BloodhoundBlog

One of the factors that unites the vendors who annoy me is that they tend to do things that are fast, cheap and obvious, then market them like manna from the heavens. Still worse is doing something fast, cheap and obvious as a hosted solution, charging start-up fees, per use fees and monthly hosting fees — which can turn into a boatload of money real fast.

The back side of doing things that are fast, cheap and obvious is that the product category quickly becomes a commodity, with the corresponding free fall in prices. The dipshit thing may not be worth having, but at least it doesn’t cost much.

Today the economy of abundance comes to Ken-Burns-style virtual tours. Documentarian Ken Burns and others perfected a style of cinematography that lends motion to still photos by panning across and zooming in on the images. This turns out to be a fast, cheap and obvious way to build cheesy little faux-video virtual tours.

The good news: These kinds of tours have always been pretty cheap.

The bad news: They’re video, even if there is no actual live motion, so they occupy huge amounts of disk space and consume big bunches of bandwidth.

The worse news: They suck. As with true video, they only work as virtual tours as the secondary tour, the back-up or the teaser. All virtual tour solutions suck, but the faux-video photo-based virtual tour sucks big time.

The purpose of a virtual tour is to get the viewer to commit to the home, and the only way to do that is by way of the commitment of time. Any real estate promotion that excuses the buyer after a minute or two — as all video solutions do — is sub-optimal. The ideal virtual tour will offer the buyer more and more tools to play with, more and more ways to “try on” the home.

All virtual tours suck to one degree or another, but the best of the breed right now is Obeo.com. You get the panoramas and the pro-photographer photos, the neighborhood information, all that stuff. But what you get with Obeo and no one else is virtual remodeling, a chance for your buyers to make your not-quite-right listing their own. This is a category-killer. For now, Obeo has no competitors in the virtual tour category.

On the other hand, the vendors of faux-video photo-based virtual tours may well have wet the bed last night. Why? Because the price of their product dropped to zero dollars and zero cents:

PropertyPreviews.com today announced the launch of its new Web site, which provides real estate professionals, photographers and home sellers with free and easy-to-use technology to instantly create engaging real estate video tours. In addition, the site is a one-click stop for distributing videos and property information to real estate and video sites including YouTube, Trulia, Zillow, Oodle, Google and others. PropertyPreviews.com users never need to install software, sign contracts or incur video or subscription fees to use the free video creation service.

“Research shows that 84 percent of home buyers begin their home searches online,” said Jeff Harris, General Manager for PropertyPreviews.com. “Giving these prospective buyers an interactive, visual experience viewable from computers and iPhones enables real estate professionals and sellers to effectively market their properties. It’s like having an Open House, 24-hours a day.”

Photos uploaded to PropertyPreviews.com are automatically converted into a Controlled Motion Video (CMV). CMV gives visual movement to static property images to create videos without the typical pixelization and loss of quality of videotaped tours. While the video creation is automated, users can personalize tours with editing tools and a variety of background music selections. PropertyPreviews.com creates the video tour and displays the property details, tour and photos in an ePostcard that can be distributed to an agent’s Web site or other real estate listing services.

PropertyPreviews.com distributes the property information to a variety of Web sites, including Zillow, Trulia, Oodle, Google and YouTube — with one click of a button, and at no cost. The site also provides the ability to buy such marketing materials as DVDs, 5×7 photo books and to distribute the video tour to Realtor.com.

I think the words “Realtor.com” may be the actual monetization strategy, but I don’t have to care. Faux-video photo-based virtual tours might be hokey, and they might be pretty poor marketing tools, but — what the heck? — they’re FREE! My day is officially made.

Technorati Tags: disintermediation, real estate, real estate marketing, real estate photography, technology

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So far, in 30 months since Zillow.com launched, precisely one client has shown me a Zestimate. I mention the site all the time, just as a matter of casual conversation, but only the INTx types know what the hell I’m talking about. Last night on the the phone with Brian Brady, I equated the Realty.bots with model trains: We fool around with these model train layouts because they’re interesting and fun — and then we get up and go back to our real jobs on the railroad.

