Fix to Flip is a brand new web site that hopes to build a community around flippers. House flippers, that is.
The site promises to give interested members the right tools and resources they'll need to flip properties, and says they're different from other like-minded services in that they help you decide which properties to get into before you buy with their "proprietary evaluation system".
They also give you preconfigured forms to help you plan your project and access to a network of associated professionals that can help you along the way. Realtors can pay a fee to advertise their services to Fix to Flip members.
The site seems a little late to market in my opinion. Is flipping dead in the water these days? Would anyone pay to be part of a service like this?
Can a Web site solve the problems California regulators have with an alleged lack of competition in the title insurance industry? Maybe not by itself, but the state's insurance commissioner, Silicon Valley entrepreneur Steve Poizner, thought enough of a demo he saw of the site, TitleWizard, to cite it as an example of the kind of efforts he'd like to see the industry make to increase consumer choice (see Inman News story).
Two years in the making, TitleWizard is being touted as a tool for consumers, who will be able to track down title insurers in their area, get information on rates and policies, and use a "Learning
Center" to educate themselves about the closing process. The site was developed in conjunction with the California Land Title Association for use in California, but can be adapted for other states, site developer Anthony Farwell told Inman News this week at the CLTA's annual
convention in San Francisco.
Watch highlights of Poizner's speech, get a briefing on TitleWizard from Farwell (above), and listen to some of what CLTA President Rich Macaluso, and Deputy Insurance Commissioner Woody Girion's have to say on the current status of a proposal to cap title insurance rates in California based on providers' actual costs.
In a panel discussion before Poizner's speech, Girion said he thought TitleWizard was a promising idea, but questioned whether consumers would use it. (Another site that allows consumers to shop for title insurance, Get Title Insurance, was launched last summer, and there are others out there).
Many home buyers rely on their real estate agent, mortgage broker or home builder to help them select their title insurance policy. As a result, title insurers market to those who control the customer relationship, rather than customers themselves, Poizner and other regulators have said.
"The relationship building expenses, some legal,
some that have been deemed to be illegal, between the title industry and other
players in the real estate transaction, is at the core in my view of the
problem," Poizner said.
Had lunch with a broker friend last week and we got to talking about real estate commissions. She thinks it would be really interesting to do a study on the commission rates that real estate agents offer when selling their own homes. She said she's amazed at how agents will offer the buy side as low as 1 percent with a straight face and then turn around and explain to their seller clients why it's important to offer buyers' agents 2-3 percent.
It's been awhile since Inman News dipped the thermometer into the commission ocean. What is going on out there? Commissions up and sailing well? Slower market prompting sellers to pay top dollar?
Savvy marketers have known for a long time that women are prime decision makers when it comes to purchasing power. And as single women beef up their ranks in the home-buying demographic, a number of real estate businesses and entrepreneurs are going after this -- almost entirely cutting the man out of the marketing picture.
There are a ton of women-focused real estate books at Amazon. I just finished reading Tara-Nicholle Nelson's, "The Savvy Woman's Homebuying Handbook," which has a different approach to helping women buy homes. Let's face it: men and women think and react differently and rather than try to wrap them into one audience for a "how-to" guide, Nelson cuts straight to the chase and focuses on challenges she's found particular to women. Her background, which includes a psychology degree and work as a professional attorney, makes for an interesting approach. Nelson's vision came out of her own struggles as a young single mom trying to buy a home for her kids and her experience working as a real estate attorney watching deals go awry.
A bizarre incident in the online edition of the Janesville Gazette, a newspaper in Southern Wisconsin: A real estate agent "can't believe she didn't realize that a form on the bed at a house she showed Monday night was a woman who apparently had been dead for two weeks." A couple of prospective buyers reportedly discovered the body while walking through the home.
