WestWords - May 2022

WESTWORDS MAY 2022

I AM

I AM JOAN LEBIGOT I AM HELPFUL I AM CONFIDENT I AM A GO-GETTER I AM RESOURCEFUL I AM RESPONSIVE I AM WEST USA

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING In the spring of 2021, we met Joan while looking for a rental in Arizona Traditions. As a Minnesota Twins fan, I immediately noticed the Minnesota Twins logo on her front license plate. As a lifelong Twins fan, myself, I knew this was going to work well. However, we did not rent the home. Joan provided a list of homes for sale on a regular basis and provided information on the various communities. Joan was knowledgeable about the area and the specific housing communities. She provided a list of fees and regulations at the various communities. Joan has always been available just to talk and provide perspective on the market and different types of options available.

She will work on any day and at any time and always with a smile on her face. Most importantly, I was also impressed last year when Joan was helping raise funds for drinking water at St. Vincent de Paul. Whenever a professional is willing to take time to help others, it reflects positively on the entire profession. We will continue to work together to find a winter home in Arizona that will fit our needs. For that, we are very grateful.

Joan is the best! She was thorough and professional and great to work with.

She was honest and forthright- no games. Joan was more than helpful in renting then selling my home in Peoria and helping me buy in the hot city of Surprise. She was extremely communicative and easy to reach to always answer any of my questions. Joan made the nightmare that is finding a home in Arizona a breeze! Do not second guess, use Palms and Pines Group for your housing needs!

After working with other Realtors to no avail, we signed with Joan to help us find a home. Joan had so much energy and was always sending home listings to my email box. If we needed a break from house hunting for a while, Joan was fine with it. But when we were ready she was a real go getter. She is very knowledgeable and was able to tell us many things about the homes we were looking at. She would give us positive and negative information in regards to the different houses and area. In March 2022 we purchased our home through Joan.

BROKER BLOG WITH BOB STEPHENS AMAZING AGENTS OF WEST USA REALTY This story is about PAULETTE FENNELLO who has been here as long as I have!

I remember attending her great Italian wedding back when we had both started at West USA. She was always creative and extended her activities to California, because she was licensed there. She became involved in CORONADO BEACH RESORT as they started digging a hole in the ground on a corner of Orange Ave. that would later become the parking garage for the resort. It was across the street from the DEL CORONADO BAY HOTEL. It was scheduled to be sold as time shares. At that time, Paulette had some sort of deal with her friend Debbie, to bring clients in from Phoenix to buy these units. So, they invited me over as Managing Broker of West USA, to view the project. They also wanted me to stay at one of their other places in Carlsbad; on them. Perhaps I would be influential in getting agents to come over and view this project in San Diego. Sometimes they would send plane tickets for several agents to come over and see this fantastic new resort that was just a hole in the ground at the time.

When it was finished, they had a very

large number of sales that came from West USA agents. Clay Fouts actually took 5 of them. Bernadette and I bought one in 1993 that we still have.

Paulette worked at an office in Coronado and lived there. But, she traveled to Phoenix to work at West USA and had a place here. She is an amazing lady and I cannot forget to mention her sponsorship of the Summer series of Coronado Park Concerts which were actually spectacular, not only for the music but also for the amount of children that had so very much fun there, getting to know other kids there and listening to the music. The park was always filled to capacity when the bands were playing. That was always the best part of our trip to Coronado each summer when we go to our vacation spot at the Coronado Beach Resort. We met many people there and it was a great experience that Paulette introduced us to.

This was a grand project that Paulette handled and all of us were happy about this one and the new experiences that came with it! Also, many agents became acquainted with each other and still work together today at WEST USA REALTY! THANKS PAULETTE!

QUESTIONS, CONTACT: Managing Broker, Bob Stephens | 602-942-4200

HOW TO BUY A HOUSE BEFORE SELLING YOUR CURRENT HOME

BY KNOCK You’ve recently decided it’s time to buy a new home. Maybe your family is expanding. Perhaps you’re ready to downsize in your golden years. Or maybe your work has gone remote and you can finally make the move out to an area with more space. So, how do you buy a house before selling your current home?