That’s not completely fair. I’ve been using Zillow more and more in my own real estate practice, as one of my pre-listing tools. Because our current MLS system sucks so bad — it’s gone on July 28th — often I will go to Zillow first.

One thing I’ve wanted and missed at the site is Google’s Street View.

Guess what we’re getting today? That link is dead for now, but I’m not under any embargo, so here’s the news:

Even though it uses Microsoft’s satellite imagery, Zillow will also be adding Google’s Street View technology for exterior elevations of homes and views of the streets and surrounding areas.

The other bit of Zillow news this week was the announcement by Zillow.com CFO Spencer Rascoff that the start-up will not be going IPO in 2008.

The problem? All of Zillow’s services are built on an advertising-based revenue model, and it is struggling to sell enough ads.
 
“There’s an online advertising recession right now, and we are not immune,” said Rascoff. He did not show any signs of departing from the company’s advertising-based business model, or its eventual plans for an IPO.

Street View doesn’t seem to be turned on yet, as I write this. The IPO spigot may be turned off for quite a while.

Technorati Tags: disintermediation, real estate, real estate marketing, real estate photography, technology, Zillow.com

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If you’re unfamiliar with Dan Kennedy, he’s often referred to as “The Millionaire Maker“.  He cut his teeth as a direct marketing copywriting guru in the 80s, attracted a lot of readers in the 90s, and has built an army of students, this decade, through his Glazer-Kennedy Insider Circle.  His “superconference” had Gene Simmons and Nido Qubein as headline speakers.

InfusionSoft is a CRM on steroids and is used by many of Dan Kennedy’s successful students (among others).  Infusion Software is sponsoring a FREE  “Day with Dan” tour:

Infusionsoft, the leading, fast-growing provider of unique, integrated online/offline marketing, follow-up marketing and customer/prospect relationship management — the only software system ever endorsed by Dan Kennedy, and the one running the Glazer-Kennedy Insider’s Circle business — is sponsoring this 4-city seminar tour as an appreciation gift to our users and, with limited seating*, to other invited guests for three simple reasons: (a) as a meaningful contribution to the community of entrepreneurs in a challenging and uncertain economy; (b) as publicity tour for Mr. Kennedy’s newest books; and (c) as a means of introducing you and other business owners to Infusionsoft. There will be a brief “introduction to the power of Infusionsoft to transform your business into an automated, efficient marketing machine” at the Seminar, however you are under no obligation to participate or accept the offers made. For more information about Infusionsoft in advance of the Seminar, you can visit www.infusionsoft.com. *While the Seminars are open to the public, advance registration is required and no at-the-door admissions without tickets can be permitted. Seating is limited and strictly controlled. Hotel locations will be provided only to confirmed registrants.

Anaheim/LA, CA - 8/5

Chicago, IL - 8/6

New York, NY - 8/7

Orlando, FL - 8/8

If you’re trying to learn some cool marketing ideas, you’ll enjoy one of these seminars.  Sean Purcell and I will be in Anaheim.  If you can’t make one of the seminars, you might view this free e-book called:

“The Edge of Success: 9 Building Blocks to Double Your Sales.”

PS:  I have no dog in this hunt other than to hope a few of you enjoy the seminar.  If you attend ANY GKIC event, you’ll be surrounded by off-beat, crazy, brave, successful entrepreneurs.  I promise you that you’ll go home rejuvenated and ready to take on the world.

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In a comment to my Parliament of Whores post, Erion Shehaj asks:

I’m having a hard time differentiating between an event such as Connect and BHB Unchained[....] Is there any real difference between them charging for a conference and you doing the same?

Now that’s an excellent question.

Have you been to events like Inman Connect, StarPower or the NAR Convention? Are they charging you for a conference? You bet.

Is that their sole or even their primary objective? To the contrary.

A trade show exists to deliver you to its sponsors. The conference curriculum will consist of sponsored presentations, with the sponsors attempting to sell you their products. Are these the best tools for your business? No. The sponsors you hear from will be the highest bidders, and the hosting organization — Inman or StarPower or the NAR — will actively prevent anyone from pointing out that the sponsor’s products are inferior to others available. In other words, a trade show like Inman Connect, StarPower or the NAR Convention is nothing but a shillfest, a carnival for bilking dupes, who come there to be bilked on their own nickel.

