The Odysseus Medal: “Superior taste, no overdone sugar coating which only masks the real product, and no nuts”

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

It is my honor and privilege to work with some of the best writers in the RE.net. There are other folks I deeply admire but whom it would be unseemly for one reason or another to recruit. But the people who write for BloodhoundBlog are first among the first rank, whether they are writing here or at their home weblogs. The Odysseus Medal competition gives me a chance to savor great writing from other great writers, so I am not twice-blessed but dozens-blessed every week — as are you.

Here are the winners of this week’s Odysseus Medal competition:

This week’s Odysseus Medal goes to Kris Berg for News You Can Use – Real Estate is a Business:

Any new agent who steps foot in the Broker’s door without basic technology skills or a strong desire to learn and embrace technology, should ahead of anything else be given a 2.0 crash course. A canned, unmanned page on your Broker’s site is not good enough; yourname@aol.com is not good enough. What they need to teach and you need to possess is a commitment to continuing education and an aching hunger to understand as much as you possibly can about the countless technological tools at your disposal in the big, wide world out there. Your business depends on it. Eighty-six your planned recipe card mailer, and reallocate that money and time to establishing and growing an online, relevant presence.

This post is a string of stunning Black Pearls all on its own.

But: This week’s Black Pearl Award belongs to Jonathan Dalton for Sell Your Phoenix Real Estate in Two Weeks. Not as local as the title makes it sound:

Take your home’s value back in November 2004 before the run began. Compute what your home’s value would be based on 5% annual appreciation. Then take the last sales price (or prices for currently active homes) and find the midpoint between that price and your adjusted home value.

For example: your home was worth $200,000 in 2004. Assuming 5% annual appreciation, your home would be worth roughly $231,000 now. If currently active homes are selling at $270,000, split the difference – $250,000.

Congratulations. You now have your list price.

It’s possible that the price you arrive at by this method will be too low for current market conditions. But, at a minimum, you will have slapped your sellers upside the head with a cold wet fish, which just might get them thinking more rationally about pricing to the market.

The People’s Choice Award this week goes to Darren Rowse of Problogger.net for 9 Lessons You Can Learn about Blogging By Watching Me Sell My House:

One of the theories that I’ve been testing with the marketing of our house is to appeal not just to the head of buyers but the heart. I’ve pushed for the ads in local papers and the copy used to not just present facts but to appeal to emotion and the heart. We also added a few ‘heart’ and ’story’ elements to the way we’ve presented the house during opens for inspections by writing a short brochure for prospective buyers on why we’ve enjoyed living in this house and have left a screen saver of images that I’ve taken around the house running on my computer screen in my study. These have complemented the more ‘factual’ brochures and information that the agents have presented to potential buyers and the feedback that we’ve received is that it’s really made an impression.

The post is much more about selling a house than it is about weblogging, which could explain why it won.

I can tell by our outbound hard clicks that the short list of Odysseus Medal nominees has become the Sunday newspaper of the RE.net. If you didn’t peruse the list, do it now.

And: If you see something great nominate it. I get emails every week from bloggers who want to know, “Who nominated me?” I won’t tell, but never doubt my gratitude for the great posts readers have suggested.

Deadline for next week’s competition is Sunday at 12 Noon PDT/MST. You can nominate yourself or any post you admire here or, more easily, here.

Huge congratulations to the winners — and to everyone who participated.

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