products and services, market trends and Realtor behavior.

We had several interesting discussions with our Advisors board last week that are worth sharing with our Blog readers — about home buyer tax credit, appraisals, forced registrations.

Home Buyer Tax Credit

Firstly, HomeGain Advisors in all regions of the country expressed hesitation in terms of how effective the first time buyer tax incentive is currently. In previous calls, many mentioned that most of their business was coming from buyers who mentioned that their motivation to purchase was based on the tax incentive.

In a call prior to the positive comments, they had expressed doubt about how effective the tax incentive was going to be. Clearly, there has been some change. They are attributing the current lack of impetus to the fact that many consumers are still not aware of the incentives and they were doubtful that the April 30 deadline would be extended.

Appraisals

A couple of Advisors spoke about the difficulties they had closing deals due to problems with appraisals. They felt that the lower level of compensation provided to appraisers by the Appraisal Management Companies had an effect on how correct the appraisals are.

One Advisor mentioned to 20% of her deals did not close due to issues with the appraisal. Most Advisors also agreed that the Home Valuation Code of Conduct was causing a lot of problems although the intent of the Code was to clarify the guidelines for appraisers and to remove potential conflict of interest between appraisers and lenders.

Forced Registration

The topic which generated the most interest and a uniform opinion due to testing performed by the Advisors was whether or not the forced registration of consumer contact information on their web sites yielded better results than unforced registrations.

No one felt that delayed registration produced as high a quantity, but more importantly, a higher quality than forced registration. Although there may still be some divided opinions on the subject, everyone generating leads from their web site has gone with forced registration before providing MLS access to the consumer.

Some Advisors are reducing their commissions to get the deal. Everyone is aware that we are in a constantly changing market and that they need to remain flexible. Even though some deals are closing, it is safe to say that short sales are universally disliked.

All in all, the discussions were lively and many ideas for 2010 were discussed. As always, the HomeGain Advisors group conference calls are a great forum for networking and sharing ideas for success. How will real estate markets and opinions change over the next month? Next quarter? We’ll see in the next call in April 2010.