I know you haven’t been to the one Unchained event we have had so far, but what we do is nothing like that. We had one sponsor, Zillow.com, which bought nothing but naming rights — practically speaking as a much-needed subsidy. No other sponsors, no sponsored presentations at all, no trade-show booths. The bulk of the program was Brian Brady and I teaching the theory and practice of Social Media Marketing. We interviewed a few vendors as a means of pinning them down and putting the screws to them. Everything about Unchained is contained in that one word: Achieving the greatest possible independence for the grunts on the ground.

You highlighted this text:

rather than strive to find new ways of milking Realtors and lenders of their income

Everything that Brian and I do is aimed at helping working Realtors and lenders hang on to every cent they earn. If you come to see us live, you’re going to pay. Electrons are almost free but atoms cost money to move around. But everything we talk about is always available right here for free.

Everything associated with the NAR and the Inmanosphere exists to enslave you in one way or another, to tie you up with one set of golden handcuffs after another, so that, in order to retain as much as half of your income, you have to piss the other half away on brokers, memberships, leads, hosted software solutions and other useless crap. Everything associated with BloodhoundBlog Unchained is aimed in exactly the opposite direction, cutting one bond after another, so that you control as much of your own destiny — and retain as much of your own income — as you possibly can.

You can come see BloodhoundBlog Unchained in Orlando for $99 — at least for now; Brian still hasn’t bumped the price, and I like it where it is. But you can come and reap everything we have to teach right here for free. We want nothing to do with milking you of your income. We want you to make so much money that, if you should pay to come and see us, it’s because you want to make even more.

You don’t have to take my word for it. There were almost a hundred people with us for our first time out. Ask them what’s the difference between BloodhoundBlog Unchained and a shillfest like Inman Connect or StarPower or the NAR Convention.

In the mean time, please do not doubt my gratitude to you for having asked this question. It’s those lingering objections that don’t quite get addressed that cause problems in any persuasive endeavor.

To close, and to summarize, here’s the one clip I made with BrokerIPTV.com at BloodhoundBlog Unchained in May:

Technorati Tags: blogging, BloodhoundBlog Unchained, disintermediation, Inman, Inman Connect, real estate, real estate marketing, real estate training, StarPower, technology

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Barry Ritholz at The Big Picture had these two comics that brought to the forefront again the issue of moral hazard. Check out the comics and then we’ll talk “on the other side.”

Okay, now some thoughts about moral hazard:

The definition of moral hazard (as taken from that scholarly journal, Wikipedia):

Moral hazard is the prospect that a party insulated from risk may behave differently from the way it would behave if it were fully exposed to the risk. Moral hazard arises because an individual or institution does not bear the full consequences of its actions, and therefore has a tendency to act less carefully than it otherwise would, leaving another party to bear some responsibility for the consequences of those actions.

Let’s break that down and look at it a little more closely in light of the current market environment:

a party insulated from risk may behave differently…. What that means is that, frankly, the people on Wall Street and the bankers on Main St. (including yours truly) might very well have done things differently over the last few years if we had been more fully exposed to the risk. Will Fannie or Freddie buy it? That’s all that most mortgage lenders really cared about when structuring a loan. On Wall Street, the guys (I’m using that term in a gender neutral sense, okay?) who packaged these loans up and sold them as securities didn’t really care how they performed, all they cared about was the great big fat commissions that they made. The rating agencies didn’t care about whether they really told the truth about these mortgage backed securities, all they cared about was getting the big fat commission checks.

And so what do we have now? We have, between Wachovia and Washington Mutual, $10.1 billion in loan loss provisions in the last 12 hours. That’s for a period of 90 days folks. I was going to figure out the cost per day but my calculator doesn’t crunch numbers that big!

Moral hazard arises because an individual or institution does not bear the full consequences of its actions.

