March 12, 2008 – 11:36 am
It’s gonna get kinda lonely soon at the Karpas Properties offices on W. Alabama. Owner Hedley Karpas has sold his company to Martha Turner Properties, leaving a few agents and employees to scramble for new homes.
Karpas told his 60 employees — including more than 40 agents — about the sale Tuesday morning. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Karpas told the Chronicle’s Nancy Sarnoff that he’ll become a broker associate at Martha Turner Properties. But he won’t be bringing many people with him:
Turner said she will be interviewing about a dozen Karpas agents and retain a “select few.”
Ouch. According to Sarnoff, Karpas’s office will close at the end of this month, though agents will continue to work with existing clients.
Photo still from virtual tour of Karpas Properties office: TK Images
Read more about: 77098, Openings and Closings, Real Estate Agents
November 27, 2007 – 8:11 am
Here’s another example of the importance of loyalty and reputation in the Houston residential real-estate biz. The Houston Press’s Richard Connelly catches up with the ex-partner of formerly ubiquitous Houston real estate agent Mike Spear, whose ubiquity has been a bit challenged since he began serving a two-year sentence in federal prison for income-tax evasion earlier this year.
. . . even though Spear himself might be behind bars, his spirit lives on: If you’re looking to buy or sell a house here these days, you might be forgiven for thinking you’re doing business with the well-known realtor.
Before the two joined Prudential Gary Greene in 2005, Spear and Realtor Ray Allison ran Montrose mainstay AllisonSpear Realtors. Allison explains to Connelly:
There’s a group of professionals within Prudential Gary Greene that are organized as the Mike Spear Team, but it is not the official name of this company.
Huh?
Mr. Spear did work with this firm. He is no longer with this firm. The Mike Spear Team does continue. It is appropriate for it to continue . . .
There’s more: Spear’s admissions from the July 2007 plea agreement, featuring shell corporations and a Mercedes Benz.
Continue Reading This Story >
Read more about: Fraud, Real Estate Agents
April 23, 2007 – 10:02 am
If you’re trying to sell your home without an agent, how do you get your listing onto MLS? Sure, there’s Craigslist and an assortment of FSBO online catalogs you can get on easily, but most Houston homebuyers do their searching exclusively in the difficult-to-navigate MLS listings at HAR.com. If you’re not with an agent, how do you get buyers to find you online?
As of today, a whopping five Houston homesellers have discovered a secret way to sneak into MLS—by using a new free service out of Florida called Iggys House. The five listings show up when you search the Iggys House site for Houston properties. More important, though, they also show up in HAR searches. Pay no attention to the weird Florida broker listing above the property. They’re in.
What’s in it for Iggy? In Texas, nothing yet—but just wait. In five other states, a sister company called BuySide Realty serves as an agent that passes onto the buyer 75 percent of the commissions it receives. Presumably, if a buyer buys a $400,000 house using BuySide, and the seller is paying a six-percent commission (with $12K to each agent), the buyer will end up with a new house and an extra $9,000. It appears to work for 1031 exchanges, too.
The free listings, then, are just a way of trolling for potential BuySide buyers. And it means that BuySide may be operating in Texas soon.
Read more about: Commissions, FSBO, Homebuying, Listings, MLS, Selling-a-Home