Is selling first a better alternative to buying first?

On paper, it might seem so. In reality, though, selling first and buying later is a woefully inconvenient experience for many homeowners.

Here are a few things you’ll want to take into consideration if you’re looking at selling first and buying later:

Can you put in an offer on a new home before you’ve sold your old one?

Yes, you technically can make an offer on a new home before selling your old one - but with a big “but” attached. If you’re like most homeowners, you probably need to sell your old house in order to afford your new home. Unless you’ve been approved to hold two mortgages, you’ll need to include a sales contingency.

Sales contingencies are typically big red flags to sellers. They mean uncertainty, which sellers typically want to avoid. If your old house doesn’t sell as quickly expected, it could potentially put the deal at risk.

For this reason, sellers often shy away from offers with sales contingencies. If you must include a sales contingency, you might have a harder time getting your offer accepted.

Living through repairs According to the National Association of Realtors, the median time a homeowner spends in their home is 13 years. Over that time, you’ve probably made a lot of memories - and left a few scuffs along the way.

In order to get the absolute best price for your home, it’s recommended to get it in tip-top shape before showing. Depending on the extent of the repairs your real estate agent recommends (they’ll be your expert guide in getting your house showing-ready), this could mean anything from a new interior paint job to refinishing floors to a full kitchen facelift. While an important step in getting top dollar for your old house, living alongside repairs (especially if you have pets or children) can be stressful and inconvenient.

How do you buy a new home before you’ve sold your old one?

It’s one thing to make an offer on a new home before selling. It’s another thing entirely to actually close on said new home before selling. So can you purchase a new home before selling your old one?

The short answer is - it depends.

If you were to purchase a new home before selling the traditional way, you would need to be able to afford two mortgages at once. For many homeowners, the financial strain of paying two mortgages makes buying before selling the traditional way out of the question.

But let’s assume you’ve saved enough money to afford two mortgages for a period of time and are confident your old house will sell quickly. You’re not out of the woods yet. Your mortgage lender will take your old mortgage into consideration when calculating your debt-to-income ratio.

Debt-to-income ratio is one of the ways lenders determine your ability to afford a monthly mortgage payment. It’s essentially all your monthly debt payments (mortgage, auto loan, student loans, etc) divided by your gross monthly income. If you’re still on the hook for your old mortgage, your debt-to-income ratio will be substantially higher.

Your mortgage lender might not approve you for a new mortgage in the first place.

Living around showings So, you’ve wrapped the last of the repairs and your contractors have packed up their toolboxes. You’re out of the woods, right? Not quite. If you’re selling your house while you’re still living in it, be prepared to live alongside showings.

A critical part of the selling process, showings allow your real estate agent to give tours to prospective buyers, highlight the best features of your house, and gauge their interest. Because most real estate agents recommend the seller not be present during showings, you’ll need to be ready to vacate your house (along with your family and pets) when a buyer wants to stop by.

While your real estate agent will do their absolute best to coordinate with your schedules and minimize inconvenience, buyer interest isn’t always predictable. You’ll need to be prepared to pack up the family (and get your house showing-ready) at a moment’s notice.

Moving twice Getting the timing perfect when you sell before you buy is a tricky task - especially in this market.

Houses are flying off the shelves, largely because inventory continues to be low. This means your old house might sell quickly - but finding your new home might take some time.

Because of this, many people find themselves in

homeowner limbo: they’ve sold their old house, but have nowhere to go. Oftentimes, the solution to this problem lies in a short-term rental and paying to move twice.

So, how do you buy a house before selling?

If buying and selling at the same time is a risky endeavor and selling before buying is wildly inconvenient, what's a buyer to do? Luckily, there are a few solutions out there that can help you buy before you sell.

Secure a bridge loan A bridge loan is a short-term loan and is most often used to help a homeowner buy their new home before selling. Lenders will typically lend you a percentage of the equity you’ve accrued in your old house, which you can then use for the down payment on your new home.

