The Don Edam Group | Real Estate Professionals Serving Minneapolis, Edina, St. Paul and Surrounding Suburbs

Preparation, mental toughness and negotiating strategy play key roles in the home purchase process, and as a home buyer you need to master them.

The L.A. Times offers us some tips to help:

Knowledge is power.
Before making a purchase offer, learn as much as you can about your local housing market and the homeowner’s motivations for selling.

Ask questions about the sellers, such as why they’re selling, how long the home has been listed for sale, how soon the seller needs to sell, the mortgage balance, how much the seller paid and any defects in the home.

As the buyer, you’re in the driver’s seat, so obtain all the knowledge you can.

But at the same time, be careful to reveal as little as possible about your personal situation, such as your income, maximum down payment, highest price you’ll pay for a home and how soon you want to move.

And caution your agent not to reveal any confidential information to the seller or listing agent.

Ask if the seller has a deadline.
Time is critical in negotiations. Find out if the other party has a specific deadline. If the seller is under time pressure, use it to your advantage.

Usually buyer or seller or both have deadlines. If the local home sale market is hot, the competition of other buyers might push you to act quickly once you decide on a specific home. But don’t be rushed into a purchase.

Keep a poker face.
No matter how much you want a specific home, avoid showing your emotions. Pretend you can take it or leave it. Once the seller (and the seller’s agent) discover you absolutely must buy a home, you lose your negotiation edge.

Adopt the “he who cares least wins” attitude.
Closely related to hiding your emotions is adopting the “he who cares least wins” negotiation strategy.

Ask yourself, as a buyer, “What will happen if I don’t buy this home?” The world probably won’t end. Maybe you’ll find a home you like better at a lower price. But don’t be afraid to walk away. There’s always another home for sale.

Watch out for real estate “auctions.”
If you are buying a home, watch out if the realty agent says, “If you want to buy this house, you’d better make your purchase offer quickly because there’s another buyer interested in this house.”

Assuming there really is another interested buyer, this is a setup for a real estate “auction.” Often, there is no second buyer. If there is, don’t let him influence you when making a purchase offer.

Make your offer based on your superior knowledge of the local home prices and the seller’s motivations for selling. If the other buyer gets the house, he probably overpaid for it.

Adopt a “win-win” attitude.
Buyers should avoid taking unfair advantage of the seller, even if the seller is facing a difficult situation, such as a pending foreclosure, divorce, unemployment or job transfer.

With a win-win attitude, the buyer offers a fair price that the seller can realistically accept. When you meet the other party and his or her realty agent, be sure to congratulate them on their successful negotiations.

What’s new in Puerto Vallarta condos? Want to see the latest San Diego high rise?

No longer do you have to wait for a national road show to get a feel for new developments around the world. Cliff Bowman, the Vancouver, B.C.-based marketing expert who has turned pre-selling condominium buildings into an industry art form, has taken his online condo idea to retail stores. His Urban and Resort Condo Centers offer consumers a menu of popular destinations and in-city projects while providing developers and builders a downtown sales presence for a fraction of the cost of finding and leasing their own building. Full Story

It may not be the sexiest ambassador of new technology, but the home security industry has stealthily become one of the most important. Options for securing our residences are transcending clumsy lock and key scenarios with new solutions that would have sounded like fodder for sci-fi movies only a few years ago.

Keyless entry locks that recognize fingerprints, hand geometry and other biometric imprints are surfacing in retail stores. Security cameras that can be monitored remotely via a PC or mobile device are commonplace. And networked security systems are increasingly tying in with other whole-home systems such as audio/video and thermostat control. Home & Design Magazine points some of the safest bets in off-the-shelf home security innovation. Read On

Mortgage application volume rose 22.5 percent during the week ending Nov. 30, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association’s weekly application survey.

The MBA’s application index climbed to a seasonally adjusted 791.8 points from 646.3 last week. That figure was revised down from a previously reported 652.5 because of an error by one of the larger reporting agencies, the MBA said. Refinance volume jumped 31.9 percent and purchase volume increased 15.2 percent.

The index peaked at 1,856.7 during the week ending May 30, 2003, at the height of the housing boom.

The survey provides a snapshot of mortgage lending activity among mortgage bankers, commercial banks and thrifts. It covers about 50 percent of all residential retail mortgage originations each week.

The average interest rate for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages decreased to 5.82 percent from 6.09 percent a week earlier. The average interest rate for one-year adjustable-rate mortgages increased to 6.28 percent from 6.24 percent the previous week. Full Story

There’s nothing like compelling content to engage potential customers, and the folks at Springwise point us to Realius.com who is doing just that with its Fantasy Real Estate suite of online games.

The first of these, Price Me Now, was demonstrated at the TechCrunch40 Conference in September and crowned Most Creative Idea at the Web 2.0 Summit a month later. Now in beta, the game challenges players to guess the prices of actual homes for sale in their market by viewing the photos and property details provided by the Multiple Listing Service (MLS). Players earn points based on their performance against the Realius price, an aggregation of previous player estimates and the actual list price; in the near future, prizes will be awarded to the best pricers. The game is free to users, but real estate companies and professionals can purchase in-game placement as “coaches” who guide players and make their own professional guesses. Licensing fees, referrals and market reports are also part of Realius’s planned revenue model.

Chuck Teller, CEO of the California start-up, explains: “Realius captures the synergies between the enormous popular interest in casual gaming and Americans’ obsession with real estate. Our games engage consumers as they dream about, search for, buy, furnish, remodel and sell their homes in ways that are incredibly fun-but also instructive.”

Other games in the works at Realius include Fantasy Flip, which lets homeowners give their homes virtual makeovers and then solicit opinions on how much the changes would increase their value, and Major League Investor, which pits players against one another as they build fantasy property portfolios. The games currently focus on the company’s home base of the San Francisco Bay Area, but they’re a nice example of marketing through content – which could be particularly important for weathering tough business climates such as the one faced by real estate today.

Back in 2003, trendwatching.com coined the term nethoods to describe an emerging trend: “neighborhoods, streets and even apartment buildings are starting to get their own internet and intranet sites: not just to promote the many qualities they have to offer their (prospective) inhabitants, but also to provide communal interaction and localised services.”

A recent example of this trend is LifeAt. Launched in March 2007, LifeAt offers property managers a turnkey solution for launching a nethood for their building. So far, over 335 buildings have joined. The property websites are private and password protected, for use by residents only. Besides offering a platform where residents can meet and communicate, sites also allow users to post classified ads and rate and review local businesses. In addition, property managers post news about vacancies and maintenance work.

By connecting people who tend to share not only a building but also similar socioeconomic backgrounds, and offering them a source of hyperlocal information, LifeAt is creating valuable links between cyberspace and ‘meatspace’. The concept is likely to find a wider audience now that people of all ages are getting used to sharing information online. Free for residents, LifeAt charges buildings a one-off fee of around $6,000 to create and launch a site.