But how can we prevent a total meltdown of the housing and mortgage market (what would happen if Fannie and Freddie actually went under) without absolving some of the participants (for this particular discussion, we’ll limit it to Wall St., the Ratings Agencies, the Mortgage Companies, and the Banks who wrote the loans oh, and the mortgage lenders themselves if they did anything criminal or fraudlent) of at least some of their consequences?

Let me offer a few suggestions to start the discussion:

1. If the US Government has to step in to bail out any more financial institutions (aka Bear Stearns Take 2), the shareholders should get virtually no value for their existing shares. Years ago, I bought stock in AutoDie (a local die manufacturing company). It went bankrupt, I lost all $1000 that I put into it. (I know, big time investment). I know what you’re thinking - what about the FDIC and banks that fail? I’m not proposing a change in the way of FDIC, that’s going to continue to work the way it works and I’m all for that. I’m talking about the Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs type of investment banks.

2. If the US Government has to step in to bail out Fannie and Freddie, I think the only way that should be done would be for a couple of things to happen: 1) Existing shares should be turned into some sort of subordinated debt where the only way the shareholders would get any of their investment back is once Fannie and Freddie are paid back and they are turning a profit and then they would get back a nominal “dividend” until 5 years of profitability has happened. 2) The existing management along with their exorbitant compensation structure need to be shown the door (I could ruin Freddie Mac for a lot less than $20 million per year!) 3. There needs to be a 10 year plan put in place to eventually move Fannie and Freddie from GSE’s (Government sponsored entities) to totally private enterprises. It needs to be done but the market is too fragile to handle it now. That’s why I’m proposing a 10 year plan.

I know that there are companies who indeed are too big to fail, the economic devastation that would be caused by them failing would be significantly worse than stepping in to save them. But I’m getting the very uneasy feeling that the rally in the financial stocks that we’ve seen going on in the last week is being caused/encouraged/related to some sort of an “It’s going to be okay, because Uncle Sam is going to bail out Fannie and Freddie and that will save us from all of our bad investments and the world will be okay.

The world is not without risk, a lot of risk, but when there isn’t the consequences as well as the rewards for the risk, something has gone wrong. According to reports that I’ve read, this bailout could cost all of us $25 billion. We better make sure we do it right or we’ll all be paying for it for it for a long time and we better make sure things are set up so that the same risk without consequence issue doesn’t come back to haunt us again.

What do you think we should do?

Tom Vanderwell

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I heard from a young military couple in Augusta, GA, looking to buy their first home. They have very good, very detailed questions, and they’re looking for straight answers. Obviously, a familiarity with the GI way of owning real estate is going to help. No fee on my end. Let me know by email if you can run down the game.

Technorati Tags: real estate, real estate marketing

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The Unofficial Apple Weblog. It’s for posting only, but you should be able to handle most admin tasks from Safari. There are alt.themes out there that will reformat your weblog for the iPhone/iTouch screen. I’ll have more to say about these if we ever actually lay hands on a 3G iPhone. More at WordPress.org.

Technorati Tags: blogging, real estate, real estate marketing, technology

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I had one of those REALLY UGLY commutes to work today. You know the ones…when your mind won’t stop ruminating on the scary thoughts of the hours before you left. I mean…you are trying to focus on the business of the day, but it just won’t happen…

After Hunter’s post about vendors…and Greg’s… It was time for me to do some serious soul searching about what I thought was right. I mean…I hate all these vendors pestering the heck out of me…and lying to me…and doing ANYTHING to get business…And then it hit me.

Gulp… I AM a VENDOR!

My blog over at EricOnSearch is my business. While I limit (severely) the number of clients that I take on to only those that TRULY fit with me, and while the real estate side is limited to SEO. ( I refer out website development to those I trust -see site) I AM indeed a vendor to the real estate market.

I spent my entire 35 minute drive to the office thinking….”I have NEVER solicited business from anyone on BHB. Ever.”
“I have always TRIED to be helpful and spent time and offered FREE advice to many who have asked.”
“I have never paid for an ad or paid a (insert chokepoint Charlie here) for exposure.”
“It has all been Earned Media.”

