Image by The Michael via Flickr

When the “listing agent” of a home for sale in Oakton, VA gave me a call recently hoping to get some feedback, I told her that my clients were totally turned off by the floral wallpaper and had ruled out her IMPRESSIVE listing.

You are probably nodding your head in agreement right now because you have seen homes that were wallpapered in the 1990′s with floral prints or the 1970′s with a western theme. Today’s home buyers see a home with wallpaper (actually any wallpaper) negatively because it represents their first big project, and that realization often rules out a nice home on the spot.

There are 15 critical seconds when a home buyer walks into a home. Those immediate impressions of a house are long lasting and anything they see (not just wallpaper) is going to influence their decision to make an offer or not. My professional advice is to remove the wallpaper and paint before putting your home on the market.

How much will it cost to remove all that wallpaper?

Anyone planning to sell their home needs to remember that their selection of wallpaper took time, maybe involved an interior decorator and some major decision making. The wallpaper you selected appealed to your personal tastes at the time… and your tastes may have changed too.

Home Sellers, change hats for a minute…

If you change hats for a moment from home seller to home buyer, imagine walking into your next home and seeing Laura Ashley wallpaper everywhere. Yes, it was popular in the 1990′s but looks a little dated now and, even you are probably calculating how much a painter will cost to strip the wallpaper and paint the room(s) a Benjamin Moore color theme like you saw in Town & Country magazine last month.

In twenty years of helping home buyers, I have never heard one say, “Doug, we love this wallpaper!” If you have been shopping for a home then you probably know what the real reaction really is… “Doug, how much is going to cost to strip off all this ugly wallpaper?”

So, Oakton home sellers can not afford to squander that first 15 second impression with the incorrect assumption that home buyers won’t care about your old wallpaper and will deal with it later.

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And when they drilled down, they found that my real estate blog was more informative and interesting than the other canned crap marketing blogs that they had found. Luckily, Northern Virginia has a lot of people thinking about real estate and they give me most of the ideas that I blog about.Yes, it’s like Seinfeld… “There’s a show!”

My content often reflects what is going on here, right now!

Online REALTOR reviews have really come of age over the past year, and the time has come for me to shamelessly share what I see out there on Zillow.com and IncredibleAgents.com (about myself that is).

Here are two quotes that recent clients left at IncredibleAgents.com , an up and coming site which seems to be national. I believe they must take agent licensing info from the public records and create a page. Having found it myself in a Google search, I did fill in my usual propaganda but my clients added the comments.

Peer Reviews and Recommendations are trends Amazon.com pioneered

When I mentioned to a Internet/blogsales guy from Salt Lake City recently that we have over 13,000 REALTORS in Northern Virginia, he seemed surprised that so many people would be real estate agents in 2011 and still have a 2003 web site. They fact is, REALTORS are sales people, customer service people, marketing people, negotiators and, somewhere down the line, computer people. So I suggested he read my FAQ page or About Me page to understand where I am coming from online in 2011.

For people who don’t want to write comments, then there are sites like MountainofAgents.com where people simply click to rate me. Seems “thin” to me but someone thought it would be a good idea.

I really haven’t pushed my past clients to write testimonials online but I probably should. This client (below) wrote a review on Zillow.com because her agent in Maryland had asked her to write one for him. Confidentially, I know she likes me more than him. People can typically tell a story about the home buying or selling experience in 100 words or less, and consumers who don’t know me yet can get the gist about who I am and how I work with people.

Sorry that the print is so small, but you can go to the sites and read the reviews yourself. What do you feel about Realtor reviews online? I feel that we have all grown accustom to seeing a review either on Amazon.com or BestBuy.com for any product we are planning to buy. It is kind of where people are getting insight these days… peer recommendations.

Don’t you Google almost anything?

Yet another web site holds client recommendations too. That site, LinkedIn.com , is more of a business networking platform rather than a real estate specific web site.

If you are looking for a REALTOR in McLean, Vienna, Oakton or who covers most of Northern Virginia, then take a look at my Online Reviews and tell me what you think. I look forward to hearing from you!

UPDATE: After I wrote this blog post, there was a flurry of articles about real estate agent review site and I stumbled upon a site that puts reviews in one place. Wow! My little Vienna real estate blog seems to have moved the conversation along… take a look now! What do you think?

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But don’t kick back thinking that you have plenty of time because there is a lot to see (in Northern Virginia) and not a whole lot of time to spare. Take a quick look at your calender and you may already see holiday or vacation plans around the corner… so let’s take a look at what I am thinking about here.

Luxury Home Buyers have a strategy to use, today!

I am not a CPA, but as a real estate agent who has an eye on this specialty market that has a low “absorption rate”, I know that these sellers are well aware of the long-term capital gains rate going back up to 20%. So, any offer that you put together right now (fall of 2010) needs to go to closing before the end of the year.

