zaterdag 8 januari 2011

2011 - A phenomenal year for the Property Market?


Website traffic to many Real Estate portals is beginning to show rapid growth. Friends and colleagues around the world are reporting a fast pick up this month after a very lethargic and crippling run up to the Christmas period.

In our own case – The Khusan property portal has peaked with more visitors than ever before (with the exception of the initial launch weeks).

So what is the trend and who is showing such a big interest in the Real Estate market?

Read further here: Khusan Real Estate Blog

woensdag 13 oktober 2010

25% Drop in Visitors on Real Estate Open House October 2010

Saturday, 9 October was the National NVM Open House Day for all houses for sale to open their doors to prospective buyers in Holland.

So picture this: house owners doing their utmost to clean up their gardens, trim their bushes, wash their windows and use a neighbor's van to store all the extra kludge they have lying around the house. Days before, the last renovations have taken place - walls painted, ceilings fixed and floors repaired. With the 47,000 plus houses participating of the 185,000 for sale, the combined whole adds up to a lot of activity.

Neighborhoods with numerous houses for sale show neighbors competing and making bets with each other. Each for sale sign and open house sticker is more prominently displayed as the other.

It is 11.00 AM and the Open House day officially starts.

At 3:00 PM the Open House day closes.

Where were all the visitors and prospective buyers?

open house cartoon

Well, a portion were sitting at home waiting for others to buy their house.

It turns out that on average a house was visited 2.7 times. This was down 0.8 times from March of this year. 125,000 visitors visted the 47,000 houses that participated in the NVM National Open House Day, of which about 1 of the 4.5 houses were not visited at all (source).

Many prospective buyers are also sellers. The number of these was actually much higher than anticipated, and because of this the average visits per house had dropped a quarter. Something you would not normally take into consideration, however also not a surprise due to the unstable political scene in the Netherlands.

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Provided by Khusan Real Estate & Property Classifieds

woensdag 25 augustus 2010

Rental Scam Artist in Amsterdam

End of 2008 my wife and I were wrapping up the sale of our house. The real estate contract had been signed, however during the appraisal our foundation was found to be poor. This added quite some time before we could actually close the real estate transaction.

However, we had not arranged temporary housing - we would be emigrating shortly and needed a place to bridge over that time.

The day after the close we put out requests wherever we could. Friends, family, anti-squatters organizations (welcome to Amsterdam!) and perusing Marktplaats.nl. On Marktplaats I found a guy, Rene, who I could meet an hour later who might have an apartment within our price range.

I called him when arriving on the Rokin (main street between the Dam and Central Station). He told me to meet him at Teasers, a bar known for its mini-shorts, low cut T-shirt, large-breasted waitresses. This should have alerted me, but I was too frantic for need of a place to stay. He told me he was a carpenter and that he'd completed an apartment some weeks ago that was still not rented. He would call the owner and see if he could arrange that we stay there. He made the call and the apartment was available and the owner was willing to rent it to him.

At the time, an acquaintance of his showed up and joined us. However this acquaintance called him Ron and not Rene. I asked him why, and Ron told me that he used this to filter his calls between jobs and apartments. If they asked for Rene, he knew they were calling for the apartment. Sounds logical, or not?

Next step was to meet at another bar a couple of hours later to sign the contract. Calling him later he told me and my wife to meet him at Cafe Thijssen in the Jordaan. We showed up there and signed two contracts, one for him and copy for us. He only half filled in his information, mostly illegible and said that we now needed to drive to Amsterdam North in order to do the transaction and get the keys to the apartment. I thought my wife had taken our copy and she thought I had taken it - it turned out neither of us had it. Furthermore, as we were under such pressure (it was Tuesday and we wanted to move out Friday the latest, as Monday was the turnover of our house) that even though we saw the illegible names, we were afraid to jeopardize this opportunity. Silly thought actually, when you look back at it.

Another thing we checked was the legality of his sub-letting this apartment to us. He said it was completely legal. Again, here we should have pushed through and gotten more information, which we didn't. It is illegal in Amsterdam to sub-let a whole apartment.

We drove to North, I gave him one month's rent with two months deposit. He went to the back entrance of an apartment building while I waited in the car, and when he returned he told me the contracts needed to be drafted. So we went to another cafe there and waited, and thereafter went back and he said the contracts were signed and he had received the keys. He also told me that owner would not know that we were staying there. Getting shadier and shadier. Damn the pressure of needing an apartment - you don't see much anymore!

I dropped Ron off in Amsterdam and made an appointment later to meet with him and my wife at our apartment. We showed up there and Ron was nowhere to be seen. When we called him, he told me they had the wrong keys and he had to go back with the owner. We were getting anxious now - he had quite a bit of our money and I had no other way to contact him. Then he called and said he wouldn't make it as he had to drive his workers home, and after his social engagement that evening he could give us the keys and access to the apartment.