And yet I AM indeed a VENDOR. I feel dirty. Tainted by the company of people who CALL themselves vendors but who in reality are confidence men (and women). The problem is that con men and women and shysters seem to make up a vast majority of the RE vendor market.

Russell Shaw made a great point in a recent post about the Enemy Line. Maybe this is one of the items on my list that I need to get over.

So I started thinking about distinctions that I believe separate the ME’s from many of the rest. I actually made a pretty good sized list of things that I do differently as a vendor to make SURE that I am firmly putting distance between myself and THEM. But once I looked at the list it all boiled down to one thing….

“Do unto others as you’d have done unto you…”

Simple as that. I don’t mind paying for GREAT service at all. I HATE paying for shoddy service. We ALL use vendor for certain things. I HATE cold calls…but when I am truly interested in a product, a warm friendly voice on the end of the line or a prompt and professional email response will SELL me on a product or person like nothing else.

Maybe BEING a VENDOR is not the problem…maybe being a ConMan or a shyster (or facilitating them **cough**NAR**cough**) is the problem. At least that’s my take…

Thoughts?

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I’m young. I am new to real estate, even newer to the RE.net. Inexperienced, blind, deaf, dumb, starving, full, big headed, blah blah blah. These are all adjectives that described me in my first months on the job. Heck, they probably still describe me.

As Greg recently talked about, I was one of those people lead vendors looked at as a buzzard looks at a dead possum on the interstate. (Do y’all have possums where you are? If not, substitute road kill of choice.) I bought some. I attended seminars. I admit, I learned and at least mad my money back from the seminars I went to, however, the services, advertisements, etc I bought, I didn’t make any money, just spent time with unqualified people wanting to rent a house I had for sale.

I was the most beautiful, graceful, largest uddered cow you’ve ever seen. I put out good milk as well. They called, I answered. Now I am afraid to answer a single out of area phone call. All day long, they call.

I am at a point where I am kissing dating goodbye. Forget flirting and foreplay with these companies. I want a commitment. I want a marriage. To death do us part. And if you are worth it, I will wear the ring.

However, I am monogamous. I don’t want to marry each and every ‘good’, ‘solid’, ‘worth it’, vendor that comes my way. Very few people will drink my milk, however those that do will be worth every pint.

I believe that there are vendors out there that are worth it. If you make my life easier, help me enjoy more of my valuable time, help me put more bread on the table, I invite you to have a sip.

However, if you are a worthless, trashy, mange infested buzzard remember this: I have kissed dating goodbye.

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It’s humbling to blog. You want to share your thoughts and ideas, so you do, but what sometimes happens, in my case anyway, is that eventually either experience or someone with more experience comes along, shows you the error of your ways, and suddenly you are faced with a public record of a half-baked idea. So it is with my Bloodhound Twitter posts, which now read like a high school romance.

Oh! I had such a mad crush on Twitter. It was so much fun to be around, but when Twitter experienced sudden ginormous growth, my Twitter gated community lost power, literally, and then it got looted, literally, and I had to lock the gates on my darkened community to keep out the riff-raff.

With the huge growth of Twitter came a lot of “followers”, and perhaps it’s semantics, but I don’t want to follow people. I wanted to converse, discuss, have that big family table experience, but without the family dynamics. I was looking at a Twitter stream full of a lot of followers, a few leaders I didn’t want to follow, and damn, that’s when it hit me: Twitter- I’m just not that into you.

Twitter, I still want to be friends. You rock for the fastest way to get news, but I’m finding that here in Dayton Ohio, I don’t need news that quickly, it doesn’t add to my life in any meaningful way. I still adore my local Twitterpals, and I’m becoming their go-to real estate pro. We tweet-up when we can, so I do check into Twitter for that reason.

Twitter, I like you, but not in that way, ya know? I just don’t feel the excitement any more. We’ve settled into a routine- an understanding- if you will. I don’t need to tweet, and you don’t miss me when I’m gone.

