Buying Homes in Fremont--A Shift Towards a Collaborative

Fremont home buyers have changed they way they search for homes from 10, even 5 years ago. I have been selling Fremont homes since 1999, and I have seen an interesting change in the goings about. Apart from the recent Fremont short sales and Fremont REO properties for sale causing havoc, the ease to search real estate in Fremont has never been better, and for all of us searching for these Fremont homes, the Internet has certainly arrived.

Back in '99 you could search for Fremont homes on the Internet using some giant sites. Realtor.com was the biggest real estate search platform for searching Fremont homes for sale. Regardless, now, there are hundreds of sites that do the same thing. Moreover, if you add up all the IDX sites you'll reach perhaps a million.* However, Fremont home buyers having access to this information has created a double edged sword. Fremont home buyers feel empowered as they should, but woe to them who feel that they can fell the heavy shodden feet of the giant. Real estate along with its financing is a huge animal yet to be tamed. Consumers go into the real estate arena sometimes all on their own and come out hurt and discouraged.

There is hope. Many deals fall apart because the financing was not solid. Lenders have a lot of requirements for the soon-to-be home owner, and a short visit to the real estate office was the old way to take care of this mishap. The other reasons for DFT's (deal fell through) are that Fremont short sale buyers get exhausted just waiting to get to the short sale lender approval so they can go ahead and buy the thing. When searching for a Fremont home, you will need to be prepared for a great many things as I will allude to in a bit. This is where I have seen the collaborative take form. Consumers have adapted to the chaos and may have a way to deal with this thorny market.

Here's one example. Judy wants to buy a Fremont home for sale. Judy's parents live in Missouri and will handle most of the financing. Judy also has an uncle who already lives in Fremont who happens to really be handy with fixing things. Judy has Jeff Pereyda at TriCity Real Estate Brokers http://www.tricityhome.com/, a Fremont real estate agent helping with the search for homes in Fremont and the contracts for escrow. Just as important, Judy has many friends on facebook who want to help as well. Add all that up and now Judy has multiple laptops, handhelds and iPhones gathering data for one goal--Get Judy a good deal on a Fremont home for sale. By the time we are ready to make an offer, the group could easily have uncovered and dealt with many "Judy exclusive" home buying hurdles. Comparable home prices, good loan programs, the proximity to her work, traffic flow, the noisy neighbors, the nice neighbors, as well as near by amenities, and "walking scores" are all placed in the working space for the collaborative to come up with an overall score for the home.

I may be overstepping a bit to call it a collaborative, but the pains of buying a home in Fremont lately have caused some to form a team and mobilize what resources they have. My job as a Fremont real estate agent is still the same, but I am part of a mobilized, tech savvy group contributing to a project that will benefit all. Seems like a wiki real estate collaborative is the next step. Is there a Google lab for that? By Jeff Pereyda

*IDX sites are MLS search sites that run from a remote database mainly designed so Realtors can have visitors search for homes on these Realtor/agent websites without the agents having to carry huge server/data maintenance and all the while providing customers with more flexibility while visiting their agent's site).