End of the evening we call - again bullshit. My wife takes the phone and puts him on the spot. He reacts angrily and says we can forget the apartment and we'll get our money back the next day. The next few days still no Ron nor money, as he needs to get this back from the owner, he then goes on vacation and when he returns no more contact with Ron.

Later we went to the police. We were one of 4 couples that had been swindled by Ron in this way. This went to court and he was found guilty. Not only that, he'd been sentenced five times earlier for swindling. The judge pronounced him guilty and between a jail sentence or a sentence to pay back the swindled monies, chose for the sentence to pay back the monies. When this was made known, his lawyer chose to appeal the decision. It's now almost two years since this has happened, and the appeal has still not gone to court.

Moral of the story - trust your perceptions, do not let pressure cloud your judgement and make sure to get everything in writing. Had we ensured that the contract was set up legibly, that I had received a receipt for the monies received and actually researched the laws regarding sub-letting than none of this would have happened.


dinsdag 10 augustus 2010

Drops in the Sea of Real Estate Listings

Get up in the morning, shake the sleep from your eyes as you drag yourself to the computer to check the responses to your property ad. Open your mailbox and... nothing. Yet you need to sell your house so that you can move into your new house and end the endless commuting.

It's lunch time. You call your real estate agent and ask how many appointments were made for viewing your house. He asks if you can all back later. You try the rest of the afternoon and no response. Most likely no appointments...

After the long commute home, throw your coat on the couch and jump behind the computer. Ah! A response. No, not a response, just spam. Damn! Oh well, might as well brace yourself for the next morning commute and hope that someone, just anyone, will bring out an offer for your house. Maybe you should lower the price...

Sound familiar?

Interestingly enough, the majority of house and real estate owners operate as above. For some reason a very passive approach is taken to actually selling one's house or property. We pay Realtors to market our property, we put a sign on the lawn, maybe we place an extra advertisement on the Internet and then... wait. Wait for a response to come in. Call the Realtor to see if there are reactions. Check our email. Check the ad to see how many views were made.

One of the few agencies that take a pro-active approach is Re-Max. They place ads wherever they can, do neighborhood flyering, hold open houses and use any other means to promote your property to the masses. They use a push-marketing form for generating leads. In the main this has more success.

It is quite funny to see the amount of effort spent generating new leads, when in actuality, there are numerous sources of existing leads right before your eyes - that you didn't see. Seeing these requires a change of mindset. The correct mindset is: contact potential buyers/tenants, don't wait for them to contact you. It takes some work, some rolling up of sleeves, but you will be much happier doing this than waiting for the next response, and as well you will have found your buyer or tenant much faster than the "classical" way.

So where do you find these leads? Classifieds sites. This is the only place where persons looking for property to rent or to buy can advertise. More and more classifieds sites are started every day. EBay has an excellent worldwide network of classifieds sites. Some local areas have very established classifieds sites that offer numerous wanted ads.

In lesser cases there are classifieds sites specifically catering to both property wanted and offered ads. You will come across these naturally by keeping the focus on classifieds sites that cover your area. Khusan Real Estate Classifieds is one such site. Toronto Rentals is another.

And a last tip - persist. It takes some getting used to this, but by persisting you become proficient in locating the wanted ads that will bring you to the buyer or tenant you've been looking for.

dinsdag 3 augustus 2010

Property Trading Place becomes Khusan

14 June 2010 marked the launch of Khusan Real Estate Classifieds, the first 100% international real estate and property classifieds site, and the new name for Property Trading Place. Property Trading Place had been servicing property owners since 2006 in the advertising of their properties.

Khusan incorporates the best of a real estate site and a classifieds site, allowing both merchants (owners, Realors, agents) and consumers (individuals, companies) to advertise their offer or need. This follows the successful tradition of sites Craigslist.org and Marktplaats.nl.

Much care has been taken to make the site intuitive and user-friendly. The lines are very clear and it is not cluttered with ads and banners that detract one from one's purpose - to find the property or candidate one is searching for. And all ads are free of charge.

Within a matter of weeks of its launch, already more than 500 ads have been hand-placed from more than 60 countries world wide. Daily ads are posted on the site.

The word "khusan" is simply the derivation of the word “house.” O.E. Hus "dwelling, shelter, house," from P.Gmc.*khusan (cf. O.N., O.Fris. hus, Du. Huis, Ger. Haus), of unknown origin, perhaps connected to the root of hide (v.). (Source: http://www.etymonline.com/)

Khusan? You can!

maandag 29 december 2008

International Property Community


In the tradition of Craigslist.org and Marktplaats.nl, newcomer Property Trading Place offers buyers and sellers of property the opportunity to connect.

There are very many qualified persons available to assist with the search, evaluation, purchasing and selling of property world wide. Property Trading Place has been set up to increase visibility for private and corporate buying, selling, renting and leasing of properties of all shapes and sizes internationally.

These are interesting times. They require bright ideas and practical applications to counter the many shifts and changes in economic and political systems. Property Trading Place is such a venture.

Our target launch date is 1 February 2009. Stay tuned!