Via email, Greg Swann recently declared Twitter a cesspit of groupthink. Hey! That’s not nice, and that’s not true. Well, okay, it’s half true- the groupthink part is on point. In fact, one of the ways you can use Twitter is to gauge groupthink. You can follow Twitter discussion threads through Summize, which is now owned by Twitter, and quickly find out which way the wind blows through the Twitterverse; that’s kinda useful, right?

Regardless of what I think about Twitter, I’m guessing that the majority of people currently, and always will use Twitter to catch up on the latest in fast breaking gossip, but let’s be fair, do vast amounts of chattering gossip make Twitter a cesspit?

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I’m way behind on introductions, but time marches on. Today we’re adding Thomas Hall to the roster. He is the creator of a weblog called It ain’t all Big Hair and Cadillacs, and that little bit of insolence by itself is more than enough to qualify him for membership in the pack.

Here’s Thomas speaking in his own behalf:

I am truly a frustrated management consultant who sells real estate. I am at a certain point in my “career” in that I want to be more involved in the mindshare of real estate technology while continuing to be a practitioner. I have clear ideas about the role of technology in real estate — I believe the basic model needs a rework, but I am firmly entrenched in finding better ways for realtors to work with consumers. I don’t think technology replaces the role of an agent — it should enhance it.

Smart guy. Good writer. A Bloodhound kind of attitude. Let’s see how he howls.

Technorati Tags: blogging, real estate, real estate marketing

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Q: What’s the difference between cows and Realtors?

A: When they get the urge to be milked, cows don’t fly to trade shows at their own expense, wandering from booth to booth with their udders out.

Well. I certainly feel vindicated. The RSSPieces clusterfrolic is further proof of the advice I gave about dealing with vendors a year ago:

1. Avoid hosted software systems
2. Avoid proprietary technology
3. Pursue commodity solutions — and prices

BloodhoundBlog has been vindicated much more than I expected this year. On issue after issue, we’re the only national real estate voice to be heard on the topic:

• The NAR cartel and how to supplant it
• Trulia.com’s butt-surfing of its own listing partners
• The attempted censorship of Vlad Zablotskyy by ePerks.com
• The vendorslut venality of Inman.com and Realtor magazine
• Realtor.com’s simultaneous betrayal of listing agents and its forfeiture of the preeminent position in real estate search
• The continued predation of Realtors and lenders by Chokepoint Charlies who bring nothing but their toll booths to the real estate transaction

In March, I noted that much of the RE.net had gotten in bed with Brad Inman. Minions of the NAR — I called them the “nice niche” and Teri Lussier is turning it into a meme — have made their incursions as well. The result is that, at the national level, we are the only consistent voice left for consumers and for the grunts on the ground, the people who actually do real estate — rather than strive to find new ways of milking Realtors and lenders of their income.

We are what we are, and I wouldn’t be anywhere else. I just didn’t expect to have the entire battlefield abandoned to us. Obviously we can more than bear the load. I worried for a while about Vlad’s Legal Defense fund, but we’ve more than covered what we’ve needed so far. For a time I was mildly dismayed that too much of the wired world of real estate seems, per Emerson, “to wear one cut of face and figure, and acquire by degrees the gentlest asinine expression” — but that certainly doesn’t describe anything that happens here.

Real estate is a vendorslut industry, after all, built by Babbits and parlor-pink progressives who preferred pushing innocent people around at gunpoint to free enterprise. Inman.com and Realtor magazine are vendorslut enterprises, after all — the advertising is advertising and the editorial content is just more advertising. The Trulia.com’s and the Chokepoint Charlies are going to milk you every chance they get. All that is baked in the cake. And since so much of what we think of as being the RE.net is actually either originated directly by vendors or by their disclosed or undisclosed employees, there really is no cause for dismay. Their job is to hustle you, and your job, as you are wise, is to train your mind not to be hustled.

All that’s as may be — long term issues that we will take down one by one. In the mean time, this week brings us two Realtor trade shows, Inman Connect in San Francisco and StarPower in Orlando. Both will feature alleged informational content, but much if not all of this content will have been vendor-sponsored and vendor-dictated in one way or another. In fact, both shows — like the annual NAR Convention — exist to milk attendees of as much income as possible as quickly as possible — and the bovine victims of this milking are expected to schlep from booth to booth to surrender their hard-won income.

