If a client asks you to list their house but tells you it was the scene of a gruesome murder or a suicide, or the house is haunted, are you required to disclose this information to prospective buyers? The short answer is maybe.

Material Facts

Most states have disclosure laws pertaining to property condition and latent defects. The legal standard requires a seller to disclose “material facts” known to the seller that may influence a buyer’s decision. Common examples are a history of termite infestation or major damage from natural events (floods). But when it comes to property that may have been the scene of a murder, suicide or even an AIDS related death, states are divided on the issue of disclosure. Courts have given no clear guidance either.

These psychologically impacted properties, defined as “stigmatized” by the National Association of Realtors, are harder to sell, if the particular fact or suspicion is disclosed, according to James E. Larsen, Ph.D. and Joseph W. Coleman, business professors at Wright State University.

Stigmatized Effect on House Sales

Larsen and Coleman did a study of more than 100 psychologically impacted houses. They found that they take 45 percent longer than comparable homes to sell, and price at an average of about 3 percent less. It is not surprising that many buyers will not buy a house where a gruesome crime or suicide has been committed.

At least 21 states have enacted laws, known as stigma disclosure statutes, concerning the (non)disclosure of psychological facts. In those states that have not enacted these statutes, there are no hard and fast rules about disclosing property stigmas. Continue reading this post

HomeGain recently rolled out its March/April issue of the Agent Success Newsletter.

The newsletter included:

• Feature Story, which announced results from HomeGain’s recent home values survey.
• Question of the Month — “I recently met with a seller I found through your AgentEvaluator program who told me they received 12 proposals from agents in my area but decided to go with mine. I’ve just listed their home, but am a bit concerned about my effectiveness going forward. Should I be worried?”
• News about HomeGain’s Instant Home Values and Home Sale Maximizer™ widgets that are now available for FREE download.
• An Awards section, where we congratulated the newest AgentEvaluator Platinum Club, Gold Club and Silver Club members. 
• Agent Quote of the Month from Ron Petzel — “I have been in close contact with Nick Di Tomasso and Ryan Monsanto. Your company is one of the BEST. I have offered to talk to anyone you put in front of me or by phone to tell them what HomeGain has done for me and my Team.”
• Announcement of February’s Customer Advocate of the Month, Da’Mali Ross in the Product Team. “Da’Mali is the sole point of contact for all AIMS agents, and for each of them she takes care of all operations, setup, customer service, billing and tracking issues. She sets an example for what it means to put the customer first,” commented Salvatore Giammaressi, VP of Product at HomeGain.
  

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Read past real estate newsletters

HomeGain, the first website to offer free instant home valuations, just released instant home values and home sale maximizer widgets for free download.

There are three different versions of each of the Instant Home Valuation and Home Sale Maximizer widgets. (pictured below)

These widgets work best for HomeGain AgentView members. If you have a HomeGain AgentView membership and place one of these widgets on your site, when your visitors request a home valuation or to use the Home Sale Maximizer tool in the zip codes where you are featured, they will be sent to your AgentView module where they can review their home valuation or access the Home Sale Maximizer tool.

These widgets are a great way to attract visitors and to get them to come back. Used in conjunction with AgentView it allows AgentView members to keep their visitors engaged on their sites and on their AgentView sites.

The widgets are also a great addition to any website in need of quality home valuation or home improvement content.

If you are interested in getting these consumer-pleasing widgets for your website, click here.

Try HomeGain’s free instant Home Valuation Tool here

Just wanted to drop in to share my thoughts on HomeGain’s AgentView product, a tool I’ve been testing for the past several months.  No better place to share my two cents than with the HomeGain community…

Why I use AgentView for my real estate business:

1. Making Sure My Team Can “Talk The Talk”. My team’s newer agents get fast and furious experience with Denver real estate home valuations.
2. Metrics/Statistics Win Business: Sooner or Later! Even if we are not able to provide a value the home owner(s)’ can “stomach”, AgentView statistics have helped us justify our valuations and “value-add” as a group, often leading to the listing later on.
3. “Personalized” Email Campaigns. Many times we offer to keep a prospective seller updated with the market activity in their neighborhood by setting up email listing alerts.  Incorporation of AgentView in these campaigns help keeps the prospective seller apprised (and hopefully realistic!).
4. Drip Mail. We’re fine-tuning an offline drip marketing campaign with AgentView integration.  What better than to add another robust tool to keep in front of the potential home sellers.  The key to any successful system in my opinion is consistent follow up.
5. Progression & Innovation. HomeGain continues to enhance the AgentView package.  While I admittedly need to invest more time keying in listings and posting to my AgentView blog, I believe investing my time into an ever-evolving AgentView suite of tools helps enhance our team’s branding and credibility. 

So that’s the scoop from my point of view.  And before I forget I must complement HomeGain’s Blogging School and the efforts of instructor Joseph Ferrara.  I use this invaluable tutorial as one of my key real estate blogging reference guides.

Thoughts???  For those of you who haven’t had enough much experience AgentView and would like to pick my brain, feel free to contact me.  For those of you who are more acquainted with the product, I’d love to know how/if you’ve integrated it in your own marketing campaign…

Check out Brian’s AgentView Blog.

Read Briank Kinkade’s Blog

To learn more about AgentView click here.

Popular tool becomes part of AgentView

It seems every other day a newspaper reporter or blogger takes note of Home Sale Maximizer.

After getting the value of his home on HomeGain.com, Max finds out which home improvements to make before his home goes on the market, and contacts the featured Realtor to ask questions about his market.

Home Sale Maximizer is an online home improvement tool home on a HomeGain survey of over 2,000 real estate agents.

Home Sale Maximizer helps consumers calculate which home improvements will increase the resale values of their homes.

Last night we integrated Home Sale Maximizer into our popular AgentView product that features Realtor listings, blogs, profiles and other real estate content in an advertising-free environment. Continue reading this post

Zillow Becomes a Lead Vendor

They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Well, those Zany folks at Zillow are at it again.

First they borrow HomeGain’s concept of the web-based instant Home Values tool, a product HomeGain first launched back in 2000.

From HomeGain’s March 9, 2000 press release: “HomeGain’s highly popular valuation tool, for example, gives home sellers an estimated home price value range of their home for free in just 10 seconds, including comparable sales figures for homes in their neighborhood.”

Six years later Zillow introduces “the Zestimate” and wraps it in a big “Z” to much fanfare, press notices and blogging adoration.

Today we learn that Zillow has taken another page out of HomeGain’s book with their launch of the Zillow Mortgage MarketPlace.

Take a look: the concept looks suspiciously like HomeGain’s AgentEvaluator program originally launched in 1999. The major difference being that Zillow’s lead generation program is for mortgage lenders.

Thank you, Zillow, we are truly flattered….. Continue reading this post