Bridge loans are not without their drawbacks.

First and foremost, they are expensive. Because they are short-term loans, lenders will attach high-interest rates to the loan. Origination fees for bridge loans can also be high - sometimes up to 3% of the loan value.

Finally, they are risky. In the instance that your old house doesn’t sell, you are stuck with the debt and at a very high-interest rate.

Use the Knock Home Swap™ The Knock Home Swap™ is designed to make buying a home before selling easier. Similar to the concept of a bridge loan, Knock lends you the equity in your current house via a loan called the Knock Equity Advance. You’ll use this for the down payment on your new home.

Knock will also provide you your new home mortgage. This means your only working with one lender to receive the two loans. Unlike a traditional bridge loan, Knock’s rates are competitive with other lenders, and repayment on the Knock Equity Advance doesn’t begin for six months. Once your old house sells, you’ll repay the Knock Equity Advance. After that, your only remaining loan will be the mortgage on your new home.

In the instance that your old house doesn’t sell, Knock will agree to purchase your old house from you, so you don’t ever have to be worried about being stuck with the debt of a second loan. Remember, if you were to go the route of a traditional bridge loan, you’d be sitting with that debt regardless of whether your old house sold or not.

HAPPY HOUSE-HUNTING!

HOW BUSY REAL ESTATE AGENTS

CAN CREATE AND MANAGE FACEBOOK & GOOGLE ADS FROM THEIR CRM

BY WISE AGENT

According to a study by NAR, in 2020, 97% of homebuyers used the internet in their home search. On Top of that, Americans now spend, on average, more than an hour a day on Facebook and Facebook-connected platforms. Your ideal client who is looking to buy or sell a home is likely on Facebook. Luckily, getting the right message to that right person at the right time can be done quickly and easily with our new feature addition: Digital Ads. With Wise Agent’s Digital Ads feature, you can create and manage your real estate Facebook and Google Ads simply and efficiently right from your CRM. This feature fully integrates with your CRM to pull property information from a real estate listing and automatically generate ads completely detailed with photos, listing info, your agent photo, & logo.

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Show off your listing, service, or brand. People scroll through Facebook and Instagram quickly. Show what you're selling, your brand, or your logo to communicate your message efficiently. Using home exterior imagery from listing content as the main image on your ad tends to be common across the best-performing ads.

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Avoid too much text on the image itself. We've found that images with less than 20% text perform better, though there is no limit on the amount of text that can exist in your ad image.

BEST PRACTICES FOR AD COPY For ads, one of the most important things to consider is whether your copy is too long for display and will therefore be truncated when your audience sees it. Here are some of Facebook's recommendations on character limits:

Digital Ads makes targeting your audience simple by giving you the ability to choose a location to target or giving you • Body Text: 125 characters the option to create a lookalike audience from a list of buyers • Headline: 25 characters (any more will appear truncated) or sellers within your CRM. We’ve gone a step further and • Description: 30 characters given you a Universal buyer or seller audience that you can narrow down to your specific location as well!

Much of the copy can be pre-populated for you from your listings' information which pulls in from your property pages Wise Agent provides you with all the tools needed to work straight from one place - your CRM. Our Digital Ads feature on Wise Agent. You can edit them and make adjustments for length on the ad preview that updates in real time. works seamlessly with the other features you already use, like your Properties, Landing Pages, Automated Lead Rules, Should you use Emojis in your copy? We've seen ads with a and more! You can easily create a workflow to help you single, well-placed emoji perform quite well. However, less generate leads and follow up all on the same platform. is definitely more here. Similar to email subject lines, it is Below are some best practices for creating your ads, campaigns, and audiences within the Digital Ads platform:

highly discouraged to use many and/or confusing emojis as the performance tends to drop off due to it looking spammy.

BEST PRACTICES FOR IMAGE ADS Testing your ad is the best way to determine what works best with your audience. As you decide on the right creative approach for your ads, here are some standard practices that work well for advertisers.