I hate every bit of this — could you have guessed? Courtesy of Russell Shaw, Cathleen and I will be at StarPower again this year, but our motive in going to anything like this is to dive for Black Pearls — ideas we can implement in our own way, ideally without the involvement of any vendors.

If you’re going to either of these shows, that’s one Bloodhound game you can run: Bring us your best Black Pearl — the best idea you pulled out of the show. Put your Black Pearl in a comment to this post. The best one will win a set of Unchained DVDs.

And here’s the other Bloodhound trade show game: Bring us the biggest scam. Not all vendors are sleazy gonifs, but plenty of them are. Show us the worst — supported by photos if you want. If you unearth the scabbiest scam, you’ll win a set of Unchained DVDs, too.

And: You just can’t make this shit up. As I was finishing this post, my email dinged with a GoogleBot: Inman “News” says: “All eyes on Better Homes and Gardens.”

Good grief!

 
Further notice: Ahem.

 
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Technorati Tags: blogging, Inman, Inman Connect, real estate, real estate marketing, real estate training, StarPower

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This Idea Is Submitted With Tongue Buried Deep In Cheek

Sometimes I can only shake my head as I look at some of the listings in the MLS. Most good agents won’t take a listing that is overpriced… and if so, it’s usually not overpriced by much.

When studying recent sales, I notice that the trend for a home to sell within a few percentage points of its current list price continues. Ultimately, it all comes down to supply and demand. If we can’t increase the demand - maybe we should restrict the supply… especially of overpriced listings.

Well I came up with an idea. What would happen if a property tax reassessment could  be made when a seller put their property on the market?

As my good friend Jeff Brown would say, ‘Now don’t jump the gun, locomotive breath.’ This knife would cut both ways. For those who are paying low property taxes - they would see a tax hike. But for foreclosures and other distressed properties - they would see a tax reduction.

The benefit of using this system is that sellers would be much more reluctant to put their property on the market for some ridiculous price. The tax assessor would be able to say - Hey, you’re the one who said your property was worth that much - quitcherbitchin.

On the other hand, buyers like some of my current clients would get a break on the purchase of their next homes. For example, on one property we are considering, the current taxes are nearly $7000 a year - but those taxes will be reduced by at least 40% after the purchase and subsequent reassessment. Having that reassessment right now would reduce the upfront costs of the purchase - not to mention that more buyers could qualify to purchase a property like this.

There you go. I’ve tossed a grenade out there for you. Anyone feelin’ froggy?

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I mentioned the Saturday Afternoon Marketing Circle yesterday. Richard Riccelli, Jeff Brown, Teri Lussier and I have been talking about an ugly marketing problem and how to get around it. I left off last night with this:

You can’t market into indifference or into firmly-established error. You can only persuade people who are listening to you.

I could go further than that to say that people only change their behavior in significant ways when the pain of their errors exceeds their inertia in emending them. In that respect, this real estate market is a good friend to Realtors like us, who intend to do a whole lot more to earn the business. In a normal market, no one is listening. Right now, a lot of people are tuned into the idea of better and worse results.

That notwithstanding, Teri offers up this observation to the idea that “you can’t market into indifference or into firmly-established error”:

Why not? I’m not being a snot, I really don’t understand why you’d say this. Can’t great (legendary) marketing overcome a wide variety of objections?

We want to teach salesmanship at Unchained in Orlando, and this question illustrates why we want to cover this stuff. To wit:

An objection is a buying sign.

If someone raises an objection to something you’ve said, they’re not only already listening to you, they’re listening hard. If you can pull out every objection and address them satisfactorily, you’ll make a sale. In many ways objections are better than placid acceptance, since the placidity may be masking unstated objections.

But that’s not what Teri and I are talking about. The issue is this: How do you get the attention of people who are already consciously or subconsciously convinced that they don’t want to hear what you have to say?

Teri put it this way in our discussion:

So your weakness is not marketing listed homes, but marketing to convince the seller to do things your way from the beginning.