I mentioned “absorption rate”, and that number will change in every real estate market as will what is defined as luxury homes, million dollar listings, or as Northern Virginia Agents like to call them, upper bracket homes. Looking over the last 90 days in Vienna, Oakton, McLean and Great Falls VA, at homes priced over $1.9 million, the absorption rate is currently over 20 months, and that’s if nothing new was added today.

Understanding this unscientific fact that most listing agents are probably going over with their clients, and the fact their CPA is probably encouraging them to sell before December ends is giving sellers a little extra motivation to negotiate giving the million dollar buyer a home buying strategy that they need to put into action today.

Sale on luxury homes ends soon (actually January 1, 2011)

Okay, there is a sense of urgency here and you should get rolling soon because the inventory that I just looked at has 196 active luxury homes listings for sale (no joke) and it usually takes a month to go from contract to closing.

And reader, before you go charging off calling a bunch of listing agents to let you into a bunch of homes that you just picked out online, know that the home Seller is actually expecting you to have your own agent (a buyer’s agent). Using a buyer agent can help you see all the properties in a shorter period of time, help negotiate from a strong, confidential position, and know that you have a professional working to help achieve your goals. Give me a call or e-mail, or let me know how it goes with a comment right here on the blog.

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I was showing some homes today in Oakton, Virginia that were built in the mid 1970’s and commented to my client, as I always do, that a home had been converted to natural gas heat. In the 1970’s there was a moratorium regarding laying new natural gas pipelines in Fairfax County, VA and I always share that story. The point of this post isn’t if this is a true story or not, because I have heard it for years so I will refer to it when discussing heating systems in the area using natural gas, electricity, geothermal or heating oil.

Oakton is one of those sections of Fairfax County where suburban sprawl comes to an abrupt halt and the woods return. The fact that most of Oakton does not have a public sewer system, but individual septic systems, quickly limits what could and can be built. And that is a key part of Oakton’s appeal: a wooded countryside yet minutes to Tyson’s Corner, Reston, Dulles or the Vienna Metro Rail to D.C. My clients who live there were drawn by the “country-feel” of the place.

Many of the homes built in Oakton, VA in the 1970’s were heated using heating oil. Tanker trucks still come through the neighborhoods filling up tanks located either in basements or buried underground in the yard.

Here is the important issue: what condition is that underground oil tank in?

Tanks in a home’s basement can be easily inspected for leaks or sludge, and cut up and removed from the property if necessary in a short time.

But the underground oil tank really requires some investigation by an environmental engineering firm. Having the proper paperwork from the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality is essential because when you buy the house then you become a responsible party if there is a future leak contaminating the soil. John Pollard of Pollard Environmental, LLC uses a “Geoprobe” to test the ground for contamination by taking soil samples around the underground tank and testing for oil residue.

Having an environmental testing contingency is not a part of the Regional Sales Contract, but most builders who buy older homes as tear-downs always include a “feasibility study” period where they can do environmental testing so they don’t get stuck buying a potential Superfund site. I always ask, “if there is any paperwork available?” It is not rude and is actually quite a reasonable request. If nothing is on hand, then adding a short testing period contingency can go into paragraph 34 of the Regional Sales Contract.

I always look at home inspections as money well spent since buyers typically learn a ton about the house and can plan for future replacements. And having an inspection by an EPA certified environmental engineer when there is an existing or abandon fuel oil tank is money well spent too because if there needs to be a renegotiation then it should happen now, and not in court years from now. And that is another example why working with an experienced buyer agent (like me) is critical when buying the right house.

For more of my Buyer Agent thoughts, use the buyer agent tab below.

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I can understand his reason for asking the question because I certainly would not want to move my wife and children into a crime plagued neighborhood either. But asking a salesman who is trying to “make-the-sale” such a question is crazy, risky, and the last thing he should have been doing. Yes, I consider myself trust-worthy but I don’t live in the neighborhood and really have no idea if someone had broken into a car over the weekend.

Get it?

Asking real estate agents for local crime info just isn’t a good idea.

So I always suggest people look up the data on the excellent police web sites, and here are a few from my market area in Northern Virginia or the Washington D.C. suburbs.

• The Fairfax County Police Department
• The Arlington County Police Department
• The City of Alexandria Police Department
• The City of Falls Church Police Department
• The City of Fairfax Police Department
• Town of Herndon Police Department
• Town of Vienna Police Department
• Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office
• The Prince William County Police Department

If there is another police department that I have left out then I will be happy to add them too!

The problem is I66 tapers down in both directions to get under the existing 1960′s era overpasses, and when rush hour hits or there is one lane blocked, it causes a classic sphincter effect that can last hours.

Here is the area thanks to The Google:

View Larger Map

Here is the #1 best projects that VDOT could do:

• Replace the Jermantown Road overpass

• Replace the Route 123 overpass, and re-engineer the 123/66 clover leaf

The annual number of delays caused by this 1960′s design is incredible. Anyone who is even thinking of living west of the Vienna Metro Station dreads the thought of driving on this part of I66 at any time of day, seven days a week. Solving this problem would virtually guarantee election to office.

What do you think, gov?