BEST PRACTICES FOR SCHEDULE & BUDGET

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In general, where audience size permits, increasing spending gives Facebook more opportunities to optimize the campaign. This can be achieved by increasing order value or by decreasing the duration the ad is run.

Use high-resolution images. For images with a link on desktop 479 x 246 pixels, and on mobile min-width 320 pixels. We recommend 1,080 x 1,350 pixels. Use the highest resolution images available to avoid your image appearing blurry or pixelated.

Giving Facebook enough money to work with allows it to learn enough to maximize performance. We've seen the best results when allotting a minimum of $5 - $10 media spend per day.

Our team is always standing by to help you along the way, 24/7!

Just reach out to us at help@wiseagent.com to get fast and friendly support.

TODD MENARD’S REAL ESTATE MARKET STATS APRIL 2022

Back to School SUPPLY DRIVE

MAY 15 JUNE 15 SUPPLIES NEEDED

BACKPACKS

ERASERS

SHARPIES

3 RING BINDERS

ERASER CAPS

RULERS

WOODEN PENCILS

PENCIL CASE OR POUCH

INDEX CARDS

MECHANICAL PENCILS

RED, BLACK, & BLUE PENS

FOLDERS

COMPOSITION NOTEBOOKS

MARKERS (8-PACK)

GLUE STICKS

SPIRAL NOTEBOOKS

CRAYONS (24-PACK)

HIGHLIGHTERS

FILLER PAPER

COLORED PENCILS

M O N DAY

T U E S DAY

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02 West USA Weekly Webinar 9:00am - 10:00am / Webinar West USA Agent Orientation 10:30am - 12:00pm / Webinar Don’t Do Dat w/Broker Bob Stephens 2:00pm - 2:30pm / Webinar

West USA Weekly Webinar 9:00am - 10:00am / Webinar

REACT - Day 1 of 3 9:00am - 3:00pm @ N Phx Office FREE LIVE CE CLASS Introduction to Divorce Real Estate (3Hrs Legal Issues) 10:00am - 1:00pm @ Surprise Office iFound Agent - Learn Homeowner Drip Campaigns, Instant Listing and Sold Listing Campaigns & more 1:00pm - 2:00pm / Zoom Ready, Plan, Action 3:30pm - 4:30pm @ Surprise Office

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Don’t Do Dat w/Broker Bob Stephens 2:00pm - 2:30pm / Webinar

10 FREE LIVE CE CLASS Disclosure and the Law (3Hrs Disclosure Law) 9:00am - 12:00pm @ Mesa Goodyear Office Meeting 10:00am - 12:00pm @ Palm Valley CC iFound Agent - Learn Homeowner Drip Campaigns, Instant Listing and Sold Listing Campaigns & more 1:00pm - 2:00pm / Zoom LIVE CE CLASS Section 8 Housing (3Hrs Fair Housing) 1:00pm - 4:00pm @ Chandler Ready, Plan, Action 3:30pm - 4:30pm @ Surprise Office

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ProStart Training Session 1 - Day 1 of 3 9:00am - 4:00pm / Zoom West USA Weekly Webinar 9:00am - 10:00am / Webinar Don’t Do Dat w/Broker Bob Stephens 2:00pm - 2:30pm / Webinar

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ProStart Training Session 2 - Day 1 of 4 9:00am - 4:00pm / Zoom West USA Weekly Webinar 9:00am - 10:00am / Webinar Don’t Do Dat w/Broker Bob Stephens 2:00pm - 2:30pm / Webinar

17 FREE LIVE CE CLASS The Appraisal Process Revealed (3Hrs Disclosure Law) @ N Phx ProStart Training Session 1 - Day 2 of 3 9:00am - 4:00pm / Zoom Goodyear Essential Learning 10:00am - 12:00pm @ Palm Valley CC iFound Agent - Learn Homeowner Drip Campaigns, Instant Listing and Sold Listing Campaigns & more 1:00pm - 2:00pm / Zoom Ready, Plan, Action 3:30pm - 4:30pm @ Surprise Office

