Opening bids often aren’t posted by the banks until the very last minute. You can estimate them by looking at the sales results in Track to see how much things are typically being discounted in your area. You can then deduct that same percentage from the Sale Amount to take a guess at the likely opening bid.

I’d love to see requirements for Realtors be similiar to those for CPA’s or attorneys. Until then, lets not start to believe that consumers should be trying to complete real estate transactions on their own just because there are some clueless agents. Clearly there are some bad attorneys, but would you represent yourself at trial?

Frankly, most realtors are totally clueless morons whose sole motivation is their own greed (and who could truly not care less how much money the client overpays / loses). The barriers to entry in the realtor profession is virtually non-existent; it’s usually a fall-back career for someone who cannot make money doing anything else.

Indeed their interests are directly in conflict with the interests of the client: due to the commission, the more the client pays, the more the realtor earns.

In late 2005 I was running into realtors who would argue with me that I was an idiot for not buying a home b/c prices would “keep going up”, and I have yet to find a realtor (except for one) who honestly will say, “prices are likely to drop” when you ask them about an outlook for the market.

In general, realtors make used car salesmen look honest and sanctimonious.

I think you’d have to be an idiot to rely on the advice of most realtors, and on top of that, pay them their ridiculous commission.

Great article.  It was nice meeting you the other day at the training you did for us in Modesto.  Yea, it’s nice to have a breath of fresh air to cut through all the hype out there.  People need to go back to the old school of treating real estate like a longer term investment.  While there are still some flipping opportunities out there, this is hardly the market for flipping.  Now is the time to buy smart and low, sit on our investments, and continue to work hard as this market corrects itself.  I look at the defaults and I see we still have a ways to go, but on the bright side, affordability is back and we are doing to done of transactions right now.  Buyers are coming out of the wood work and gobbeling up REO opportunies.