But exactly. Our efforts are remarkable. Our results, even in this market, have been very strong compared to the agents we compete against. But as I discussed with Jeff the other day, most sellers aren’t paying attention to the factors that make a difference in getting their homes sold. It’s not that everyone is not paying attention at all. The problem is that many of those who are don’t know how, objectively, to judge the results they see.

So how do you break through that wall of silence — indifference and entrenched error? How do you get people who already don’t intend to listen to you to listen anyway?

As it happens, this is what Richard Riccelli does for a living. As Realtors or lenders, we are lucky enough to sell a product that our customers already know they want. Richard’s job is to sell products — magazine and added-value web site subscriptions and renewals — that his customers are already all but certain they don’t want. How does he overcome what is not just indifference but actual aversion and get them to write the check anyway?

Richard’s answer is Teri’s answer: Make an irresistible offer. Lend me your mind for a few minutes. I’ll give you a gift now, and I’ll show you how to reap even more benefits in the future.

In other words: I acknowledge that you are indifferent to my message or convinced in advance that I am wrong. I want to compensate you for indulging me in my madness for a brief moment.

This is direct marketing. Richard does it by mail, but you can do it by telephone or by email or face-to-face. You haven’t actually solved the problem of indifference or error — or outright hostility — you’ve just attacked it with a lateral move. If I can induce you to listen to me, I have a chance of persuading you. So if I can’t get you to listen to me as a consequence of your own perceived long-term self-interest, let’s change the game and give you something else to be interested in for a few minutes.

We haven’t done these things, but here are a couple of direct marketing ideas we have considered:

• Buying wholesale quantities of a book that would be of interest to homeowners in our target markets and handing it out door-to-door — face-to-face — belly-to-belly. It won’t do any good if they don’t look you in the eye.
• Offering a Starbucks gift card in exchange for a ten-minute appointment to talk about the real estate market and how to sell homes quickly and for the biggest return. “You give me ten minutes, I’ll give you ten bucks.”

Here’s a direct marketing idea Richard and I have discussed that I can’t do:

“Dear Home Seller: Here is why your house isn’t selling. Call me so we can discuss how to correct these defects in your marketing strategy.”

Richard did exactly this in a post about Everywhere magazine. He got one comment: “This is brilliant!” Who sent it? The circulation guru for Everywhere magazine.

This is capitalism, right? Here’s a way my company can help you get better results. The seller of a home that is not moving could not possibly be more interested in learning what’s going wrong. Indifference? Not hardly. Error? Possibly, but it’s no longer firmly-entrenched. It’s one good kick away from sailing into the gutter.

So why can’t I do this? This is obviously the most effective kind of marketing we could do, selling directly to people we know are avid — ravenous — to hear a better way of doing things.

The problem is is the National Association of Realtors Code of Ethics, of course:

Article 16: Realtors shall not engage in any practice or take any action inconsistent with exclusive representation or exclusive brokerage relationship agreements that other Realtors have with clients.

That one sentence is enough to convict the NAR of being anti-consumer, ant-competitive and anti-capitalist. The recently entombed DOJ/FTC suit was a complete joke. That one sentence is an abomination to the principles of free enterprise.

This is what the NAR is saying in that sentence: Homeowners can go to hell. It doesn’t matter that their most precious asset is being squandered away by incompetent marketing. What matters is protecting incompetent Realtors from competition. This is the purpose of the real estate licensing laws — written by the NAR — and it is the motivation behind everything the NAR does.

That one we’ll have to leave, for now. I can’t think of any better way to flush the bums out of our industry that to point out, in no uncertain terms, why they are bums, but this is not permitted by the NAR cartel. So be it.

Let’s go back to Teri’s question instead. I said: “You can’t market into indifference or into firmly-established error.” Teri’s retort:

Why not? I’m not being a snot, I really don’t understand why you’d say this. Can’t great (legendary) marketing overcome a wide variety of objections?

What answers can you offer to this question? How can you penetrate either indifference or an erroneous certainty in the minds of your prospects?

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