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Prostart Training Session 2 - Day 2 of 4 9:00am - 4:00pm / Zoom Surprise Office Meeting 10:00am - 11:00am @ Surprise Office iFound Agent - Learn Homeowner Drip Campaigns, Instant Listing and Sold Listing Campaigns & more 1:00pm - 2:00pm / Zoom Ready, Plan, Action 3:30pm - 4:30pm @ Surprise

30 ALL OFFICES CLOSED Memorial Day

W E D N E S DAY

04

T H U R S DAY

MAY 2022 F R I DAY

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FREE REMOTE CE CLASS To Be Or Not TO Be Paid, That Is the Question (3Hrs Contract Law) 9:00am - 12:00pm / Zoom

FREE LIVE CE CLASS Advanced Contract Writing (3Hrs Contract Law) 9:00am - 12:00pm @ Chandler

REACT - Day 2 of 3 9:00am - 3:00pm @ N Phx Office

REACT - Day 3 of 3 9:00am - 12:00pm @ N Phx Office

Team Leaders Monthly Mastermind 11:00am - 12:00pm @ Chandler Office

Arrowhead Office Meeting 10:00am - 11:30am @ Arrowhead Bullpen

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FREE REMOTE CE CLASS Secrets to Unprecedented Growth & Referrals (3Hrs RE Legal Issues) 9:00am - 12:00pm / Zoom Coffee, Conversation, & Collaboration 9:00am - 10:00am @ Chandler Office Kierland Office Meeting 10:00am - 11:00am @ Kierland Office The Power of Testimonials 10:00am - 11:00am @ Surprise Office

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FREE REMOTE CE CLASS Disclosure & The Law (3Hrs Disclosure Law) 9:00am - 12:00pm / Zoom ProStart Training Session 1 - Day 3 of 3 9:00am - 4:00pm / Zoom Chandler Office Meeting 10:00am - 11:30am @ Chandler Office Surprise Happy Hour 4:30pm - 6:30pm @

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FREE REMOTE CE CLASS Advanced Contract Writing (3Hrs Contract Law) 9:00am - 12:00pm / Zoom Prostart Training Session 2 - Day 3 of 4 9:00am - 4:00pm / Zoom

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FREE LIVE CE CLASS Managing the Home Inspection (3Hrs Disclosure) 9:00am - 12:00pm @ Kierland Level Up Your Personal Brand w/ Keith Flynn 10:00am - 11:00am/ Zoom Ahwatukee Office Meeting 4:00pm - 6:00pm @ Ahwatukee Office 101 Exchange Seminar 11:30am - 1:00pm @ Chandler Office

Coffee with Justin 10:00am - 11:00am @ Surprise FREE LIVE CE CLASS Managing the Home Inspection (3Hrs Disclosure) 9:00am - 12:00pm @ Kierland Maximize Local Facebook Groups w/ Keith Flynn 10:00am - 11:00am / Zoom RESA Certified Staging Designation Class 1:00pm - 4:00pm @ Chandler Chandler Happy Hour 5:00pm - 7:00pm @

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Prostart Training Session 2 - Day 4 of 4 9:00am - 4:00pm / Zoom Broker Round Table with Kyle Fouts 10:00am - 11:00am / Zoom Craft a Killer Real Estate Agent Bio w/Keith Flynn 10:00am - 11:00am / Zoom North Phoenix Office Meeting 10:00am - 11:00pm @ North Phoenix

Mesa Office Meeting 10:00am - 11:00pm @ Mesa

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31 iFound Agent - Learn Homeowner Drip Campaigns, Instant Listing and Sold Listing Campaigns and more 1:00pm - 2:00pm / Zoom Ready, Plan, Action 3:30pm - 4:30pm @ Surprise Office

• CE- Continuing Education Renewal Training • Luxury Division Event

• Commercial Division Event • Office Meetings

SPONSORS

• Education Events • REACT

• Holiday Hours • Social Mixers / Events